We have recorded proof that the Osages , Delware and Shawnee Indians at one time or another lived in Greene County , the Delawares near Delaplaine , the Shawnees near Walcott and Osages near Lafe and Lorado.

There were Indian villiages near Delaplaine and on Villiage Creek on what is now the Ray Higgins farm . All of these tribes seem to have been farmers for when De Soto's scouts came through the county in 1541 they traded Spanish trinkets for beans and corn and dried meats . Later when the French visted the Indian settlements near Delaplaine they traded French jewlry for beans, corn and meats . The Shawnees near Walcott traded tobacco and clay pipes for trinkets.

Like in many other places in the United States , the Indians were at first friendly and aided the Crowly's and Willcockson in building their homes near Walcott and lived together peacefully for several years.

Indians from Old Town , now Lake city in Craighead County , settled on Villiage Creek about eight miles southwest of Paragould on the Ray Higgins farm . Here they found lead in abundance and smelted it and made their own bullets . The old settlers in the neighborhood could trade them powder , but not lead for they had it in abundance.

When the Indians left , their secret of where they got the lead went with them . They hid the entrance to the mine so well that no white man has never found it. Chunks of lead have been plowed up in the fields by white men , but the source has not been found.

Near the site of this Indian villiage is a cemetery , unkept and overgrown with second growth pines . Estimates of older people of the neighborhoods that there are between 400 and 1000 graves.

Transcribed : From the unpublished History of Greene County by W. A. Branch