June 20, 2010

June 20, 2010

Natchitoches, LA (pronounced Nakatish) is on the sleepy Cane River. It turns out to be quiet because it is not really a river anymore. It used to be the busy Red River but in the early 1800’s settlers cleared a major logjam and the Red River ended up cutting a new channel leaving this section stranded. It is now a really long skinny lake. A few miles downstream we visit the Cane River Creole Historic Park. The park consists of two former cotton plantations that time passed by. They are interesting but the heat and humidity here are killers of my curiosity.
These plantations started off as slave enterprises. After the Civil War most of the blacks stayed on the plantation as tenant farmers and sharecroppers. The brutal reality was that little changed when they converted to “voluntary” servitude. Today we call this predicament being chained to a “job”. I can relate. I had the same dream of wanting to shake loose the shackles of “the man”. Only a few days ago Aimee and I celebrated the fourth anniversary of our Emancipation Proclamation. Free at Last!

From the Cane River area we worked our way with the A/C turned on high to the northeast corner of Louisiana and the Poverty Point Monument. It turns out the name is a misnomer. Although Reagan designated it a National Monument, Arkansas wouldn’t relinquish control so it remains a state historic site. Poverty Point is an Indian archeology site from before 1500 BC. Besides being incredibly old for the New World, it is huge, and was only recognized from aerial photographs. It consists of concentric earthen ridges almost a mile wide surrounding a central courtyard (see scale model). A community of maybe 4000 pre-agriculture hunter-gatherer Indians lived here. Artifacts found at the site indicate this ancient people traded for goods from all over the US. The whole story seems incredible. Because of the heat I was secretly happy when the park ranger said we could take a tram tour. We would have drowned in our own sweat hiking this huge site. The tour and museum turned out to be a hidden gem.