It therefore seems appropriate to publish the available information about this site, despite the limited excavations conducted nearly 30 years ago. The criticism has been made that too many foci in the Caddoan area have been based on excavation of a single site and that the Alto Focus, for example, is based on the Davis Site alone. The information presented herein concerning Smithport Landing and other Alto Focus manifestations in Louisiana was available to, and used by, Krieger as indicated in the Davis report. The details should have been published for other students, however, especially since burials of the Alto period are limited in number.
SITE ENVIRONMENT
The Smithport Landing Site is in the eastern edge of De Soto Parish, about eight miles east of Mansfield, the Parish seat ([Fig. 1]). It is a relatively large village site situated on eroded and dissected hills which project in an expanded tongue of land fronting on Old Smithport or Clear Lake (Bayou Pierre Lake). The former lake bed is now dry in the summer, swampy during the rainy season. Buffalo Bayou courses through this low area to join the outflow of present Smithport Lake about one mile northeast of the site. Further eastward this drainage flows into Bayou Pierre which continues some 20 miles down the southwestern margin of the Red River flood plain until it empties into this river near Natchitoches.
The hills on which the site is located ([Fig. 2]) are 10 to 20 feet above the lake bed; where dissected by small drainages the slope is gentle, but in several places is abrupt. Most of the site was formerly in cultivation and the topsoil, a grayish sand with liberal mixture of humus, is three to four feet thick and apparently fertile. The subsoil is a rather dense, reddish or orange sandy clay. The trees around the site are oak, persimmon, gum, and many smaller hawthorns and sassafras. The uplands have heavy growths of pine and the lake bed has the usual cypress, willows, and some hardwoods. The nearby lakes still have abundant fish—bass, crappie, “bream” and other small perches, as well as the “rough” varieties like gar, carp, catfish, shad, and “gasper-gou”—and turtles, eels, bullfrogs, snakes, and an occasional alligator are present. Bird species are abundant and in former years migratory waterfowl came in tremendous numbers. Edible wild fruits and nuts in the area are persimmons, haws, crab apples, plums, muscadines and other wild grapes, hickory nuts, walnuts, pecans, chinquapins (dwarf chestnuts), yoncapins (seed of Nelumbo lutea, a water lily), and many others. Deer were present until the early part of the 20th century and are now returning; squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, and opossums are the more prevalent of the edible animals. Mussels and snails are available in moderate numbers. In aboriginal and early historic times this vicinity afforded, undoubtedly, an abundance of natural resources, with good soil and adequate rainfall for domestic crops.
Fig. 1. Map of northwestern Louisiana and adjoining portion of eastern Texas. Listed sites have Alto Focus or related components. Note route of the early historic road, El Camino Real, which probably followed prehistoric trails through this area.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
During the 18th and 19th centuries this land was spoken of as “the coast,” inferring a large body of water into which the tongue of land projected. Like so many other lakes formed where streams run into the river valley out of the hills, it is probable that old natural river levees formed a bar or dam which produced the lake; some, however, are of the opinion that the famous log jam in Red River was instrumental in production of these lakes. At any rate, much of the traffic on the river above Alexandria coursed along these lateral streams and lakes. When we first visited this site, old residents spoke of a deep lake with steamboat landings at the site and on present Smithport Lake.
The desirability of this land for habitation is attested by the several prehistoric sites in the neighborhood, the size of the Smithport Landing Site, and the early documents which indicate a white settlement within a few years after establishment of Natchitoches Post. About equidistant (25-30 miles) from Natchitoches and the Spanish counter post at Los Adaes ([Fig. 1]), families and influences were derived from both the French and Spanish. Records at Natchitoches record the birth of Joseph Marcel Antonio De Soto, son of Manuel De Soto and Marie De St. Denis, member of the family of Louis Juchereau De St. Denis who founded Natchitoches, in 1758 (D’Antonio, 1961a). A later daughter married Paul Lafitte of Bayou Pierre, as the Smithport Lake Settlement was called.
The Spanish influence became stronger in the latter 1700’s, after Louisiana was ceded to Spain. Even after the Louisiana Purchase, this land was on the margin of the “neutral ground” and for a time was under Spanish jurisdiction. This, as well as a comment about a Yatasi Indian village which may be of significance to the site, is indicated by D’Antoni’s (1961a) account of the journey in 1808 of Don Marcelo De Soto, who had become Spanish judge of Bayou Pierre Community, to San Antonio to petition the governor for a resident pastor. The petition reads in part: