“A Barely Discernible Horizon”

This chapter details events that occurred in 1999, when Albert Gore Jr., standing on the steps of the Smith County courthouse in Carthage, Tennessee, began his run for president. The Carthage courthouse chosen by Gore for his announcement was not just a place of justice but also a former jail—the last known prison for two Muslim fugitives. Launching his bid to become President, Gore was standing in the same spot where a pair of Arabic authors had failed to win their own freedoms, despite the Qur’anic appeals dispatched to the sitting President in 1807. On the courthouse steps once climbed by these two captives, Gore welcomed an American millennium that was soon to be haunted by scandals of Muslim incarceration. Gazing into the unsearchable future, Gore stood where two forgotten “Mahometans” had been jailed in 1807, even as he greeted a century that would open with outrage over Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Current Research: Archaeological Investigations at the Shackleford Creek Site (41SM494), Smith County, Texas

An archaeological survey in 2018 of the proposed Shackleford Creek Residential Development, a federally permitted project, in the upper Angelina River basin in East Texas by Tejas Archaeology identified the ancestral Caddo Shackleford Creek site (41SM494). Because the site was only investigated with a few shovel tests during the archaeological survey, although sufficient to identify the site extent and general characteristics of deposit depth and artifact content, but appeared to contain intact archaeological deposits of ancestral Caddo age, Nelson and Perttula recommended that the site warranted further evaluation by a plan of test excavations to determine its research potential and eligibility for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Tejas Archaeology completed the test excavations in February 2019.

Caddo Ceramic Vessels from the W. J. Barnett Site (41SM2), Smith County, Texas

Ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels were found along the bank of an eroded ditch in the early 1930s at the W. J. Barnett site (41SM2). They were purchased by The University of Texas about 1935. The site is in the uplands about 6 km south of the Sabine River floodplain and ca. 2 km east of the Jamestown (41SM54) mound center.

Sam Whiteside’s Prairie Creek Sites in Smith County, Texas

During primarily the late 1950s Sam Whiteside investigated a slate of sites on the upper reaches of Prairie Creek in eastern Smith County, Texas. Archaeological investigations ranged from fairly extensive efforts at a couple of sites, including the Chapman site (41SM56), to fairly limited excavations at others based on the amount of recovered artifacts. Artifacts and notes from a number of the sites were donated by Sam Whiteside to the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin. However, artifacts and notes from other Prairie Creek sites were kept by the family and after Mr. Whiteside’s death were made available to the senior author. Other than the Chapman site, none of the archaeological findings from other sites has been published. This article makes that information available to the archaeological community in Texas.

Ceramic Beads from the Cloud Hammond Site (41SM244), Smith County, Texas

During investigations at the Cloud Hammond site (41SM244) during the 1960s, J. A. Walters recovered Caddo ceramics, two clay beads, Perdiz arrow points, and two Gary dart points. The site is located in northern Smith County, Texas, about 400 m east of the Middle Caddo period Jamestown Mound site (41SM54). Of the artifacts reported to have been recovered from the site, only one clay bead was available for study. No record survives of the extent of investigations at the Cloud Hammond site or if any cultural features such as burials were found during the 1960s work.

41SM91: A Frankston Phase Settlement on the Neches River at Lake Palestine, Smith County, Texas

Site 41SM91 is an ancestral Caddo habitation site on an upland landform east of the Neches River, in the area of Lake Palestine, a large reservoir constructed on the Neches River in the East Texas Pineywoods; the dam is located about 11 km south of the site. The site was found and recorded during a 1957 survey of the proposed reservoir flood pool, and Johnson described it as “a large Frankston Focus habitation site located in a cultivated field on the slope of a large hill to the east of the Neches floodplain”. A large assemblage of ceramic vessel sherds were collected from the surface of the site during the archaeological survey, and these sherds are in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Caddo Ceramic Sherd Assemblage from the Hawkins Site (41SM144) on the Sabine River in Smith County, Texas

The Hawkins site is an ancestral Caddo habitation site on a Sabine River bluff about 1.7 km southwest of the confluence of Little White Oak Creek with the river, in the Pineywoods of Smith County. The site was located and investigated in the 1950s by Sam Whiteside of Tyler, Texas. This article is concerned with the analysis of the Caddo ceramic wares from the site, as well as an assessment of the probable age and cultural affiliation of the Caddo occupation.

A House Burning at Redwine (41SM193)

I explore an unusual Caddo vessel from the Redwine site (41SM193), a Middle Caddo period (ca. A.D. 1200-1400) habitation/mound site located in Smith County, Texas. This vessel has been described as part of the Walters Collection by Perttula.

41SM32 on Little Saline Creek in Smith County, Texas

A review of early trinomial numbers for sites located in Smith County in East Texas indicated that between 1938 and 1943 Jack Hughes identified and collected from at least 37 sites listed on the Texas Historic Site Atlas. From 1938 to 1941 his site locations randomly occur throughout the County; interestingly there are no sites recorded in 1942. In 1943 he recorded about 14 sites along Black Fork Creek and its tributaries, this being mostly west of the City of Tyler. The primary purpose in reviewing the available archaeological information about these early recorded sites was to re-visit selected sites if necessary and to update information that was recorded beginning almost 80 years ago. An entry contained on a Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas (TARL) site card indicated that Hughes collected artifacts from a site (41SM32) located on Little Saline Creek, near the much better known Alligator Pond site (41SM442) that had been recorded in 2011 by Mark Walters. The Alligator Pond site is on property owned by Thacker, a Texas Archeological Stewardship Network member. 41SM32 is a prehistoric archaeological site that was found and recorded in September 1940 by Jack Hughes, who later went on to a career as a professional archaeologist in Texas. The site is on Little Saline Creek, a northward-flowing tributary to the Sabine River about 10 km to the north, in the Post Oak Savannah of East Texas.