Moonlady Showcase

Poverty Point Earthworks
Cultural Cradle of the Continent

Poverty Point State Historic Site is the second largest set of ancient earthworks in America, an archeological site so important it was named a National Historic Landmark and nominated by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site. But its remote location in northeast Louisiana kept all but the most ardent ancient history buffs away. A few motels on Interstate 20 and handful of country cafés in nearby Delhi was all to await travelers that spent a day exploring the complex that sprawls over one square mile. Quiet hotels and a greater variety of restaurants and services lay 45 minutes away in Monroe, Louisiana, or Vicksburg, Mississippi.

But visiting the earthworks just got easier with the completion of a new Louisiana park, Poverty Point State Reservoir, just 15 minutes away. Attractive wood lodges that sleep ten overlook either the reservoir or the adjacent Bayou Macon (pronounced may sohn). With full kitchen facilities, complete with dishes and cookware, plus an outdoor grill, visitors can explore the massive earthworks all day and drive only a short bit to enjoy home-made food and sunset over the lake from a porch swing. The park boasts its own earthworks, the circa 500 CE Marsden Mounds.

Cabin renters can even provide fish for dinner by catching a few from the park's 2,700-acre reservoir. Saunter a short distance to the dock and pitch a line for bluegill, crappie and more. The friendly park ranger will be happy to provide a cane fishing pole. For larger catch like largemouth bass, visitors can rent a canoe or boat. Or bring your own boat and gear; each lodge gets its own covered boat slip. Many fishermen have not discovered the lake, built in 2001. But judging by the number of herons around, the fishing is very good indeed.

Back in Time

The gigantic earthen constructions of Poverty Point State Historic Site date back 4,000 years, a time of Stonehenge in Great Britain and Nefertiti in Egypt. Though the ancient Native Americans of northern Louisiana at that time were tribes of nomadic hunter-gatherers, they came together to create gigantic, elaborate, astronomically aligned ceremonial structures. In 1750 BCE, the peak of Poverty Point, it hosted periodic gatherings of 2,000 people or more. Conveniently located close to the Mississippi River, the location allowed visitors to bring in vast quantities of trade items using the Big Muddy and its tributaries like an aquatic interstate highway system.  Soapstone from southeast United States, shells from the Gulf Coast and copper from the Great Lakes are just a few.

Around 1200 BCE, the Native American builders stopped gathering at Poverty Point, no one knows why. When settlers came through in the mid 1800s, the complex was so vast, eroded and overgrown that only the largest mound was recognized as man-made. Farmers cleared the forest and plowed down all but a few of the earthworks for cotton fields, destroying millennia of archeological evidence. The true nature and scale of the site was revealed in the 1970s when archeologists happened to view aerial photos of the area made for a highway building project 20 years before. The earthworks' man-made outlines were clearly visible. Even so, highway construction had continued and LA 577 now slices through the site.

Long-time site archeologist Jon Gibson terms Poverty Point "The Place of Rings," for its six concentric c-shaped embankments that appear to radiate out from Bayou Macon like the waves of a pebble thrown into a pond. The outer largest ring spans almost a mile across. Created inside the inner ring is a plaza nearly 40 acres in size. Aisles that line up with sunrise and sunset on the solstices and equinoxes divide the rings. Archeologists theorize that buildings of reed and wood once topped the rings and many of the mounds.

Though now greatly eroded, the semi-circular embankments once spanned 10 yards across and reached up to six feet high. A partial square created by five mounds frames the rings, including the epic Bird Mound, shaped like a falcon in flight with a wingspan of over 600 feet and soaring to 70 feet in height. To create the earthworks, ancient people dug pits of loosened dirt and moved it one 50-pound basket of packed earth at a time, stacking the loads like bricks to create the structures. Since the valuable imported materials were not concentrated in one area, the sign of an elite class, nor were there weapons, Mr. Gibson theorizes that the society was a peaceful egalitarian one.

It takes a bit of imagination to grasp the Poverty Point earthworks. Large parts of it look like a mowed field with the rumpled texture of an unmade bed. But on the largest mounds and the few ring sections to escape the plow, images of the past vividly come to mind. Resting on a wood bench in a lush forest of berry-laden vines, fruiting shrubs and 60-foot high nut trees in the northern part of the rings, or walking along the Bayou Macon rich with fish and waterfowl, it's easily to see why the native people needed only a few hours each day to collect food, leaving ample free time for earthwork construction.

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