La Harpe's 1719 Post on Red River and Nearby Caddo Settlements Mildred Mott Wedel BULLETIN 30 THE TEXAS MEMORIAL MUSEUM The University of Texas at Austin LA HARPE'S 1719 POST ON RED RIVER AND NEARBY CADDO SETTLEMENTS 1 Mildred Mott Wedel 2 In 1719 Jean-Baptiste Benard de La Harpe termine their kind and degree of validity. set up a post on Red River, a western tribu- Then they must be viewed with the insights tary of the Mississippi, to establish trade of anthropology. The bridge between the relations with the Spaniards then in Texas "known" and "unknown" is made possible and New Mexico. This study proposes a lo- by identification of the village location of cation for the site of this structure built in a historically recognized people with an ar- an Upper Nasoni village above the Great Bend cheological site component that gives evi- of the Red. Neighboring Caddo settlements dence of Euro-American contact. The sound- were described by the Frenchman in terms ness of the construct depends upon the skill that related to his post, so having postulated and care with which it is put together and where it was erected, this paper also suggests the amount of historic data and archeological the location of settlements of the Kadoha- material available (M. Wedel, 1976: 7-11). dacho, Upper Natchitoches, and the Nadsoo When this gap has been bridged, a relative or Natsoo ("Nanatsoho" in Hodge, 1907- chronology displaying cultural continuity of 1910, 2: 23). The basic source for data has great time depth, anchored to historic times, been La Harpe's 1718-1720 journal. may be achievable so that a report on the The information developed here may archeological data involved will take on added enable archeologists working in northeast significance. It is to be hoped that if the Texas and southwest Arkansas to apply the arguments presented here regarding Caddo "direct historic" or "upstreaming" approach settlement locations are acceptable to profes- in their research, a methodology that has been sional archeologists, they will proceed to highly rewarding, particularly in the northern carry further the direct historic approach in plains, the northeast, and southwest, when their analysis of the archeology of the region. carried out with thoroughness and critical This is a logical procedure and one that could skill. This distinctive way of studying ar- lead to greater insights than have been ob- cheological materials has been described as tained through study of archeological materi- moving "from the known to the unknown" als alone. (Strong, 1935: 6, 296; W. R. Wedel, 1938). Jean-Baptiste Benard, Sieur de La Harpe, The "unknown" is prehistoric time. The first came to the Louisiana colony in 1718 "known" refers to the historic period. when he was 35 years old. (Note that his sur- The data for the later period is drawn from name, not his given name, was Benard, often documentary sources such as memoirs, let- mistakenly written "Bernard.") The title he ters, official government correspondence, inherited had originally been given to his journals, and so on, using the principles of father, a famed sea captain of St. Malo, another "approach," the ethnohistoric. To France. Having grown up in that city on the do this, the written records must be critical- English channel, Jean-Baptiste served when 18 ly examined and evaluated in order to de- in the cavalry of Philip V of Spain. Later, he was to use his knowledge of the Spanish lan- paper read the Caddo Nacogdoches, was at Conference, guage to advantage in River Texas, March 17, 1978. the Red region. Between 1703 and 1705 he was in South Associate, Department of Anthropology, Smith- sonian Institution. America where presumably he had contact 1 with its Indians. His purpose in coming to Claude Brown of Rennes, France. The trans- Louisiana was to claim a concession on Red lation made by Ralph A. Smith in the South- River where he intended to erect a post from western Historical Quarterly (62: 1-4) is of which to establish trade with the New Mexico Pierre Margry's printing of the journal (1876- and Texas Spaniards. He brought from France 86, 6: 243-306) wherein Margry made in- a group of 40, mostly men from St. Malo or excusable alterations, deletions, and additions. Nearby Rennes, some titled associates, and The journal contains notations of features some indentured workers (Rolle des Conces- La Harpe observed while traveling, happen- sionaires, 1718). Having landed at Dauphin ings of interest, and the direct-line distance Island, off Mobile, in August 1718, he re- and direction he advanced each day. Direc- ceived that fall the approval of the Council tion was determined by reading the compass of Louisiana for his venture, as well as the en- we know he carried. How did he estimate dis- thusiastic endorsement of LeMoyne de Bien- tance? It may be that on clear sections of ville, governor-general of the Louisiana col- rivers he used dead reckoning to measure ony. As a result of his own determination and his progress, that is, a measurement based on perseverance, rather than effective assistance log-line (a length of rope floated by a chunk from the Company of the West, La Harpe of wood at the end) and time. His overland reached the mouth of Red River by Janu- distance estimates also were probably linked ary 10, 1719 (M. Wedel, 1971: 41-42). Not to a time reading. We know he had a time- until April 1, however, did the Frenchman piece of some sort with him because on cer- finally arrive at the mouth of Sulphur River. tain occasions he mentions the hour of the The rapids and raft of the Red had been large- day events occurred. The common league of ly responsible for his spending three months France was an "itinerary” unit, the equivalent in the effort to reach this point with his sever- of an hour's travel on foot (Richelet, 1728; al heavily laden pirogues and flat boats. La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, 1880; 174; Jones, Many details of La Harpe's stay in French 1963: 77). In the 1700s the common or land Louisiana were recorded by him on a day-to- league was recognized as 25 leagues to a de- day basis. It would seem that in January gree, or 4444 /21 meters, which would be slight- 1720, when he was back from Red River and ly over 2.76 miles per league (G. Delisle, 1700 in the lower colony awaiting a ship on which map L'AmeriqueZ/Septentriona/e; Societe de to return to France, he put his scrawled field Gens de Lettres, 1771, v. 16; E. Littre, 1869, notes—later evidently discarded—into better 2: 305). The straight-line distance of advance form. It appears too that at this time he may in leagues reported daily by La Harpe was a have added some incidental information he calculation derived from a number of annota- picked up from Louisiana officials. The only tions made during the meandering march of manuscript of La Harpe's 1718-1720 journal the day. He described this recorded figure as that is now extant is in the Bibliotheque "corrected" or "reduced." Rationale of France in Paris (M. Wedel, In a 1972-1974 on-the-ground reconstruc- 1974:17-25). It is not in La Harpe's hand- tion of the route taken by La Harpe from his writing but is part of a copy of several of his Red River post northwest to a meeting with documents: the journal of the Red River ex- Caddoan-speaking Indians in the southern pedition, journals of two later journeys in plains, my associates—Waldo R. Wedel, Louisiana, and a memoir. I have made my Larry Banks, and Quintus Herron—and I own translation of this Paris copy of the jour- were greatly impressed when we found that nal, assisted in questionable passages by our straight-line map distances consistently Monica Heiman of Canyon, Texas and Marie- correlated with La Harpe's computed straight- 2 line league distances when multiplied by the Days Creek, thereby avoiding the tangled mileage length of the common league. They growth of the floodplain that reaches to the did not correlate exactly. The Frenchman creek bank and passing through the woods of with some regularity overestimated his dis- oak, walnut, and hickory described by La tance by a mile or two. This probably related Harpe. The Frenchman figured the party to his calculation for the "corrected" figure. made about 15 miles, a long day, before it Understandably, his winding route across high came upon a "beautiful" stream by which crests of the Ouachita Mountains resulted in it camped. By paralleling Days Creek valley excessive direct-line estimates of distance proper (fig. 1), and then Swamppoodle or covered, but this was an exception. Only a Cowhorn tributary creeks, the travelers would general description of the course of La Harpe's have come to an east-west divide where in less travel will be presented in this report; it will than a mile Clear Creek heads. This would not indulge in comparative analysis of dis- have been a spring-fed stream—a "spring tance figures. For this it will be necessary to branch"—which would deserve the adjective await publication of a longer, more detailed "beautiful." Today it flows north into Bringle manuscript now in preparation on La Harpe's and Waterworks lakes, which provide the 1718-1720 experience in the Louisiana col- water supply of Texarkana. The next day the ony. men probably followed down Clear Creek At the mouth of Sulphur River the Natchi- coming out of the bluffs near its mouth at toches Indians, who had joined the party McKinney Bayou.