Black Spear Point- Olivier Site

​I'd spent a decade or more walking what used to be a mound, now plowed a few times a year, called the Olivier Site. I am friends with the daughter of the owner of this field, which rotates soybeans and sorghum. I monitor this field. It was a prehistoric stone working place at the very edge of the Teche escarpment. The first artifacts I found there were scores of knapping shards, still very fine and sharp after all these years. They were multicolored, and since rock doesn't exist naturally in this prairie delta the imagination wonders to the origins of the white, blue, black, grey and red stone chips. Finding each one was thrilling for me. 

I had been told that the neighbors found many artifacts in that field, but I never found more than the knapping pieces and maybe a small broken point or two. They are concentrated on the north edge of the rise of what used to be a great mound. 

One day in 2019 I was walking the field as usual. I had never found a full artifact before. I found a white marble that reminded me of the full moon and some knapping and ceramics when all of a sudden I saw a piece of bone in the soil. I don't know what kind of mound was here before, but its likely it was burial. I picked up the piece of broken bone and just held it, out there in the field. It was leg or arm. In that moment I heard in my head, "You're going to find a point." I walked three steps and there was the black spear point on the dirt. 

On the Olivier Site and Meche-Wilkes Mound

Jon L Gibson 

The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point Place

CULTURAL RESOURCES SURVEY OF FOUR DISPOSAL AREAS ALONG THE VERMILION RIVER LAFAYETTE PARISH, LOUISIANA

Cultural Resources Survey of Four Disposal Areas Along the Vermilion River Lafayette Parish

 

Cultural Resources Survey of Four Disposal Areas 

Along the Vermilion River Lafayette Parish:

US Army Corps of Engineers

"USL continued to excavate selected sites in the general area. A. Frank Servello conducted test excavations in the Meche-Wilkes Mound (16SL18) on Coulee de Marks between Grand Coteau and Arnaudville in the late 1970s. Coulee de Marks is a tributary of Bayou Fusilier, which is the eastern head branch of the Vermilion River. Gibson continued excavations there in 1989-1991. This site has a low conical mound filled with fragments of Poverty Point objects as well as fiber-tempered and untempered Tchefuncte-like pottery, surrounded by a midden containing untempered Tchefuncte-like pottery (Gibson 1990a:109-lll, 117-118, Tables 26-27). The fiber-tempered pottery is similar to that from the Ruth Canal site, 20km to the south, and these sites, along with a few others bearing fiber-tempered wares in the locality, probably represent a very narrow time interval around 1000 B.C."

"Despite its compact size, Beau Rivage (near the confluence of Bayou Tortue and Vermillion River) had large quantities of exotic rocks—thousands of pieces and possibly hundreds of kilograms. Exotics make up over a third of all lithic materials in the available collection (Gibson 1976a:Table 20). There are at least nine other sites within a 25km radius of Beau Rivage that have exotic materials—materials other than novaculite and quartz crystals, which are not really exclusive Poverty Point commodities (Gibson 1991b). The Olivier site (16SL12), near the junction of Coulee de Marks and Bayou Fusilier, is the most notable of these other sites (Gibson 1976a:38-39). But none of these sites comes close to matching Beau Rivage in absolute quantities, although Olivier might come close in terms of relative quantities. The point to be made here is that Beau Rivage is not an isolated component. For 25km above and below Beau Rivage along the Coteau Ridge and flanking Vermilion swamp are other presumably coeval sites bearing foreign lithic materials. We suspect Beau Rivage was the local supplier. But where did Beau Rivage get the rocks? In an earlier analysis, Gibson claimed that they came directly from the Poverty Point site, 280km to the north {Gibson 1979). Gibson thought they were first delivered to Poverty Point, where they were rendered into tool blanks before they were then shipped on to distant consumers, like Beau Rivage. Now, after more than a decade of recent excavation at Poverty Point have failed to find either the unaltered bulk materials or the primary chipping residue showing that preshaping actually took place at Poverty Point, we are not as certain. Initial shaping of tool blanks for trade now seems more likely to have been carried out at the rock outcrops or deposits themselves. Poverty Point still seems to be the most likely source of the blanks and nodules that got to Beau Rivage, but search for intervening distributors continues."

"...Several San Patrice points were found at Meche-Wilkes Mound, on Coulee de Marks near its junction with Bayou Fusilier"

"Additional Archaic components occur upstream and downstream from Lafayette. Downstream some eight kilometers below the Vermilion River gap is a cluster of sites (16VM7, 16VM17 and 16VM23) near the mouths of Anslem Coulee and Coulee He des Cannes. One of these (16VM23) produced several projectile points (including Evans, Ensor, Benton, and others), point fragments, drills and drill fragments, chipped adzes and gouges and fragments, boatstone fragments, and tubular and barrel-shaped stone beads (Gibson 1976a:Table 23, Figure 10). However, only a handful of flakes was recovered, totally insufficient to complement the number of finished tools on the site. The assemblage is unusual enough to lead us to suspect that it might be functionally specialized, perhaps even ceremonial. Upstream where the river parallels the Coteau Ridge are other Archaic components, and on the low Prairie des Femmes terrace, where flanked by Coulee de Marks between Grand Coteau and Arnaudville, is the oldest Archaic component known in the Vermilion locality. The Coulee de Marks site (16SL48) produced Early Archaic point types, Keithville and Cache River, as well as point fragments and preforms, small flake end scrapers, and chipping residue (Gibson 1990a:Table 24). There was substantial Archaic activity on or near the Vermilion River, and it seems to have spanned much of the long Archaic interval. But precisely when and what forms it took are unknown. We have only the most general perceptions of the interval, but they are sufficient to show that the locality continued to be a favorite spot for native groups. Having a long-standing sizeable population in a place with easy access to the interconnected waterways in the Lower Mississippi Valley was probably a prerequisite for entering into an era of commercial exchange, which characterized the ensuing period."

Arrowheadin

Arrowheading on the Plowed Mound, October 7, 2014

       

Flint Shards at the Olivier Site

Research of the name Prairie des Femmes has pointed me to a particular field near my house, a big open field where milo and soybeans are rotated.  It's been farmed for decades at least, but it sure is curious how the whole thing has been left open and otherwise undeveloped. As if there is memory there. It was brought to my attention that there is a slight elevation in the middle of this field that is a plowed Indian mound, possibly a site of the "village" of native women la Prairie des Femmes is named for.

After I found out about the location, I took every chance to pass by this field, in complete awe, seeing at different times of year how the grain undulated out toward the center. You couldn't see it at certain angles, but there is surely a mound out there, even though it has been plowed hundreds of times. I would idle down the dirt road that skirts the south side, I would even stop sometimes just to look and maybe take a picture when the rise was visible, but I never dared to go out into the site until I talked to a neighbor who encouraged me to go, saying that no one would protest my presence there. So I waited for them to plow, and it's as if I felt it when they did; I had a hunch. Sure enough, it was bare dirt, the mound like a long still wave out there. I went. I was woozy to be out there on that sacred ground.  But I was too focused on my children and every crunch of gravel from the road to concentrate. I did feel that place, though. I took the clods of dirt in my hands and let them break to the ground. I looked out across the land, purple in sunset, to watch a lone starling flit around, or, to jump, startled by the wind's song in a surviving stalk, or the buzz of an insect, the call of the killdeer. But the field was dusty and coarsely plowed. I needed a big rain to wash it all down and reveal what was underneath. I took a clod of dirt from the apex and went home, happy. I waited a day, and as if on cue, the first cool front of the season came, hand in hand with the opening of squirrel weekend. The front had woken me up at dawn with the thought of arrowhead hunting. The cool snap had everyone out and feeling good. Harvest and the scent of fires were in the air. The moon waxed past half, and I took the chance to go back to the site. This time, the rain had smoothed things out, but the mud was so sticky it felt like I was hauling ten pound boots across the expanse, and my children were covered. We settled on collecting a bag of the biggest and sweetest pecans I have ever found which were falling from the nearest tree to the mound, and even picked up a few pieces of white ceramic from the mud before going home to hose off.

When I told my neighbor that I'd found no artifacts, just big pecans after the rain he said, well you must be lookin with ya eyes closed! I know for a fact that there are shards all over that north side, right over the hump... that field is full of shards.

Well, novice as I was at all this, I didn't know what a shard was, I was looking for arrowheads! I anxiously went back anyway that evening, after the field had dried a little more. This would be the time, I knew it. I knew where to go, I had appeased (or at least tried to appease) the ancestors. Third time's the charm, I said. I started scanning the northside of the mound. The north wind blew through the good pecan tree so loudly it broke my concentration, and there were squirrel hunters in the woods to both sides of the site, their lone shots ringing every few minutes, also breaking the calm of my mud scanning. I felt like I had been training for this my whole life, though, as I normally scan the ground for things (like rocks and snakes), and have found treasures in the dirt (the first was a tiny, ornate key in the compact dirt of the neighbor's dooryard) since I was young. Still not seeing anything in the mud, I began picking up anything that seemed out of sorts, anything hard, not mud or vegetation, and put it in my pocket. Then I saw a little rock... hmmm, it was flat and white and seemed insignificant, a chip. I felt it between my fingers before hastily dropping it behind my back... just as I was bending over and saw two more in front of me. Shards, I thought. I began picking them up. This is the place. They were not densely scattered, but by the time I left, I had a pocketful of strangely shaped rocks, two smooth white marbles that reminded me of the full moon and a planet, white ceramic pieces, and twenty small, very sharp flint shards from arrowhead making at the site. They are all in pastels, sharp as shark's teeth, like jagged wampum, each one impossibly thin and complex. Their texture is so foreign to me, so unlike what I usually find in Louisiana mud, it is old, old rock, traded and chipped centuries, even millennia ago. I now keep the colorful assortment together in a small ceramic dish, examining their elegant shapes and qualities with my fingertips. I find I like their vibration so much when they are stirred, their dry rasp, it's so quiet it's almost like a whipser.

Vent dans l'arbre dans la PDF

Les vents dans cet arbre pendant que j'faisait du arrowheading à ce matin

The Plowed Mound

the Apex and the Moon

I have always imagined, when I looked out over open water, of all of the fantastic sea creatures that are just below the surface unseen. It's the same out here in the prairie where one can see the undulation of the ground, the swells of earth, and knows the history in the dirt, the treasures below the surface.

When I venture to ask a local elder about the Prairie des Femmes' origins or where I can find an arrowhead, they direct me to this field, which is on a bayou path that I am familiar with.

You can't see it from certain angles, but when you do see it, it is unmistakable; there was a large mound here. The earth swells as a wave, climbing two or three feet gradually, and forming a clear apex out toward the center. It was disorienting to be there, like being on holy ground. I have passed on idle so many times but never stopped. 

It's the harvest time. Just last week I passed the field in question and it was knee deep with weeds grown up in the weeks after the harvest. But the fields on this side of the PDF have been getting plowed, so I had the feeling that it had been, also. I waited until the cool of sunset to go out there. I took my boys, sat them down at the treeline with a bag of potato chips and a pig in a blanket each and told them to stay put while I tramped off into the field. 

I looked around and around, walking, looking down, listening for trucks that passed, watching the little red and white spots of my children against the black of the tree line, yelling at them occasionally or hearing them playing. I was unprepared for arrowhead hunting in my old red leather loafers, now full of fine dirt, as I had sunk eight inches in places as I walked. At the apex of the mound, which is not extremely pronounced, I took some pictures. I detected a death smell, very faintly, yet clearly. Surely from a field mouse crushed under the plow, I thought, but I could not help to think of the place and wonder what it really was.  I picked up clods, but found no stone, no ceramic. I walked crushing the clods in my hands and letting the dust fall. At the high point I found a dark clod of earth, cooler and fresher than that rest, and put it in my pocket. 

It seemed to me strange that I was so worshiping this land, an ironic time for me to come there, the permission and the occasion of the harvest coming at the same time that I have been fuming daily about a near neighbor back on my side of the prairie who is excavating a pond and trucking out dozens of Mack trucks a day of Prairie des Femmes dirt to sell, I assume. I hear the grumbling and beeping for twelve hours a day, I can see the machinery. It's officially started to annoy me, not only the noise way back here in the peaceful prairie, but that they were trucking out the land.  The Prairie des Femmes, being unceremoniously trucked out, and I had to listen to it all day. Selling earth was taboo to me, I realized, especially this dirt. 

I believe it is sacred ground, and it has been desecrated to a point. People have built their own homes on these high places, plowed them repeatedly, dumped and littered them, or else built roads over them, as there are a few roads in the PDF that undulate up over a mound and back down again.

I left as the reds of sunset were fading to oranges and purples. I had found nothing but a dark clod of earth from the apex, but what Frozard had said was true: no one messed with me. Now I needed is a big rain...

the rise of the plowed mound

la terre et mon soulier rouge

Sept Aigrettes

This is the place!

Word on the Prairie Streets is that this slight elevation in the field in the Prairie des Femmes is the location of one of many Indian mounds that has been plowed many times over for agriculture. I pass here often, waiting for a chance after they harvest, plow and then it rains a big rain so I can go arrowhead hunting. I have even stopped a few times at the elevation in the road. It is definitely "the place"!

The Cœur de la Prairie des Femmes

Prairie des Femmes Origins

Had a good visit with my new little babysitter who lives across the prairie a half mile south as the crow flies. A beauty, she seemed to be a direct descendant of the very women the Prairie is named for. We swapped ghost stories and information about old sites and neighbors and talked about the Indian artifacts that are found here. When I asked her what was the story she had heard of the Prairie, she said her daddy said it was where the Indians "hid" their women when they went off hunting or fighting. It was the first time I'd heard it told like that, and I liked it! 

 

Click here for more PDF Origin Stories

No Arrowhead Today

There are three things that I have been searching for in the Prairie des Femmes: a red cardinal feather, an arrowhead, and the origin of the place name, Prairie des Femmes. Despite the PDF being a place of high native traffic back in the day and the dozens of red cardinals that swoop across the road as you drive, I have made the most headway with the name origins and found no arrowheads or red feathers. 

Recently, though, I realized with the help of Mr. P. LaHaye (who has found all kinds of ancient Indian artifacts out here) that I had actually found an Indian clay marble a while back in the oxbow woods. Today we walked down the road and walked a few meters into the woods on an afternoon walk. I had the feeling I might find something, so I brought a short spoon. I looked  and cleared the leaves a little, but with my two little men with me, it wasn't easy to focus on finding anything. I did see a palmetto shoot waving in the wind like a signal, it was being shaken by a small blackberry vine. It should be noted that in the hour we were walking and exploring, no car or truck passed on the Prairie des Femmes Road. The woods are impassible in summer and still a little wild in winter, full of spiny trees and palmettos. Soon we turned to exit onto the road and right where we did, there was a cardinal feather in the gravel on the side of the road. Gettin close!!

Indian Women Plant Corn in the Prairie des Femmes