Caddo Fundamentals

Caddo ancestors were laid to rest within the Caddo Homeland for generation upon generation. Following the accepted burial custom of the day, grieving relatives laid each departed Caddo in his or her grave with solemn rituals that, in historic times, traditionally lasted six days,during the journey of the deceased to the House of the Dead in the Sky. Often the custom included burying the dead with special artifacts or offerings, especially beautifully decorated pottery vessels, but also with shell ornaments and other items symbolizing their role in society and other things as well. Since Late Woodland times, over 1200 years ago, Caddo people were buried soon after death in a manner that archeologists describe as primary interments. Typically, the deceased were laid out on their backs in a fully extended position, a single individual in each grave. In contrast, in many areas of the Eastern United States (including the Arkansas Basin) the deceased were placed in charnel houses where priests defleshed the bones and stored them for months or even years. In such societies, the stored remains were periodically gathered and buried in ossuaries, large communal graves, as secondary interments, as part of communal rituals. Craig Mound at Spiro is an extraordinary example of a complex mortuary facility.

In prehistoric and early historic times, the offerings and burial rituals for important Caddo leaders were very elaborate, representing major expenditures of effort and wealth apparently thought to befit the leader's exalted position in society. Sometimes leaders were buried in deep tombs dug through mounds and into the original earth, perhaps symbolically connecting sacred times past with the departed. At other times leaders were buried among their people, but even then their graves were set apart by size, location, and offerings. Ordinary Caddos had less elaborate graves and were often buried in family cemeteries and sometimes (especially children) buried beneath the floors of their houses. These differences are just a few of those that could be mentioned; Caddo burial practices were somewhat different from group to group and they changed over time.

We know this because grave robbers, farmers, archeologists, and construction bulldozers have been digging up Caddo graves for over a century, a fact that causes great pain to many Caddo people today. If it were the graves of your ancestors that were subject to this distruction, you would understand how the Caddo feel: violated, disrespected, and very sad. There is no easy way to explain what has happened or why and no way to reconcile all the conflicting views on the subject of Caddo graves.

Since the early 1900s archeologists have sought out and excavated Caddo graves, most of which faced imminent destruction by looters, farming, and natural erosion. The graves, skeletal remains, and associated offerings have provided critical knowledge about the Caddo past. For example, information on social organization, health, and disease based on Caddo graves is not otherwise obtainable from archeological evidence. The way a society treats its dead says much about that society, and clearly there is no other comparable source of information for prehistoric societies. In addition, physical remains are practically the only source of information on individual lives of ancestral Caddo people, as well as on the biological relationships among individuals and populations.

Unfortunately, for many decades archeologists treated Caddo graves with little awareness of the feelings of living Caddo peoples. Taking a Western scientific perspective, archeologists regarded human remains and grave offerings as mere evidence, perhaps important evidence, but evidence nonetheless. In this view, the remains are considered dispassionately and treated like any other fragile and potentially important kind of artifact. With that attitude, most archeologists had no interaction with the Caddo Nation because they really did not appreciate the connection between the ancient Caddo and the living Caddo.

Part of the problem was that, by the 20th century, very few Caddo people lived in the Caddo Homeland where archeologists were working. Unfortunately, the thought that Caddo people living in west-central Oklahoma might still care about the graves of their distant ancestors was just not there. To be fair, to most archeologists the concept of "ancestors," as seen through western eyes, refers mainly to relatives a family still retains memory or record of. They did not realize that in Native American eyes, ancestors of the recent past are thought of in much the same way as ancestors of the ancient past. This attitude was not unique to the archeologists who worked in the Caddo area—it was widely shared by most American archeologists. American archeologists came to believe that many aspects of prehistoric North American were essentially unconnected to modern tribes—too much time and too many changes had occurred; cultural continuity had been lost.

Archeologists saw themselves as the only ones truly interested in the prehistory of North America and thought that archeology was the only thing standing between ignorance of the past and willful grave destruction. As enlightened scientists, archeologists sincerely believed they were working against the inevitable march of progress and against the "dark side"—grave robbers and land development.

In truth, most people who dig up Caddo graves are not archeologists; they are artifact collectors intent on finding valuable things, most of all, whole pottery vessels and other funerary offerings. They are usually called pothunters, looters, or grave robbers. Some do have an interest in documenting what they find and consider themselves "amateur archeologists," but most dig up graves solely to find grave offerings. Most dig without regard to whatever human remains they find and keep little or no record. As a group, grave robbers are highly secretive and rarely publish descriptions of their work and findings. Some want the artifacts just for their own personal collections, but increasingly the motive is greed. An intact, finely engraved Caddo pottery vessel can bring thousands of dollars on the antiquities market. Untold hundreds of Caddo graves have been dug up every year in this manner, at least an order of magnitude more than the number of graves that archeologists excavate.

Today, archeologists rarely excavate Caddo graves except in circumstances required by federal and state cultural resource laws and/or occasioned by emergency salvage. When archeologists encounter Caddo graves during the course of cultural resource management projects, they routinely consult with the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma. In contrast, grave robbing continues apace and slows only because so many cemeteries have already been destroyed. Still, many Caddo graves are dug up each year by those hunting Caddo pots. Grave robbers often trespass on private, state, or federal lands and dig up graves surreptitiously and illegally.

Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas all have laws affording some legal protection to "unmarked graves." In Texas, these legal protections fall under the recently amended Health and Safety Code of Texas and the Texas Administrative Code. Today, most professional archeologists in Texas do hold the view that human graves, marked or unmarked, Indian or Anglo-American, historic or prehistoric, Christian or non-Christian, should be protected by law and left unmolested except when unavoidable or with particularly good cause, such as a significant research question that can only be answered by studying graves. In such cases archeologists should work with descendant communities to reach an equitable compromise between scientific and humanistic concerns. Such a compromise is not always possible.

While all Caddo people may not have the same attitude toward the graves of their ancestors, most believe the resting places of their ancestors are sacred and should be left undisturbed out of respect for their memory. One of the most remarkable things about ancestral Caddo cemeteries is that one grave rarely intrudes into another, even in cases where the burials were separated in time by decades or even centuries. Given the complete absence of headstones or other durable markers, the graves must have been marked by perishable materials, likely marker poles, that were periodically renewed. This shows that Caddo cemeteries, like most cemeteries in the United States today, were created as permanent resting places that were cared for by succeeding generations. Given this tradition, it is easy to understand why some Caddo see grave robbing as grave robbing whether it be done in the name of science, curiosity, or commerce. Other Caddo see a difference and acknowledge that archeologists have learned many things about Caddo ancestors that had been lost. Much of the content of the Tejas exhibit you are reading comes from archeological research.

For their part, most archeologists today realize that science is only one perspective and that Caddo peoples have every right to play a major role in deciding what should happen to Caddo skeletal remains, graves, and grave offerings. Most of the change in attitude came about after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This federal law enacted in 1990 is really a civil rights law that has had profound consequences for the Caddo and other federally recognized Indian tribes. Essentially NAGPRA says that human graves on federal and tribal lands are to be protected. It also says that Native American descendants should decide the fate of the skeletal remains, grave offerings, and sacred objects of their ancestors that are encountered by the federal government and held by any institution, such as a museum, that receives federal funding. NAGPRA requires federal agencies that administer or carry out archeological research on federal or tribal lands to consult with the appropriate tribes in advance of work that might disturb graves associated with their ancestors.

The result has been that, for the first time, the Caddo tribe has been given a say-so in what happens when Caddo graves are encountered that fall under NAGPRA regulations. The Caddo tribe also has the right to decide what happens to the Caddo skeletal remains and grave offerings in museums and repositories across the country. As a consequence, constructive dialogues have taken place in recent years between the tribe and all of the major agencies and organizations that are involved in archeology in the Caddo Homeland.

NAGPRA attempts to balance the legitimate interests of Native Americans and scientists. While the intent of the law is clear and reasonable, the enabling regulations have created a tedious and contentious process that sometimes pits Native Americans against archeologists, oral tradition against science, and one tribe against another. For instance, who should decide the fate of the many skeletal remains and grave offerings that cannot be definitively affiliated to a living tribe? What happens when two tribes both claim the same grave? How about when a scientist proposes to use destructive analytical methods in order to determine which, if any, living tribe can be linked to those skeletal remains?

Fortunately, things have gone relatively smoothly in the Caddo Homeland in comparison to many other places in the country. For one thing the Caddo Homeland and the archeological sites within it is well known and there are few disputes about whether a grave is associated with the tribe or not. Still, there are many issues that remain to be resolved. For instance, the Caddo Nation has not made a final decision regarding what to do with all the Caddo skeletal remains and grave offerings in museums and repositories, although they have established a reburial cemetery on their tribal land. Some say "rebury them all," but how and where? Who will pay for proper burials for so many things? Others recognize that the thousands of Caddo pottery vessels sitting on shelves represent a tremendous cultural legacy. In many cases the skeletal remains the pottery vessels once accompanied have not survived (mainly due to acidic soil conditions). Should all these objects be buried again and, in essence, removed from visible Caddo history? Some say that Caddo pottery vessels and other grave offerings should be returned to the tribe and sensitively displayed in a museum run by the Caddo. But building and running a museum takes lots of money and training. The tribe has taken positive steps in this direction with the creation of the Caddo Heritage Museum and its own Tribal Historic Preservation Office. In the end, under NAGPRA, the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma makes the final decisions on the repatriation and reburial of human remains and funerary offerings affiliated to them.