HISTORY

Caddoan Prehistory to Trail of Tears - Gaze long enough at the wildlands protected at Little River NWR and you might be able to envision a prehistoric people who hunted and gathered here between 6,000 B.C. and 10,000 B.C. a period known as the Archaic Period. The Caddoan people left this area by the time Europeans explored Little River in the early 1700s. A century later, in 1830, the Choctaw Indians arrived at the end of the "Trail of Tears". The Choctaw and other settlers started clearing the forests to grow corn and cotton. By the mid-1900s, major timber companies arrived to log forests and eventually start loblolly pine plantations. The bottomland forests preserved at Little River stand as silent sentinels to both land and cultural changes.

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