Crossroads, p. 34
(Plan view of the Parkin site, a major fortified Late Mississippian town in Cross County in northeast Arkansas.)
Nearly all Mississippian towns were heavily fortified, for constant warfare between tribes and towns was the dark side of Mississippian culture. A member of the De Soto expedition described the main town of the province of Casqui, a town of 400 houses that was probably the Parkin site at the modern town of Parkin in Cross County, as follows: "This town was a very good one, thoroughly well stockaded, and the walls were furnished with towers and a ditch round about. At the distance of a half a league to a league [roughly one and a half to three miles] were large towns, all of them surrounded by stockades."
(Mississippian arrow points: The Mississippians were armed with powerful bows of oak or bois d'arc (Osage orange), the latter one of the best bow woods in existence, equal to the yew wood used for the English longbows of Robin Hood's days. The Spaniards learned, to their dismay, that the indians could shoot arrows through their shirts of chain mail and completely through their horses. Mississippians warriors were also armed with chipped stone daggers and swords. This chipped stone, blade which once had a wooden handle, is about 15 inches long.)
The bright side of Mississippian culture was that the Mississippians developed to high levels the arts of pottery making, shell engraving, weaving, sculpture, and wood carving. Most of their art seems to have been related to their complex and widespread religion. Known to archeologists as the "Southeastern Ceremonial Complex," it was the greatest religion ever to develop in North America in prehistoric times. By A.D. 1500 most of the people in the Southeast had been drawn into or touched by Mississippian culture and Mississippian religion. Many Mississippian chiefs had become extremely powerful, commanding armies of thousands of men. Some were no less than medieval kings or feudal lords in authority and in bearing, a fact frequently noted by the Spanish invaders of the early 16th century, who knew kings when they saw them.
In Arkansas, Mississippian culture did not spread far south of the confluence of the Arkansas and the Mississippi. South of there the Mississippi Valley was the home of the Plaquemine people, the ancestors of the Tunicans. ("Plaquemine" is a Tunican word meaning persimmon, one of the favorite foods of the Tunica in historic times.)
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