For a mere five years, from 1817 to 1822, the "Sulphur Fork Factory" -- a federally approved trading house -- stood at the confluence of the Sulphur River into the Red River in today's Miller County, Arkansas. While it did not last long, and wasn't supposed to be there, it had a real impact on the human landscape in the region above the Great Raft.
The "factory system" took root in the Red River Valley after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. It originated in 1795 as a federal program that sought to build good relationships with native tribes by keeping the fur trade monitored, legitimate, and beneficial. The "factories" were clusters of log cabins and framed buildings, protected by an army garrison, that acted as stores and go-to places for native villages and American settlements. In the prevailing thought of the 19th century, commerce was considered the great peace-maker, and by helping to fund and secure a trading house, the United States believed that it could prevent resentment by the Indians and fraudulent activities by nefarious characters that roamed the "frontier."
Finding a Site
John Fowler, a tradesman from Baltimore, received the contract to run a factory for the Caddos, Yattasees, Coushattas, and other people along the Red River. The original site selected, at Fort Claiborne in Natchitoches, was a dilapidated log cabin that the parish wanted removed. A second site was then selected, at Fort Selden along Bayou Pierre, where the men stationed at Fort Claiborne had been moved to. However, Dr. John Sibley, the Indian Agent at Natchitoches, claimed title to the land, and thus a third site had to be found. It was finally discovered at the mouth of the Sulphur River.
Today, the site that was selected for the Sulphur Fork Factory is where AR 160 crosses over the Red River on its western bank, just above the Sulphur River's confluence and just east of today's Doddridge. It is a pretty place: a high bluff, fertile soil, but seemingly isolated. There's not a lot of people around here anymore. Now, the biggest settlement in the region is Fouke, where a "bog monster" supposedly lives.
But in 1817, when John Folwer selected the site, it seemed like a good idea. The factory sat on a high bluff and could see eastward for miles. Over 100 Americans had already established farms there, and were busy turning them into plantations by trafficking black people into the region. The Indian tribes, displaced by the influx of whites, had founded new villages in today's northwestern Louisiana and southwestern Arkansas. The Great Bend region was the ancient homelands of the Caddos, who knew the land and its bounties intimately. Everyone hoped that the factory could bring them peace, legitimate trade, and stability. It didn't.
American-Indian Trade on Spanish Claims?
There was uncertainty about the legitimacy of the location for the factory because technically, it was in the "disputed territory" that New Spain claimed. While this questions of legal boundaries would be settled in 1819 with the Adams Onis Treaty, the construction of the factory on the western bank of the Red River at the Sulphur River's mouth -- the southern-most river to enter the Red River and therefore, theoretically, the southern boundary of the Louisiana Purchase -- may have been a deliberate move by the US to assert its territorial claims.
Fowler hired soldiers and rented enslaved men from area planters to construct the trading complex, which consisted of at least three buildings. The main store was a two storied log cabin, where Fowler occupied the upper story and the lower one containing the trading station. A two-story frame building served as a "skin and fur house," and the large kitchen also contained the living quarters for enslaved laborers. Each building "had chimneys built of clay and Spanish moss" (Russell M. Magnaghi, quoting a letter written by Fowler in 1819).
Fowler traded guns, sugar, coffee, tobacco, lead, powder, salt, and other items, but not whiskey -- instead, whiskey comprised partial payments to the free, white laborers. Whiskey found its way into the tribes through unscrupulous traders, however, and addiction and debt had become rampant. The Caddos, who preferred trade with the Spanish missions in Texas instead, went on the warpath to fight the incursion of white settlement. Still, trade at the Sulphur Fork Factory became profitable, and Fowler, who proved himself a champion of fair trade, doubled his initial investments quickly when the influx of deerskin, beaver, fox, bear, and other furs.
Going, going, gone.
After Fowler's death in 1820, the factory deteriorated rapidly. It changed hands several times -- Larkin Edwards, one of the interim keepers, even stole all its furniture and allowed vermin to eat the stored furs and trade goods. In 1821, under the management of Mitchell McClellan, the Indian Agency moved from Natchitoches to the Sulphur Fork Factory, a ferry was added to facilitate further trade, and transactions revived well. It was all for nothing, though, because the U.S. abandoned the factory system under pressure by private fur traders.
By 1822, the Sulphur Fork Factory closure disintegrated the trade. The Caddos, Cherokees, Shawnees, Coushattas, and other tribes were pushed out of the region by the influx of white settlement. They had congregated in northwestern Louisiana, where they were subjected to forced removal treaties by the state of Louisiana, an forced agreement that was made at the Sulphur Fork Factor. These "treaties" led the Caddos into Mexican Texas, which granted them land in exchange for filing fees or after seven years of "proving up." Without cash, however, they couldn't afford the claims, and their time to gain title through labor ran out when Mexican Texas became the Republic of Texas, which did not recognize the legitimacy of land claims by native people.
Today, nothing remains of the Sulphur Fork Factory.
