Fourche Maline culture

The Fourche Maline culture (pronounced foosh-ma-lean) was a Woodland Period Native American culture that existed from 300 BCE to 800 CE, in what are now defined as southeastern Oklahoma, southwestern Arkansas, northwestern Louisiana, and northeastern Texas. They are considered to be one of the main ancestral groups of the Caddoan Mississippian culture, along with the contemporaneous Mill Creek culture of eastern Texas. This culture was named for the Fourche Maline Creek, a tributary of the Poteau River. Their modern descendants are the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma.

In the late 1930s archeologists with the federal Work Projects Administration excavated a series of sites in the Wister Valley of southeastern Oklahoma. The middens at these sites were unusually thick and dark, and were called "black mounds" by the excavators. They contained a blend of Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian culture artifacts. These sites became the type sites for the Fourche Maline culture. Early during this time period, ceramic pottery had been introduced into the area, probably from Tchefuncte culture peoples to the southeast in Louisiana. The population became more sedentary and began to establish semi-permanent villages and to practice agriculture, planting various cultigens of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, including maize.

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