Mound Prairie

Three prehistoric Indian mounds and an adjacent village covering about 100 acres form one of the major aboriginal sites in North America. From about 500 to 1100 A.D., Caddoan Indians inhabited the village near the southwest edge of the Mississippian mound-building culture, which once flourished throughout the present eastern United States. Excavations during 1939-41 and 1968-69 showed that two of the mounds had ceremonial purposes; one may have been capped with bright yellow clay, both apparently supported temples, and the tallest mound, about 20 feet high, revealed several major burials. The village, which surrounded the mounds and was not settled before they were built, contained many round houses that probably resembled giant bee hives. Thousands of pot fragments, some pipes, charred corn cobs and nuts, and flint points were found there. Centuries after the site's abandonment by the Indians, the region again became a center of civilization when, in 1690, the first Spanish mission in East Texas was built nearby to minister to the Tejas Indians.

Texas · United States