Upper Sabine River Basin Caddo Mound Sites: The Seaton Bros. (41RA38) and Fruitvale (41VN35) Sites in Rains and Van Zandt Counties, Texas

There are a number of ancestral Caddo-constructed earthen mounds on sites in the upper Sabine River Basin in East Texas. Perhaps the best known are the multiple mound centers at the Early Caddo period Boxed Springs site (41UR30) and the Middle Caddo period Jamestown site (41SM54). The Seaton Bros. and Fruitvale sites are two of the least known ancestral Caddo mound sites in the upper Sabine River basin. Both sites were recorded by Malone during the archaeological survey of the proposed Mineola Reservoir, but because the reservoir was not constructed, these mound sites were only investigated during cursory survey efforts. Neither mound site is situated in the Sabine River floodplain or associated alluvial terraces, but had been placed along tributary streams either north or south of the river

18th Century Mexican Majolica Sherds from the George C. Davis Site (41CE19), Cherokee County, Texas

During the late 17th-early 18th century, Spanish forces colonized the middle reaches of the Neches River and its tributaries when several missions were established for the Tejas and other Hasinai tribes in this locale: Mission San Francisco de los Tejas, 1690-1693, Mission El Santisimo de Nombre Maria (1690-1692), and Mission Nuestra Padre de San Francisco de Tejas (1716-1719, 1721-1730), otherwise known as Mission San Francisco de los Nechas. These missions were established along the Hasinai Trace, later known as El Camino Real de los Tejas . None of these missions have been located and identified in the many archaeological investigations that have been conducted in East Texas since the 1930s. It has been known, however, since 1940 that early 18th century artifacts have been found at the George C. Davis site (41CE19) on the Neches River at the crossing of the Camino Real. H. Perry Newell, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) excavator of the site, had noted in the published report on the 1939-1941 excavations at the George C. Davis site, that: some pieces of Spanish pottery found near a spring in one of the ravines cutting the slope a few hundred yards southeast from the mound [Mound A]…The Spanish ware were examined by Arthur Woodward, Los Angeles County Museum…The Spanish ware was analyzed as follows: “The fragment of blue and white glazed ware is Mexican majolica, made at Puebla, Mexico, sometime between 1700-76 but more than likely it dates from 1720-1750. This majolica from the George C. Davis site, about 20 sherds in total, has been recently relocated in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin. The sherds are from early 18th century (ca. 1720) Puebla Blue on White plates, a bowl, and a cup. Given the rarity of majolica on archaeological sites in East Texas outside of Spanish Colonial archaeological deposits, its presence at the George C. Davis site is especially intriguing given the fact that Mission San Francisco de Tejas/de los Nechas or Neches was built in this part of the Neches River valley in 1716, then rebuilt in 1721, and finally abandoned in 1730

Selected Caddo Ceramic Artifacts from the E. H. Buchanan Plantation (41RR5), Bowie County, Texas

The E. H. Buchanan site is an ancestral Caddo settlement investigated by B. B. Gardner of The University of Texas in July 1930. The site lies between Pond Creek and Salt Well Slough, streams that drain into the nearby Red River, and they are not far upstream from the large Caddo mound and village center at the Sam Kaufman site (41RR16) on Mound Prairie. As described in Gardner’s notes on file at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) at The University of Texas at Austin, the site lay adjacent to a salt lick on “Buchanan’s upper place,” on a natural alluvial mound. The archaeological deposit was ca. 20-25 cm thick, with much charcoal and ash. Furthermore, Gardner noted that “there is a spot comprising approximately 1/2 acre on which are literally bushels of potsherds, apparently from very large vessels. Unlike most of such places, it is on heavy, stiff soil.” The description provided by Gardner strongly suggests that the E. H. Buchanan Plantation is another salt-making site near Salt Well Slough, much like the Salt Well Slough site (41RR204), 41RR248, 41RR256, and 41RR257

The Caddo Archaeology of the Musgano Site (41RK19) in the Sabine River Basin of East Texas

The Musgano site (41RK19) is an important ancestral Caddo habitation site on Martin Creek in Rusk County in the Sabine River basin in the East Texas Pineywoods. The site was investigated by the Texas Archeological Survey at The University of Texas at Austin in 1972 and 1973 prior to the construction of Martin Creek Lake by Texas Utilities Services, Inc., and a Caddo house structure, midden deposits, features, and a large ceramic assemblage were documented from a component speculated to date between ca. A.D. 1400-1500 (Clark and Ivey 1974:14-41; McDonald 1972:10-11). Unfortunately, however, the results of the excavations and the recovered artifact assemblage received only the most cursory investigation and analysis, and thus the significance of the site with respect to how it could contribute to a better understanding of the regional Caddo archaeological record has not been realized. I sought to remedy this by undertaking a reanalysis in 2013 of the existing excavation and feature records as well as the recovered artifact assemblage that are curated at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL). This report is a product of this reanalysis of the records and artifact assemblage from the Musgano site

The Peterson Ranch Site (41HS253), A Late 17th to Early 18th Century Ancestral Caddo Cemetery in the Little Cypress Creek Basin, Harrison County, Texas

The Peterson Ranch site (41HS253) is a late 17th to early 18th century Caddo cemetery in the Little Cypress Creek basin in the East Texas Pineywoods. The cemetery, on Gray’s Creek, was found and excavated in 1962 by a number of collectors from the Marshall, Texas, area. In 1963 the cemetery area was destroyed by the construction of an oil well pad. Most of the collectors kept cursory notes on their excavations at the site, which consisted of plan maps showing the orientation of the burial pits, the human remains in the graves, and the location and kinds of some of the funerary offerings placed in the grave to accompany the deceased to the House of Death in the Sky. Fray Casanas commented in 1691 that the Caddo buried “their dead with all their arms and utensils which each possesses.” The kinds of items placed in Caddo burials, especially the vessels—since they are by far the most common burial offerings—can provide unique insights into how different Caddo groups treated the dead, and what such differences may mean regarding diverse view on life and death among contemporaneous Caddo groups. The information on the cemetery excavations and burial offerings from the Peterson Ranch site has been reconstructed from notes and drawings on file at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL). To my knowledge, the funerary offerings from the burials at the site have not been documented by a professional archaeologist, and it is presently unknown what the current provenience(s) of the collections are

The Colony Church Site (41RA31): A Caddo Mound Center in the Upper Sabine River Basin, Rains County, Texas

The Colony Church site (41RA31) is an ancestral Caddo mound center in the Post Oak Savannah of the upper Sabine River basin in East Texas; it is the westernmost Caddo mound site on the Sabine River. The site was recorded in the late 1960s, as part of an archaeological survey of the proposed Mineola Reservoir on the Sabine River. The reservoir was never constructed

Early to Mid-19th Century Occupation at the Dead Cow Site (41SM324), Smith County, Texas

The Dead Cow site is an early to mid-19th century archaeological site located within the northern part (Sabine River basin) of the proposed Republic of Texas 1836 Cherokee Indians land grant in East Texas, generally east of the downtown area of the modem city of Tyler. Cherokee Indians had moved into East Texas by the early 1820s, and most of the Cherokees cleared land and carved out farms in the uninhabited region directly north of Nacogdoches, on the upper branches of the Neches, Angelina, and Sabine rivers. By 1822 their population had grown to nearly three hundred. To date, historic archaeological sites identified as being occupied by the Cherokee during their ca. 1820-1839 settlement of East Texas remain illusive, and to my knowledge no such sites have been documented to date in the region. This article considers, from an examination of the historic artifact assemblage found here, the possibility that the Dead Cow site is a Cherokee habitation site

Ancestral Caddo Ceramic Artifacts in the Jesse Martin Glasco Collection from Upshur County, Texas, at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

Jesse Martin Glasco, or J. M. Glasco, lived in Gilmer in Upshur County, Texas, between the mid- 1840s and 1886. During most of those years he served as Upshur County surveyor and deputy surveyor, as well as deputy county clerk, postmaster, and tax assessor, and he also represented Upshur County in the 11th Texas legislature. Between 1859-1861 and 1867-1873, he was a meteorological observer for Upshur County for the Smithsonian Institution, and also collected Native American pottery for the Smithsonian’s collections from the Gilmer area

The De Rossett Farm (41HE75) and Quate Place (41HE81) Sites in the Cobb Creek Valley in the Upper Neches River Basin, Henderson County, Texas

The De Rossett Farm and Quate Place sites were among the earliest East Texas archaeological sites to be investigated by professional archaeologists at The University of Texas (UT), which began under the direction of Dr. J. E. Pearce between 1918-1920. According to Pearce, UT began work in this part of the state under the auspices of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and that work “had led me to suppose that I should find this part of the State rich in archeological material of a high order.” The two sites were investigated in August 1920. They are on Cobb Creek, a small and eastward-flowing tributary to the Neches River, nor far to the northeast of the town of Frankston, Texas; the sites are across the valley from each other. The De Rossett Farm site is on an upland slope on the north side of the valley, while the Quate Place site is on an upland slope on the south side of the Cobb Creek valley, about 2 km west of the Neches River, and slightly southeast from the De Rossett Farm. Both sites have domestic Caddo archaeological deposits, and there was an ancestral Caddo cemetery of an unknown extent and character at the De Rossett Farm

Radiocarbon and Oxidizable Carbon Ratio Dates from Archaeological Sites in East Texas, Part II

This paper presents a second compilation of recently obtained radiocarbon and oxidizable carbon ratio dates obtained from archaeological sites in East Texas. An analysis of the age ranges in the more than 585 dates from East Texas archaeological sites indicate that most pertain to prehistoric and protohistoric Caddoan Indian occupations, particularly the Early (A.D. 1000-1200) and Middle Caddoan (A.D. 1200-1400) periods when prehistoric Caddoan settlements were widely distributed throughout the region