a LAFAYETTE PARISH article

Cultures of Acadiana
a look at the French, Cajun, Creole, and Native American cultures of south Louisiana
(a project of Carencro High School - 721 West Butcher Switch Road, Lafayette, LA  70507)

Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, January 27, 1998

Indian mounds tell of early inhabitants

Attakapas artifacts help show life of first Acadiana settlers

by Jim Bradshaw


As with the rest of Acadiana, the first settlers who left any sort of record in Acadiana were Indians, mostly Attakapas Indians. They left little in the way of written records. But, Indian mounds scattered throughout the area, and recollections of men who were here at the same time as the last of the Attakapas, tell us something about them.

What may be the largest collection of artifacts from Indian mounds in Lafayette was that of the late Joseph Martin. It was a hobby he pursued for some 20 years after he accidentally discovered an arrowhead on his farm on the Vermilion River at the foot of Magnolia Street.

Arrowheads, pottery, stone axes, hoes, tubular pipes, and other artifacts washed up in newly plowed ground after the spring rains. Martin also bought Indian artifacts that other people found in the area of Oakbourne Country Club and the Paul Breaux School.

The Martin collection includes some 2,000 projectiles, most of which were found at the Paul Breaux School site.

USL anthropologist Jon Gibson has studied the area since 1969. He found Tchefuncte-era sites, dating from 600 to 100 B.C. all along the upper Vermilion River. His list includes sites at Metal Camp, Lafayette Mounds, Ruth Canal, Fournet Mound, Jim Fournet, Coulee Crow, Ridge, Bayou Tortue, Airport Runway East, Beau Rivage (near Oakbourne Country Club), Paul Breaux School, and others. He found a variety of artifacts at an Acadiana Park site, including dart points, aboriginal pottery, rosary beads, finger ring sets, European pipe stems, red ware, and other items.

His studies suggest that at the time of the coming of Europeans to Acadiana, about 1700, the main Attakapas village was between Bayou Teche and the Vermilion River.

Dr. Harry Lewis Griffin wrote a brief history of the Lafayette area at the time of Lafayette's centennial celebration in 1936. In it, he reported, "The (Attakapas) ... were not civilized. They lived usually in crude huts, huddled together in miserable villages. The men spent most of their time hunting and fighting while the women remained at home to do the work in the house and field. The civilization was that of the rough stone age, as the weapons and implements were made of roughly shaped pieces of stone. The men, however, were skilled hunters and the women attained the art of making pottery and baskets. Their religion consisted in worshipping objects of nature such as the sun and moon, and the spirits of departed ancestors. Their dead were often buried in large mounds in which were placed the trinkets and weapons of the dead warriors. Many of the mounds are to this day along the high banks of the Teche and Vermilion."

With the coming of European s to the area, the Attakapas gradually sold off their land and moved to the west. By the turn of the century, there were only a handful of the Attakapas remaining, living on the shores of Lake Charles and nearby Prien Lake, and a few in eastern Texas. There are no Attakapas left today.

This article is copyrighted © by the Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser and is used with permission.  This web site was originated through a grant awarded to Carencro High School (Joel Hilbun/Bobbi Marino, Grant Administrators) by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from the Louisiana Quality Education Support Fund - 8(g).