Spiro, OK

Literally filled with buried treasures, the eastern Oklahoma town of Spiro is shrouded in mystery that archaeologists have worked for seven decades to uncover.

Northeast of the town of 2,227, a 140-acre archaeological park—one of the country’s most important prehistoric sites and Oklahoma’s only National Historic Landmark—has been a dig site since the 1930s. Archaeologists studying the ancient Caddoan culture that built massive mounds have unearthed hundreds of artifacts such as beautifully ornate conch shells engraved with iconography. The shells were interred with the village’s leaders.

“It looks as though Spiro acted as the information glue between four mound groups,” says Dennis Peterson, the park’s chief archaeologist. He adds the engraved conch shells were “the e-mail of the time,” allowing diverse groups of people to communicate. The mounds themselves, positioned to face the setting sun, may—like Britain’s Stonehenge—hold some spiritual or practical significance. To date, archaeologists are still trying to solve that riddle.

Once occupied by a farming society sophisticated in trade and ritual, the Spiro Mounds village flourished from A.D. 600-1400. In 1539, the Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto chronicled the mounds: pyramid-like earthworks built higher and higher by each new generation living on the fertile ground between the Arkansas and Poteau River Valleys. Some mounds cover graves, others were used for religious ceremonies, and some were used as platforms to raise dwellings above the floodplain.

Peterson compares the temple structures to a modern-day judge’s bench. “The higher you are in perspective to others, the more authority you can exercise over them,” he notes.

As Spiro’s leaders died, their temples were razed and covered with dirt before new leaders built structures on top of previous sites. The largest of Spiro’s 11 mounds (33 feet high and 400 feet long) actually consisted of four joined mounds constructed over a 550-year period.

It would be almost 550 more years before white settlers developed the valley surrounding the pre-Columbian village. Before it was incorporated as a town in 1899, however, the area was known as Skullyville: a frontier outpost marking the end of “The Trail of Tears” walked by thousands of Cherokees from the Southeast after the Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced them into Oklahoma.

Each May, the people of Spiro join hands with members of the Choctaw Nation to retrace the steps of their ancestors. They walk from the old Skullyville Cemetery (where Choctaw tombstones rest next to those of white settlers) to Spiro’s high school. Tribal members prepare specialties such as Indian tacos and fry bread.

“Everyone walks it that can,” says Spiro Historical Museum trustee Peggy Crane.

Crane, 76, remembers her family hauling potatoes from her father’s sharecrop directly onto railroad cars that traveled Spiro’s distinctive double-wide Main Street. Built to accommodate produce-laden wagons on market days, the wider street comes in handy for modern festivals like the antique car show held each fall.

The street can showcase old Studebakers and Thunderbirds and still have room for bands to march in place. Spectators cheer from outside the historical museum, the library, or Redwine Brothers—a store in an 1898 native rock building that is Spiro’s oldest continually operating business.

“Redwine’s used to sell everything from caskets to groceries to dry goods,” Crane recalls. Current proprietor Frank Davies limits modern inventory to general hardware.

Davies, who also serves as the historical museum’s president, says another Spiro mystery has yet to be cleared up—how the town got its moniker. One account attributes the name to a Jewish pioneer family, which included the town’s first postmistress, Mrs. Louis Spiro Friedman. “Some people say it’s a Choctaw name, but it’s not,” Davies adds.

The riddle—like unanswered questions about the mound builders who once lived in this river valley—just adds to the mystery of the town.

 

Margaret Dornaus is a frequent contributor to American Profile.

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