It's a long way to travel - leaving the shadow of America's most majestic mountain, through the Texas panhandle scrub, and black prairielands, across alligator bayous. I have to remind my car-weary self, that this arduous journey took my distant relatives months and months of struggle and hardship. Finally we reach Jackson, MS on our third night. I can't tell you how many times we stopped for a plate of fried catfish and greens, an unplanned lagniappe (a little something extra) as they say in this part of the U.S. The next day our adventure begins in earnest. Well, let's back up a minute - we did make a small detour to Poverty Point in Louisiana, one of the most impressive surviving structures of the ancient Mound cultures. Artifacts found at the massive earthworks have been dated to be at least 3,400 years ago. The highest mound takes the form of a huge bird effigy. The area was at the heart of a huge trade network with many other indigenous peoples. The museum has an incredible display of arrowheads, trade items from all over the Southeast, some of which are featured in a downloadable PDF from the <a href='https://www.crt.state.la.us/dataprojects/archaeology/povertypoint/assets/poverty-point-pdf-1.03.pdf' target='_blank' rel='nofollow ugc noopener noreferrer'>LA State Parks site</a>.

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