Village life at the Toltec Site
Arrow points of novaculite and chert from the Plum Bayou culture. It is apparent from the size of these specimens that the Plum Bayou people had the bow and arrow. (Courtesy Arkansas Archeological Survey)
Arrow points of novaculite and chert from the Plum Bayou culture. It is apparent from the size of these specimens that the Plum Bayou people had the bow and arrow. (Courtesy Arkansas Archeological Survey)
The first platform mound builders in Arkansas, and among the first in the Southeast,
were the Plum Bayou people of the Toltec site. Between A.D. 750 and A.D. 950 they
dominated east central Arkansas from their great political and religious center,
the Toltec mound group southeast of Little Rock. The Plum Bayou people were in
touch with the early Caddo people of southwest Arkansas, with people of Louisiana
and the Gulf Coast as far east as Florida, with people up the Arkansas Valley
as far as Fort Smith, and probably with people to the north in the Mississippi
Valley near St. Louis. A plain bowl of the Plum Bayou culture is shown here. Most
of the pottery the Plum Bayou people made was undecorated, but a small percentage
of it was painted red inside and out. (Courtesy Arkansas Archeological Survey).
The Plum Bayou people lived mainly on the old Southeastern staples of hickory
nuts, acorns, fish and game, plus some of the more recently developed plants
of the eastern agricultural complex including maygrass, little barley, lamb's
quarter, squash, and possibly sunflowers. To this complex of foods they added
two very important new plants, long since domesticated in Mexico, corn and beans.
It is likely that corn and beans and information on how to grow them came to
the Southeast along with the ideas that stimulated the building of temple mounds.(Courtesy
Arkansas Archeological Survey).
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