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FIRST CONTACT Jean-Baptiste Bénard, Sieur de la Harpe came to the end of his journey in September 1719. It was a year since he and 40 paid laborers had disembarked at Dauphine Island in French Louisiana and conferred with GovernorGeneral Bienville about his commission to establish among the Nasoni, a Caddo tribe, a trading post on the Red River near present-day Texarkana. He had dutifully set up that post, but the war that subsequently broke out between France and Spain created unexpected impediments to commerce. La Harpe wished to broaden his horizons. So taking about nine men and 22 horses laden with trade goods, he traveled from the Red River northwestward through the Ouachita Mountains and the subsequent ®oodplains and hills, to a region that no European had ever seen—or, at least, recorded. He had come north to establish relations and cement political alliances with friends of his allies—and, while he was at it, to size up the landscape for commercial transactions. We know some particulars about this venture today, because La Harpe left a diary that is housed at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and that has subsequently been published by Pierre Margry (Margry 1886).1 At the end of La Harpe’s journey was a village, or an area, that contained 6,000 Indians (the wording of the account is a little vague on this point), which rapidly grew to 7,000 as news of the encounter spread. This was the principal home of the Tawakoni, one of several loosely associated groups, including the Taovaya/Tawehash, Iscani/Waco, and Wichita proper, that later coalesced to form the Wichita tribe. The Tawakoni were the most powerful of these groups, their village being located on a river known as the Alcansas. The Tawakoni spoke a Caddoan tongue and could easily be communicated with through the Nasoni and Quidehais (Kichai) guides who accompanied La Harpe’s party (Smith 1958–59; Vehik 1992; M. Wedel 1971, 1982). Since La Harpe’s mission was to establish friendly relations, he brought plenty of European items to please the inhabitants. In return, he relates that at a calumet ceremony “they painted my face the color of ultra-marine blue; 1 The Land That Knew No European then they threw thirty buffalo robes at my feet, several pieces of rock salt, loaves of tobacco, verdigris, and some bits of ultra-marine. They added to these presents a young slave of eight years of age from the Cancy nation, from whom they had eaten a ¤nger from each hand, a mark that destined him to serve some day as food for these cannibals” (Smith 1959:529). Probably noting the heightened interest with which the news of the Cancy (Apache) slave was received, the chief told La Harpe that he was terribly sorry to have had only one slave to give. Had the French come a month earlier, he would have been able to provide 17 slaves, but these had already been consumed in a public feast. Despite inevitable cultural disjunctures such as this, La Harpe’s sojourn was, on the whole, quite comfortable. During his 10-day visit, the party received the constant attention of the local Indian women, who were especially fascinated by, and solicitous of, the two black men who accompanied the group. La Harpe participated in the calumet ceremony, interacted with dignitaries , and collected information on the local geophysical and political situations. During this period he distributed a variety of gifts, the estimated worth of which was about 1,500 livres (Villiers du Terrage 1934:24). The book you have begun to read is intimately concerned with La Harpe’s visit and with new discoveries that shed light on the conditions that prevailed during this period of contact between Native Americans and Europeans. Let us begin by brie®y investigating the physical environment and local conditions that La Harpe’s party would have encountered in the region of the Tawakoni village they visited—insofar as we can ascertain where that village was located. THE ENVIRONMENT La Harpe’s 1719 trading post on the Red River was located not far from the modern town of Texarkana. There is some evidence that it was placed on what is now an oxbow lake, at a locale known as the Rosborough Lake site (41Bw-5).2 This site contains occupational features and burials, as well as artifacts of European and protohistoric Native American origin. In addition, it occurs in close proximity to the...

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