Embark on an archaeological adventure as Tom Guderjan, Ph.D., takes us beneath the surface of East Texas to reveal a history rich with the legacies of the Caddo Indians, French explorers and Spanish conquistadors. Hear about the Gallant Farm in west Nacogdoches County and the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site, and enrich your understanding of the area’s diverse heritage.
TRANSCRIPT
LANDESS:
You may not know that the Texas Archaeological Society has identified more than 600 historic sites in Smith County alone and that at least one 18th- century French settlement was just found near Mineola. I’m UT Tyler Radio News Director Mike Landess. Here to enlighten us about that and the recent 29th East Texas Archaeological Conference is Thomas Guderjan. Tell us more.
GUDERJAN:
The purpose of the East Texas Archaeological Conference is to bring together people interested in the history, the prehistory, the cultural background and every aspect of human life in Texas, in East Texas, for the past 12,000 years. We have a rich tapestry here. The Caddo Indians who lived here played off both the French and the Spanish interests for decades and decades. They had lived here for hundreds of years and their predecessors for thousands of years. So archaeologists, historians, avocationalists, conservationists, all sorts of people with vested interest in these things, come together every year and share the new and best research that’s available to them. One thing that’s happening right now is that the Texas Archaeological Society — it’s a statewide organization — has targeted East Texas for the last year and for the next couple of years to really burrow in and do new and interesting research on the Caddo people at contact when they were interacting with the French, interacting with the Spanish people. This is the 29th East Texas Archaeological Conference, so it’s actually gone on 30 years. We had to skip one because of COVID, and the body of information that has come out of these conferences is just tremendous. While sometimes we’ll bring in Caddo people themselves to talk with us, to perform with us and so forth, the opportunity for people to get together and just talk about things is wonderful. It initially sounds a bit boring, doesn’t it?
LANDESS:
Not at all, actually. I was sitting there thinking to myself I’m kind of playing this in my head as you’re speaking, you talk about the French and the Spanish. Obviously, what they were doing, using the trade routes that went through East Texas, through the rivers and the different passageways that they could travel on and continue to trade with the Indians or each other for that matter, and then what’s left behind in terms of how those cultures managed to emerge in one way or another.
GUDERJAN:
Mike, you’re absolutely right, and we think about East Texas and the Spanish and the French playing off each other here. But you have to understand that we’re on the edge of world dominion. That’s the game they were playing.
LANDESS: Now tell me, what does that mean?
GUDERJAN: They wanted to take over the world.
LANDESS: That simple?
GUDERJAN: It was that simple. And East Texas is where that played off between these two world superpowers. You know, it was not just whether they got along with each other here. They were, this was sort of the litmus test place for who was going to be the great European superpower.
LANDESS:
Right. Let’s talk specifically about the areas here in East Texas and this conference: the research at Gallant Farm in west Nacogdoches County. What have they been doing there?
GUDERJAN:
That’s an interesting location. The Texas Archaeological Society, in combination with a local group, a local avocationalist, led by Dr. Tom Middlebrook in Nacogdoches, have been learning about the colonial period. And the Gallant Farm is one of the places where they are finding Caddo sites, Caddo communities, that are existing side by side with the Spanish occupation of Nacogdoches. And by learning where they are, by learning what sort of materials are going to be found there, they’re learning about that interaction in ways that nobody ever wrote about in history books. So they’re fleshing out things that were never understood, and that’s really the focus of the Texas Archaeological Society’s efforts there for the next couple of years. But I’ll point to Tom Middlebrook, who is a recently retired child psychiatrist there but a national award-winning avocational archaeologist and the founder of this 29-year-old conference.
LANDESS:
Well, is that right?
GUDERJAN:
So he is a, I think it’s fair to say, Tom Middlebrook is the dominant figure in East Texas archaeology.
LANDESS:
That’s an interesting concept, the whole idea of East Texas archaeology. I’m not sure that the average person has any real concept of that, and I’m wondering if it’s because lack of a central area where you can go to to learn about archaeology or the history of East Texas.
GUDERJAN:
You’re absolutely right. There are few places to go to to experience archaeology in East Texas. And a major part of that is because we live in the woodlands. The cattle people built out of wood; wood rotted. You go to Arizona, you go to New Mexico, and you see these giant stone buildings, but we’re, we often confuse that with thinking there were more Indians in the Southwest than are here. This was a much more populous place. It’s just that their wooden buildings are hard to find. The single place, public place, that you can experience archaeology today is Caddo Mounds State Historic Site by Alto, Texas, an hour and five minute drive from our campus. The facilities at Caddo Mounds were destroyed just a few years ago by a brutal tornado that destroyed the museum, destroyed several of the buildings, badly injured a number of people, and the amazing thing is it just reopened again, in I believe 4 years. It was rebuilt. It was, I guess, a testimony that if you’re going to have a disaster, have a disaster when the legislature’s in session, and it’s open to the public again. And the Caddo people who live in Oklahoma, and they’re thousands of them, regard Caddo Mounds as their ancestral home. They’re equally important Caddo sites in Arkansas and Oklahoma, but I’ve talked with a number of these people who say, yes, I’m from Arkansas, but I feel this place is important to us. So the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site has archaeology tours for kids, how natives use plants, all sorts of opportunities to learn like that. And just a few weeks ago, just before Christmas, some of their best known artists, Chase Earls, Jerry Redcorn, people we know well and are friends, came to Caddo Mounds for a day-long demonstration. It was the largest attendance they’d ever had in an event. So there’s a great deal going on at Caddo Mounds, and it’s worth keeping an eye on their website for their events. The other thing about Texas archaeology that people miss, a thing about Texas archaeology, a thing about East Texas archaeology that people aren’t aware of, is how many archaeological sites there are. I think everyone is somehow familiar with Caddo Mounds State Historic Site, but most people think that’s the only one. The reality is is because wooden buildings and things made of cloth don’t last long, the only thing we find in archaeological sites in East Texas are stone artifacts and discarded pieces of stone artifacts and–
LANDESS: Ceramics?
GUDERJAN: Occasionally some ceramics, but few. I think most people would be shocked to find that there are at least 600 documented archaeological sites in Smith County.
LANDESS: I’m shocked. Say that again for me.
GUDERJAN: I’ll say that again. There are at least, and the number keeps going up, so I’m a little behind, there are at least 600 documented archaeological sites in Smith County. And to add to that, we have probably surveyed 5% of Smith County.
LANDESS: Wow, that’s amazing.
GUDERJAN: So take that number and multiply it by 19 or 20, and you’re going to get pretty close to what’s really there.
LANDESS:
Goodness. One of the items on the conference agenda concerns a find by a UT Tyler student.
GUDERJAN:
That’s right, one of our own, and it’s complemented by work by one of our professors of history, Dr. Ed Tabri. It’s the Sturkey Earthworks site north of Mineola. This young man who discovered it simply found this the best term perhaps, is a berm, a linear pile of dirt covering a rectangle and didn’t understand what it was and thought it’s possible that this is a French colonial period fort, an outlier of the Natchitoches, Louisiana, system, and he’s done a great deal of field work onsite. He is working with some very good avocational archaeologists, a fellow named Bob Vernon for one, and our own Dr. Ed Tabri, and they’ve been putting together what appears to be a story of this place that is about a family that owned it, that built a defensive earthworks around it and is the first time we’ve seen this sort of material from East Texas. I’ve had a number of calls about this site, and people have said, “We don’t know of any French site in that area,” and I can only say, “Come to the conference and you will.”
LANDESS:
Now this is like mid-18th century colonial, is that correct?
GUDERJAN:
That’s right, that’s what we understand. We have only the very beginnings of information from it. We have materials, and I’m saying “we,” not “me.” The investigators have materials, metal materials that are pretty sheer, pretty clearly French colonial time period, and the rectangular earthworks around it. There’s so much more to be done with the place, and I had to point that I had my doubts about it, too, until we were provided with a LiDAR image of it.
LANDESS: What’s that?
GUDERJAN: LiDAR is an airplane-based, laser-based mapping system that will penetrate through the canopy of trees and create an incredibly detailed model of the ground below it. So when I was told there were earthworks, my first thought was “by earthworks,” they’re talking about this rectangular berm, the berm. When I was told about it, I just thought there could be so many other reasons why it’s there. Well, the industry, all sorts of things could do that in the past, you know, 50 years or so. But what we realized when we saw the LiDAR is that’s a very clearly intentional, non-modern construction, and we’re going to be learning from that site for many, many years ahead.
LANDESS: And if there’s one–
GUDERJAN: Wouldn’t that be nice.
LANDESS:
And if there’s one, there could be more.
GUDERJAN: That’s right, Mike. That’s right, of course.
LANDESS: Now, this is a far cry from the exotic Mayan ruins you’ve been exploring and documenting for four decades now in Belize. What piques your interest the most here in East Texas?
GUDERJAN:
Understanding East Texas archaeology is difficult because so few materials remain. We can only find if there’s a site someplace by digging holes in the site with shovels, throwing that dirt through a screen and seeing if there are artifacts in the dirt. There’s almost nothing on the surface that ever gives you much more than a guess if a site is there. There are a couple of exceptions, and one of them is the Box Spring site, which is on the Sabine River. It’s between Longview and Big Sandy, and we’re really fortunate that we have a young researcher. Her name is Crystal Dozier, and she’s a relatively new Ph.D. from Texas A&M University. She’s from this area, and we have someone who has really invested in spending years into the Box Spring site. And she’s doing subsurface underground remote sensing. There are also mounds at the site, so it was a large scale town, and I’m excited about the kind of thing that she’s doing because we’ll finally have, I think, in some years, a sort of a picture of what an ancient Caddo town would have looked like, and we really don’t have much of that today. We have two or three sites that were clearly Caddo towns, but we don’t have, we’ve never had anybody do a focused, full, long-term study of them, and that’s what’s going to have to be done, and she’s doing it, and that’s pretty exciting.
LANDESS:
If someone wanted to be a part of an archaeological effort here in East Texas, how would they go about it?
GUDERJAN:
Oh, that’s easy. There are a couple of ways. Of course, one could join our program in Belize. You could do that from anywhere in the world. I will tell you we’re full, so wait until 2025. But you can come to this conference. Just chat with people and talk with them about what they’re doing. The group from Nacogdoches is always active. The Texas Archaeological Society is very active and will have a two-week field school in Nacogdoches this summer. Wichita State University — this is also Crystal Dozier at the Box Spring site, which is 40 minutes from our university. We’ll bring a field school of Kansas students here this summer. So there are plenty of opportunities to — just get in touch with us. I also know that lots of people have found arrowheads and pot sherds and things like that in their backyard and in their ranch or wherever. Look. They’re welcome to bring them to us at this conference. Just let us know, and we’ll find somebody who knows something about this who can chat with you about it, maybe help you learn about what’s been sitting on your shelf or your grandfather collected years and years ago that’s still on your shelf.
LANDESS:
Final thoughts you’d like to share about archaeological efforts here in East Texas?
GUDERJAN:
I have a final thought about Caddo Indians that I wish to share. I had the experience about a year ago of giving a couple of talks to local groups about Caddo Indians, and I was first surprised by the fact that very few people in these groups knew who Caddo Indians were, and the Kadohadacho people, we call Caddo, owned East Texas for hundreds of years and, of course, because the state of Texas retained the authority over Native American relations rather than the federal government when the merger occurred, most of the Caddo people and others were pushed out of the state, and they’re kind of been forgotten. But they’re real, they exist, there are thousands of them. There’s some amazing artists in the group. They’re exhibiting in the Dallas Museum of Art and other places like that. They have vibrant lives. They’re teaching Caddo language to their people, and I’ve had the personal experience, particularly the past few years, of spending time with them, learning from them, appreciating who they are and honestly, learning about me while I appreciate them. And then when I realize that their history stretches back thousands of years into the past, the appreciation is just amazing, and I’ve benefited from that, and I just encourage others to try to do the same thing.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
