Caddo Salt Making

This picture is an artist's reconstruction of Caddo people "boiling salt" at a site near De Queen, Arkansas, circa A.D. 1500. As corn, beans and squash became staples in their diet, the Mississippians and the Caddo developed a need for salt, partly because they were probably no longer getting enough meat to obtain naturally the minimum amount of sodium (about one gram per day) required to maintain good health and partly because corn, beans, and squash are high in potassium and eating them in quantity increases one's need for salt. So as these plants became important, so did salt making, something that the Indians had not bothered with prior to the Mississippi era. In easten North America there are seven significant "saline areas," where salt water comes to the surface in springs and was available to the Indians to make salt. The second largest of these was within the territory of the Caddo tribes in southwest Arkansas and northwest Louisiana. This gave the Caddo a monopoly on salt production and trade throughout a large part of the Southeast.

The Caddo were trading salt in historic times, having begun making salt in earnest between A.D. 1200 to 1300. Salt production was carried out at dozens of sites. In southwest Arkansas there are clusters of Caddo "salt sites" around Arkadelphia, in the Ouachita Valley, and around De Queen in the Little River-Red River drainage. In northeast Louisiana there are many salt sites in the uplands between Minden and Winnfield. A few are west of the Red River in Natchitoches.