III. PHYSICAL SETTING

B. Man-made Features

1. Relative Positions of Principal Features

b) The Village

In his article in The Louisiana Historical Quarterly Stanley Faye wrote: “Captain de Villiers in 1779 removed Fort Carlos III from the river mouth to a site adjoining the hunting village that during the years past had stood on the upland peninsula where the village stands today.”[17]

Captain Rousseau, on February 3, 1793, noted in his journal:
“Above the fort there are about thirty houses, with galleries around, covered with shingles, which form two streets. Below the fort there are about a dozen quite pretty houses. “[18]

c) Fort Carlos III

Stanley Faye located the fort on a site adjoining the “hunting village.” Describing the area, he wrote:

From the west the river approached the village peninsula in a course somewhat farther south than the present course [1944]. A left bend that since has fluctuated without developing a cutoff carried it northward along the eastward side of the peninsula and thence eastward and southward to continue in bends to the forks [confluence with the Mississippi]. About half a mile below the post . . the ten habitant families domiciled. . .[19]

Captain Rousseau, in February 1793, visited the area. This was after the eroding riverbank had compelled the garrison to relocate Fort Carlos III. The fort was now known as Fort San Estevan of the Arkansas. Rousseau noted in his journal for the 3d:

The Fort of Arkansas is situated in the middle of a hill [côte] that overlooks the Arkansas River, which may be forty-five feet in height when the river is low and six feet when it overflows. It forms a horseshoe that may be half a league on the river and extends to the north. Above the fort there are about thirty houses, with galleries around, covered with shingles, which form two streets. Below the fort there are about a dozen quite pretty houses [the habitant coast].[20]

The destruction of Fort Carlos III is detailed in the dispatches of the commandants. Josef Vallière in December 1787 informed the governor that the Arkansas had washed out the land on the river front, and now there was only “one and a half feet before the water would be up to the palisade.” Vallière requested authority to return Fort Carlos III to the site of Carlos II near the Mississippi.

The situation got worse. On February 15, 1788, Vallière reported that half of the bastion, nearest the river, had been destroyed by the caving bank. He asked permission, if he could not return the fort to the site of Carlos II to be allowed to transfer it to Uzutiuhi [Osotouy], 5 leagues downstream.

Governor Miró in his report to his superiors, described Fort Carlos II as a work consisting of a “palisade made of thick stakes, able to withstand a fusil bullet with loopholes for musket and gun-ports, which is good enough to resist an attack from the Indians.” Miró endorsed Commandant Vallière’s proposal to relocate the fort. His first choice was a site near the Mississippi, and his second near Uzutiuhi {Osotouy].

The government, however, did not follow up on these proposals. Nor did it authorize the commandant to make repairs. In October 1789 the commandant reported “the total ruin and destruction” of Fort Carlos III.

When Ignacio Delinó took command in 1790 he wrote that the fort was without a stockade, its artillery dismounted, and its buildings about to fall into the river.[21]

Delinó relocated and rebuilt the fort, which he called Fort San Estevan of the Arkansas, near the site of Fort Carlos III. In constructing the new fort, the garrison probably razed and salvaged materials from the Fort Carlos III structures, which Delinó reported in disrepair.

By February 1793, when La Flecha visited the post, Captain Rousseau made no mention of the remains of Fort Carlos III. This leads to the conclusion that by 1793 its entire site had either eroded into the river, or what is more probable, the garrison had razed the structures and pulled down the stockade on the land fronts, salvaging useable materials and burning the remainder.[22]

Fort San Estevan of the Arkansas is the post shown on the “Map of Fort at Post of Arkansas, 1807.” The site of this fort, like the site of Fort Carlos III caved into the Arkansas. The sites of Forts Carlos III and San Estevan of the Arkansas, having been destroyed, are now flooded by Horseshoe Lake [Post Bend]. The lake was created when Dam No. 2 was completed and the Arkansas backed water into its former channel north of Arkansas Post.