Bayou-Diversity: Nature and People in the Louisiana Bayou Country

4. Encounter: A Meeting, Especially One That Is Unplanned, Unexpected, or of Note

4 Encounter A Meeting, Especially One That Is Unplanned,­Unexpected, or of Note On night of 5 June, I motored to northeast spillway of Lacassine Pool in Whaler. Carried pirogue to photograph in Pool. Photographed alligators, raccoon, pig frogs, lotus blooms, green snake and marsh. Ran aground [off Lacassine Bayou] in Whaler on return trip and had to paddle and pole pirogue 5 miles home. Arrived 2am. —KO Field Diary, 6 June 1981—Lacassine NWR Went w/Keith Weaver to check bear snares on Deltic property north of Hwy. 80. Caught 229 lb. male on Wade Bayou Unit—drugged him, put in ear tags, radio collared him, tattooed lip, measured & weighed him, pulled a pre-molar, took blood & tissue samples—sewed him up, gave him antibiotics—he was beautiful in great shape; My 1st Loui­ si­ ana bear! —KO Field Diary, 1 June 1988—Tensas River NWR Tributary Affair Shortly after New Year’s Day in 1913, the steamboat Gopher pulled hard to port side and entered the mouth of Bayou D’Arbonne from the Ouachita River above Monroe, Loui­ si­ ana. She was on a special chartered trip, and the passengers had no interest in the bustling packet trade that usually paid the captain’s bills. One of them was a world traveler and a man of letters from the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science. His companions knew little of letters of any kind and wore hard labor calluses with their overalls. 151 152 / Confluence: A Flowing Together of Two or More Streams of Life The bayou was half a century away from knowing the biodiversity -choking effects of locks and dams. Dusky and Creole darters still lived in the gravel shoals that wagons could cross in late summer . It was winter now, and behaving as it should, the bayou left its banks and covered the floodplain 2 miles wide between the red clay hills. Only the leafless crowns of overcup and willow oaks broke the surface of the adjacent flats. Understory water elms and mayhaws slept the season away completely submerged. The captain used the russet-feathered cypresses that lined the banks as channel markers. One mile upstream the paddle-wheeler passed White’s Ferry, closed for the season, and soon after churned over the drowned wreck of the Rosa B. In succession, local landmarks were washed in the boat’s wake—Catfish Slough, Long Reach, Wolf Brake, Cross Bayou, Bayou Choudrant, Holland’s Bluff, Eagle Lake, Old Mills, and finally the destination of the day—a spring-fed creek entering from the east side known as Rocky Branch. The leader of the expedition, C. B. Moore, was searching for a man who owned land nearby and whose last name was spelled in part like the ancient word “Ouachita.” Moore had been informed by his scouts that evidence of aboriginal sites was located on the man’s property. The man himself was reportedly an Indian. Moore was an archaeologist of sorts. He roamed the Southeast plundering Native American mounds and burial grounds searching for artifacts, especially ornate pottery and bones dug by his crew of laborers. Although modern scientists would condemn his destructive techniques, some value would come of his published works. Moore found his man whose first name was Rufus. He was the patriarch of a local clan subsisting on the fruits of marginal soils and a fickle swamp. His background was clouded by time and suspicion of strangers. Of his ancestors, little was known other than that his father, a private in the 31st Loui­ si­ ana Infantry, was paroled at the fall of Vicksburg and walked back to this swamp. Rufus led Moore to areas the family called the big and little Indian camps. Moore described them as humps and rises in a field near the bayou. The laborers dug into them with results that dis- Encounter: A Meeting / 153 appointed Moore. They found no intact pots or burials, only broken potsherds, shells, fire-cracked rocks, and small, barbed dart points—worthless in the science of the day. When questioned, Rufus had no knowledge of the former inhabitants of the Indian camps. He could not have. Later analysis of the site would reveal the occupants to be members of the Coles Creek and Plaquemine cultures, which flourished between 600 and 1,200 years ago. The drama of the scene on this day was an enigma unappreciated by the players. A Harvard scholar of...