Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

C LOVIS
C ULTURE
The discovery of Clovis Points, or projectiles fashioned by early humans of bone
or stone provide evidence of the earliest human activity in South Jefferson County.
Clovis Points are so named for the type of projectiles found in association with
extinct animal remains in the vicinity of Clovis, New Mexico.
The discovery of artifacts of this prehistoric, Paleo-Indian culture on
McFaddin Beach, suggest human occupation of this portion of Jefferson
County at the same time as artifacts discovered in New Mexico, or circa
10,000-12,000 B.P. Similar artifacts have been discovered in many other areas
of the southeastern United States.
The greatest number of Clovis Points discovered in Jefferson County have been
uncovered by wave and storm action on McFaddin Beach. In fact, McFaddin Beach
has the highest concentration of Clovis Points in Texas. Dr. Russell Long, a member
of the department of Biology at Lamar University, took the lead in discovery and
research of these artifacts in the 1970s. This also led to evidence of preserved faunal
matter of several extinct species-ranging from mastodon to capybara—suggesting
both rain forest and prairie environments in the area during prehistoric eras.
Long Reported, in a monograph published by Lamar University's
Spindletop Museum in 1977, the discovery of 166 artifacts—mostly of stone—
in the area between Sabine Pass and High Island along the route of U.S. 87.
Sixty points have been documented and are on file at the Museum of the Gulf
Coast, the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory in Austin, Southern
Methodist University, and the Smithsonian Institution.
❖
A Clovis point found on McFaddin
Beach by Paul Tanner. Clovis points
have been identified with a Paleo-
Indian culture dating between 10,000
and 12,000 years ago, long before the
Attacapa. The points were used by
Paleo-Indians as dart or spear points
and were made out of a hard stone,
such as flint.
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST,
PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS.
was more ritual than regular diet. They hunted,
fished, gathered their victuals, and harvested
alligator for its meat, oil, and hide. Early
European visitors described the Attacapa as
short, dark, and stout, clothed only in
breechcloths or buffalo fur, and paired into
family units for the rearing of their young.
Attacapa likely numbered fewer than 4,000
in the entire area, at their peak, before European
diseases and settlement dropped the population
or drove them from the area. Evidence of their
time and way of life survives in pottery chards,
tools, seashells, and other cultural flotsam
gathered by modern archeologists, for none of
“the people” remain.
THE COMING OF
THE EUROPEANS
Economic, political, and religious stirring in
Europe in the fifteenth century quickened that
continent’s peoples from a near-thousand year
sameness in which everyone lived under noblemen
who inherited their domain, worshiped through
the same church, and earned their bread servicing
a feudal system. Nationalism, a religious
Reformation, and capitalism brought the
quickening, and with it, the first significant efforts
of Europeans to venture westward beyond the
horizon. Crusades and trade had taken them across
the Mediterranean Sea, but the unknown world
waiting over the rainbow of the ocean remained a
mystery until Christopher Columbus made landfall
on islands near the middle of the Western
Hemisphere and claimed the land and the sea for
Spain. Within three decades Spain had established
a New World headquarters in Cuba, Cortez had
conquered the Aztecs in Mexico and Pizarro and
Almagra the Incas in northeastern South America,
and Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of Panama and
claimed the vast Pacific for Spain as well.
Spaniards explored the “golden circle” of the
Gulf of Mexico, always searching for riches in gold
and silver utilized by the superior Native
American cultures of the Aztecs and Incas. Alonzo
Álvarez de Pineda sailed along the northern coast
in 1519, and fashioned the first map of the area.
More significantly, survivors of an effort to explore
Florida, attempting to reach settlements in Mexico
by sailing along the coast, found themselves on
6 ✦ WATER, RAILS & OIL