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What you see is thought to be the
largest intact Native American canoe

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ever found in North America. It's about
34 feet long and is carved from the trunk

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of a tree. Boaters stumbled on it a few
weeks ago but the threat of tropical

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weather forced crews to carefully move
the relic. It will go to the Texas A&M

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archeological lab for preservation and
will eventually be placed on exhibition

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in Shreveport. We came out here and
checked it out and sure enough it is a

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dugout that dates to the prehistoric
Caddo people who lived in this area. It

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is almost identical to one that was
found in 1983. It is now in the state

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exhibit museum. It was found a couple of
miles downstream from here. The dugout

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that is in the museum dates to around
1100 AD and we suspect that this one is

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just as old so it's a little over 900
years old. We know that we have Caddo

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people who lived in a major mound Center
ceremonial center that exists about four

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or five miles downstream from here it
was known as mounds plantation and there

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were other ceremonial centers that go
down into Red River Parish and up into

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southwest Arkansas and they were all
contemporary between about 900 and 1200

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AD. During that period of time there was
a huge mound Center in what is now the

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St. Louis area of southern Illinois and
they were making all kinds of exotic

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Goods and including things out of copper
and they were trading that all over the

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southeastern United States particularly
down here into the Caddo cultural area

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and there are items from Cahokia that
have shown up down here in Louisiana so

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they were moving things back and forth
and probably some of it was by River and

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so we know that along the Red River of
these ceremonial centers were all

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connected to one another