Louisiana Native Americans
Native Americans have lived in what is now Louisiana for at least 12,000 years. They adapted to major climatic and social changes with modifications to tools and ornaments made of wood and other plant materials, as well as stone, bone, shell, and clay. Aspects of social life and religion were also captured in the form and decoration of both utilitarian and ceremonial artifacts. The organic artifacts have long since disappeared, but the more durable materials remain to reflect the lifestyles—and the artistry—of Louisiana’s first settlers.
past lifestyles
A durable reflection of prehistoric Native American societies is the public architecture. Mound shape and size changed through time; mound function and the meanings the mounds had in the social landscape of these peoples changed as well. Archaeologists study the shape, size, and construction history of mounds in an attempt to read the meaning in these monuments. The earliest dated mounds in the U.S. are in Louisiana. These were constructed by Archaic cultures sometime around 6000 B.C.E.
Houses were made of pole frames resting on forked sticks and covered with mats. They used to be palmetto-thatched and had only one door, mostly facing the south. Raised platforms around the walls served as benches and beds. A fire was kindled on the ground within the lodge, the smoke passing out through an opening made for the purpose at the top near the center. Sometimes, houses were covered with a mix of clay and moss ("daub"), which is a constructive technique called wattle and daub. For the winter, they built a substantial structure without windows nor smoke holes; it had only a small entrance facing east, which was the sacred or “good luck” direction.
The best evidence of the prehistoric food quest is the hundreds of thousands of projectile points (spear, dart, and arrow points) that occur in Louisiana. Other tools include so-called “bola stones” which could be attached to cords and thrown; they may also be used as net weights. These stone artifacts are what remains of a diverse hunting, gathering, and fishing toolkit that also contained fine-meshed nets for fish and birds, decoys, small and large snares, fish weirs, fish baskets, cane and bamboo arrows, wooden bows and atlatls, and digging sticks for root crops and shellfish.
Before Native Americans invented pottery, they used baked clay objects in different shapes to cook. These "cooking balls" were heated in fire and placed in pits, where they slow-roasted foods. They were used by Archaic cultures (around 6.000BCE) and as an alternative to pottery by early Tchefuncte peoples.
The earliest pottery in the Southeast was created around 3000 BC along the Savannah River and adjacent to the Atlantic coast. It was tempered with plant fibers like Spanish moss to open up pore spaces to control shrinkage and cracking when the pot was dried and fired. Between 1000 and 50 BC, cultures in the Southeast replaced plant fibers with sand or sponge particles. The Tchefuncte culture developed a different temper called grog, consisting of ground-up potsherds, which was used in the Lower Mississippi River Valley until Contact. Shell tempering appeared in northeast Louisiana and extreme southeast Louisiana and it is an excellent indication of Mississippian cultural influence and of a fairly late occupation.