Tunica-Biloxi Museum

The Tunica-Biloxi Museum belongs to the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana and fills part of the tribe's Cultural and Educational Resources Center, a 40,000-square-foot building that opened in 2011 on the reservation just south of Marksville. The tribe is one of four federally recognized tribes in Louisiana. It succeeded the Tunica, Biloxi, Ofo and Avoyel peoples, who merged into one tribe in the early twentieth century, and it won federal recognition in 1981 under Chairman Earl J. Barbry Sr.

The center of the collection is the Tunica Treasure, a large body of Native and European trade goods that, in the tribe's words, the Tunica left as grave goods between 1731 and 1764. In 1968 a guard at the Louisiana State Penitentiary found the Tunica village and cemetery in West Feliciana Parish with a metal detector and dug for months, which damaged the record the graves held. Lawsuits followed, and the tribe regained possession in the late 1980s. The case helped lead to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, and trained tribal members did much of the conservation.

In 2022 the tribe also took back the 42-acre Marksville State Historic Site, the mounds on the bluff above Old River, through an agreement with the city. A 2023 report said that site had been closed to the public since the mid-2010s, so the museum is the place to visit. A one-mile boardwalk trail crosses Coulee des Grues behind the building. Call (318) 240-6421 before a long drive.