Foot-loose and fancy-free By Angie Debo

Conclusion

This study of Spanish exploration in and about the region of present Oklahoma brings into view some important considerations. It is strikingly evident that Spanish sources contribute much to the Indian history of this area. The names, locations of tribes, unknown heretofore in some cases, can therein be determined; their customs and their relations with neighboring tribes indicated; and the part they played in the international struggle carried on by Europeans for this region, understood. In the second place, as appears here, long before the advent of Pike, Wilkinson, Dunbar, and other explorers of the early nineteenth century, much of the territory and the principal rivers of present Oklahoma and adjacent states was explored by Spaniards and Frenchmen. Thirdly, there is revealed in our knowledge of this frontier some gaps that await research. Particularly does the period of French control and influence over the tribes beyond those revealed by Spanish exploration, need investigation. Likewise the work of the Spanish traders after 1763 from St. Louis among the Osages and beyond, and from the Arkansas post westward into present Arkansas and Oklahoma presents a fascinating study. Finally, this survey of but a small corner of Spain’s immense empire suggests the fundamental nature of her contribution to North American civilization.

The earliest history of the Arkansas region dates back to Hernando de Soto, 1542. From his expedition we get the first geographical knowledge of the region, and our first real history of the Indians in the southwest. Other expeditions into this region came with the same object in mind, in search of the Gran Quivira. Coronado, 1541, "crossed the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma, and reached Quivira in eastern Kansas." The explorations of De Soto and Coronado were the most elaborate efforts made by the Spaniards into the interior of North America, and, in some respects, never surpassed in the later history of the country. Other explorations were made by the Spaniards, but it was left to the French to make the first permanent settlement.

The Arkansas region includes that part of our country between the Illinois country on the north, and the Natchitoches on the South extending west to the Spanish possessions of New Mexico, and embracing mainly the present states of Arkansas and Oklahoma—that country drained by the Arkansas, Verdigris and Canadian rivers. The history of this wedge-shaped country has been treated as only secondary to that of the country to the north and to the south; while its history has been just as distinct and important. The history of this country, especially of Oklahoma, could be written around the quest of the white man to find great riches, as the Gran Quivira, and the Seven Cities of Cibola, for which the Spaniards sought. The trade with the Spanish Southwest, Taos and Santa Fe, lured the French into this country. Then, last, but not least, Indian trade, free land, mines and oil have brought other white men into this country.

The French explorers of this country have left many traces in the naming of the rivers and mountains. And especially did they leave a marked influence upon the Indians with whom they came in contact. Among the Choctaws, there was a legend handed down from father to son that the French king was coming and with his coming all would be well. Even today this legend is familiar to the older members of the tribe. The first French explorers in the Arkansas region, of whom we have any knowledge, were Father Marquette and Joliet, who came down the Mississippi River as far as the Arkansas River. Father Marquette drew a map of this western region, and on his map the Mississippi River descended only to the mouth of the Arkansas. The next visit by the white man to this region was that of Father Hennipen in 1680. But it was left for La Salle and Tonty to take possession of this country and to establish the first post.

On March 14, 1682, La Salle reached the villages on the Arkansas, took possession of the country in the name of France, erected the arms of the king, and planted a cross. Father Zenobia Membre, who accompanied La Salle, related this act in a truly missionary way. "I took occasion to explain something of the truth of God, and the mysteries of our redemption, of which they saw the arms. During this time they showed that they relished what I said, by raising their eyes to heaven and kneeling as if to adore. We also saw them rub their hands over their bodies after rubbing them over the cross. In fact, on our return from the sea, we found that they had surrounded the cross with a palisade." This was the formal taking possession of the Arkansas region.

While in the Arkansas region, La Salle gave Tonty a grant of land, and it was on this grant that the historic old Arkansas post was founded. Here Tonty built a house and fort in 1683. This statement, with that of du Breuil that, in 1783, the post celebrated its hundredth anniversary, gives evidence of the fact that the Arkansas Post was established soon after the return of La Salle and Tonty from the first expedition to the mouth of the Mississippi, or, at least that they must have reckoned their beginning from that date.

After leaving the Arkansas, La Salle reached the mouth of the Mississippi in April, where he took possession of the great valley, naming it, in honor of the King, Louisiana. La Salle now planned a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, and for this purpose returned to France to make definite arrangements. In the summer of 1684, La Salle left France with a colony to establish this settlement. Tonty, in order to aid La Salle, descended the Mississippi. This hazardous undertaking and the failure to find La Salle is one of the romantic incidents in the early history of the Southwest. On the return trip, Tonty made alliances with various Indian nations along the Mississippi. He says, "When we were at Arkansas, ten of the Frenchmen who accompanied me asked for a settlement on the Arkansas River, on a grant that La Salle had given me on our first voyage. I granted the request to some of them. They remained there to build a house surrounded with stakes. The rest accompanied me to Illinois, in order to get what they wanted. We arrived in Illinois, June 24, 1686." Tonty must be ranked next only to La Salle, in his contribution toward the exploration and settlement of the Mississippi Valley.

This was the beginning of one of the oldest French posts in the southwest; and from this post, France made treaties with the different Indian tribes, in her efforts to keep back both English and Spanish, the Spaniards pushed in from the Southwest, and the English from the Carolinas, using the same methods to get control of the Indians through trade and by alliances.

The Arkansas Post was not only for the purpose of material gain. Tonty, like many other early explorers, was a missionary in thought. And that side of life in the Arkansas country was early considered. Tonty gave to the Superiors of Canada in 1689, a deed to a strip of land on the Arkansas a little east of his fort, "for a chapel and a mission-house, beside an immense tract on the opposite side of the river near the Indian village, for the support of the missionary." This mission was to have been erected in 1690, and, among other things, the missionaries were to build two chapels, raise a cross fifteen feet high, minister to the Indians, and say a mass for Tonty on his feast day." If any missionaries were sent to the Arkansas at this time there are no traces left.

Little growth or development had come to the Arkansas Post for the first quarter of a century, trade being slow in development, because of the Spanish deadlock. When, at the close of the seventeenth century, the Spaniards and the French came face to face on the Louisiana-Texas frontier, in a contest for commerce and empire, they found there several well-marked groups of confederations of native tribes, which became so the bases for much of the struggle. This contest for the control of the frontier tribes was one of the chief policies of both Spain and France; of course behind this was the ultimate object of territorial possession.

The effort expended by the two competing nations to maintain an influence over these tribes had, from the first moment of contact to the time when Louisiana was ceded to Spain, the nature of a contest. It, in the main, was waged only to a slight extent with weapons of military warfare. The principal weapon used by the French was the Indian trader and agent; by the Spaniards, the Franciscan missionary; each backed by a small display of military force. This contest to control the Southwest was fought along the Arkansas, Canadian, and Red rivers. The Arkansas Post served as a center for making alliances with Indians along the Arkansas River, and, later on, with those of the whole region. By these treaties and alliances, France hoped to open up trade with the Spaniards in New Mexico.

There was, at this same time, a contest in the southeast between the English and the French. From the first, the English had the advantage in numbers and bases of supplies. Tonty, in establishing the post on the Arkansas, hoped to forestall the English as well as the Spaniards. The hand of fate seems to have played a part here, because Jean Couture, who had been the one that Tonty had selected in establishing the post, deserted and went to the English in Carolina, and, in 1700, led a party of English to the mouth of the Arkansas, accomplishing what Tonty had feared, the diversion of the western trade from the French to the English. France realized that in order to cope with the Spanish and the English, and to reap the harvest of her discoveries, colonies must be established as posts of exchange. This caused her to turn to private individuals for aid in settling up and holding her possessions. In September 1717, John Law, and his Mississippi Company, was granted the commerce and control of Louisiana. Although, Law’s economic goals failed, a new interest in Louisiana had brought men like Bernard de la Harpe, Le Page du Pratz, and Du Tisne into the region; each giving new information concerning the Arkansas country.

Bernard de la Harpe had been granted by the company a tract of land on the upper waters of the Red River, and, in 1718, he started out to take possession of this grant. Leaving New Orleans in December 1718, he arrived at the mouth of the Red River on January 10, 1719, and, after much difficulty, reached the fort of the Natchitoches.

While at the Natchitoches post, La Harpe learned that the Spanish governor of Texas had ordered the establishment of a post among the Nassonites on the Red River. This news caused him to hurry on his way. Upon his arrival at the Nassonites, his first concern was to make alliances with them. This was accomplished when the Nassonites, Cadodaquins, Natsooe and Natchitoches sang the Calumet. This celebration lasted twenty-four hours. After the feast, La Harpe made them presents of a large amount of merchandise, in order to interest them in his company, for which the Indian trade was very necessary.

In the meanwhile, La Harpe, having learned that the Spanish and French were at war, and war being an obstacle to his attempt to establish a trade with the Spanish, set out to explore and to make alliances with the Indians to the northeast. This expedition led him through Northeastern Oklahoma, and near the mouth of the Canadian River, an alliance was made with eight nations including a part of the Roving Nation. La Harpe says that seven thousand persons were here assembled to sing the Calumet.

La Harpe considered that one of the best places in all Louisiana for the establishment of a post was at the mouth of the Canadian River, because of its importance in trade, and "because the French could thus obtain control of the trade with the Padoucas and Aricaras." This was the aim of France, to get control of the Indians by trade. The Spaniards had been trading with the Indians in this region for a long time, especially in the trade of horses and cattle.

While La Harpe was making alliances with the Indians in Oklahoma, as a stepping stone toward the trade in the Spanish southwest, Du Tisne was making alliances with the Indian tribes on the Osage, the Missouri, and the Arkansas rivers. He made an alliance with the Pawnees on the Arkansas, "bought Spanish horses from them and established the French flag in their village." These two expeditions mark a definite step in the direction of trade with the Spaniards in New Mexico.

To the early French trader, New Mexico held almost the same lure that the Gran Quivira held for the early Spaniards, gold and precious stones, and, in addition, perhaps, a route to the South Sea. For the French traders, there were three natural highways of trade with the Spaniards in New Mexico, the Missouri, the Arkansas, and the Red rivers. Each had its own difficulties. Between the French and New Mexico there roamed the treacherous Comanche and Apache, from the far north, to the south, following the buffalo. The jealous Spaniards kept these Indians hostile to the French, forming as the Spaniards wished, a barrier between the French and the Spanish possessions in New Mexico.

In order to trade with New Mexico, it would be necessary to maintain peace among the Indians by causing them to make alliances with each other. This was one of the main objects of the expeditions between 1718-1724. La Harpe, Du Rivage, Du Tisne, by series of alliances with Indians, treaties were made with at least thirty different nations in the western part of Louisiana. It was hoped that through these alliances, the coveted trade with the Spaniards in New Mexico would be established.

When the western company wished to open up the Arkansas River as a highway to Spanish territory, La Harpe was chosen for the task. La Harpe reached the Arkansas Post early in March, 1722. His first care was to gain knowledge of the course of the river and the nations along its banks. The Indians seemed to have been under Spanish influence, as they were rather reluctant to give any information. They told him that five Frenchmen from M. Law’s company had ascended the river to the Indian nation on the headwater of the river to purchase horses and had been killed by the Osages. After making some preparations for his journey, La Harpe left the Arkansas Post with a detachment of twenty-two men. He continued his explorations up the river nine days, when he became short of provisions. La Harpe then set out overland to see if he could find the fork of the river whose right branch led to the nations he had discovered by land in 1719. On account of the condition of his men, he went only about fifty leagues in a westerly direction. But, from the appearances of the river, he concluded that it was navigable in high water to the settlements of the Padoucas, and the Spanish in New Mexico. He recommended the establishment of posts near "the Rock" and at the Fork, and that the Arkansas Post be strengthened by sending out people to cultivate the soil.

In 1723, Bourgmont erected a post among the Missouri tribes and in order to open up this route, made treaties with various tribes along the route, and secured permission for the Frenchmen to pass through the Comanche country to the Spanish dominions. Although the Missouri post was soon destroyed, there are indications of traders attempting to reach New Mexico. The Mallet party, which reached Santa Fe in 1739 is an example. Four of this party returned by way of the Canadian and the Arkansas rivers. The safe return of this expedition gave added momentum to possibilities of opening up a trade by way of the Arkansas River.

Governor Bienville, in 1741, sent Fabray de la Brugeie, with a letter to the Governor of New Mexico, and, guided by the four men of the Mallet party, he was furnished with instructions to open up a commercial route. After going a short distance up the Canadian, Fabray was forced to go back to the Arkansas post for horses. Returning by way of the Cadodacho, he learned that the Mallet brothers had continued to Santa Fe on foot. He gave up the project, crossed Oklahoma from the Canadian to the Red River, where he visited the tribes which La Harpe had discovered in 1719.

With the establishment of Fort Cavagnolle, at the Kansas village on the Missouri, the Arkansas route was made safe by a treaty between the Comanche and Jumano, in 1746 or 1747. France had, at last, accomplished her purpose of making possible a highway to the Spaniards of New Mexico, which she had definitely started, by establishing the Arkansas Post, and by making treaties with the Arkansas. A second step was made by La Harpe in 1719, when he made alliances with nine tribes, collectively called Touacara. During the period between La Harpe’s expedition and the treaty between the Comanches and the Jumano, many attempts had been made to open communication with New Mexico, with more or less success.

The effect of the treaty between these important Indian nations that patrolled the western frontier of Louisiana was immediate. At once, new expeditions of all kinds, private, deserters, and official agents started toward New Mexico, the Mecca, of trade in the west. Professor Herbert E. Bolton, searching in the Archives of Mexico, has brought to light records of two of these expeditions which give some interesting facts concerning both the Indians of this western frontier and the methods the French traders used in getting to Spanish territory.

The Comanche were little known to the French at this time. Until the middle of the eighteenth century, they were hostile to both French and Spanish. This hostility made a barrier between Spanish New Mexico and French Louisiana. Between the French and the Comanche were the Jumano, Pawnee, and other tribes to the east, all of which had been enemies of the Comanche. This gave the Spaniards a better opportunity to trade with the Comanche. Their principal trading place was Taos, where, each year, they met in large numbers, and where pelts and captives were exchanged for horses, knives, and other merchandise.

This trading mart at Taos held great attraction for the French, and soon after the alliance between the Comanche and Jumano, the Comanche reported that two Frenchmen were at their village waiting to accompany them to the Taos fair. The Spaniards at once became concerned. In 1749, the governor of New Mexico sent his lieutenant to attend the Taos fair, and he brought three Frenchmen back to Santa Fe. In questioning these three men, as was the Spanish custom, it was found that all three claimed to have been deserters from the Arkansas Post, and that they had all heard of Santa Fe from Frenchmen who had come from there a few years before.

The route over which these travelers came is interesting. They started from the village of the Arkansas Indians, a short distance from the post, going up the Arkansas River to the village of the Jumano Indians. The Jumano conducted them one hundred and fifty leagues to the Comanche settlement; here they remained some time. From the Comanche settlement they came to the Taos fair and from there they were taken to Santa Fe, taking, in all, six months. This was the route that the French had long wanted to open, the nearest and the most direct, to New Mexico. Within a year another had entered New Mexico over practically the same route. The Arkansas and Canadian rivers became the international highway between the French and the Spanish in the New World, France using all means at her disposal to open and keep open the way, and Spain using all her means to block it.

The contest for the control of North America was, each year, drawing nearer and nearer to an end. The Indian on the frontier had borne the greater part of the burden. Two hundred and fifty years of contact with the white man, and the white man’s superior methods of warfare and diplomacy had made the Indian a tool, merely to be used in getting possession of the Territory. As that possession was gained, the Indian was pushed on to newer frontiers. The true pioneer of North America was not the European, but the Indian. For the first three hundred years, he blazed the way for the white man on every frontier. He was the buffer between hostile tribes and hostile nations. Neither of the European nations realized the importance of the Indian as a frontiersman. Had there been a better understanding, there would have been an entirely different Indian problem for the American government to take up later, and attempt to solve.

At the close of the Seven Years’ War, the Indian had only two masters. France had not been able to hold her possessions, though not for lack of support of her Indian alliances. The Indian knew that the aggressive English farmer would take the place of the French hunter and trapper. The Treaty of Paris, 1763, meant that civilization had taken a step forward on the North American continent. But, an old Choctaw Indian, in recounting what he had once had, said that he remembered the time when he and his fellow tribesmen owned a vast territory, "plenty horses and cattle, on a thousand hills. Now," he said, "all we have is civilization, just civilization." "Just civilization" did not appeal to the red man.

Spain accepted Western Louisiana as she found it and attempted to carry out France’s policy in dealing with the Indians. Monsieur de Clouet was commander of the Arkansas Post just after, and, possibly, at the time of the transfer. From his letters to Lord Aubry, at that time senior captain of the military forces, and, as such, the temporary governor of Louisiana until Spain took possession of the province, it can be seen that the commander of the Arkansas Post shared the feeling of opposition to Spanish rule, as did those near New Orleans.

President Jefferson believed that Louisiana would provide the foundation for a great American empire. In that role it could supply needed natural resources, living room for an expanding population, a barrier against foreign aggression, and space for the resettlement of eastern Indians. Yet Jefferson recognized that effective use of Louisiana’s resources required better knowledge of its topography, its flora and fauna, it rocks and minerals, and its people. His desire for that kind of information led him to dispatch a series of expeditions to undertake scientific exploration of Louisiana.

Early in 1806 the President ordered Captain Richard Sparks to proceed up the Red River to the Twin Villages of the Wichitas and from there to the Rocky Mountains. He was to take careful notes on the country he saw and the people he met. Sparks put together a company of twenty-four soldiers and moved upriver in a small fleet of canoes. But his party barely made it into present-day Oklahoma—if it made it all. A Spanish cavalry unit of several hundred men overran its camp and ordered the captain to return to the American settlements or face arrest. Sparks went back. Obviously the Spanish were very sensitive about any United States party exploring southern Louisiana when boundaries were still indefinite.

Since southern Louisiana remained a mystery, authorities next dispatched Captain Zebulon Pike to search out the origins of the Red River. In July 1806, Pike departed from St. Louis with twenty-three men on a route that took him up the Missouri River to the Osage villages. There he obtained horses and, dodging Spanish patrols, made his way to the Great Bend of the Arkansas River in west-central Kansas. At this point, Lieutenant James Wilkinson became ill and the command was divided. Wilkinson and five men were sent east down the Arkansas while Pike and the rest of the troops went west up the river to its source. Pike’s party pushed on to the Rocky Mountains, eventually being arrested by a Spanish patrol and subjected to imprisonment in Mexico before returning to the United States.

Meanwhile, in November and December, Wilkinson’s party worked its way down the Arkansas River in two elm bark canoes. Shallow water soon forced them to march along the riverbank. By the time they had reached northeastern Oklahoma they were barely able to navigate the river in two dugout canoes. Winter came early and hard in 1806. The Arkansas filled with ice, and snowstorms limited visibility. The Wilkinson Party suffered greatly, losing supplies of food and ammunition and experiencing severe frostbite. Some relief came from Osage hunters encamped along the river’s edge.

Wilkinson celebrated New Year’s Day 1807 by leaving Oklahoma. Although his group had limited time for observation, the journey shows that they had learned a good deal. The Osages were numerous and in “a constant state of warfare” with any Cherokees, Creeks, and Choctaws who ventured into the area. Wilkinson heard about a prairie that was encrusted with salt and about lead mines “northwest” of the Osages, and he passed over a seven-foot waterfall (Webbers Falls) on the Arkansas. He also documented that American hunters and trappers were already working the Poteau River. President Jefferson found the official report extremely interesting, especially the part about any entire prairie of salt.

It was the prospect of salt that brought the third official expedition to Oklahoma in 1811. Salt was an important commodity on the frontier, necessary for meat preservation and food seasoning. George Sibley led the expedition, and, being a subagent from Fort Osage, was given the primary mission of negotiating peace alliances between the Osages and western Kansas tribes. He also used the occasion to lead his party into Oklahoma to look at the storied deposits of salt.

Sibley’s visit to the Great Salt Plains revealed wafer-thin sheets of salt on the vast flat glistening “like a brilliant field of snow.” The sight so excited Sibley’s imagination that he pressed on to the Big Salt Plains, the salt deposits mentioned by Lieutenant Wilkinson five years earlier. The “beautifully white” rock salt, Sibley wrote, was “unquestionably superior to any that I ever saw.” Altogether, there was in northern Oklahoma and “inexhaustible store of ready made salt” just waiting to enter “into channels of commerce.”

The Long-Bell Expedition

No military expedition yielded more information about Oklahoma than did that commanded by Stephen Long. Yet it was an accident. Long was assigned to search out the sources of the Red and Arkansas rivers and to descend each to the Mississippi River. In July 1820 he led his command west from Omaha along the Platte River to the Rocky Mountains. There he divided his party, similarly to the Pike-Wilkinson expedition, sending Captain John Bell and twelve men down the Arkansas while he continued south to the headwaters of the Red.

Bell, like Wilkinson before him, found the Arkansas route tough going. Only this time the problem was not cold temperatures but hot ones. When Bell and his party got to Oklahoma in mid-August, ninety degree temperatures had worn out the animals and men and made game difficult to find. For food they were reduced to eating skunks, a fawn taken literally from the jaws of a wolf, hawks, turkeys, turtles, mussels, and boiled corn. An occasional deer, and grain and melons taken from abandoned Osage campsites restored their strength and kept them going until they reached Fort Smith on September 9.

Thomas Say, a noted zoologist, was a member of Bell’s command. His task was to make and record observations on the plants, animals, minerals, and native peoples the party encountered along the Arkansas. Unfortunately his five large journals were lost when three soldiers deserted and took those valuable materials with them. From the few remaining notebooks, Say later published the only account of this expedition.

In the meantime, Long continued southward from the Arkansas looking for the headwaters of the Red River. His party also included a noted biologist, Edwin James. Eventually Long encountered a broad stream which he took to be the Red River, an assumption that he held for nearly seven weeks. Actually it was the Canadian, the waterway the French had followed to Santa Fe. Riding horses in the bed of the river, the Long Party reached the Antelope Hills and Oklahoma on August 17. James was impressed with the wildlife he saw: “Herds of bison, wild horses, elk, and deer, are seen quietly grazing in these extensive and fertile pastures.” A prairie-dog colony, a mile square in area, filled him with awe, as did flocks of white pelicans, egrets and snowy herons, and the occasional bald eagle, not to mention tarantulas.

When the Long Party arrived at the Arkansas on September 10, 1820, they recognized to their “mortification” that they were not on the Red River, but the Canadian. Both Long and James were embarrassed and disappointed, even more so because they knew that they did not have the energy, the time, or the means to go back and do the job rights. Instead they pushed on to Fort Smith, where three days later they were reunited with Bell and the remainder of the original party.

The Long expedition did not meet its declared objective, yet it had important consequences. It generated, despite the loss of Say’s journals, an impressive quantity of scientific data on Oklahoma’s flora, fauna, geology, geography, and native peoples. More important, the expedition confirmed a general impression that the Southern Plains were a sandy wasteland unsuitable for general agriculture. Thereafter, maps of the American West usually labeled the area as “the Great American Desert.” If Long and his colleagues had had their way, Oklahoma and the surrounding area would have remained in its natural condition.
Thomas Nuttall in Oklahoma

The most useful and complete information assembled about the resources and people of Oklahoma did not come from government-sponsored expeditions. Rather it was gathered by the English botanist Thomas Nuttall. In 1819 he spent several months in Oklahoma gathering botanical samples. His expedition followed a route up the Poteau River and then down the Kiamichi River. Along the way Nuttall marveled at the wildlife he saw (bears, bison, panthers, and snakes) and the loveliness of the prairies and mountains. “Nothing could at this season exceed the beauty of these plains,” he wrote, “enameled with such an uncommon variety of flowers of vivid tints, possessing all the brilliancy of tropical productions.”