Date of Visit: 19 Dec 2024
Scott, AR
55º ~ thankful for partly sunny skies that turned mostly to sun
Another park on my much-anticipated list, Plum Bayou Mounds (formerly Toltec Mounds) proved to be a solid choice for a December visit, checking off park #36. Only a 10-minute drive down the road from Plantation Agriculture Museum, the two make for a great day-trip pair. Why a December park? After reading up about the history and archaeology in the visitor center, the bulk of the visit takes place as a mile-and-a-half walk around the mound site. Knowing how this flat delta land heats up from May to October, walking the path in December was a delight.
For years, everyone called this place Toltec Mounds because the Knapp family who owned the site in the 19th century attributed the immense mounds to the Toltec people of Mexico. By 1883, archeologists disproved the theory but the name stuck. Only recently did the site receive a name to more accurately reflect its origin. The people who built these mounds were prehistoric Native Americans, not tied to any modern tribe. The site’s inhabitation record spans from AD 650 – AD 1050, although one display in the museum states AD 950 as an endpoint. (These discrepancies often send me down the research rabbit hole!) In the end, no one can say why this culture either left the area or died out.
Archeologists now name the people who built the mounds after a modern waterway nearby, Plum Bayou. The Plum Bayou people would have lived scattered in villages and on small farms throughout the area, coming together several times a year at the mounds to hold religious and social ceremonies. Alas, their culture pre-dates any written record.
It is believed…. Archeologists speculate…. Scholars are unsure….
While walking the land, I kept coming back to these phrases in all of the park information. This vast area once held 18 mounds, with only 3 natural mounds remaining (and 1 recreation). My heart wrenched to learn that large-scale farming destroyed the other 15 mounds. Old hand-drawn maps and modern technology, including drilling soil cores, show us where the absent mounds once stood. The park marks them with large alphabetical red and white signs, providing a haunting vision of what we’ve lost.
I walked and I ruminated on the human urge to know. Put a puzzle such as this in front of us and we are driven to try and figure it out. Who were these people? What did they do here? What were the sounds of their language, their songs? Piecing together information gathered on site and at other sites of a similar date in the region only offers so much information. I can’t stop fixating on the large gaps of what we cannot know.
