Fort Saint Louis

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There was also a fort by that name at today's Moose Factory, Ontario.

Fort Saint Louis was a frontier fort built in 1685 by French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle near what is now Inez, Texas. La Salle led almost 300 people, including settlers and soldiers, to establish a small settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Inaccurate maps and navigational issues caused his ships to instead anchor off the coast of Texas near Matagorda Bay. The colony faced numerous difficulties, including the loss of their ships and deaths due to illness and the harsh conditions. La Salle conducted several expeditions in search of the Mississippi, but instead explored much of the Rio Grande and parts of East Texas. The settlement was destroyed in 1689 by Karankawa Indians. Its brief existence established royal France's claim to possession of the region that is now Texas, and later supported the United States's claim to the same region as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

Spain considered the fort an incursion into the territory of New Spain and funded multiple expeditions over several years to find and eliminate the French settlement. The unsuccessful expeditions helped Spain to better understand the geography of the Gulf Cost region. Spanish explorers led by Alonso De León followed the directions of French deserter Jean Gery and discovered the remains of the fort in 1689. The Spanish burned the fort and buried the French cannons and later built a presidio at the same location. The location is now an archaeological site.


Contents

[edit] Expedition

Image:Cavelier de la salle.jpg
René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle

French nobleman René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle had previously lived in the French colony in Canada, and in April 1682 he arrived at the Gulf of Mexico after traversing the Mississippi River from Canada. He named the Mississippi River valley Louisiana on April 9, claiming it for the French king, Louis XIV.[1] De Soto had explored and claimed the same area of land for Spain 140 years before.[2] La Salle believed the Mississippi River was very near the edge of New Spain,[2] and knew that French control of the Mississippi would split Spanish Florida from New Spain.[3] On his return to France in 1683, La Salle argued that a small number of Frenchmen could successfully invade New Spain by relying on the help of 15,000 Indians who were angry over Spanish enslavement. This had been suggested as early as 1678 by Diego de Penalosa, the former governor of New Mexico who had fled to France after being targeted by the Inquisition. After Spain declared war on France in October 1683, Louis agreed to back La Salle.[2]

Although La Salle had requested only one ship, on July 24, 1684, he left La Rochelle with four: the 36-gun man of war Le Joly, the 300-ton storeship L'Aimable, the barque La Belle, and the ketch St. Francois.[4][5][6] The ships carried almost 300 people, including 100 soldiers, 6 missionaries, over a dozen women and children, 8 merchants, and artisans and craftsmen.[4][7] Several weeks later France and Spain ceased their hostilities, and Louis was no longer interested in sending further help for La Salle.[6] Details of the voyage were kept secret so that Spain would not be aware of its purpose, and La Salle's naval commander, Sieur de Beaujeu, resented La Salle for his lack of trust. The discord between the two led to a further disagreement when they reached Santo Domingo and quarreled over where to anchor. Beaujeu sailed to another part of the island, allowing Spanish privateers to capture the St. Francois, which had been fully loaded with supplies, provisions, and tools for the colony.[8] During the 58-day voyage, two people had died of illness, and one woman gave birth to a child.[7] Several other members of the voyage were lost to desertion in Santo Domingo, and La Salle fell gravely ill.[8]

The voyage to Santo Domingo had been slower than expected, and provisions had run low. The expedition also needed to replace some of the badly-needed supplies which had been on the St. Francois, yet La Salle had little money. Two of the merchants aboard the expedition sold some of their trade goods to the islanders, and lent their profits to La Salle to replenish supplies. To fill the gaps left by the deserters, La Salle recruited several islanders to join the expedition.[9]

In late November 1684, La Salle had fully recovered from his illness, and the three remaining ships continued their search for the Mississippi River delta.[8] Before they left, local sailors warned them that the Gulf currents flowed east, and would carry the ships toward the Florida straits unless they corrected for it.[10] On December 18, this ships reached the Gulf of Mexico and entered waters that Spain claimed as their sole territory. [11] None of the members of the expedition had ever been in the Gulf of Mexico or knew how to navigate it.[12] A combination of inaccurate maps, La Salle's previous miscalculation of the latitude of the mouth of the Mississippi River, and overcorrecting for the currents led the ships to be unable to find the Mississippi.[10] Instead, they landed at Matagorda Bay in early 1685, 400 miles (644 km) west of the Mississippi.[10]

[edit] Construction

On February 20, the colonists were able to get to shore for the first time since leaving Santo Domingo. They set up a temporary camp near the location of the present-day Matagorda lighthouse.[13]

Against Beaujeu's advice, La Salle ordered the Aimable "to negotiate the narrow and shallow pass" to get closer to the campsite. As the Aimable got underway, a band of Karankawa Indians approached, and carried off some of the settlers. La Salle led a small group of soldiers to rescue them, leaving no one to direct the Aimable. When he returned to the campsite, he found the Aimable grounded on the sandbar.[13] For several days the men attempted to salvage the tools, supplies, and provisions that had been loaded on the Aimable, but a bad storm prevented them from recovering more than the food, cannons, powder, and a small amount of the merchandise. By March 7, the ship had sunk.[14] The Karankawa helped themselves to much of the wreckage. French soldiers approached the tribal village to retrieve their blankets; discovering that the Indians had hidden, the soldiers helped themselves to the French merchandise, as well as animal pelts and two canoes. The angry Karankawa attacked, killing two Frenchmen and injuring others.[14]

Beajeu, having fulfilled his mission in escorting them, returned to France aboard the Joly in mid-March.[15] Several of the colonists chose to return to France with him,[16] leaving approximately 180 behind.[17] The colonists, suffered from dysentery and venereal diseases, and people died daily.[15] Those who were fit helped build crude dwellings and a temporary fort on Matagorda Island.[17]

Image:TXMap-doton-Inez.PNG
Approximate location of Fort Saint Louis

On March 24, La Salle took 52 men in 5 canoes to explore the area to find a less exposed settlement site. They found Garcitas Creek, which had fresh water and fish, with good soil and timber along its banks, and named it Rivière aux Boeufs for the nearby buffalo herds. Fort Saint Louis would be constructed on a bluff overlooking the creek, 1.5 leagues from its mouth. The men found a source of salt nearby and constructed a community oven. Two men died, one drowning while trying to fish and another suffering from a rattlesnake bite.[17] At night, the Karankawa would sometimes surround the camp and howl, but the soldiers could scare them away with a few gun shots.[18]

In early June, La Salle summoned the rest of the colonists to the new settlement site. Seventy people began the 50 miles (80 km) overland trek on June 12. All of the supplies had to be hauled from the Belle, a physically draining task. All of the supplies were moved by the middle of Jul, and the 30 men who had remained behind to guard the ship joined the remaining settlers at the new site. By the end of July, however, over half of the settlers had died, most from a combination of scant rations and overwork.[18]

[edit] Difficulties

The group still did not know where they were, and took several short trips within the next few months to explore their surroundings. At the end of October La Salle decided to undertake a longer expedition and reloaded the Belle with much of the remaining supplies. He took 50 men, plus the Belle's crew of 27 sailors, leaving behind 34 men, women, and children. The bulk of the men traveled with La Salle in canoes, with the Belle following further off the coast. When the group was three days from camp, they learned of hostile Indians in the area, and 20 of the Frenchmen attacked the village, where they found Spanish artifacts.[19] Several of his men died on this expedition from eating prickly pear, and Karankawa killed a small group of the men who had camped on the shore at night, including the captain of the Belle.[20]

From January until March 1686, La Salle and most of his men searched overland for the Mississippi River, traveling as far west as the Rio Grande.[20][21] The men befriended the native peoples, asking for information on the locations of the Spaniards and the Spanish mines, and offering gifts and stories of the cruelties of the Spanish and the niceness of the French.[6] The group may have followed the Rio Grande as far west as modern-day Langtry, but returned to Fort St. Louis in March 1686 after being unable to find the Belle where they had left her.[20][21] The following month they travelled east, hoping to locate the Mississippi and return to Canada.[21] During their travels the group encountered the Tejas, or Caddo Indians, who gave the Frenchmen a map of their territory, that of their neighbors, and the location of the Mississippi River. Four of the men deserted when they reached the Neches River, and La Salle and one of his nephews became very ill, forcing the group to halt for two months. While the men recovered, the group ran low on food and gunpowder.[22] The group chose to return to Fort Saint Louis in August, having reached only as far as the Trinity River.[23] Only eight men, half of those who had set out, returned safely.[22]

While La Salle was gone, six of those left on the Belle finally arrived at Fort Saint Louis. According to them, the new captain of the Belle was always drunk. Many of the sailors did not know how to sail, and they grounded the boat on Matagorda Peninsula. The survivors took a canoe to the fort, leaving the ship behind.[24] The destruction of their last ship left the settlers stranded on the Texas coast, with no hope of gaining assistance from the French colonies in the Caribbean Sea.[15] La Salle believed that their only hope of survival lay in trekking overland to request assistance from New France.[24]

By early January 1687, fewer that 45 people remained in the colony, which was beset by internal strife.[23][25] That month, La Salle led a final expedition to attempt to reach Illinois.[23] He left fewer than 20 people at Fort Saint Louis, primarily women, children, and those deemed unfit, as well as 7 soldiers and 3 missionaries with whom he was unhappy.[25] Seventeen men were included on the expedition, including La Salle, his brother, and two of his nephews. After a quarrel over the division of buffalo meat, one of La Salle's nephews and two other men were killed in their sleep by another expedition member. The following day, March 19, 1687, La Salle was killed while approaching the camp to investigate his nephew's disappearance.[23] Infighting led to the deaths of two other expedition members within a short time. Some of the remaining men joined friendly Indians in what is now East Texas. Others eventually reached New France, without reporting the situation of the remaining settlers at Fort Saint Louis. There would be no successful French rescue or relief effort.[26]

[edit] Spanish response

La Salle's mission remained secret for a year, until a Frenchman who had deserted in Santo Domingo informed the Spanish of the plans. The Spanish government felt the French colony would be a threat to their mines and shipping routes, and Carlos II's Council of war thought that "Spain needed swift action 'to remove this thorn which has been thrust into the hear of America. The greater the delay the greater the difficulty of attainment.'"[6] The Spanish had no idea where to find La Salle, and in 1686 they sent a sea expedition and two land expeditions to try to locate his colony. One of the land expeditions left Mexico and was forced to turn back at the Rio Grande, while the other left from Florida and turned back in what is now Alabama. Although the expeditions were unsuccessful, they did narrow the search for La Salle to the area between the Rio Grande and the Mississippi.[27] Four additional Spanish expeditions the following year failed to find La Salle, but helped Spain to better understand the geography of the Gulf Coast region.[27]

In 1688, the Spanish sent three more expeditions, two by sea and one by land. The land expedition, led by Alonso De León, discovered Jean Gery, who had deserted the French colony and was living in Southern Texas with the Coahuiltecans.[28] Using Gery as a translator and guide, De León finally found the French fort in late April 1689.[29] The fort and the five crude houses surrounding it were in ruins.[21] Several months before, the Karankawa had become angry that the French had taken their canoes without payment and had attacked the settlement. The Indians left a great deal of destruction and the bodies of three people, including a woman who had been shot in the back.[29] A Spanish priest who had accompanied De León conducted funeral services for the three victims.[21] The chronicler of the expedition, Juan Bautista Chap, wrote that the devastation was God's punishment for going against the Pope, as Pope Alexander VI had granted the Indies exclusively to the Spanish.[29]

The remains of the fort were destroyed by the Spanish, who also buried the French cannon left behind.[30] The Spanish later built their own fort on the same location.[31]

[edit] Legacy

Only 15 or 16 people survived the colony. Six of them returned to France, while nine others were captured by the Spanish, including four children who had been spared by the Karankawa. Of the remaining Spanish captives, three later became Spanish citizens and settled in Spain's New Mexico colony.[23] Although the French colony had been utterly destroyed, in response to the French attempt, the Spanish crown for the first time authorized small outposts in eastern Texas and at Pensacola.[30]

France did not abandon its claims to Texas until November 3, 1762 when they ceded all of their territory west of the Mississippi River to Spain in the Treaty of Fontainebleu, which ended the Seven Years War.[32] Spain gave Louisiana back to France on October 1, 1800. In 1803, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States. The original agreement between Spain and France had not explicitly specified the borders of Louisiana, and the descriptions in the documents were ambiguous and contradictory.[33] The United States insisted that its purchase included all of the territory France had claimed, including all of Texas.[33] On February 22, 1819, Spain ceded Florida to the United States in return for the United States relinquishing its claim on Texas. The official boundary of Texas was set at the Sabine River (the current boundary between Texas and Louisiana), then following the Red and Arkansas Rivers to the 42nd parallel (California's current northern border).[34]

[edit] Today

In 1908, historian Herbert Eugene Bolton claimed to have found the location of the fort, on Garcitas creek near Matagorda Bay. The University of Texas at Austin funded a partial excavation of the site in the 1950s which was unable to prove that Fort Saint Louis had existed on that site. Other historians had argued that the fort was actually located on Lavaca River in Jackson County. The mystery was solved in late 1996, when ranch workers exploring with metal detectors located eight cast-iron cannons buried near Garcitas Creek. The Texas Historical Commission excavated the cannons and announced that they were the ones from Fort Saint Louis that de Leon had buried.[35] The Commission conducted an additional excavation of the area following the cannons' discovery. Because the Spanish built Presidio La Bahia on the same site, many Spanish artifacts have been found in the area as well. Archeologists have identified the location of the French fort as well as two other buildings which housed settlers[36][37] and the graves of the three settlers the Spanish buried.[38][39]

The Texas Historical Commission had also been searching for the wreckage of the ship La Belle. In 1995, the shipwreck was discovered in Matagorda Bay. The researchers excavated a 700–800 pound cast-bronze cannon from the waters, as well as musket balls, bronze straight pins, and trade beads. Large sections of the hull were intact.[40] Usually, the warm water of Matagorda Bay would cause the wood to deteriorate, but the ship had been buried beneath thick mud, "essentially creating an oxygen-free time capsule in fairly shallow water".[41]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Chipman (1992), p. 72.
  2. ^ a b c Weber (1992), p. 148.
  3. ^ Chipman (1992), p. 73.
  4. ^ a b Weddle (1991), p. 13.
  5. ^ Chipman (1992), p. 74.
  6. ^ a b c d Weber (1992), p. 149.
  7. ^ a b Weddle (1991), p. 16.
  8. ^ a b c Chipman (1992), p. 75.
  9. ^ Weddle (1991), p. 17.
  10. ^ a b c Chipman (1992), p. 76.
  11. ^ Weddle (1991), p. 19.
  12. ^ Weddle (1991), p. 20.
  13. ^ a b Weddle (1991), p. 23.
  14. ^ a b Weddle (1991), p. 24.
  15. ^ a b c Chipman (1992), p. 77.
  16. ^ Weddle (1991), p. 25.
  17. ^ a b c Weddle (1991), p. 27.
  18. ^ a b Weddle (1991), p. 28.
  19. ^ Weddle (1991), p. 29.
  20. ^ a b c Weddle (1991), p. 30.
  21. ^ a b c d e Chipman (1992), p. 83.
  22. ^ a b Weddle (1991), p. 34.
  23. ^ a b c d e Chipman (1992), p. 84.
  24. ^ a b Weddle (1991), p. 31.
  25. ^ a b Weddle (1991), p. 35.
  26. ^ Weddle (1991), p. 38.
  27. ^ a b Weber (1992), p. 151.
  28. ^ Weber (1992), pp. 151–152.
  29. ^ a b c Weber (1992), p. 152.
  30. ^ a b Weber (1992), p. 153.
  31. ^ Weber (1992), p. 168.
  32. ^ Weber (1992), p. 198.
  33. ^ a b Weber (1992), p. 291.
  34. ^ Weber (1992), p. 299.
  35. ^ Turner, Allan (February 16, 1997), "Cannons' discover ends debate on LaSalle fort", Houston Chronicle (Houston, TX): City and State, 2, <http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1997_1395062>. Retrieved on 2007-11-07
  36. ^ Mosely, Laurie. Information About Archeology: Fort Saint Louis. Texas Archeological Society. Retrieved on 2007-11-06.
  37. ^ Kever, Jeannie (September 17, 2000), "The first French Colony in Texas", Houston Chronicle, <http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2000_3243050>. Retrieved on 2007-11-07
  38. ^ Fort St. Louis Excavation Highlights, Texas Historical Commission, <http://www.thc.state.tx.us/lasalle/lasfslhghlites.html>. Retrieved on 2007-11-04
  39. ^ Kever, Jeannie (December 3, 2000), "Hot on their tracks: Remains of Settlers at site of La Salle Fort thrill archaeologists", Houston Chronicle, <http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2000_3262867>. Retrieved on 2007-11-07
  40. ^ Turner, Allan (July 14, 1995), "History surfaces in Matagorda Bay", Houston Chronicle, <http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1997_1395062>. Retrieved on 2007-11-07
  41. ^ Turner, Allan (July 30, 1995), "History rising from the bay's murky depths: La Salle ship one of many Matagorda victims", Houston Chronicle: State section, page 1, <http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1995_1288560>. Retrieved on 2007-11-07

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