Texas Archeological Site May Unlock Tragic History of the Caddo : Culture: The tribe occupied a vast stretch of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma for a millennium, but in 1840s those who survived were forced onto a reservation.

In a nondescript state office building, Mark Parsons sorts remnants of a once-great civilization into cardboard box lids.

There are colorful pottery shards. Rusted pieces of a flintlock gun. Scores of emerald-green and blood-red beads--each meticulously assigned a serial number.

Parsons and state archeologists are reconstructing the recent history of the Caddo, American Indians who for a millennium occupied a vast stretch of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma until 160 years ago, when they were forced onto a reservation.

An excavation sponsored by the Texas Historical Commission is underway in east Texas; the project has confirmed the site near Caddo Lake as Sha’chadinnih, the last Caddo village.

Jim Bruseth, director of the commission’s archeology division, ranks Sha’chadinnih alongside the Alamo--and among Texas’ most important historical sites.

“For a long period of time there’s been a real bias in terms of identifying important Anglo-American sites in Texas,” he says. “Here we have one of the most important Native American sites in Texas, not only because of the artifacts we find but also because it represents the last location of a culture.”

Before their land was gradually taken by European-Americans and the Osage, the Caddo farmed, hunted and traded from villages established throughout the region. Parsons calls them a powerful people, revered by other Indians as “the father of tribes.”

In “Caddo Indians: Where We Come From,” historian Cecile Carter writes that “the Caddo appear to have been, even in the earliest times, very good diplomats, able to establish good relations with tribes along their borders.”

Carter traces the tribe’s earliest reference back five centuries, when Indians told Spanish explorers of a nation to the north with a strong sociopolitical structure, where “no one dared cross their borders without permission.”

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Caddo became a political force due to geography, positioned between the Americans and the Spanish in what would later become Texas. The state, incidentally, is named for the Caddo word for “friend,” pronounced “taysha.”

“They were being courted right and left and made all these promises,” Bruseth says. “Then just as soon as those issues got resolved and Texas became a republic, the Caddo were no longer important. So they were kicked out of their homeland.”

Sha’chadinnih is a phonetic approximation of the Caddo name. The language was never written. The village was settled in about 1800 after disease--probably smallpox imported from Europe--decimated their population. The survivors--some 2,000 villagers--might have been the remnants of several Caddo groups trying to preserve their tribe by boosting population, Bruseth says.

The Caddo, who mistakenly believed their land was part of U.S. territory when in fact it was Mexico’s, sold it to the United States in 1835. Then the last of them left in 1842, relocated first to a reservation near the Brazos River and then to Oklahoma in the 1850s.

“Today,” Bruseth says, “the Caddo are largely relegated to a footnote in our history books,” their story “one of terrible tragedy.”

Lost for a century and a half, Sha’chadinnih was found in six weeks by two Louisiana men.

Jaques Bagur, a historian at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, scoured maps from the 1800s. Then Claude McCrocklin, an amateur archeologist from Shreveport, used Bagur’s research and spotted a distinct loop in James Bayou on an 1841 map.

McCrocklin found the same loop on a modern map, near the bend where Caddo Lake sweeps northeast into Louisiana, and headed there with a metal detector early last year.

It wasn’t long before he found the village site, amid 70-foot pines on gently rolling terrain about 40 miles northeast of Marshall. International Paper Co. owns the land in Marion County.

“It was great, the satisfaction,” says McCrocklin, a retired west Texas cattle buyer. “This had been looked for [for] many years.”

The Cypress Valley Alliance, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving the county’s history and environment, supported an exploratory dig last February by lining up free motel rooms and meals while McCrocklin, Parsons and others probed 75 square yards.

Experts are already drawing conclusions based on some 1,350 artifacts recovered. To Parsons, tiny brass thimbles sewn on Caddo clothing suggest trading with whites who manufactured them. To Bruseth, the ear of a brass kettle suggests Caddo pottery already had lost importance.

Some finds, such as shards of engraved pottery, might even help modern Caddoans reclaim the lost art of their ancestors.

Stacy Halfmoon, the tribe’s cultural affairs officer, endorses such gains, physical as well as spiritual. “There is much to be learned,” she concedes, “as long as we can do it in a way that is respectful.”

Other Caddoans--about 4,000 reside in southwestern Oklahoma--are less enthusiastic about the salvage. The tribe wants to help decide what to do with artifacts and where to excavate next. “We’re glad to have that information. We want to know,” Halfmoon says of the find. “We would like the opportunity to express our opinion on the disposition of the site.”

Under Texas law, artifacts belong to International Paper. But forester Neil McGinness, representing the company, says several hundred acres near the site may be designated “unique areas” to be protected. “We’re really trying to do something that would please everybody,” he says.

Duke DeWare says the Cypress Valley Alliance that he heads will stake no claim to artifacts, despite the group’s hopes to set up displays. And, McGinness adds, although a few relics might displayed locally, most will likely be returned to the tribe.

The biggest question may not be display, but pay. Five more months of work could yield a good idea of what’s there. So far, the state has budgeted no funds to study the site, though the legislature could allocate them.

Says Bruseth: “It’s a great project waiting to be funded.”