Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center
Le Flore County, Oklahoma, United States
A Mississippian-era ceremonial center of the Caddoan world in eastern Oklahoma, commercially looted in the 1930s and now an Oklahoma Historical Society site that formally acknowledges the Caddo Nation and the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes and admits their citizens free.
Spiro Mounds was a major Mississippian ceremonial center on the Arkansas River. From 1933 to 1935 commercial diggers looted the site, dispersing an enormous quantity of objects; the looting of Craig Mound, the so-called King Spiro Mound, is the episode the histories remember, and the Oklahoma Historical Society retells it in its own materials.
Today the Oklahoma Historical Society operates the site as an archaeological center and acknowledges the Caddo Nation and the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes in its exhibition work; citizens of both tribes enter free. The record here is plain: the mounds were commercially looted, and the Caddo and Wichita communities regard the site as ancestral.
Visiting
Trails and the visitor center are open Tuesday through Saturday, 9 am to 4 pm, with guided tours by appointment. Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors 62+, $5 for students 6 to 18, and $30 for a family of up to six; free for OHS members, veterans and active military, and members of the Caddo Nation and the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. Call ahead because staffing is limited, and drones are prohibited without written approval. See the Oklahoma Historical Society for details.
Photo: Smallchief, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons ([source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:House_at_spiro_mounds.jpg))
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories