The Trudeau Landing site ( 16 WF 25), also known as Tunica Village and Trudeau, is an

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

in Tunica,

unincorporated Unincorporated may refer to: * Unincorporated area, land not governed by a local municipality * Unincorporated entity, a type of organization * Unincorporated territories of the United States, territories under U.S. jurisdiction, to which Congress ...

West Feliciana Parish West Feliciana Parish (French: ''Paroisse de Feliciana Ouest''; Spanish: ''Parroquia de West Feliciana'') is a civil parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. At the 2010 census, the population was 15,625, and 15,310 at the 2020 census. ...

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It was once occupied by the Tunica tribe. Later European settlers developed it into the Trudeau Plantation.

Tunica Treasure

In the 1960s, a guard at the local Louisiana State Prison (Angola) and self-described treasure hunter dug up graves at the site. He removed hundreds of artifacts from the area, which had been deposited as grave goods with the more than 100 graves. The Tunica felt that he had stolen tribal heirlooms and desecrated the graves of their ancestors and were outraged at the violations. He tried to sell the artifacts to the

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, with ...

at Harvard University, but the transaction stalled when the museum found that he did not have legal title to the items. In the 1970s, archaeologists excavated the site and uncovered large amounts of pottery, European trade goods, and other artifacts deposited as grave goods by the Tunica from 1731 to 1764 when they were in residence. The treasure-hunter sued the landowner to claim the artifacts were his in ''Carrier v. Bell''. The court ruled that the artifacts were buried in graves, not abandoned, and so belonged to the Tunica tribe. A decade passed in the courts, but the ruling became a landmark in Native American history, and it helped lay the groundwork for new U.S. federal legislation, the

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub. L. 101-601, 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq., 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law enacted on November 16, 1990. The Act requires federal agencies and institutions tha ...

, passed in 1990. It was also used to prove the early heritage of the Tunica peoples, and helped them to gain state and

federal recognition This is a list of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States of America. There are also federally recognized Alaska Native tribes. , 574 Indian tribes were legally recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) of the United ...

. The

Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe The Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe, ( tun, Yoroniku-Halayihku) formerly known as the Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe of Louisiana, is a federally recognized tribe of primarily Tunica and Biloxi people, located in east central Louisiana. Descendants of Of ...

built a museum to house the artifacts in

Marksville, Louisiana Marksville is a small city in and the parish seat of Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 5,702 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census, an increase of 165 over the 2000 tabulation of 5, ...

. They are using it also as a conservation and education center to preserve their artifacts.

References

External links

The Tunica-Biloxi Museum
{{National Register of Historic Places Archaeological sites in Louisiana Art and cultural repatriation Geography of West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana Archaeological theft Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Louisiana National Register of Historic Places in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana Native American history of Louisiana