European Explorers in the Mississippi Valley

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A CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE OF EARLY EXPLORATIONS IN ARKANSAS AND THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY

by Marvin D. Jeter

[16th Century] [17th Century] [18th Century] [19th Century]

Sixteenth Century

"Spanish Conquistadors", by Gary Simmons. Courtesy of the artist.

1541-1543: Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto crosses the Mississippi River and encounters Native American chiefdoms in northeast Arkansas and along the Arkansas River. Scholars continue to debate the identity of these groups — some may have been Tunican, others may have been Quapaw, or perhaps these people were unrelated to the tribes that occupied this region in later centuries. In western and southwestern Arkansas, the Spaniards encountered Caddo Indians. De Soto died in 1542 and was succeeded by Luis Moscoso, who explored farther to the southwest into Texas, encountering Caddos and perhaps others, before eventually returning to the Mississippi River. Survivors of the expedition escaped down the Mississippi River to the Gulf Coast and ultimately to Mexico in the spring of 1543.

Seventeenth Century [top]

"Father Marquette and His Pipe of Peace" by A. Bobbett. Courtesy of University of Central Arkansas Archives.

1673: French missionary Jacques Marquette and his companion Louis Jolliet descend the Mississippi from the Illinois country to the mouth of the Arkansas River. Here they encountered the Akansea (Quapaw) on the Mississippi, and recorded reports of the Michigamea (Illinoians) inland in northeastern Arkansas and Tunicans and possibly Wichitas further up the Arkansas Valley. Marquette and Jolliet return up the Mississippi to Canada after their stay with the Quapaws.

1682: French explorer Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle descends to the mouth of the Mississippi and returns. His party encountered the Quapaw near the mouth of the Arkansas River. Tunicas and others were encountered near present-day Vicksburg, and some Koroas (a Tunican group) were identified among the Natchez.

1685: La Salle's colonial expedition sails from France to establish a settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi. Passing by the Mississippi, La Salle establishes Fort St. Louis on the Texas Gulf Coast. The settlement fails, most of the inhabitants including La Salle die or are killed, but a few men lead by Henri Joutel in 1687 escape overland to the Arkansas River.

1686: Henri de Tonty, La Salle's associate, descends the Mississippi from the Illinois country. He visits the Quapaw settlements of Kappa, Tongigua and Touriman (sometimes called "Tourima" or "Omma" or "Imaha") along the Mississippi near the mouth of the Arkansas. Tonty continues downstream to the mouth of the Mississippi in search of La Salle, but fails to find him. On his return, Tonty establishes Arkansas Post on the lower Arkansas River at the Quapaw settlement of Osotouy. Six men, including Jean Couture, remain at the post.

1687: Henri Joutel and other survivors of La Salle's settlement at Fort St. Louis trek through east Texas. Crossing into present-day Arkansas, they visit the Kadohadacho (Caddo) along the Red River and the Cabinnio (Caddo) on the Ouachita River. At the latter settlement they learn of the "Tonica" living just downstream, and they hear of another nearby group called the "Maintou" (or Mentos, a Wichita group). The group then reaches Arkansas Post, from which they depart for Illinois.

Map of the 'Cadodacho' (Kadohadacho) Indian settlement by Domingo Teran de los Rios, 1691. Courtesy of the J.T. Bryan Collection [CT 0108], the Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

1690: Tonty travels south from Illinois again, stopping briefly at all four Quapaw settlements and at Arkansas Post. He also visits the Koroa, who probably were located on Bayou Bartholomew ("the River of the Koroas") near the present Arkansas-Louisiana state line, as well as the Caddos along the Red River before returning.

1691-92: Don Domingo Terán de los Rios, newly appointed governor of the Spanish territories in Texas, visits the "Tejas" (Caddo) in eastern Texas and the Kadohadacho along the great bend of the Red River.

1698: Captain Thomas Welch leads an English party from South Carolina across northern Mississippi to trade with the Chickasaws. This group crosses the Mississippi and contacts the Quapaws.

1698-99: Tonty returns yet again, escorting the Recollect priests Montigny, St. Cosme, and Davion down the Mississippi. They find "Old Kappa" deserted due to smallpox and warfare, and the remnant population living a short distance down the Mississippi. Tongigua is not mentioned, and may have ceased to exist. Tourima(n) is mentioned, but Osotuoy is said to be much more populous than either it or Kappa.

Plan du vieux Fort au Billoxy et etablissement, courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

1699: Pierre LeMoyne d'Iberville and his brother, Jean-Baptiste LeMoyne de Bienville, lead a colonial expedition from France to the Gulf Coast and found Fort Maurepas at Biloxi, initiating permanent French settlement of the Louisiana colony. Jean Couture, formerly of Arkansas Post, leads an English trading party west into Quapaw country.

Eighteenth Century [top]

1700: Pierre-Charles le Sueur with 20 men travels up the Mississippi River as far as the Minnesota River, passing by Arkansas on the way.

1700: Iberville establishes Fort de Mississippi ("Fort de la Boulaye" is a later misnomer) near the mouth of the Mississippi. It is a small establishment, encounters floods and other problems, and only lasts seven years, but from this time on, the Lower Mississippi Valley (including Arkansas) leaves the sphere of French influence from the north, and enters that of the French expanding up from the Gulf of Mexico.

1700: Bienville travels up the Mississippi and visits the Taensa (allies of the Quapaw) in northeastern Louisiana. Turning westward, he visits Caddo Indians living near Natchitoches.

1702: Fort Louis established on Mobile Bay. This secures French operations along the Gulf Coast against encroachments by the Spanish from Florida.

1707: Fort de Mississippi is abandoned.

1711: Fort Louis is relocated and renamed Fort Conde.

1712: The French establish a trading post at Natchez.

1714: Fort St. Jean Baptiste is established at Natchitoches, Louisiana, among the Caddos and near the colonial frontier with the Spanish.

1714: Fort Toulouse is established at the Coosa-Talapoosa boundary along the Alabama River east of present-day Montgomery, and trade commences with the Creek Indians. This secures the northeastern flank of the French Gulf Coast and adjacent inland operations against encroachments by the English from the east.

Detail of Carte de partie de la Louisiane de Baron de Crenay (1733), showing Fort Rosalie. Courtesy of the Centre des Archives d'outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence (Archives nationales, France).

1716: Fort Rosalie is established at Natchez.

1717: The Spanish establish a Catholic mission among the Adaes (Caddo) near Natchitoches.

1718: New Orleans is established (the Vieux Carre, or "old quarter," now the French Quarter).

1719: Fort St. Pierre is established on the Yazoo River above its juncture with the Mississippi at Vicksburg.

1721: The Spanish establish the Presidio de Nuestra Senora del Pilar de Los Adaes near Natchitoches. This serves for 50 years as a hub for more or less illicit trade between the Spanish, French, and Indians.

1721: John Law obtains a concession at Arkansas Post and attempts, unsuccessfully, to establish a colony for German settlers.

1721: A small detail of French soldiers arrives at Arkansas Post and reports that the Quapaws "had recently situated all of their villages on the Arkansas River, apparently for protection from the Chickasaws."

1721-22: French trappers have ascended the Arkansas River for some distance, and rumors of precious metals and stones begin to circulate. Bienville dispatches Jean-Baptiste Benard, Sieur de La Harpe to explore the Arkansas Valley. He reaches Arkansas Post and Osotuoy and finds Law's concession almost entirely abandoned. La Harpe has difficulty obtaining supplies and assistance from the Quapaws at Osotouy — although their hunting territory extends to the Little Rock vicinity, Osotuoy is their northwesternmost settlement and they apparently fear enemies further up the Arkansas Valley. La Harpe proceeds upstream past Little Rock, but encounters no Indian settlements, Quapaw or other, along the way.

1722: Fort de la Balise is established at the mouth of the Mississippi.

1729: The Natchez Massacre (uprising against the French) and subsequent suppression.

Bossu welcomed by the Quapaws (1751).

1739-40: Bienville assembles a large force of French soldiers and Indians at Fort Assumption, along the Margot (Wolf) River, from which an unsuccessful attack is launched against the Chickasaws. A number of Quapaw Indians from Arkansas participate in this campaign against the Chickasaws.

1739-40: The Mallet brothers lead a small trading expedition from Illinois across the plains to Spanish New Mexico, returning down the Canadian and Arkansas rivers to the Mississippi and thence to New Orleans. This journey stimulates French trading activity west of the Mississippi.

1751: Quapaws are visited by Jean-Bernard Bossu, a French naval officer who traveled up the Mississippi Valley and left an extensive account of his activities and observations.

1756: Arkansas Post moved to Desha County, across from Big Island (the misnomer "Fort Desha" is a typographer's error).

1763: The French lose the Seven Years War with England; Louisiana territory obtained by the Spanish at the Treaty of Paris.

Arkansas Post in 1779. Courtesy of Archivo General de Indias, Seville.

1767: The first Spanish governor of Louisiana, Antonio de Ulloa, appoints Alexandre de Clouet as commandant of Arkansas Post, now named Fuerte de Carlos III (Fort Carlos III, after King Carlos III of Spain) and generally referred to as Fuerte de Arkanzas. From that time until the transfer of Louisiana back to France, the Spanish regime maintains a commandant and detachment at the Arkansas Post settlement.

1769: Alexander O'Reilly becomes governor of Louisiana, and remarks that the English were entirely in control of the colony's commerce. In 1770, John Fitzpatrick established an English trading post at Manchac along the lower Mississippi River, and British settlers were scattered up and down the river. During the next decade British settlements grew at Baton Rouge (called New Richmond), Natchez, Vicksburg (called Walnut Hills), and at Concord (also called British Ozarks) on the east side of the Mississippi across from the mouth of the Arkansas River.

1770-71: Bossu visits the Quapaws, again.

1775: Kaskaskia Indians from Illinois arrive at Arkansas Post, request and are granted permission to settle along the lower White River. The Kaskaskians are awarded a land grant in 1777.

1778: U.S. Army Captain James Willing captures the British trading settlement (formerly called British Ozark, now called Concord) on the east bank of the Mississippi across from the Arkansas River, then visits Arkansas Post. American settlement begins in Arkansas Territory.

1780: Don Juan Filhiol establishes Fort Miro at Ecore a Fabri near present-day Camden. The fort was moved in 1794 to Prairie de Conots near present-day Monroe, Louisiana. This settlement became known as the Ouachita Post.

1783: An English trader, James Colbert, attacks Fort Carlos III with a group of Chickasaw warriors, but they are repelled by Quapaws led by Chief Angaska. This was the only "battle" of the American Revolution west of the Mississippi.

1784: Spanish government arranges a peace treaty between the Quapaws and Chickasaws.

1795: Spain signs the Treaty of San Lorenzo which permits Americans to travel freely along the Mississippi.

Nineteenth Century [top]

1801: Spain cedes Louisiana territory back to France.

1803: France sells Louisiana territory to the United States.

[16th Century] [17th Century] [18th Century] [19th Century]