After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Dr. John Sibley was not just a contracted surgeon for the US army and also an Indian agent who counted the number of native people residing in his jurisdiction in the Summer of 1805. He was also, apparently, the Justice of the Peace for Natchitoches.
Natchitoches lay in the middle of New Orleans Territory, which would soon become the state of Louisiana after a census was conducted and the legitimacy of most land claims could be verified. Sibley's Autumn of 1805 task was to talk to the people who already resided in New Orleans Territory before the United States took over so that the new government could ascertain the use of the land, including what improvements still stood (and if the newly "acquired" inhabitants might be hostile).
In September of 1805, Dr. Sibley took the testimony of Francis Grappe about French settlements along the Red River in New Orleans Territory. Grappe was a long-time trader who at this point lived at Campti but was born in a Caddo village north of Natchitoches on the Red River about 1748. He described to Sibley in detail the French settlements that lay on the Red River north of Natchitoches, many of which have been forgotten by history.
This testimony is very striking and informative, and is transcribed here (paragraph breaks have been included by me):
Natchitoches, Sept 22, 1805.
National Intelligencer, Washington DC.
Personally appeared before me, John Sibley, one of the justices of the peace for the county of Natchitoches, Francis Grappe, of Campte, in said county, aged fifty-seven, who being duly sworn, deposeth and saith, that to the best of his knowledge and belief, he was born near the ancient Caddo village on the Red river, which by the course of the river he believes to be upwards of five hundred miles above Natchitoches, where his parents then lived, and had lived, he believes, a number of years before he was born, and where they continued to live until he was sixteen or seventeen years of age.
As long ago as he can remember he recollects a Mr. Francois Hervey, a French gentleman, who lived there, and who he understood was the first white man that settled there, and that his father settled there, about two years after, but he always understood there had been a company of French traders settled for a number of years about forty miles higher up the river, and that Mr. Hervey was one of them, but they were broke up before he was born; it was always called the Company, and that during the whole he lived at the ancient Caddo village there were three settled families, besides a number of single persons and a detachment of soldiers, and that the number of soldiers assigned by the French government of that post was always fifteen, but he never knew the number completed, and that his father was commandant of the place for many years, and was succeeded by a M. Gloso, who continued to be commandant till it was abandoned after the cession of Louisiana to Spain (1762), and that his father, by order of the governor of Louisiana, built a small fort there, in which two small pieces of cannon, and in which was a flag staff, on which the French flag was occasionally hoisted. He believes the whole time that that place was occupied by the French as a military post and a settlement of families, was about thirty years, and that the inhabitants pursued the same agriculture that was then common in other parts of the French settlement of Louisiana, viz. corn, tobacco, indigo, cotton, and garden vegetables, with some wheat, which grew well, but having no way of manufacturing flout, there was but little raised though there were a pair of Excellent European mill stones and mill irons there, but were not in use in his time; the stones he himself brought down in the year 1778, and they were carried to Opelousas; he understood they had been carried to Caddo country by the Company, as it was called.
and that the has knowledge of a French trading establishment being at the placed called the Dout on the Sabine River, near where the Mandarco [Nardarco, Andadarko] Indians now live, and that it was an ancient establishment, and a place of great trade and resort at the time his father's family lived at the Caddos, and the has several times been at the place; the French flag used to be hoisted there; and there are the remains of buildings and works now to be seen; and that the Dout is about 150 miles northwest from Natchitoches; and that there was at the same time a similar trading establishment at the Yattasee Point, on the southwest division of the Red river, about twenty-five leagues above Natchitoches, on which is now called the Bayou Pierre settlement, which is now under the jurisdiction of Spain, and which place is now, and ever has continued to be, occupied by French inhabitants, and in that some of whom have ancient French grant titles for their lands, and that Mr. Verge, who lived there for many years before Louisiana was ceded to Spain, had the exclusive Indian trade granted him by the French governor of Louisiana of the Tawacones, the Keecchises, and several other tribes that inhabit the river Sabine, and southwards [illegible] of it, in what is [illegible] the province of Texas.
Signed Franciois Grappe, Sworn to before John Sibley, September 1805.
Interpreted and translated, Sworn to before John Sibley, September 1805.
So let's see what Francois Grappe talked about:
Ancient Caddo Village
Though it's hard to say which village Grappe grew up in, it is most likely the village of the Nassonites. The Nassonites were part of the Caddoquis whose original homelands consisted of mound cities established along the Red River west of and near the Great Bend Region, and who'd lived there for at least one thousand years. In 1685, Hernando de Soto's expedition may have been the first Europeans that they encountered, which most likely soured them on the experience. Since the French traded guns with the native people, they were much more welcoming to French settlement. In 1719, Bernard de la Harpe was tasked by Louisiane's governor Bienville to establish trading posts, like the post at Natchitoches, among the Caddoquis.
The location of the Harpe's Nassonite post is still conjectured, although it was most likely in today's Bowie County, Texas. Harpe's accounts explain that it was located on the "right bank of the river," which means south bank.
Yattasee Point
The Yattasees were a group of native people who had been displaced by other natives, who themselves had been displaced by other native people, after the French, English, and Spanish had begun colonizing North America. The Yattasees spoke Caddo and were kin to the Adayes people.
By the mid-18th century, the Yattasees found themselves pushed to the Red River above Natchitoches. They lived in ad-hoc villages inhabited by other displaced or refugee people from various parts of the Southwest. Many of the inhabitants in the Yattasee village were people who had been enslaved but then were freed after a royal decree: African/ Native Creoles, Panis (Wichita freed people) and Canechi (Lipan Apache freed people).
The village was at a vacherie -- a ranch -- which gave them sustenance and offered some French protections. During Grappe's lifetime, the village stood at Bayou Pierre and the Red River, near today's Shreveport. However, subsequent displacements moved the Yattasees to other points until they vanished as a separate tribe.
Fort Dout
I have yet to find this French trading post on contemporary maps, just like I really haven't found a map listing the Nassonite Post, and Fort Dout has not been given the attention it deserves. Here is the write-up found in the Handbook of Texas:
Fort le Dout, reportedly located in what is now Wood County, was probably established during the eighteenth century by the French as a post for trade with the Caddo and Wichita Indians. Le Dout, which means "redoubt," or "fortification," may have been located on the Sabine River or possibly on Lake Fork Creek, a fork of the Sabine. A 1989 archeological study suggested that the Woldert Site, located about five miles from the confluence of Lake Fork Creek and the Sabine River, might be the site of Fort Le Dout.- Timothy K. Perttula and Bob D. Skiles, "Another Look at an Eighteenth-Century Archaeological Site in Wood County, Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 92 (January 1989).
A small fort and a military post: Might this be Fort St. Louis de Carollete?
Francois Grappe described that de la Harpe established a French trading post along the Red River "500 miles from Natchitoches." It begs the question, though: 500 miles as the crow flies, or 500 miles by foot, or 500 miles up the winding Red River?
Since the 1930s, it has been believed that Harpe's post established "500 miles from Natchitoches" was the one situated at the twin villages in today's Jefferson County, Oklahoma and Montague County, Texas. This conclusion was drawn by historian Joseph Carroll McConnell and has become canon in Texas history. However, I don't think that "Fort St. Louis de Carollete" was established at the twin villages of the Taovayas nor the Nassonite village. I believe that there was a trading fort established by Harpe in 1719 in a Caddo village, called Fort St. Louis de Carolette, and this post and village were located within today's Lamar County, Texas:
Fort St. Louis de Carlorette [sic] was built on the south bank fo the Red river by Bernard De la Harpe in 1719, under the orders of D'Bienville, for the purposes of securing the rights o fthe French to the country of the Upper Red river, as against the Spanish, who had already visited the head-waters of Red River and worked on the lead mines there [San Calixto]. It was located in latitude thirty-three degrees fifty five minutes north, and stood in northeast Texas. -- Weston Arthur Godspeed, The Province and the States: A History of the Province of Louisiana,1904.
There's a lot more to dissect here. Stay tuned for another post on the elusive French fort, "Fort St. Louis de Carollete."
