Honey Grove, Texas -- A large crowd filled Lyday Hall at Honey Grove Library & Learning Center on Saturday, March 1, 2025, to hear what local archeologist Cody Davis and his cohorts discovered in the area that is now covered by Bois d'Arc Lake.
Until recently, the documented history of this area only dated back to when the first intrepid Anglo settlers arrived in the early 1800s, but Native Americans had been making excursions into this area for thousands of years -- possibly as long as 14,000 years -- while carving out an existence in the region.
Davis told of an era when smoke from campfires curled upward from dozens of encampments of Caddo People along what would later become known as Bois d'Arc Creek and Red River. Six of these sites were deemed to be eligible for the national registry.
And any study of Caddoan activity in this area calls for an appreciation of the unique qualities of bois d'arc wood because Davis believes that the first forays into this area by Native Americans were to harvest bois d'arc wood for tools, war clubs and, later on, some of the most powerful hunting bows on the planet.
The Caddo diet mainly consisted of deer, rabbits, turtles and birds. Evidence indicates that bison wasn't readily available to hunt and there was very little evidence of fishing.
The cultural chronology of Northeast Texas was defined as ranging from Paleoindian (14,000 years ago) to Anglo-American settlement (1815 to present).
But even that knowledge is only scratching the surface of the history of this area.
Although bois d'arc trees once flourished throughout North America as a food source for megafauna such as giant sloths, mammoths, mastadons and bison during the Pleiocene (5.33 to 2.58 million years ago) and Pleistocene (2.58 million years ago to 12,000 years ago), several factors made the tree retreat to our neck of the woods. The late Dr. Fred Tarpley christened this region as the Bois d'Arc Kingdom and on Saturday Davis described this region as "the last natural habitat of bois d'arc."
Harvard Ph.D. Frank Schamback suspected that, at its lowest point, the range of bois d'arc was reduced to Bois d'Arc Creek and nearby tributaries to Red River.
While doing research in the Bois d'Arc Lake area Davis and his co-workers unearthed bones of Eremotherium, an elephant-sized, extinct giant sloth that could weigh more than four tons and grow to be 20-feet long.
The end-Pleistocene extinction event brought the demise of megafauna approximately 13,000 years ago in the Western Hemisphere, which curiously coincides with the arrival of humans in significant numbers. Bois d'arc trees survived long past their original purpose as food for megafauna, survived the last glacial maximum that ended 20,000 years ago and was eventually re-purposed by Native Americans and Anglo settlers in a myriad of ways.
Fannin County and Lamar County have been the source of a number of archeological studies for the past century. The Goss Farm and the Morgan farm in Fannin County have yielded artifacts. Just across the line in Lamar County is Sanders Site, where an excavation in 1931 by A. T. Jackson and the University of Texas produced what Davis described as "the largest cache of Mississipian cultural artifacts west of the Mississippi" at the time.
Unfortunately, the University of Texas hasn't shared any of those artifacts with museums in Fannin County and Lamar County, the area where they originated.
And what will happen to the artifacts unearthed by the massive sand mining operations that are proliferating near Red River?
"That's stuff we will never get back," Davis remarked.
If you missed this fascinating presentation, drop by the Honey Grove Library & Learning Center anytime during the month of March to see artifacts associated with this exhibit, "A Time Before Texas - Exploring What Life Was Like For the First People to Call Texas Home."
