The salt-making process consisted of pouring water over baskets of salt-laden soil and catching the resulting brine in clay bowls that were made on site. The bowls were then placed in a fire to boil off the water, leaving cakes of high-quality salt. A member of Hernando de Soto’s expedition (1539–1543) described the procedure from his observations at another saline in present-day Arkansas:
The salt is made along by a river. . . As they cannot gather the salt without a large mixture of sand, it is thrown together into certain baskets they have for the purpose, made large at the mouth and small at the bottom. These are set in the air on a ridge-pole; and the water being thrown, vessels are placed under them wherein it may fall; then, being strained and placed on the fire, it is boiled away, leaving salt at the bottom.
Other early historical accounts support the idea that salt-making at Drake’s Salt Works was conducted mostly by Caddo women.
After the salt cakes were produced, they were dried for storage and made ready for transportation. Early trading partners were Native American groups in their vast web of trade networks and, besides other Caddo bands, included Koroa, Natchez, Ouachita, Taensa, Tunica, Quapaw, and Wichita. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, a major economic shift expanded the salt trade as sustained contact with the French and Spanish developed throughout the region. French-Canadian explorer Louis Juchereau de St. Denis recorded that trade between the Natchitoches and French began in 1701, and salt was the main article of commerce. In reference to the quality of the salt, St. Denis stated that “the salt secured from these Indians is whiter and purer than the salt that came from France.” The colonial settlers required salt to preserve meat (an uncommon practice among Native Americans), and for tanning as the trade in animal hides surged. Additionally, the founding of the French village of Natchitoches in 1714 provided a nearby trading post for the salt works. Salt making persisted at Drake’s Salt Works by the Caddo until soon after 1800, when in 1805 the American “Indian Agent” John Sibley wrote that only two old Indian men continued to produce salt there.