The people who lived during the Woodland era created some of the finest craft and artwork in North America, turning to the natural world around them and their understanding of the universe as their inspiration. They created objects from copper, greenstone, mica and shell, artwork that was prized by others from as far away as the Gulf coast and the shores or the Great Lakes.

Much of the art objects that are created in locations like Pharr and Bynum villages in the current day state of Mississippi, have spiritual meaning and often linked to religious ceremonies, and these beliefs and ideas travel with the artwork to many of the other sites that are part of the Hopewellian trade cultures.

Hundred of linked trails are traveled as these trading partners understand and relate to the imagery that is applied to the artwork, wether it be fabric, jewelry, pipe, or pottery made from the copper, mica, greenstone and shell.

During the first section of the Woodland Period, the people continued many of the trends which began during the end of the Wayfarer period, which include mound building, regional distinctive burial complexes, trade of goods across the continent, consumption of both wild and domesticated plants, and a mobile subsistence on seasonally available nuts fish, shellfish and wild plants. Pottery which in limited amounts was made previously is now being created widespread across the continent.

During this section of the Woodland Period, the population began to shift towards the interior along the Mississippi river valleys. Trade is increasing greatly, covering most of the eastern part of the continent, earthworks are becoming very similar and a common body of both cultural and religious practices are becoming the norm.

During this section of the Woodland period, the population centers begins to disperse but do not seem to decline. The number of settlements increased but not the size of each. The bow and arrow gradually replaces the atlatl and spear. Also, the introduction of agricultural production of beans, maize and squash, together known as the Three Sisters began to reduce the need for gathering wild plants.

There is three primary regions where Woodland Period settlements were prominent, which are: (1) The Lower Mississippi River Valley regions, (2) The Red River Valley region and (3) The Ohio River Valley region.

During the Woodland period, 1000 BCE - 1000 CE, the lower Mississippi valley region had several cultures along the Mississippi River.

Tchefuncte (pronounced Che-funk'tuh) began in the Early Woodland period and developed from the Poverty Point Culture of the Wayfarer period. As this culture was beginning to develope, the people began to settle into small groups to build mounds, bury their dead and even trade goods with other nearby settlements.

The Tchefuncte site is located on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain in the southeast section of Fontainebleau State Park near Mandeville, Louisiana.

This site originally contained two oval-shaped shell middens, designated Midden A (about 170 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 5 feet thick) and Midden B (about 151 feet long and 108 feet wide).

This people from the previous period culture were primarily hunter-gatherers who possibly as early as 1000 CE, began to build small hamlets of temporary circular shelter having a frame of light poles covered with palmentto, thatch or grass mixed with mud.

Their food included a variety of seafoods, such as clams, alligators, fish, but surprisingly not crabs or crawfish which were likely to have been available and abundant. They also hunted deer, raccoons, and some migratory birds.

This is the first culture in Louisiana to make large amounts of pottery made by coiling clay, smoothing it to form containers and then fired by slow baking. Ceramic pots allowed better cooking and food storage techniques.

The Tchefuncte was succeeded by the Marksville Cultures

Developed from the earlier Tchefuncte culture, the Marksville culture takes its name from the Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. Marksville Culture was contemporaneous with the Hopewell cultures of Ohio and Illinois.

The Marksville site is located on a previous channel of the Red River, in the area of the conjunction between the Red River and the Mississippi River.

This culture extended and expanded into areas of the current day states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas and eastward along the Gulf Coast to Mobile Bay in Alabama.

The Marksville Culture was succeeded by the Baytown, Coastal and Troyville cultures, as well as were the ancestors of the more modern Avoyel, Natchez and Taensa Peoples.

The Baytown, Coastal and Troyville cultures are three separate archaeological cultures whose homelands were located along the Lower Mississippi river valley in areas now within the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and southeast Tennessee.

While the Baytown and Coastal peoples proceeded to build dispersed settlements and left no or few earthworks, the Troyville people instead continued building major earthwork centers.

The Baytown, Coastal and Troyville cultures all developed from the Marksville culture indigenous peoples and were later succeeded by the Coles Creek culture.

The Baytown culture was located in the lower Mississippi River valley in the areas of what is now in the states of Arkansas and Mississippi.

The Troyville culture was located in the lower Mississippi River valley in the areas of what is now in the states of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Mound sites have been found primarily in Louisiana.

Although the following settlements were began late in the Coastal Troyville cultures, major development did not occur until the Late Woodland Period.

Bayou Grande Cheniere

Little Pecan Island

Morgan

Sims

Nanih Waiya site: (300 - 600 CE) Louisville, MS. (32.9214710, -88.9483162)

The Nanih Waiya mound site is connected with the Choctaw who may have been may have been associated with the Baytown and Troyville cultures due to the contemporaneous nature and proximity of when and where these mounds were built.

Coles Creek culture is a Late Woodland archaeological culture in the Lower Mississippi valley which followed the Baytown, Coastal and Troyville cultures in the same areas.

The period marks a significant change in the cultural history of the area. Population increased dramatically and there is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political complexity, especially by the end of the Coles Creek sequence. Although many of the classic traits of chiefdom societies have not yet been manifested, by 1000 CE the formation of simple elite community political structure had begun.

Coles Creek sites are found in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi and are considered ancestral to the Plaquemine culture of the Mississippian Period.

The following are listed alphabetically and are most all of the current known Cole Creek cultural sites.

During the Woodland period, at least beginning in the Middle Woodland era (200 CE to 500 CE), the Red River Valley Region began to be settled and separate cultures developed. Many of these same settlements continued into the Late Woodland era (500 - 1000 CE).

Some of these settlements were even predecessors of the later Western Mississippian Cultures, (also know as the Caddoan settlements) in the Mississippian Period Cultures (1000 CE - 1700 CE) and

The Fourche Maline culture (pronounced foosh-ma-lean) is a Woodland Period native culture that existed at and below the Great Bend of the Red River, which was the primary location of their settlement. However, over time, these people expanded their settlement to include what are now defined as southeastern Oklahoma, southwestern Arkansas, northwestern Louisiana, and northeastern Texas. This culture was named for the Fourche Maline Creek, a tributary of the Poteau River located in Oklahoma, an area of their eventual expansion.

The Fourche Maline are contemporary with the Marksville Culture to the southeast and the Mill Creek and Mossy Grove cultures to the south in eastern Texas. Trade with the Marksville culture and other Hopewellian peoples brought exotic goods from the Gulf Coast such as fresh water pearls, sea shells, sharks' teeth, and copper from northern areas.

The dead were cared for in increasingly elaborate rituals, as the first burial mounds were built at this time. Political power began to be consolidated, and the elite organized the construction of the first earthwork platform mounds at ritual centers. They were used for ceremonies and sometimes residences by the developing hereditary political and religious leadership.

Fourche Maline pottery was tempered with grog, bone, grit, and sand. Believed to have been made by the women, it is known for its distinct shape, mainly flat-based vessels with thick walls, similar to flower pots.

They are considered to be one of the main ancestral groups of the Caddoan Mississippian culture, along with the contemporaneous Mill Creek culture of eastern Texas. Their modern descendants are the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma.

It is believed that the Fourche Maline, Mill Creek and Mossy Grove was succeeded by the Caddoan Cultures of the Mississippian Period. However, the Fourche Maline culture of the Red River valley was almost certainly the primary or mother culture out of which the future Caddo culture would develop. Still, the Mill Creek and Mossy Grove settlements, although they developed their own ways of doing things, these settlements were definitely interacting with the Fourche Maline.

The Mill Creek Culture was located south of the Fourche Maline settlement primarily primarily found in the Big Cypress Creek and the Sabine River basins in East Texas but continue east and northward into Louisiana.

Although Fourche Maline and Mossy Grove are contemporary, Mill Creek sites are different in that ceramics remains are not abundant. This is believed to be so because Mill Creek people may have relied on traditional cooking and storage techniques (ie. pit over cooking and storage pits) instead of ceramic advancement. Further, there have been no structures, burials or burial mounds discovered or identified at the Mill Creek sites.

The Woodland period archeological pattern on the Gulf Coast and inland into the Piney Woods in southeast Texas is somewhat different from their northern counterparts of the Fourche Maline settlements.

Because southeast Texas has greater rainfall, higher humidity and a longer growing season, the differences have much to do with the wetter environment. Southeast Texas also has less forests, more swamps, as well as, the estuaries, bays, and barrier islands along the Gulf Coast.

The Mossy Grove culture, at least the ceramic period began sometime about 200 BCE, possibly earlier, and consisted of relatively thin-walled, round bottomed vessels. Too, the projectile points of the Mossy Grove culture are small dart points and did not become longer stem arrow points until sometime after 500 CE.

The Ohio River Valley cultures sites include about 200 sites in the central Ohio Valley, with perhaps another 200 scattered throughout Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, although they may once have numbered in the thousands.

The Adena culture was a Pre-Columbian native culture that existed from 800 to 200 BC, in a time known as the Early Woodland period. The Adena culture refers to what were probably began as a number of related native societies sharing a burial complex and ceremonial system.

Prominent Adena culture includes the following sites and later, the Adena culture was succeeded by the Hopewell cultures.

The Hopewell culture (or Hopewell tradition) describes the common aspects of the native culture that flourished along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern areas of the North American continent. The Hopewell tradition was not a single culture or society, but a widely dispersed set of related populations connected by a common network of trade routes, known as the Hopewell trade system.

In the height of this this trading system, it expanded to the Gulf shores from Texas to Florida, north and west along the Mississippi and Missouri river, east along the Ohio river into Pennsylvania and New York, north to the Great Lakes and across to the Canadian shores of Lake Ontario.

The Hopewell trading system received materials from all over the north American continent, items which were exotic materials and were received by people living in the major trading and manufacturing areas. These people then converted the materials into products and exported them through local and regional trading networks. The objects created by the Hopewell trading system spread all over the continent and have been discovered in many burials outside the Hopewell cultures area.

During this time, the Hopewell exchange ceased, mound building stopped, and art forms were no longer produced. The most likely cause is war between the settlements, as villages dating to the Late Woodland period shifted to larger communities and began to built defensive fortifications of palisade walls and ditches.

Too, colder climatic conditions could have also driven game animals south or west, and weather would have a detrimental effect on plant life, drastically cutting the subsistence base for these foods.

Also, another factor that could have caused a decline in the culture as a whole was the introduction of the bow and arrow. By improving hunts, this may have caused stress on already depleted animal food populations. Finally, the breakdown in societal organization could also have been the result of the increase in large-scale agriculture.

The Hopewell culture was succeeded by the Fort Ancient cultures during the Mississippian Period.