page_title: Caddo Mounds State Historic Site
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Caddo Mounds State Historic Site / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: A map showing the geographical extent of the en:Caddoan Mississippian culture of prehistoric southeastern North America and some important sites.
context_page_description: Caddo Mounds State Historic Site is an archaeological site in Weeping Mary, Texas. This Caddoan Mississippian culture site is composed of a village and ceremonial center that features two earthwork platform mounds and one burial mound. Located on an ancient Native American trail later named by the Spanish as El Camino Real de los Tejas, the settlement developed hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans and Africans to the region. Archaeologists believe the site was founded in approximately 800CE, with most major construction taking place between 1100CE and 1300CE.
  The Caddo Mounds site is located in East Texas, 6 miles west of Alto, Texas on Texas State Highway 21 near its intersection with U.S. Route 69 in the Piney Woods region. Operated by the Texas Historical Commission, the museum at the site was reopened in October 2015. The new museum offers visitors a chance to explore a replica Caddo village, and all exhibits are hands-on. Visitors can walk the 0.7 miles self-guided interpretive trail to see the Caddo burial, low temple, and ceremonial mounds. An additional trail along the El Camino Real is also available.
context_section_description: The site began with the founding of a permanent village by the Hasinai, who moved into the region from the Red River area to the northeast, in roughly 850 to 900CE. The region had ideal qualities for a village: good soil, abundant food resources, and a permanent water source that flowed into the Neches River.  What eventually became the largest mound, Mound A, was begun at this time. It is at the southern edge of the site and was surrounded by about 40 houses. In 1100 a new mound was begun near the center of the site, Mound B, and would eventually measure roughly 175 feet (55 meters) north-south and 115 feet (35 meters) east-west. Mound C, the northernmost mound of the three, was used as a burial mound, not for elite residences or temples like the other two. The site was the southwestern-most ceremonial mound center of all the great mound building cultures of North America.
  The settlement was abandoned in the 13th century when the elite ruling class dissipated after the outlying hamlets became more self-sufficient and grew less dependent on the site for religious and political matters. The Caddo culture that remained was similar to the earlier culture in many ways but lacked much of its hierarchical structure and exotic material wealth. By the time Europeans arrived in the area in the 18th century, the Caddo groups in the area lived in small villages and hamlets, spread across the local landscape. They had long since stopped building mounds, and their former hierarchical social and political organization had become much less centralized.
  The Hasinai groups continued to live in the Neches and Angelina River valleys up to the 1830s, but by the early 1840s, all Caddo groups had moved to the Brazos River area in an effort to avoid Anglo-American colonization. In 1855 the U.S. government moved them to the Brazos Indian Reservation. In 1859 it forced them to move again, to the Washita River in Indian Territory (now western Oklahoma). The Caddo still live in western Oklahoma, and Binger is the capital of the federally recognized Caddo Nation of Oklahoma.
caption: Map of Caddoan Mississippian sites
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