Arkansas Post

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/media-detail.aspx?mediaID=27

Geography

Themes

Location

Place

Human Environm

ent Interactio

n

Movement

Regions

Human Environment Interaction

Human-environment interaction looks at the relationships between people and their environment.

1) How do people depend on the environment? 2) How to people adapt to the environment? 3) How do people modify the environment? 

What kind of example can you come up with for each question?

From The Encyclopedia of Arkansas: “Arkansas Post was the first and most significant

European establishment in Arkansas. In the colonial and early national periods, from 1686 to 1821, it served as the local governmental, military, and trade headquarters for the French, the Spanish, and finally the United States.”

1686 Arkansas Post

In 1686, where would you build the first settlement in Arkansas?

What would be the pros and cons?

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/media-detail.aspx?mediaID=6336

Arkansas Post #1

Portrait by Ben Brantly (1935), courtesy of the Arkansas History Commission: http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/media-detail.aspx?

mediaID=386

From The Encyclopedia of Arkansas: “In return for serving in René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle’s 1682 expedition, Henri de Tonti, a French officer born of Italian parents, received land and a trading concession at the juncture of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. In the summer of 1686, he arranged with the local Quapaw for Jean Couture, Jacques Cardinal, and four other Frenchmen to establish a trading post, where they would exchange French goods for beaver furs. They founded this first Arkansas Post near the Quapaw town of Osotouy in present-day Arkansas County.”

Henri de Tonti

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/media-detail.aspx?mediaID=6726

“The Frenchmen built a wooden house and fence, the first French establishment west of the Mississippi. The settlement, consisting of six men and a hut with no priest, was referred to it as “aux Arcs,” meaning "at the home of the Arkansas," one of the names for the Quapaw Indians. Eager for French trade and alliance, the Quapaw welcomed the Post and supported it throughout most of its history. Without Quapaw supplies and military assistance, the Post would not have survived.”

From The Encyclopedia of Arkansas:

Depend?

Adapt? Modify?

“On July 24, 1687, La Salle’s brother and Henri Joutel arrived at Arkansas Post, having fled across Texas after a mutiny killed La Salle. They were relieved to find that Couture and Cardinal were getting along well with their Quapaw hosts. However, the fur trade was not going well. The Quapaw were not traditionally beaver hunters and showed little interest in changing, and French colonial policies failed to encourage the western trading ventures. Therefore, there was little trade on the Arkansas River in the Post’s early years.

Beginning in 1699, with the support of Louis XIV, the French began to invest resources in Louisiana. The Arkansas Post’s location near the Mississippi River meant it would play an important role in commerce and Indian diplomacy. In 1717, John Law’s Company of the West received the charter for Louisiana trade, and Law himself acquired a personal concession on the lower Arkansas River in 1720. His plan was to establish a military post and create an agricultural colony that would sell crops to the soldiers at Arkansas Post, as well as New Orleans and French Illinois. To work the land, his company recruited European settlers and indentured servants and bought African slaves. In the summer of 1721, nearly 100 slaves and indentured servants whom Law had sent arrived at the mouth of the Arkansas River to prepare the way for the mostly German settlers to whom Law had granted land. By 1723, Lieutenant Avignon Guérin de La Boulaye, with thirteen soldiers, took command of Arkansas Post.”

From The Encyclopedia of Arkansas:

Before the settlers could arrive, however, investors’ hopes for easy riches in Louisiana began to wane, and Law’s company went under. The slaves and most of the servants were moved to plantations closer to New Orleans, and in 1724, the Company of the West withdrew the garrison from Arkansas Post. Still, some of the former indentured servants, freed by Law’s bankruptcy, stayed to hunt, trade, and farm fields given to them by the Quapaw, so the French presence continued in the Arkansas region.

For the next few decades, the Post was occupied sporadically by soldiers and priests. Father Paul du Poisson became the Post’s resident priest in July 1727, but in 1729, he died in a Natchez Indian attack on the French post at Natchez, where he was visiting. In 1731, the colonial Louisiana government again assigned a dozen soldiers to Arkansas Post. Their commandant, First Ensign Pierre Louis Petit de Coulange, built the first substantial Post structures—a house for the commandant, soldiers barracks, a powder magazine, and a prison. All were built with vertical posts and probably bark roofs. From 1731 on, Arkansas Post was a center of colonial trade and diplomacy with the Quapaw and other Indians, including Osage, Caddo, Chickasaw, and other bands that came to hunt and trade in the region.

From The Encyclopedia of Arkansas:

Arkansas Post #2

“The Post suffered its first military assault on May 10, 1749, in the middle of a French-Chickasaw war. Chickasaw Chief Payamataha and 150 warriors attacked the settlers who lived outside the Post. The Chickasaw killed several French men and captured eight French women and children. Once the other settlers had escaped into the fort, the Chickasaw retreated with their captives. In response to the attack, Commandant Ensign Louis Xavier Martin de Lino moved the Post a few miles up the Arkansas River to be farther from the Chickasaw and closer to the Quapaw, who had moved their towns closer together upstream just before the attack. (The new location, at the bluffs called Écores Rouges, is the site of the Arkansas Post National Memorial.) The next commandant, Captain Paul Augustin Le Pelletier de La Houssaye, built an elaborate Post in the new location. It consisted of a barracks, a powder magazine, a prison, a storehouse and hospital, a bake house, a latrine, and an imposing building that housed the commandant, the priest, and a chapel, all protected by an eleven-foot-high stockade.”

From The Encyclopedia of Arkansas:

Now on bluffs, ~45 miles upstream from the Mississippi River.

Depend?

Adapt? Modify?

In 1756, just five years after La Houssaye completed the new Post, the next commandant, Captain Francois de Reggio, evacuated the elaborate construction. In order to protect the fort, La Houssaye had placed it too far from the Mississippi River for it to see and respond to British and Indian attacks on French convoys once the Seven Years’ War began.

From The Encyclopedia of Arkansas:

Arkansas Post #3

“The French moved the Post back down the Arkansas River about ten miles from the Mississippi River, in what is now Desha County. In this latest configuration, a stockade surrounded the commandant’s house, barracks, powder magazine, commissary, and a building to house visiting Indian delegations.

In 1763, after the French lost the Seven Years’ War, they surrendered the half of Louisiana that lay east of the Mississippi to the British and gave the western half, including Arkansas Post, to their ally Spain. The resident French traders and settlers remained, but Spanish troops occupied the Post in de Reggio’s site. The Spanish had difficulty adjusting to the diplomatic requirements of this frontier Post, where Indians and French far outnumbered the handful of Spanish soldiers. In 1772, Spanish Commandant Fernando de Leyba tried to enforce his superiors’ orders to reduce expenses on gifts and feasts for the Quapaw and to gain power over the Frenchman who interpreted between him and the Quapaws. In response, Quapaw Chief Cazenonpoint threatened to “put the knife to the post.” Leyba agreed to most of the Quapaw’s demands for goods, and the Post was saved.”

From The Encyclopedia of Arkansas:

What do you think happened?

Arkansas Post #4

In 1778, Spanish King Carlos III decided to take advantage of the American Revolution to declare war against his British rival. In 1779, to avoid flooding, Spanish Commandant Balthazár de Villiers moved the Post back to Écores Rouges. At first, his new Post did not even have a real fort, but fighting among the British, Spanish, and various Indian groups resulting from the American Revolution made local French settlers fear a Chickasaw attack. The settlers insisted on building a fort where they could seek protection. Villiers named it Fort Carlos III for his king.

From The Encyclopedia of Arkansas: