ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 2 (June 1943), p. 105
INDIANS OF CLARK COUNTY
BY V. L. HUDDLESTON,
Principal High School,
Arkadelphia.
Somewhere in the very distant past the first man
came into what is now the present area known politically as Clark county,
Arkansas. These first men lived entirely by hunting and fishing with
some food gathered from the trees and shrubs in their fruiting season.
His possessions possibly, consisted only of a crude club and a stone knife.
His habitation was a crude bark shelter with some skins, undoubtedly
poorly tanned and prepared. He knew nothing of agriculture and did not build
a permanent home. How long ago this occurred is only a wild guess, possibly
not more than 15,000 nor less than 3,000 years. Even to say that they ever
existed is a guess. The basis for supposing that such a people did live
here rests on a few crude implements that have been found in the area of
Clark county and which cannot be classified in any of the cultural levels
of early man.
Following these people came the first inhabitants who could be called permanent
residents. They made pottery and did some planting of maize, or corn. Their
chief diet was still game and fish. They used the atl-atl or throwing stick,
to project their short heavy spears. They were very good stone workers and
made many forms of polished and chipped instruments. Their arrows are characterized
by having two notches on each side of the stem in place of one, as is common
with the later cultures. (S. D. Dickinson and S. C. Dellinger, archeologists
connected with the University of Arkansas, say that they have found many
evidences of positive association of the double notched arrow with Marksville
burials but never have they found them in association with Caddo burials.)
