Hatchel/Barkman Caddo Indian Village

The Hatchel site, recorded as 41BW3, lies on the Red River in Bowie County. University of Texas archaeologists excavated it during Works Progress Administration investigations in 1938 and 1939, working in a platform mound, village areas and cemetery areas. The dig produced 68 ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels, now kept at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, and Timothy Perttula devoted a 2015 monograph to them. The plaque calls the villagers Caddoes and says their descendants live in Oklahoma. The site is protected, and the marker stands on highway right of way; there is no route to the village.

What the plaque says

Hatchel/Barkman Caddo Indian Village Near here for 1,000 years, 800-1800 A.D., lived civilized Caddoes, who thought they were the sole survivors of a prehistoric flood and ancestors of all Indians. Their ceremonial mounds stood high above Red River. They had a significant role in exchanges between Puebloan Indians and the Mound-Builders in the east. They domesticated food plants such as corn, squash and beans and manufactured fine pottery. Because of pressure from Euro-American settlers, they left this area, and descendants are found in Oklahoma. Their village site is now under state protection. (1981) Incise in base: Marker sponsored by the Hoblitzelle Foundation

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of Regional History — 4.9 mi
  Texarkana's oldest museum, in an 1879 brick building on State Line Avenue, with Caddo pottery, one of Scott Joplin's pianos and a research library of city directories and photographs.
• Atlanta State Park — 22 mi
  A shoreline park on Wright Patman Lake, leased from the Army in 1954, where Caddo ancestors farmed the Sulphur River and wagon traces such as the Bobo Ferry trace still cross the woods.

More markers nearby

• Scott Joplin — 4.4 mi
• Texarkana — 4.4 mi
• World War I Memorial — 4.7 mi
• First Disciples of Christ in Texas — 4.7 mi