North LaSalle Parish History Tidbit

Back by popular demand! Rip Cannaday shares more stories about life in LaSalle Parish long ago. In this article, he tells about his love of finding Indian artifacts.~TCT

I was born near Castor Creek, January 17, 1937. There were seven pumping wells standard rigs, and they would rock me to sleep at night with their big flywheel engines. So that’s where I’ll start.

From the time I can remember, I wanted to hunt for arrowheads, made from flint rock. I found some on the Harper Oil Lease, but most were found on the dirt road that ran from Hwy. 84 down to where we lived. The road ran by a spring and I could drink clear, cool water from that spring until we moved in 1952. This was the same spring where our mother washed the clothes in the late 30s, early 40s.

Now back to hunting arrowheads: West of Tullos, below the railroad tracks in washed out gullies I found spear points that could date back thousands of years. I found arrow points at the old salt lick, on Saline Creek, up the west side of Castor, to where Chickasaw Creek enters Castor west of Urania.

In LaSalle Parish, south of Jena down Hwy. 127, below Nebo, my Dad fished Lehman and Walker Lakes. Over the ridge from Lehman Lake was a slough where I would help my dad sane for bait that he would use to catch white perch in the lakes.

After Dad got his bait, I could go hunt arrowheads. Up from the slough, on a ridge, I found rock bowls, hand tools made of flint, and little sandstone bowls on the ground in the open woods. It seems to me that they Indians left in a hurry, and left a lot of these things behind.

Now this is a story about Old River that drains Catahoula Lake at low water stage. My Dad and younger brother were building a duck blind by the little stream of water coming out of the lake. The stream was 25 feet wide and less than a foot deep, and the water was very clear. As I walked down it, I began to see arrowheads in the edge of the running water, and I filled my pockets with them. I still have them today, from over 75 years ago.

When Catahoula Lake was in low water stage, the lake water would get hot, and the fish would come down French Fork and Old River to find cooler water. My Dad and Uncle Dub Whitehead would set trot lines above Hwy. 84 Old River Bridge and fill up a deep freeze in one night. What I think is that the Indians knew about the fish looking for cooler water, and they would shoot arrows down at the lake, where I found arrowheads in the running water and sand. I also found bird points and pottery where French Fork comes out of Catahoula Lake and makes Little River down to Jonesville.

There’s no way I can tell you all the places I’ve found arrowheads and little bird points. But here are a few more: In the upper Jugbend above Harrisonburg on the Ouachita River. There are some large Indian mounds there, and back in the 1950s there was a plowed field beside the mounds. When it rained, you could find little bird points. But now there’s large trees in the field, and on the mound it’s all thickets.

Another place was along the Ouachita River edge, at the old lock stage, before the new lock and dams were built. There I could find arrowheads beneath the bluffs. Now that’s under river water, and gone forever.

When International Pacific cut the timber all over the Catahoula hills from Rosefield to Harrisonburg, it left the ridges bare. I found arrow and spear heads there when I was deer hunting. But let me say that many of the places may be private land now, or maybe Federal land, and you can’t go on it without permission.

I am unable to walk without a walker anymore, and I guess that my arrowhead hunting days are over, sad but true.