A few months ago, on the way back from visiting his folks in Kentucky, we passed briefly through Vicksburg and Northeast Louisiana. It surprised us both how much we realized there was deep history here, but how little credence we'd given the area before-- especially when it comes to vacation destinations.
On Saturday morning, we set off on a leisurely and Community Coffee-fueled drive toward Jonesville-Ferriday, intent to visit Louisiana's only UNSECO World Heritage site (and only the 22nd in the U.S.)-- Poverty Point Earthworks. Once a sacred spot to the Native Louisiana peoples around 2,000-1,000 BC, it is one of the oldest cultural points still in existence in North America.
The mound-building of Native Americans has spawned various logical and superstitious schools of thought; but these ancient mounds provoke a particularly enigmatic idea-- their entire purpose is decidedly unknown, but most likely ritualistic or religious. The design of the mounds themselves sparks the imagination-- a sort of proto-crop circle, many amateurs and professionals have hypothesized their significance.
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What we do know about the site is based on the things we have found, and also what we have not found at the site-- other mounds usually suggest burial, but no tombs or bodies are found here. There are some older portions of the site that suggest that it was significant before it became so large, and that it most likely was a permanently-habited site for around 600 years, with much trade occurring here over that time. What is known is that the design is man-made, and took a group of people a lot of time and effort to put together. Our personal speculation? The design is that of a Barred Owl that is populous in the area, and considered sacred to these people. We observed one in flight during our meager stay of two hours!
As happens with nearly everywhere, the place eventually fell out of favor-- whether due to the Mississippi river changing course and flooding, the loss of wild game, disease, or just due to the younger generation's slowly shrinking sense of reverence for the ways of their forefathers (we've all been there...). And then, as also happens, a new group of people found the place desirable again, and history was laid on top of other history like layers of silt. One of the older mounds shows great wagon wheel grooves worn into the middle as settlers from the 1700-1800's followed the small tributary bayou out west. After this, other settlers made permanent homestead here, and later the plantation for which the site is named.
As you guide yourself along the lovely (and, in mid-August, steamy) three mile hike, you're greeted with tracts of open grassland, lovely bayou views, lush forest trails, and handfuls of curious critters to blend the natural and the historical elements of the site seamlessly together.
So what did we learn; what did we come away with? What's left at the end of such a lovely hike and tour? Definitely a profound sense of wonder and hundreds of questions, for which the very deeply explored scientific answers are, "We really don't know much, but we do know this stuff is special."
As we got our sweaty selves rehydrated and off to Vicksburg to explore our more modern Civil War history, it hit us how the passage of time can change what we think we know about the past and, honestly, is Poverty Point really just an ancient society's own Battle of Vicksburg National War Memorial that time and consciousness forgot? Instead of arrowheads, we have bullets? A crossroads of many peoples, or were they the armies of peoples, or peoples just coming to remember the past? Because honestly, after seeing both places, they can appear eerily similar, just a few miles and millennia apart.
