Mary Eliza Knapp
It is a story that stretches back more than twelve hundred years in Arkansas, and it started with a letter. In 1876, Mary Eliza Knapp wrote to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, to report a curious find on her property near Scott in Lonoke County, one which sparked a sensation in the area. Knapp had discovered a series of ancient Native American mounds and astronomical calendars that dated back to the seventh century, known as Toltec Mounds.
Eighteen mounds were built in an area of 100 acres at the site by hand over several generations, with some as high as forty feet. One was used as a burial mound while others were used for religious ceremonies. The mounds were arranged in patterns to indicate the angle of the sunrise and sunset at important times of the year for farming. For a society that depended on farming, knowing when to plant and to harvest was a matter of life and death, and a matter which they asked favor from their gods to bless.
Little is known about the communities who built Toltec Mounds. Like the settlers who came to Lonoke County in the 1800s, they were farmers who lived in small villages or farmsteads across the area. Archaeologists came to call the group the “Plum Bayou” people. By the time Knapp bought the property in 1848, the site itself had almost been completely forgotten about.
Archaeological expeditions to the site have determined that construction began at the site around AD 650. At that time, similar mounds were being built by tribes throughout the Mississippi River Valley.
By 1050, however, the Plum Bayou people had mysteriously left the area, leaving behind no clue as to their ultimate fate. Other tribes in the area would come and go, and though they all lived in relatively permanent villages, weather and warfare would often force the tribes to move.
After a series of archaeological studies in the 1870s and 1880s, area residents began calling the site “Toltec” as more information about the Central Mexican tribe began trickling into the popular imagination. Despite the name that emerged, Toltec Mounds had nothing to do with the Toltec tribe of Central Mexico, their civilization thriving between about AD 900 and AD 1200 and mostly replaced in the region by the Mayan and Aztec civilizations. Archaeologists have determined that the mound patterns and pottery found at the Lonoke County site have very little in common with their famed namesake in Central Mexico.
While excitement about the site circulated, much damage was done to the site from the 1850s forward. Several land owners plowed over the mounds, wearing them down or destroying them in the process. Gradual erosion damaged others. Reportedly, several other mounds were deliberately wrecked in the 1960s for farming.
The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 before being bought by the state in 1975. Since 1980, Toltec Mounds has been open to the public as a state park. Today, the state provides a museum at the site and offers guided tours and also allows visitors to tour the site on their own. The Arkansas Archaeological Survey operated a research station at the site to learn more about the area’s long-ago residents.
Though mystery still surrounds the origins of the Toltec Mounds site, it still stands as a testament to the lives of the ancient tribesmen who first called Arkansas home.