U.S. Water News Online
SHREVEPORT, La. -- Planned drawdowns of Lake Bistineau over the next three years may be a cloud to shoreline property owners, boaters and anglers. But they're a silver lining to historians and archaeologists eager to learn more about regional history.
"It will give us the opportunity to look at portions along Bayou Dorcheat we normally don't get to see," said Jeff Girard, the state regional archaeologist who works out of Northwestern State University.
Dorcheat, which cuts a wide and wet swath through Webster Parish, is the stream that largely feeds the lake and along which, for perhaps thousands of years, people lived before historic times in this region of the state.
"There is going to be everything from early prehistoric Indian sites that date back 10,000 to 12,000 years, all the way up to 19th-century occupations," Girard said. "Because of the rafting of the Red River, Lake Bistineau has been a lake quite some time."
Lake waters are being drained to control aquatic plants and otherwise maintain the lake bed. That could expose up to 10,000 acres of the 17,200-acre lake bottom. The last time the level fell enough for scholarly studies to be made was 20 years ago. The most recent study of the exposed salt works was published in 1902. That means studies today should benefit from new technologies.
"We have several sites on the lake bed that are dots on a map. And I'm not sure how accurate those dots are," Girard said.
With modern techniques, "we will be able to get much more precise locations of where things were."
Girard will be assisted by the local Louisiana Archaeological Society chapter, Caddo Nation officials and cartographer and historian Gary Joiner, a nationally recognized expert on Civil War history relating to Louisiana.
Prior to the Civil War, salt works were a viable industry on Lake Bistineau. Salt pans from native Americans have been found, so it's an ancient site.
Confederate defense maps also show that camps of various sizes were sited near the lake, most likely to protect the salt works, a strategic asset for the mineral-strapped Confederacy, Joiner said.
History unearthed from the muddy lake bottom and sites rediscovered or confirmed with new technologies will add pieces to the puzzle of local history and provide more for future scientists to stitch into a historic fabric, Girard said.
Such sites now could be correlated to the Conly Site in Bienville Parish, where human remains dating 6,000 years before the pyramids of Egypt indicate a sizable group lived along the banks of Loggy Bayou, which drains from Dorcheat and Bistineau into the Red River.
The Conly Site was only discovered a few years ago and so could not aid research on Bistineau decades ago.
"This gives us the opportunity to look for occupations that might have been contemporary with the Conly Site," Girard said. "It will help us put the site in context. That would be very exciting."
Girard and Joiner planned to visit the north shore of the lake this month to examine some of the first sites to be explored -- Tadpole Lake and Potter's Pond. These are historic salt works used during the Civil War but which historians believe Indians used far earlier.
Also on hand will be regional representatives of the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, who will help protect the exposed lake bottom from relic hunters.
"There are a lot of people who like to do treasure hunting who will go out on state property and will try to recover things by digging," Girard said. "But there are state laws that protect any cultural resources on state property. And under the lake bed, it is state property."
Complicating the issue, however, is that some sites are on private property. Some of the areas exposed by the receding lake may be private property as well. Girard said people who find what they believe could be artifacts should get in touch with him.
"We're not going to confiscate what people have found. But people want to know what happened on their property," he said. "And when they find something, they want to know how old it is and what it was used for."
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