The Earthen Mounds of Marksville

Phase one of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe’s plans for the Marksville site involves refurbishing the Spanish-style museum.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who stay home and those who don’t. Fall back 2000 years into the past, says Dr. Charles R. “Chip” McGimsey, Louisiana’s state archaeologist, and you would recognize similar human impulses. “While it’s true that a majority of people stayed at home, curious, adventurous folks wandered the landscape all the time,” he says. “I am pretty sure if you walked up to the people at Marksville and said, ‘How can I get to the people in Ohio?’, someone could have given you directions.”

Marksville, motto “Where Everybody is Somebody,” is today’s parish seat of Avoyelles, but archaeologists use the name to identify the 40 acres of land with six earthen ceremonial mounds located at the eastern edge of town. “One of the fascinating things about Louisiana is that it is the state where the first earthen mounds in North America were built, starting 7,000 years ago,” McGimsey says. “Thirteen sites have radiocarbon dates that place their construction between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago. We’re not first in many things, but we were the first to start building piles of earth as ceremonial or sacred places.”

Radiocarbon dating reveals that Native peoples began to build the core site area in Marksville between 50 B.C. and A.D. 1. Sometime after A.D. 350, the site was abandoned. Archaeologists know that much, but they don’t know the name of the Native people who lived here and whom they call the Marksville culture, a southeastern variant of the Hopewell of Ohio and Illinois. The Marksville culture lived outside the 3,000-foot C-shaped earthen embankment that, along with a former Mississippi River channel, encloses the site.

McGimsey, who began working regularly here in 1995, notes that the Marksville site is among few places in the Southeast where Native people practiced Hopewell traditions. “There were lots of people living all over Louisiana at that time,” he says, “and most of the rest of them couldn’t care less about these other places. Here, they did.”

(Left Top) The Marksville site includes six earthen mounds, including this canonical burial mound. (Left Bottom) Archaeologists believe that Mound 6 — at 300 feet in diameter and 12 feet high — was used for ceremonial purposes. (Right) The Tunica-Biloxi Cultural and Educational Resources Center includes a museum exhibit hall, conservation and restoration laboratory, library, auditorium, classrooms, meeting rooms and tribal government offices.

Because earthen mounds rise throughout the Mississippi River Valley, the Tunica-Biloxi recognized Marksville culture traditions when they migrated south and settled near the site in the late 18th century. “Our community viewed this place as something we were connected to,” says John D. Barbry, the first Native American archivist hired at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and current Director of Development and Programing for the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe in Marksville. “While it changed hands as far as ownership, we considered that it belonged to us.”

In 2020, the State of Louisiana transferred ownership of the site to the City of Marksville. For several years, trees and other debris lay strewn across the mounds. Unhoused people began using the museum for refuge. In 2022, the City of Marksville donated the land to the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe, which has cleared the grounds and has begun restoration of the museum. The tribe plans to reopen the site in phases beginning later this year and is negotiating with the city and private landowners to buy property and provide direct access between the reservation, which includes the Paragon Casino, and the site.

(Left) This painting of the Sun Woman represents tribal stories of the Tunica and Biloxi peoples, says John D. Barbry, Director of Development and Programing for the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe in Marksville. Europeans used trade beads, such as these from the Tunica treasure, at “calumet” (peace pipe) ceremonies.

As a child, Barbry and his family made regular trips from Lake Charles to see his grandparents in Marksville. In 1933, when Barbry’s grandfather heard about a team of archaeologists digging at the Marksville site, he assembled a group of protestors. They demanded that the team cease their work. Insisting that they were investigating the place and people who came before the arrival of the Tunica-Biloxi, the team eventually gained approval to continue their work.

Today, Barbry considers his grandfather’s act an early example of Native people protesting the desecration of sacred land. He sees the restoration of the Marksville site as an opportunity to promote the culture of all Native peoples. “For me, this has an emotional appeal. We’re still here. We still exist.”

Did You Know?

“The Marksville site is the most important site of [the period from A.D. 1 to 400],” writes Louisiana’s state archaeologist, Charles R. McGimsey, in “Archaeology of Louisiana,” edited by Mark A. Rees (LSU Press, 2010). “The site plan was based on a geometric grid, with alignments to the sun, certain stars, and constellations, indicating that at minimum the core or central area was a carefully planned construction.”