Trade and Travel

     Bayou Jasmine lies near Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Maurepas and the Mississippi River. These bodies of water provided routes for trade and travel, as well as sources of food. Trade may have been important to the people at Bayou Jasmine. There is no stone available near the site, and all of the stone used for tools was from other places. Many of these places were nearby in Louisiana and Mississippi, but some stone came from farther away. People also brought at least a few ceramic pots from other places to the site.

The people who lived at Bayou Jasmine may have relied heavily on waterways for trade, travel and food. They probably used dugout canoes to get around on the water. Making a dugout canoe is not easy. After felling a big tree, it was left to dry and then the inside was burned to make it easy to scrape out. This process may have looked much like the depiction in the engraving below. Engraving by Theodor de Bry after watercolor by John White. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-52443.