Salt in Eastern North America and the Caribbean: History and Archaeology [1 ed.] 9780817393335, 9780817320768

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SALT IN EASTERN NORTH AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

Archaeology of Food Series Editors Mary C. Beaudry Karen Bescherer Metheny

Editorial Board Umberto Albarella Tamara Bray Yannis Hamilakis Christine Hastorf Frances M. Hayashida Katheryn Twiss Amber VanDerwarker Marike van der Veen Joanita Vroom Richard Wilk Anne Yentsch

SALT IN EASTERN

NORTH AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN History and Archaeology

Edited by Ashley A. Dumas and Paul N. Eubanks

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS  TUSCALOOSA

The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-­0380 uapress.ua.edu Copyright © 2021 by the University of Alabama Press All rights reserved. A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press. Typeface: Scala Pro Cover image: Artist’s reconstruction of an AD 1500 salt maker homestead based on excavations, drawing by Ed Martin; with the permission of the Arkansas Archeological Survey Cover design: David Nees Cataloging-­in-­Publication data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-­0-­8173-­2076-­8 E-­ISBN: 978-­0-­8173-­9333-­5

Contents List of Illustrations

vii

Introduction Paul N. Eubanks and Ashley A. Dumas1

Part I  Salt Histories 1 A Millennium of Salt Production in Southwest Alabama Ashley A. Dumas21 2 Prehistoric Uses of Salt and Mineral Springs in the Middle Cumberland Region of North-­Central Tennessee Paul N. Eubanks, Kevin E. Smith, Hannah Guidry, and Larry McKee37 3 More Than Just Salt: Middle Tennessee’s Mystical Mineral Springs Kevin E. Smith and Paul N. Eubanks49 4 Production of Salt in the Onondaga Lake Region of New York: From Prehistory to History Ian W. Brown61 5 Salt Production and Consumption in Historic Jamaica Alyssa Sperry72

Part II  Salt in Society 6 Salines in the Late Pleistocene Human Landscape of Southeastern North America Steven M. Meredith85

vi CONTENTS

7 Salt Making among the Precontact Southern Caddo of Arkansas Ann M. Early98 8 Prehistoric Salt Making Writ Small: An Ancestral Caddo Example from East Texas Nancy A. Kenmotsu and Timothy K. Perttula113 9 Salt Archaeology in Northwest Louisiana Paul N. Eubanks124 10 Creating Social Meaning: The Role of Salt in Multicrafting at the Mississippian Periphery Maureen Meyers138 11 The Power of Salt in Gift Exchange and Social Transformation in the Precolonial Caribbean Joost Morsink153 Conclusion: The Quest for Salt Heather McKillop164 Glossary175 Bibliography177 Contributors217 Index219

Illustrations

Figures I.1. Salt lick in northwest Louisiana

8

I.2. Examples of vessel forms used to evaporate salt in eastern North America

10

I.3. Salt-­making sites and localities in eastern North America and the Caribbean discussed in this book

15

1.1. Map of southwest Alabama showing salt springs and other archaeological sites mentioned in the text

22

1.2. McLeod simple stamped bowl from the Lower Salt Works, fabric-­impressed saltpan from Beckum Village, and cane-­impressed saltpan from Stimpson

25

1.3. Remains of a salt-­boiling furnace at the Upper Salt Works

34

2.1. Topographic map of the mineral springs at Castalian Springs

39

2.2. Rim fragment from a fabric-­impressed pan at Castalian Springs

40

2.3. Profile view of a limestone/earthen oven at Castalian Springs

43

2.4. T-­shaped pit at the French Lick site

46

3.1. Mineral springs localities recorded with “support facilities,” 1800–1930

53

3.2. Castalian Springs vicinity

55

3.3. Chimney base and hearth of slave residence at Wynnewood State Historic Site

59

4.1. William Kirkpatrick Jr. Monument honoring the discovery of the Onondaga salt springs

63

4.2. Principal late prehistoric and historic Onondaga Indian sites

65

4.3. Interior view of a salt manufactory, Salina

68

viii ILLUSTRATIONS

4.4. Mural of solar salt production, Syracuse

70

5.1. Drawing by William Berryman of workers in evaporation ponds at salt works, Jamaica, circa 1808–1816

75

5.2. Survey of Captain Joseph Noyes of “The Little Salt Pond,” 1668

77

5.3. W. R. Harris Salt Pond, St. Thomas, 1832

78

6.1. Early interpretation of Paleoindian artifact concentrations compared with concentrations of salines in eastern North America

86

6.2. Quantities of Clovis points and quantities of mineral springs by Tennessee county

89

6.3. Locations of documented Clovis points and salines in Louisiana as documented in the Paleoindian Database of the Americas

91

6.4. Quantities of Clovis points by Alabama county as documented in the Alabama Paleo Point Survey

93

6.5. Location of sites with Clovis components, salines, and quarries of knappable stone in Choctaw, Clarke, and Washington Counties, Alabama

94

7.1. Outline of the Caddo Culture Area with major salt-­making sites and locales mentioned in this volume

99

7.2. Artist’s reconstruction of an AD 1500 salt-­maker homestead based on excavations

102

7.3. Distribution of post molds, hearths, and graves in the central portion of the Hardman site

105

7.4. Facsimile of the 1691 “Terán map” of a Nasoni Caddo village on the Red River

107

7.5. Keno Trailed bottle and Old Town Red effigy bowl

111

8.1. Salt Well Feature 3, an exposed, shallow hearth with clumps of sherds around it

115

8.2. Sherds of a Nash Neck Banded vessel recovered from several of the sherd clumps around Feature 11

118

9.1. Upper and Little Licks at Drake’s Salt Works, as seen from Google Earth, 2012

125

9.2. Excavations on a low mound of salt production debris at the Little Lick

128

9.3. Nineteenth-­century wood-­lined well from the Upper Lick at Drake’s Salt Works

135

10.1. Plan view of Carter Robinson mound and excavation areas

143

ILLUSTRATIONS  ix

11.1. Map showing the location of MC-­6 on the edge of the salina and its relation to Armstrong Pond

155

11.2. Detailed map of the central plaza on MC-­6

157

Tables I.1. Approximate Sodium Content in Selected Foods

3

8.1. Archaeological Assemblages from Caddo Salt-­Making Sites, Farmsteads, and Hamlets

117

10.1. Number and Percentage of Rims with Rim Thickness Greater than Body Thickness 

147

10.2. Number of Bowls from Rim Fragments per Level and per Structure

148

Introduction Paul N. Eubanks and Ashley A. Dumas After marching thousands of miles through the forests, mountains, and prairies of southeastern North America, Hernando de Soto and his conquistadors reached the banks of the Mississippi River in the spring of AD 1541. Although their minds had been fixated on gold when they began their entrada two years before, by the time they reached the mighty river, Soto’s men were afflicted by fatigue, nausea, and muscular seizures. Their suffering came not from their lack of gold but for want of an equally precious substance—salt (Clayton et al. 1993:II:383–384, 410). In a dramatic recounting of their plight, it was said that “they felt the lack of [salt] greatly, and some whose constitutions required more than others died for the need of it in a most extraordinary manner. They were taken with a slight hectic fever, and by the third or fourth day no one could endure the stench of their bodies fifty paces away from them, . . . and their bellies were as green as grass from the breast down” (Clayton et al. 1993:II:384). It is certain from this gruesome description that Soto’s men were suffering from hyponatremia, a suite of debilitating symptoms caused by chronic lack of salt (Adrogué and Madias 2000; Verbalis et al. 2013). In this case, long hours of marching in the subtropical climate of southeastern North America caused a rapid depletion of salt through perspiration. In desperation, some of Soto’s men interrogated a group of captured Indigenous traders about any local sources of salt. The traders told them of a salt deposit in a mountainous region some 40 leagues (222 km, 138 miles) to the west of their encampment. Soto dispatched a small group of men to accompany the traders, and eleven days later, they returned with “six loads of rock-­salt crystals” (Swanton 1946:300–301). This life-­sustaining substance was undoubtedly seen as a godsend to Soto’s men, but for many, their manna arrived too late (Clayton et al. 1993:II:384). This historical episode reveals two facts about the need for salt in the

2  EUBANKS AND DUMAS

North American interior. First, and perhaps most telling, is that salt was important enough that Soto sent his exhausted and battle-­weary men specifically to obtain this mineral. The conquistadors’ experiences confirmed that without salt the human body begins to shut down, especially in warm and humid environments. Second, there was a regional demand for salt in eastern North America, as the captured traders seemed accustomed to traveling long distances to acquire or trade this substance. What is not apparent from this encounter, however, is that for many centuries prior to Soto’s arrival, the Indigenous peoples of North America had been making and trading salt. Moreover, the limited distribution of salt sources across the interior of the eastern portion of the continent means that salt may have been viewed similarly as other scarce, valued materials, such as marine shell, copper, mica, or greenstone, whose production and distribution was controlled or influenced by people seeking social prestige. We are fortunate to have accounts from the Soto expedition that speak to the need for salt and describe some of the Indigenous peoples who made and traded this commodity in the sixteenth century. Limited European exploration into the interior of eastern North America and the uneven distribution of salt sources means that such early ethnohistoric accounts are rare. Furthermore, shortly after the establishment of Euro-­American trading houses and settlements in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, native peoples in some areas ceased making and trading for salt, resulting in a general lack of primary sources on the topic. Archaeological traces of prehistoric salt sites and artifacts are often damaged or destroyed by later salt-­making activities, which themselves have suffered from a lack of attention from the preservation and scholarly communities. Fortunately, prehistoric salt production sites have gained increasing attention from researchers in recent decades. Colonial and American period salt production locales have also enjoyed some study, enhanced by the presence of archival documents and first-­person accounts. This volume assembles the information and models from some of these projects so that we might explore the story of salt—its uses, production, exchange, and cultural meaning—in eastern North America and the Caribbean, from the continent’s initial settlement to the twentieth century. USES AND DEMAND Salt is an electrolyte required by humans to help us retain water (Beauchamp 1993:345; Meneton et al. 2005; Morimoto et al. 1993:389; Whitney et al. 1990). Although the minimum amount of sodium required by the body is a much-­debated topic, certain groups, such as the Yanomamo of Brazil, have been known to survive on as little as 50 mg a day (He and MacGregor 2007;

INTRODUCTION 3

TABLE I.1. APPROXIMATE SODIUM CONTENT IN SELECTED FOODS Food (100 g, raw)

Sodium (mg)

Acorn

|t| = 0.9912). The Shapiro-­Wilk W test and the Spearman’s test both demonstrate that there is an extremely ­low-­to-­nonexistent correlation between mineral spring frequency and the frequency of Clovis points by county in Tennessee. LOUISIANA Unlike in Tennessee, there are few documented Clovis points from Louisiana (Anderson et al. 2010; Rees 2010:45). There are six Clovis points recorded from three parishes on PIDBA, and six more have been found in two archaeological excavations in Caddo (Webb et al. 1971:7) and Sabine (Servello and Bianchi 1983) parishes. Louisiana does, however, have at least several dozen salines. These are located between the alluvial bottoms of the Red and Mississippi River alluvial valleys in the central northern portion of the state (Eubanks, this volume). Additionally, one set of salines associated with a near-­surface occurrence of solid salt is located at Avery Island, in Iberia Parish (Brown 2015; Gagliano 1964). It was at this site that association of humans and Pleistocene megafauna was speculated as early as 1867, and where fragments of woven baskets or mats were found in association with the bones of extinct animals (Foster 1867). A piece held at the Smithsonian Institution produced an uncalibrated radiocarbon date of 4260 BP, postdating the Pleistocene by several millennia (Gagliano 1964:43). At the Salt Mine Valley site (16IB23) on Avery Island, Gagliano (1964:59–64) encountered a deeply buried assemblage of blade and bipolar stone tools that remains to be dated. This assemblage conforms to a degree to early Archaic period pebble-­ derived lithic assemblages, such as that found at the Beaumont Gravel site (22PE504) (Giliberti 1995) in Perry County, Mississippi. In addition to this assemblage, Gagliano (1964:43) documented a single triangular lanceolate projectile point that had been found on the surface at a site on the island. This artifact appears to date to the Late Paleoindian period. The occurrence of Clovis points and salines by parish is plotted in Figure 6.3. The only parish in which both Clovis points and a saline are recorded is Webster Parish, with two Clovis points and one saline. The two points were found on two nearby sites in the far northern part of the parish (Charlotte Pevny, personal communication 2018). The saline is Potter’s Pond, in

HUMAN LANDSCAPE OF SOUTHEASTERN NORTH AMERICA

91

Figure 6.3. Locations of documented Clovis points and salines in Louisiana as documented in the Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA). (Base map courtesy of Creative Commons; courtesy of Ashley A. Dumas)

the south of the Parish (see Eubanks, this volume). The sites where the Clovis points were found and the saline are approximately 50 km (31 mi.) apart; thus, no statistical tests are necessary to demonstrate the lack of correlation between salines and Clovis sites or artifacts. The earliest documented human presence at any saline to date in Louisiana (Avery Island) likely postdates Clovis by at least 1,000 years, as indicated by the triangular projectile point mentioned earlier. ALABAMA The borders of Alabama include a broad spectrum of physiographic variation, ranging from the low-lying shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico to many miles of “fall line” where harder Paleozoic rocks are covered by the softer rocks and unconsolidated Mesozoic age deposits of the Gulf Coastal Plain, to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Within all this variation is the Hatchetigbee Dome, which is a deformation of several thousand feet of Coastal Plain sediment driven by movement of massive salt deposits of the Louann Salt Formation thousands of feet below the surface. Where the

92  STEVEN M. MEREDITH

broad alluvial valley of the Tombigbee River crosses the anticline, a series of salines emerges within and near the margins of the valley (see also Dumas, this volume). Like Tennessee, Alabama has an exceptionally high number of documented Clovis points in PIDBA (Anderson et al. 2010). The Alabama Paleoindian Point Survey (APPS) is a database of Paleoindian points sponsored by the Alabama Archaeological Society (Futato 1996:308) and is a contributing database to PIDBA (Anderson et al. 2010). Because there is a backlog of several hundred artifacts from APPS to PIDBA, several of which are from the southwestern part of the state, data from the APPS, rather than PIDBA, will be used here. As with the abundant Tennessee data, I use here only proximal fragments or Clovis points and exclude preforms. The APPS largely reflects the data collected by a few individuals (primarily Howard King, Van King, and Mark Cole) who have been steadfastly documenting artifacts for decades. For this reason, the concentration of the documented artifacts partially reflects the network of these individuals, but this concentration does correspond to distributions that have been known prior to the compilation of the database (cf. Futato 1982). The concentration also coincides with a large number of recorded Early Paleoindian archaeological sites in the Alabama State Site Files. There are 549 Clovis points in the APPS that meet the criteria of this study. As seen in Figure 6.4, there is a distinct concentration of Clovis points in the northwestern corner of the state, with 161 from Madison County, 127 from Colbert County, and 99 from Lauderdale County. Though not as dense as the northwestern concentration, there is also a cluster of points in the southern part of the state, including 12 from Montgomery County and 15 from Clarke County. These numbers are certain to increase as more artifacts are recorded in this region as a result of a multiyear effort to document Paleoindian artifacts in private collections (Meredith 2009). Mapping salines and documented Clovis points together, one can see that the greatest concentration of Clovis points is far from any documented saline. An examination of the Gulf Coastal Plain alone shows that a high number of artifacts are documented near the salines of Clarke County, but there is an equally high concentration found in Montgomery County, far from any saline. One resource that does correspond with the concentrations of Clovis documented in the state to date is the relative abundance of quality, knappable stone. Within the northwest corner of Alabama is Muscle Shoals, which is a series of falls and rapids of the Tennessee River where it cascades over a layer of knappable chert measuring more than 60 m (197 ft.) thick in places (Harris et al. 1963:13). Muscle Shoals and surrounding outcrops of Fort Payne Chert, as well as Tuscumbia Limestone and Bangor Limestone,

HUMAN LANDSCAPE OF SOUTHEASTERN NORTH AMERICA  93

Figure 6.4. Quantities of Clovis points by Alabama county as documented in the Alabama Paleo Point Survey. (Steven M. Meredith)

were the sources of tool stone for nearly all of the Clovis points found in the surrounding counties (APPS data). Knappable stone is also abundant in Clarke County, counties adjacent to the west and northwest, and to the east, in Monroe County, which has eight documented Clovis points on the APPS. The source for the knappable stone in southwest Alabama is the Tallahatta Formation. In an arc from the vicinity of Andalusia westward to Jackson, then in a northeasterly direction to Meridian, Mississippi, this formation has beds of well-­cemented quartz sandstone, which is abundant in many parts of the formation’s outcrop within the area described. Additionally, in a limited portion of Clarke and Washington Counties, the formation produces a chert that is primarily an agate but in places is in the form of a silicified siltstone or amorphous chert (Dunning 1964:37; Meredith 2017).

Figure 6.5. Location of sites with Clovis components, salines, and quarries of knappable stone in Choctaw, Clarke, and Washington Counties, Alabama. (Steven M. Meredith)

HUMAN LANDSCAPE OF SOUTHEASTERN NORTH AMERICA  95

There is a set of archaeological sites with early components within the area of salines in Clarke County. One of these, the Chastain Site (1CK312), is located in the northern part of the Upper Salt Works, so named because this was the place of an extensive salt-­production operation during the American Civil War. It is on a Pleistocene terrace above the floodplain of the Tombigbee River where several salt springs emerge at the site and for at least two kilometers (1.2 mi.) to the southeast. Surface collections at the Upper Salt Works have produced four Clovis preforms, two heavily resharpened Clovis points, and several uniface tools made on prismatic blades, all of which are indicative of a significant Clovis period site that involved a variety of activities. In addition to the Chastain site, three uniface tools were recovered in 1940 in excavations from Beckum Village (1CK24) (Wimberly 1960). Beckum Village is located across Jackson Creek from Chastain and was the site of salt production from an adjacent saline during the twelfth and the nineteenth centuries (Dumas 2007:271). The uniface tools indicate an early component at the site, and one that is perhaps as early as Clovis. One Clovis point was found by an avocational archaeologist on the surface in the area, but not at any currently active saline. The Clovis points from Chastain, and the isolated discovery of a Clovis point in the saline area, account for three (not counting the preforms) of the 12 documented Clovis points from Clarke County. Of the other 12 points, eight have site-­level provenience. All of those were discovered in a broad area around 25 km (15.5 mi.) to the north, in close proximity to outcrops of the Tallahatta Formation, specifically, in an area where several tool stone quarries are located. The locations of salines, sites that have produced Clovis points, and Tallahatta Formation quarry sites are plotted in Figure 6.5. DISCUSSION A review of the relationship between Clovis and saline locations in the three selected states shows broad-­scale patterns of distribution of Clovis sites or artifacts in relation to the distribution of salines and/or mineral springs. In Tennessee there is widespread occurrence of both mineral springs and Clovis points. However, there is not a significant correlation between the frequency of Clovis points and the frequency of mineral springs across the state. A high frequency of Clovis points in counties crossed by the lower Tennessee River flows corresponds to abundant outcrops of Fort Payne Chert. In Benton County, Tennessee, the Carson-­Conn-­Short site has produced not only several Clovis points but also abundant evidence of Clovis-­ age quarrying (Jones 2018). It is possible that the availability of highly knappable stone is skewing the frequency of Clovis presence away from saline/ mineral springs in Tennessee.

96  STEVEN M. MEREDITH

In Louisiana substantial salines occur in an area in the south and north-­ central parts of the state, but the pattern of saline location does not correspond with the location of the few Clovis point discoveries. Here, too, knappable stone may have been the most influential resource, such that a relative absence of it in Louisiana explains the low numbers of Clovis points, despite the high number of salines. In Alabama there is a distinct concentration of Clovis point discoveries in the northwestern corner, which does not correspond with the salines in the southwest. With a closer look at southwest Alabama, however, there is an increase in the number of Clovis points from Clarke County over surrounding counties. Looking even closer, on the site level, Chastain (1CK312) is located in the immediate vicinity of a saline. Additionally, the occurrence of early artifacts in close proximity to salines at two other locations a few kilometers from Chastain may indicate a local pattern of Paleoindian use of salines in that area. Though there is not a connection between salines and Clovis on a county-­ level scale, instances of Clovis sites at salines do exist, such as at Chastain, Kimmswick, and Big Bone Lick. These sites are only a few scattered across a large part of the continent, but they do demonstrate that salines were a focus of some Clovis occupations, and the diversity of artifacts at both Kimmswick and Chastain suggests these two sites were more than simply hunting loci. The presence of knives, scrapers, and a variety of debitage indicates the use and maintenance of many tools, not just spearpoints, and suggests activities beyond hunting and processing, and possibly long-­term occupation. Thus, what are we to make of the overlap of salines and Clovis sites as mapped by Brown (1980a) on a continental level? In the decades since he first suggested a correspondence, additional data have begun to expand the known distribution of Clovis and other projectile point types. The majority of the concentrations of Clovis points also correspond to relative abundance of high-­quality knappable stone. Such concentrations can be found across a broad area referred to as the Highland Rim (Fenneman 1938), which includes the areas of the Tennessee, Cumberland, and lower Ohio River Valleys, where concentrations of fluted points were initially recognized, and where there are several widely distributed salines. Extensive databases and county-­level proveniences have refined the image of generalized “areas” or blobs on a map to fine-­grained loci. Additionally, in recent decades, areas outside the Highland Rim have emerged as Paleoindian settlement areas, including parts of the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains, such as in the Savannah River Valley, middle Georgia, and northern Florida (Anderson et al. 2010; Anderson et al. 2017), none of which have salines but are near sources of knappable stone.

HUMAN LANDSCAPE OF SOUTHEASTERN NORTH AMERICA  97

Although there is not a consistent correspondence between salines and Clovis, I suspect that salines were catalogued by Paleoindians as notable parts of the landscape for several reasons. As speculated by many, because they are attractive features to many animals, salines would have been especially valuable hunting or scavenging loci. The assumption that Paleoindian diets were meat intensive has been largely inspired by the megafauna “kill” sites found in the Great Plains. However, undisputed evidence of megafauna processing and consumption in eastern North America is rare (Gingerich and Kitchel 2015), and it has been demonstrated that plant-­derived food was an important part of the Late Paleoindian period diet in the Southeast (Hollenbach 2009). Paleoindians may have used salines as a source for other forms of direct sustenance. Another landscape feature suspected to have been used similarly is sinkholes. Archaeologists have studied these features—localized watery ecosystems, like salines—as possible places for hunting or scavenging, particularly in times of drought, when animals may have been abundant there (Donoghue 2006; Dunbar 2006, 2016; Halligan 2012; Halligan et al. 2016; Niell 1964; Thulman 2009; Waselkov and Hite 1987). However, it should be noted that sinkholes occur in karstic landscapes made of limestone, which is known to bear quality chert. As this chapter has shown, salines were not necessarily one of the preferred resources available to early eastern North Americans. Like knappable stone, sinkholes, rivers, and other natural resources, salines were one variable on the Paleoindian landscape that may have influenced their movement and multidimensional lives. Nevertheless, salines are unusual spots, clearings without vegetation, where odd-­tasting and odd-­smelling water gurgles and seeps from the world below. Thus, it may not be too much of a stretch to say that the reverence for these places seen in the late prehistoric and historic periods (see Dumas 2018; Eubanks et al., this volume) has its roots deep in the continent’s prehistory. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank the many people who have been generous with the information that is included in this chapter, especially Charlotte Pevney, Paul Eubanks, and Shane Bernard. Thanks to Erin Stacey and Rob Riser for helping with maps, and thanks to Amanda Dumas for helping with statistics. NOTE 1. The Coats-­Hines site, located at mineral springs in central Tennessee, has produced large Pleistocene mammals and some chipped stone artifacts, which were initially interpreted to be in the same context (Deter-­Wolf et al. 2011). Recently, Tune et al. (2018) demonstrated that the fossils and artifacts are not contemporaneous.

7

Salt Making among the Precontact Southern Caddo of Arkansas Ann M. Early .

The Caddo archaeological tradition arose AD 900–1000 and was centered on the Red River basin of southwest Arkansas, northeast Texas, and the adjoining parts of Louisiana and Oklahoma (Figure 7.1) (Early 2004; Girard et al. 2014). Within this vast and environmentally diverse region, there were several distinct population blocks of Southern Caddo-­speaking people. At the time of European contact, they shared a common set of beliefs and cultural practices but maintained regional variations within separate drainage basins. Although the Caddo world shrank in the first century of European contact, some communities continued living in their traditional homelands until forcible removal in the nineteenth century (Rogers and Sabo 2004; Swanton 1942). This chapter examines salt-­making practices in the northeastern portion of the greater precontact world of the Caddo people. The process of salt making in this area varies from those described by Kenmotsu and Perttula (this volume) and by Eubanks (this volume) at two other locations in the traditional Caddo Homelands. Thus, we present a case study in diversity within one large and long-­lived cultural tradition. This emerging pattern reminds us that even within a single social or archaeological tradition, preindustrial salt making may take many different forms among contemporary populations. In the Caddo case, the economic and social impacts of European colonial exploration and settlement on this Indigenous culture brought about further changes in the salt-­making process as the Caddo became purveyors of salt in new trading networks with both native neighbors and European newcomers. Surviving ethnohistoric descriptions of Indigenous salt making may therefore be inadequate sources for modeling earlier practices in the Caddo area and across the greater Southeast.

PRECONTACT SOUTHERN CADDO OF ARKANSAS  99

Figure 7.1. Outline of the Caddo Culture Area with major salt-­making sites and locales mentioned in this volume. (Courtesy of Paul N. Eubanks)

A large portion of this Caddo area is within the Gulf Coastal Plain, the southern portion of which contains deeply buried Cretaceous deposits. Included in these deposits are tremendous bodies of salt that, in places, were forced to the surface in diapirs, becoming the source of most of the region’s brine seeps. Precontact Indigenous salt making took place at numerous locations. Some sites continued or began use in the contact period, when colonial and territorial era newcomers tried to establish economically viable salt-­making businesses (Eubanks, this volume). In both cases, brine was evaporated through boiling, using the abundant forest fuel sources available at seeps. However, even the strongest seeps required extended cooking and heavy investment in fuel procurement and pan manufacture. Thus, many salines were abandoned in historic times as soon as alternative salt sources produced economically viable commodities.

100  ANN M. EARLY

CADDO LIFESTYLE Precontact Caddo were maize farmers who lived in permanent communities of sturdy houses, with storage facilities, ritual centers with mounds, and cemeteries. The population was decentralized, and a Caddo community would sprawl for many kilometers along a stream valley. Early historic observers describe social and religious leadership vested in priests and community chiefs who derived their legitimacy through extended lineages of inherited privilege (Early 2000; Sabo 1998; Swanton 1942). Investigations at salt sites in the Arkansas part of the Caddo world show that salt making coincided with the emergence of the committed maize-­ farming lifeway between AD 1100 and 1300 and continued until the late seventeenth century, when almost all Caddo villages were abandoned. The commonly articulated model of Indigenous salt making in eastern North America is that salt was made episodically at specialized source locations (e.g., Brown 1980a; Muller 1984). In southwest Arkansas, at least, we have evidence that precontact Caddo salt makers who resided near viable seeps made salt within their communities and within established family farmsteads. There may have been seasonal conditions that allowed maximum effectiveness for cooking weak brine in simple ceramic pans over open fireplaces some seasons of the agricultural year, but some Caddo salt makers made salt at home, in the yard, within a few steps of residences, storehouses, and family cemeteries. They may, however, have employed some uncommon architectural or social protocols to facilitate this arrangement. The Arkansas Archeological Survey has identified several salt-­making sites in different river drainages, marked by enormous quantities of broken pottery, intense burning and ash buildup, evidence of building construction, and both human and dog burials. The most revealing information came when highway development in 1987 required a large-­scale excavation across a salt maker community adjoining a strong seep in the Ouachita River Valley in southwest Arkansas. This slice of highway went through a densely populated and sprawling Caddo community that existed in the valley for over 500 years. Farmsteads drift from one location to another after a generation or two as domestic structures fall into disrepair and probably as ground is broken for new agricultural fields. Additionally, as botanical analysis suggested (Early 1993a:228–29; Fritz 1993:162; Williams 1993:26–28), making salt with weak brine put a heavy demand on fuel that could deplete timber resources to the point that local procurement practices could have been affected. Salt making nevertheless remained an integral local activity at seeps and in the yards of families close enough to walk back and forth from a seep to a homestead.

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A SALT MAKER HOMESTEAD The 1987 excavations took place at the Hardman site (3CL418) along Saline Bayou, a capillary drainage in the Ouachita River alluvial valley (Early 1993a) (Figure 7.2). This locale was long known for briny seeps scattered along the bayou bed. Explorers William Dunbar and George Hunter likely paused here to evaluate the seeps’ economic potential on their journey up the Ouachita River in 1804 (Berry et al. 2014). There was no evidence of contemporary Indigenous salt making at that time. During the early pioneer period and again during the Civil War, local people attempted to procure salt supplies on a small scale but shortly abandoned the effort. It is unclear whether their attempts were brief because of the weakness of the brine, competition from better salt-­making facilities, or increased commercial salt supplies coming into the area from other parts of the country. In 1939 then–Harvard graduate student Philip Phillips visited the bayou during his survey of the Ouachita River Valley. He found a heap of ceramics and ash overlooking a strong seep and tested the deposit, demonstrating that a stratified series of burned surfaces, post mold arrays, ash beds, and artifact-­rich strata a meter deep were present. Phillips did not use his Ouachita River data in subsequent publications. Thirty years later, between 1966 and 1968, Arkansas Archeological Survey archaeologists James Scholtz and Frank Schambach removed a Caddo grave and conducted their own test excavation adjoining Phillips’s old test pit, finding the same stratified deposit. Over a meter of densely packed ceramics, ash layers, burned surfaces, and dozens of postholes represented activities beginning in Early Caddo times, between AD 1100 and 1400 in this valley, and continuing into the early seventeenth century (Scholtz 1970). The midden was designated as Bayou Sel (3CL27), but the geographic extent and full period of occupation of the entire site was not determined, given that it was in a heavily forested streambank corridor for nearly a century. Unfortunately, the materials from this work have yet to be analyzed or published. The Hardman site lies only 200 m south of the Bayou Sel midden. In contrast to the Bayou Sel work, the Hardman site investigation provided examination of a shallow deposit surviving in an agricultural field and ribbon of wasteland bordering the bayou. Because the construction project was to lay a new right-­of-­way across archaeological deposits, 3,240 m2 was the investigation target, allowing for the first time a broad horizontal view of a salt-­making community (Early 1993a). The research plan called for shovel test documentation, the excavation of fifteen 50 cm2 midden samples, and a second sampling of 75 m2 in the densest midden area. All excavated soil was water-­screened. The sampling program revealed a 30 m diameter maximum

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Figure 7.2. Artist’s reconstruction of an AD 1500 salt-­maker homestead based on excavations. (Drawing by Ed Martin. With the permission of the Arkansas Archeological Survey)

midden deposit in the center of the construction right-­of-­way. Beneath the shallow black midden, which was no more than 25 cm deep, was a bright-­ yellow subsoil where post molds, pits, and burned surfaces were abundant, but no intact structure floors were identified. A 1,950 m2 area along 100 m of the right-­of-­way was subsequently stripped to subsoil, revealing 968 features (Williams 1993). These included 900 post

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molds, 40 pits, 11 hearths, and 17 graves. Chronologically diagnostic pottery recovered from these features represented a 300-­year time span; although only two radiocarbon dates produced acceptable results, they confirmed this estimate. The artifacts gave some indications of salt-­making methods, as did the features. About 29,000 potsherds were recovered, of which 85%, or 24,572 were saltpan sherds. In southwest Arkansas, thick, undecorated, heavily shell-­tempered platters or wide conical saucers with small flat bases are common at salt-­processing sites. They are rarely found intact enough to see original size and shape, and they appear to have been used until they literally fell apart. Sherds do not show fabric or cord impressions or other marks from fabrication as is common at many prehistoric salt production sites in eastern North America (Brown 1980a, 1981b; Dumas, this volume; Eubanks et al., this volume). The Hardman sample exhibits four different rim profiles; the most extreme is a nearly flat square or rectangular platter with a small upturned rim like a modern cookie sheet (Early 1993a:Figures 57 and 59). A portion of a saucer-­shaped saltpan with a circular orifice that was retrieved from another nearby salt-­making site has an orifice diameter of nearly 50 cm. Saltpan sherds were found throughout the midden, in grave fills, and in some post molds, offering a means of establishing a rough chronology of settlement activities and feature construction as the salt-­making debris accumulated through time. The second-­most common sherds, 3,502, or 12% of the total, are from coarse shell-­tempered jars with typical precontact Caddo shapes and decorations. Commonly called utilitarian jars, these vessels do not show any differences in form or decoration from examples found in domestic or mortuary contexts. The unusually large proportion present in comparison to frequencies at domestic sites not associated with salt seeps indicates that these containers had a role in the salt-­making process sufficient to make them abundant and ubiquitous in salt site middens. Jars and pans are found together at other southwest Arkansas Caddo salt sites, indicating that, in tandem, they were instrumental elements of salt-­making protocols in this part of the Caddo world. The size and thickness of the utilitarian vessels argue against their use in salt or liquid transport: large, heavy, cumbersome and fragile containers are not well suited to either foot travel or watercraft transport, and any such use fails to account for the hundreds of broken vessels at the salt-­making location itself. One feasible role for this vessel type is in the latter stage of salt manufacture, when brine is not completely evaporated, and slush is removed from rendering pans to air dry in separate containers. Once dry, the jars can be broken and solid cakes removed for storage or distribution. This two-­stage evaporation process would relieve some pressure

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on the fuel supply and on the salt makers while contributing to an increasingly large deposit of discarded jar sherds. Absent from the Hardman site assemblage and the Bayou Sel midden are small ceramic cups and solid pedestals commonly referred to as briquetage (Brown 1999a:134) and identified as salt containers and supports elevating saltpans above a heat source, respectively. Brown (1999a) has suggested that both items could have been part of the salt-­making process in coastal Louisiana, but the Arkansas Caddo appear to have followed a different manufacturing protocol. Artifacts from the Holman Springs site (3SV29), a salt-­ making site on the Rolling Fork River, a northern tributary of the Red River, also do not contain briquetage. As with Bayou Sel (3CL27), extensive excavations at the Holman Springs site in 1985 and 1986 have not produced analyses or publication. Information about the artifact assemblage and features present comes from observations made during excavation and from the archived photographs and records. At Hardman, the numerous, large burned areas, the largest covering 22 m2, indicate that open-­fire evaporation was the standard method for salt production. Nine of these areas were sampled for archaeomagnetic dating. Only the largest hearth yielded a single readable date, of AD 1335–1425. Given the failure of archaeomagnetic sampling to retrieve a single date at the stratified Bayou Sel deposit or at Holman Springs, there is a strong possibility that repeated fires on the same hearth destroy the effectiveness of this dating technique and affect the accuracy of the single result. Our three failed attempts at archaeomagnetic dating at three different salt production sites also indicate that local salt makers were repeating a routine process for years if not a couple of generations in a single designated location that they likely had exclusive access to over a substantial period. The largest hearth at the Hardman site probably represents several years of salt making in the same spot. Hearth areas on this scale are not reported at domestic sites, or even at mound centers, away from brine locations. About 4,600 items of lithic debris were recovered from Hardman. Amid the preponderance of chipping debris were 18 ground stone celts, mostly broken pieces that are common woodworking tools in Caddo communities. Several pieces came from within post molds, where they appear to have been recycled as props to stabilize timbers for houses and other architectural facilities. Domestic and salt-­making needs would have necessitated a ready supply of these heavy-­duty tools for both fuel and construction. REVEALING THE SETTLEMENT PLAN The 900 post molds at Hardman were densest in a 50 m (164 ft.) section of the right-­of-­way, roughly overlapping with the thickest midden deposit

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Figure 7.3. Distribution of post molds (dots), hearths, and graves in the central portion of the Hardman site. (With the permission of the Arkansas Archeological Survey)

(Figure 7.3). Almost all the posts appeared at the boundary between the black midden and the yellow subsoil. The only exception was a large arc of substantial posts that appeared during the last mechanical stripping operation. These features were encountered as we were checking, just before road construction began, for earlier or deeper features that may have been missed during our excavations. Invisible until the last pass with the heavy machinery, the 50 or so posts define an arc across the excavation right-­of-­way and indicate a circle 25 m (82 ft.) in diameter around the heart of the site and around at least some of the post molds and other features. These posts were

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all excavated and contained organically enriched soil and artifacts only at their very bases. They were wider and deeper than other posts, and they had no saltpan sherds in the fill. Similar fence features have not been confirmed yet at any other archaeological sites affiliated with the Caddo cultural tradition. Perttula suggested the presence of a fence among an array of WPA era features uncovered at the Hatchel site, but there is not a clear line of post molds, beyond the five he highlights to suggest such a feature, nor are there structures, graves, or hearths within the hypothetical arc (Perttula 2005:Figure 7). Walker and McKinnon (2012) propose that some of the linear anomalies they see in remote sensing data at the Battle Mound site, also on Red River, might be short, 15 m (49 ft.) fences. One appears to intersect a circular house, and none have been excavated (Walker and McKinnon 2012:201, Figure 7–13). A question remains whether this is a special facility used to mark one family’s privileged access to a highly desirable brine resource, or if its discovery is more a fortuitous result of large-­scale exposure at a residential site that normally would be investigated with only a handful of small excavation units embracing a single structure. It is worth considering whether all domestic Caddo sites actually have perimeter fences that have been missed because we have not been looking for them. Two pieces of evidence from historic period encounters with Caddo settlements suggest that the latter may be true. The first is a well-­known drawing of a Caddo community made by a member of the 1691 Spanish expeditionary force that was led into northeast Texas by Domingo Terán de los Rios1 (Figure 7.4) (Sabo 2012). The illustration shows a group of domestic households scattered along a stream. Each household is represented by one or two substantial residential buildings that are dome-­shaped and apparently circular or oval, smaller single-­post facilities, and a fringe of trees, shrubs, or unstripped posts separating each household group from its neighbors. The Terán documents are silent on the actual existence or character of these facilities, but the artist painstakingly reproduced the woodland fringe, fence, or coppiced thickets throughout the community. The second instructive graphic is a pair of Will Soule photographs, two views of the same family homestead where surviving Caddos resettled in southwest Oklahoma after the Civil War (Early 2014:Figures 1 and 2). The homestead sits in an open grassy location with a fringe of trees in the background. Less obvious is a board fence that is shown behind the dwellings. Perhaps the fence was a regular component of a traditional homestead with a stilted storage facility, an open platform ramada, several dwellings and other facilities, or perhaps it was a recent addition needed for livestock management in the mid-­nineteenth century.

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Figure 7.4. Facsimile of the 1691 “Terán map” of a Nasoni Caddo village on the Red River. (Courtesy of the J. P. Bryan Map Collection, di_09638, The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin)

Discerning patterns among the remaining post molds at Hardman presented an interpretive challenge. Using GIS technology, we mapped post distributions based on a series of variables, including the presence or absence of saltpan sherds in the fill, the presence or absence of other shell-­tempered sherds, post diameter at first discovery, and elevation of the post mold base. Of these, the most useful variables were the presence or absence of saltpan sherds and shell-­tempered jar sherds. These items were more likely to be in more recent post molds as a result of later construction episodes, which would have dug through greater quantities of accumulated midden. The analysis yielded several recognizable patterns. First, there are two circular outlines typical of precontact Caddo architecture, about 6 m in diameter and located in the northwest edge of the tract, close to the bayou. Basal elevations for the constituent posts in both circles were within 10 cm of each other. Since they are so close that their post circles nearly overlap, and the usual ethnographic descriptions indicate a single dwelling in a family settlement, I believe that this represents a replacement situation, where one worn-­out dwelling was allowed to collapse and was replaced by another. Some support for this sequence is that posts in one circle had more saltpan sherds than the other, suggesting that they were constructed at different

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times (Williams 1993:40–44). This process of abandonment and in situ collapse is also captured in the Soule photographs. Other post mold distributions indicate smaller circular structures, 3 m (9.8 ft.) or less in diameter, that correspond to circular storage facilities still in use in the mid-­nineteenth century at some Caddo family farmsteads (Early 2014:Figure 2, 54–55; Swanton 1942:48–54). When we map the large circular structures and the compound fence, along with the hearth areas, what appears to be an integrated set of features of a single Caddo compound becomes evident. The largest hearth sits in the approximate center of the circle. Ceramics from the postholes and from some of the graves that also align well with this domestic organization indicate that we are looking at the remains of one, doubtless of many, local Caddo farmsteads adjoining Saline Bayou. The ceramics in post molds and two of the graves indicate that this compound was active around AD 1500. The age estimate comes primarily from the pottery found in two of the graves that, by their orientation and placement, are linked to the largest hearth, compound fence, and large circular structures. THE SALT MAKERS Seventeen graves were found at the site. By their orientation and contents, the Hardman graves represent four discrete cemetery groups from two periods of residence that were between 100 and 150 years apart. The arrangement, distribution, and contents of the graves provide more information about the local Caddo salt makers and their contacts. For most of the 700-­ year Caddo tradition, the typical mortuary treatment was in-­flesh interment in family or residential group plots with accompanying grave goods or, in some times and places, aggregate burial in community cemeteries. The most common grave features are single interments of recently deceased individuals in a fully extended supine position with a small number of offerings, mostly pottery vessels and items of personal adornment. Elites were entitled to special treatment, such as favored interment in individual or corporate graves at ritual centers, postmortem dismemberment, cremation, and other extended mortuary programs, and objects of special social or religious significance provided as offerings. With the notable exception of Burial 18, described more fully below, the Hardman graves are consistent examples of middle to late Caddo mortuary practices. There are two children and one adolescent in the mortuary population. There were evidently special burial programs for children that distinguished them from adults and perhaps placed them under or near residences. Burials 11 and 16 on this map make up this group, one a fetus or newborn and

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the other a four-­year-­old child. They are separated from each other by several meters and are set apart from all of the adult groupings. The remaining graves contain individuals considered adults, the youngest being about 15 years old. They are aligned in three separate groups facing roughly southeast to northwest and one group of two facing southwest to northeast. The graves of the two children share the southeast-­to-­northwest orientation, suggesting that they are associated with these three mortuary groups. The group of two graves oriented southwest to northeast is the earliest, dating to about AD 1500 based on ceramic decorative styles, and they are apparently associated with the houses, the large burned area, and the compound fence. The larger of the two is the anomalous example in this group of mortuary features. It held three robust adult males in their early to mid-­ thirties who had been given the rare treatment of having their heads removed and replaced with ceramic bottle and bowl sets. I believe these are local salt makers and community leaders. There is no sign of violence on the skeletons, and the missing crania may have been transported to the valley’s principal ritual center for extended treatment and burial. Disembodied human skulls and mandibles have been found in great numbers within at least one Caddo mound center, where the interment of skulls and mandibles continued for at least 300 years (Samuelson 2014, 2016). This large grave, Burial 18, and its companion grave with a single individual, Burial 13, contained matching suites of locally made pottery vessels as the only accompaniments, except for two small, locally made arrow points. The remaining adult graves seem to be three distinct familial or residential clusters. Post stains are present at the ends of several graves and appear to be markers that situate the first interment in a group, with subsequent group members buried parallel to the first. Small differences in direction may suggest that the three groups were sequential within a two-­or three-­ generation period, at most, because the pottery vessels that make up the burial offerings are all virtually identical representatives of a tight cluster of decorative types. Only a small number of pottery vessels and objects of personal adornment were found in the late graves. The ceramic assemblage from the later groups indicates a date between AD 1600 and 1650 for this last occupation of the salt-­making locality, referred to as the Deceiper phase. The burial groups overlay the features and were dug through the midden associated with the earlier homestead, and there were no recognizable dwellings or other facilities that could be tied to this seventeenth-­century occupation. It is likely that the homesteads belonging to the deceased were within a short distance of the excavation area on either side of the bayou.

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CHANGES IN OUACHITA VALLEY SALT DISTRIBUTION The pottery found in the Hardman site cemetery groups offers some insight into the place of salt makers within their local valley and beyond. Caddo ceramics are craft items of great technical accomplishment and complex design traditions. Nuanced differences between products of pottery-­making kin or residential groups across the Caddo area allow analysts to identify source locations and narrow the age ranges for ceramics found in graves and in domestic sites (Early 2012). The long-­lived Caddo ceramic tradition contrasts sharply with the contemporary ceramic tradition followed by Mississippian potters in the Mississippi River Valley. The burial artifacts found in the earlier two graves are all typical of goods made in a 50 km (31 mi.) stretch of the Ouachita River Valley, with the Hardman site in the approximate center. There are no objects that are not also found in other local graves or domestic sites, and no objects of special media or manufacture from outside the valley that could represent enhanced status or access to wealth or privilege. Apart from the atypical group burial and cranial treatment, the individuals in the two early graves do not exhibit special treatment or status that would distinguish them from their kinsmen and neighbors in the valley. The final-­occupation Deceiper phase graves are also similar as a group and similar to other seventeenth-­century graves elsewhere in the valley. They are single interments with only a small number of grave offerings that are primarily common representatives of local manufacture. However, included in the graves are a few nonlocal items that indicate changes in the role that salt making played in the local Caddo economy and point to new relationships for the salt makers that more closely align with the colonial era salt makers described by Eubanks (this volume). The two notable items are a red-­slipped bowl and an incised bottle (Figure 7.5). The bowl is the type Old Town Red, for its shell temper and red slip. Its oval orifice and anthropomorphic head on the lip, wearing a concave head ornament, is typical of slipped fineware vessels made to the east, in the Arkansas River Valley and elsewhere in the Mississippi Valley, by non-­Caddo people who were ancestors of Tunica, Quapaw, and other tribes. The paste and manufacture show that it was made elsewhere, and it is a rare item in local Caddo assemblages. Caddo potters did not make red-­slipped bowls with these effigy heads on them. The second vessel is an incised or trailed bottle of the Keno Trailed type, with a Solomon’s Knot motif. Numerous vessels with this shape and decoration appear in collections along the Arkansas River Valley as well, but it is a stranger in Caddo assemblages. There is no evidence of this trans-­river basin ceramic exchange between Caddo residents of the Ouachita River basin and Mississippi Valley populations until

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Figure 7.5. Keno Trailed bottle (left) and Old Town Red effigy bowl (right). (Courtesy of Ann M. Early)

the seventeenth century, several decades after the Hernando de Soto expedition passed through the Caddo world in a failed attempt to escape overland to Mexico (Early 1993b). Small numbers of these and other Arkansas Valley pottery vessels have been found in other seventeenth-­century Caddo sites in the Ouachita River basin. At the same time, some of the highly distinctive and elaborately engraved local Caddo fineware vessels are reported in numerous sites along the Arkansas River Valley. Other material goods that could be hypothesized as high status or ritually potent elements of either Caddo or Arkansas Valley traditions are not found in either valley or as items of exchange at that time. What we are left with is a distribution pattern of finely made local craft items that indicate sustained relations between the Ouachita Valley Caddo and their Arkansas Valley neighbors, who had no salt resources of their own. If we map site locations that have yielded mixed Caddo and Arkansas Valley assemblages, the sites indicate a likely water route between the two regions used for the transport of salt and other goods on the eve of European colonization. This route runs downstream from Hardman on the Ouachita River, then upstream along Bayou Bartholomew, which is a tributary of the Ouachita flowing east and south to a point where a portage of a few miles would carry the Caddo and their product to the Arkansas River and its chain of communities near modern-­day Pine Bluff (Early 1993a:Figure 88). About 50 years later, in AD 1700, the first French colonials witnessed a similar arrival of canoes loaded with salt brought by Koroa Indians from the lower Ouachita hinterlands to Taensa villages, downstream from the mouth of the Arkansas and along the backswamp drainages of the Mississippi. THE END OF CADDO SALT MAKING IN THE OUACHITA VALLEY The early and middle decades of the 1600s in the Caddo Homelands and Lower Mississippi Valley were on the eve of sustained contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples. Glass and metal beads, bracelets, and

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tinkling cones began to trickle into the region from the southwest, northern New Spain, and the French colonial northeast, in advance of Europeans, but were not found among these Caddo salt makers. Within two generations, the Ouachita Valley Caddo salt-­maker communities were abandoned, leaving the seeps to attract territorial entrepreneurs a century later. CONCLUSION The Hardman project offers a look at some southwest Arkansas Caddo salt-­ making sites at several points in time. The industry began at the time that local people were transitioning to a lifeway heavily dependent on maize agriculture, between AD 1100 and 1400. All seeps of sufficient strength to produce salt with simple boiling evaporation seem to have been exploited by people resident in their respective river drainages. By AD 1500, the salt makers resided permanently near brine seeps, and at least some families rendered salt at open fireplaces, probably transferring partly evaporated slush to utilitarian pottery jars for final drying within the household work area. The resulting cakes would have been small enough to transport on foot or by canoe. The lack of trade goods or evidence of economically hierarchical social differences throughout the valley indicates that Ouachita Valley salt makers at least were providing salt to their kin and other communities within the river basin and do not seem to have engaged in longer-­distance trade (Early 1993a). Those families fortunate enough to live closest to the seeps marked their household boundary with a substantial fence, and they likely buried deceased family members in the corner of the yard. A century or so later, Caddo continued to live along the saline in permanent households and extended communities. There is evidence that their salt trade may have extended outside the valley by this time, provisioning communities downstream and to the east in the Arkansas and Bayou Bartholomew stream valleys. Still free of the dramatic social and economic changes brought about by sustained colonial presence, epidemic disease, and warfare to come in just a few more decades, communities involved in the salt trade seem to have maintained a low-­level economic exchange relationship around the movement of salt. After AD 1700, the gravitational center of the Caddo salt trade moved south and changed composition as the salt makers were drawn into the colonial economic orbit. NOTE 1. Known as the “Terán map,” this map is a hand-­drawn copy of the original map in the Archivo de Indias in Seville, Spain. The copy was commissioned by J. B. Bryant in the early twentieth century and given to the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.

8

Prehistoric Salt Making Writ Small An Ancestral Caddo Example from East Texas Nancy A. Kenmotsu and Timothy K. Perttula The North American Eastern Woodlands cultural area stretches to the eastern part of Texas that some ancestral Caddo peoples called home. The ancestral Caddo Homelands were built over the Salina Basin, rich in naturally occurring salt springs (Beckman and Williamson 1990; Brown 1980a; Eubanks 2016a; Veatch 1902). This geological placement may or may not be serendipitous, but as this volume’s chapter by Early and that by Eubanks indicate, the Caddo peoples took advantage of the salt beneath their homes. Early Spanish documents (Biedma 1865:437; Elvas in Clayton et al. 1993:I:140) indicate the Caddo, like other Indigenous peoples, manufactured and traded salt, sometimes in relatively large quantities. When in 1542 Soto’s men reached what is today Arkansas, they saw salt being produced by the Caddo and even stopped to make salt for themselves (Biedma 1865:437; Elvas in Clayton et al. 1993:I:141–142). Shortly thereafter, they arrived at a large village on the Red River whose native name was Nawidish or Naguatex, meaning “Place of Salt” in Caddo (Bruseth and Kenmotsu 1993:209–212; Chafe 1993:223).1 Investigations at the Salt Well Slough site (41RR204; hereafter, Salt Well) were undertaken as part of the 1991 Texas Archeological Society field school in conjunction with excavations at the nearby village known as Sam Kaufman or Roitsch (41RR16) (Bruseth and Perttula 1991; Kenmotsu 2005; Perttula 2008b:342–385). Sam Kaufman was once part of a larger occupational locality that we are calling the Middle Red River Valley settlement (see Figure 7.1). This settlement included the Roden site (34MC215) across the Red River in Oklahoma, and the Salt Well, Dan Holdeman (41RR11), and Rowland Clark (41RR77) sites to the south, and a series of small farmsteads near the

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Sam Kaufman site. Other than Roden, all these sites are on the Texas side of the Red River and were occupied between ca. AD 1300 and 1700 (Bruseth 1998:62; Perttula 2008a:180; Perttula 2008b:319). This occupation probably looked much like the settlement shown on the 1691 map drawn during the expedition of Domingo Terán de los Rios to the Nasoni Caddo living on the Red River near present-­day Texarkana, Texas (see Figure 7.4). The map illustrates a village consisting of one large mound, houses of caddi, or chiefs, and scattered farmsteads with grass-­covered houses, granaries, and ramadas. The map shows the settlement extending up and down both banks of the river, similar to the Middle Red River settlement and to other large settlements located elsewhere along the same river, which served as a significant route of trade and travel via canoes (Kenmotsu 2005:2). Salt Well was chosen for excavation because we suspected that its deposits might yield evidence of ancestral Caddo salt production during the same period. This was based on the sizable quantity of broken pottery vessels strewn across the surface of the small site. Caddo sites in eastern Texas are numerous, but it is rare to encounter a Caddo site that has this quantity of artifacts exposed on the surface. Our suspicion was also based on the fact that most of the pottery was plain; many sherds were over 5 cm in diameter, and the site overlooked a slough well known locally for its natural salt springs. Several Caddo salt production sites have been investigated (Early 1993a; Eubanks 2016a; Gregory 1973:257; Gregory and Webb 1965; McCrocklin 1985; Veatch 1902:51–59; see Early, this volume; Eubanks, this volume). In this chapter we argue that Salt Well was a place where salt was produced only for household or special use rather than for trade. We also discuss what factors may have influenced such minimal production of salt during the period AD 1300–1700 in a heavily populated locale along the Red River, where large-­scale salt production was possible. THE SITE AND ITS EVIDENCE OF SALT PRODUCTION Salt Well is one of four salt-­making sites within the larger Late Caddo community described above. The other three (41RR248, 41RR256, and 41RR257) are located close to Salt Well, and all four extend for about 800 m (2,624 ft.) along the west side of the salty slough. Each of the other three sites was briefly tested, and their contents, consisting predominantly of utilitarian sherds in dense concentration, match the contents of Salt Well (Perttula 2008b:240–245). Additionally, none appear to contain evidence of domestic dwellings. Salt Well itself is quite small, less than 0.4 ha (1 ac) in size. Four small blocks and several shovel tests were excavated, each to a depth of about 20 cm (7.9 in.) below the ground surface. The shallow depth was due to the clay soil at the site. When dry, units were dampened to enable troweling; when wet, they were difficult to trowel, shovel scrape, or screen.

ANCESTRAL CADDO EXAMPLE FROM EAST TEXAS  115

Figure 8.1. Salt Well Feature 3, an exposed, shallow hearth with clumps of sherds around it. (Courtesy of Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin)

Nonetheless, 11 features were recorded, and around 30,000 artifacts (including 8,547 pieces of fired clay) were recovered from the investigations. Eight of the features were ephemeral hearths. They were amorphous in outline and distinguished from the surrounding soil by the presence of streaks of orange/yellow burned areas on their surfaces, higher charcoal staining, and slightly more compacted matrices than the surrounding soil. The orange/yellow streaking was intermittent and linear in nature, likely representing individual pieces of wood burned on the ground. Another characteristic of these hearths was clumps of tightly packed sherds randomly spaced around their perimeters (Figure 8.1). The sherds in these clumps were often larger than 5 cm (2 in.) in diameter. In the field, we anticipated that they represented individual vessels that broke when placed too close to the heat. However, subsequent ceramic analysis showed that the clumps frequently represented two or more vessels. Investigations of salt-­making sites around the world show that salt production frequently results in large quantities of discarded ceramic sherds, but often little else. At Maya salt sites, discarded sherds, almost entirely from utilitarian vessels, are known to reach heaps 2 m (6.6 ft.) in height (Andrews 1980, 1983; Hewitt et al. 1987; McKillop 2002; MacKinnon and Kapecs 1989; Mock 1994; Nance 1992). Mississippian salt-­extraction sites are similarly dominated by massive quantities of sherds (Muller 1984:499, Table 1; Brown 1980a). Artifacts of chipped stone, bone, and antler are almost nonexistent (Keslin 1964:141; Muller 1984:505). Caddo salt sites exhibit similar

116  KENMOTSU AND PERTTULA

limited quantities of nonceramic materials (Gregory 1973:257; McCrocklin 1985:4). Even at the most well-­documented Caddo salt-­making sites in Arkansas and Louisiana, Hardman and Drake’s Salt Works (see Early, this volume; Eubanks, this volume), lithic debris, stone tools, bone, and shell artifacts are relatively low in number (Eubanks 2016a:214; Williams 1993:119). In contrast, Caddo farmsteads and hamlets contain abundant faunal materials, a broader array of artifact classes, and a wide variety of ceramic wares and decorative styles. Lithic materials usually include arrow points, perforators, unifaces, ground stone, lithic debris, and antler tine (Kay 1984; see also Perttula 2008b). Ceramics from such sites include engraved fineware, incised and brushed utility ware, and plain ware (Brewington et al. 1995; Hemmings 1982; Kelley 1994:74; Schambach and Miller 1984:109; Trubowitz 1984). We expected that ceramics, especially utilitarian wares, would dominate the Salt Well collection in percentages well above those from village deposits at the Sam Kaufman site and other residential sites. Our expectations were realized, as pottery represented 94% of the assemblage. Aside from this artifact class, little else was recovered. For instance, only 68 lithic artifacts were identified—a mere 0.3% of the total. Further, the only lithic tools represented were three celt fragments, one arrow point, and a single battered stone. Faunal remains, macrobotanical material, and shell fragments were also present, but in limited quantities. Table 8.1 compares the assemblage of Salt Well with the assemblages of two Caddo salt production sites (Hardman and Drake’s Salt Works) and five excavated Late Caddo or Historic Caddo period (ca. AD 1400–1730) farmsteads and hamlets: Spirit Lake, 41MX5, McClelland, Cedar Grove, and Sam Kaufman. Salt Well aligns nicely with the salt production sites, with its much higher proportions of ceramics. Moreover, Salt Well is dominated by utilitarian wares, including Nash Neck Banded (Figure 8.2), Emory Punctated-­ Incised, and plain vessels. Of the 21,478 sherds recovered, only 73 small Avery Engraved sherds represent nonutilitarian finewares. Among the ceramic artifacts, two are unique. The first, a small pedestal-­ like artifact, measuring 1.2 cm (0.5 in.) in diameter by 2 cm (0.7 in.) in length, was recovered at the base of a sherd concentration on the edge of a hearth feature. The second artifact, which came from a possible trash midden, was similarly shaped, measuring 1.2 cm (0.5 in.) in diameter and 3 cm (1.2 in.) in length. Although pedestals are used in salt production at sites elsewhere around the world to elevate vessels and allow heat to circulate around the base of the pot (Brown 1996; Riehm 1961), the pedestal-­like artifacts from Salt Well are too short to have functioned in this manner. Instead, it is more likely that the clumps of sherds found around the perimeters of the burned/ hearth areas were used to prop up the vessels near a low-­burning fire.

ANCESTRAL CADDO EXAMPLE FROM EAST TEXAS  117

TABLE 8.1. ARCHAEOLOGICAL ASSEMBLAGES FROM CADDO SALT-MAKING SITES, FARMSTEADS, AND HAMLETS Site (Salt production/

Ceramics Total Lithics Lithic

Bone

Shell

Residential) (reference)

(percent)

(percent)

Tools

(percent)

(percent)

Salt Well (salt

21,478

83

5

582

738

production)

(94)

(0.3)

(2.6)

(3.3)

Hardman (salt

28,864

4,580

98

n/a*

n/a*

production and

(86.3)

(13.7)

Drake’s Salt Works

33,918

1,166

25

213

4

(salt production)

(96.7)

(0.3)

(