III. PHYSICAL SETTING

B. Man-made Features

1. Relative Positions of Principal Features

e) Fort Carlos III

(3) Embrasures

Captain de Villiers in July 1781 reported that the embrasures for the cannons and swivel guns were “covered with sliding panels” which were “bullet proof.”[38]

In the summer of 1782, Acting-Governor Miró sent Sub-lieutenant Antonio Soler, an ex-sergeant of artillery, to Arkansas Post to cut new embrasures in the bastions to mount the cannons, and to drill some of the garrison as artillerists.[39]

(4) Storehouses, Barracks, and Officers’ Quarters

The stockade, Captain de Villiers reported, enclosed all “necessary places, including a house 45 feet long and 15 feet wide, and a store house, both serving to lodge my troops, and around several smaller buildings.” These structures had been erected by the commandant and his troops, at de Villiers’s expense, following their arrival at the post.[40]

Captain Dubreuil, on his arrival at the post in January, 1783, “even presumed to order repairs made to the commandant’s house within the enclosure.”[41]

On May 22, 1783, Commandant Dubreuil notified Acting-Governor Miró that “to shelter from the bad weather” the public property and commissary stores, “which had no more protection than a bad enclosure,” he had been “obliged to erect a store house at little cost.”[42]

The expense of erecting this storehouse, Dubreuil reported on April 17, 1784, was 205 pesos. He broke down the cost as follows:

Captain Dubreuil, when he filed his “after action report,” called attention to the destruction by a violent wind of the quarters in the fort occupied by Lieutenant de Villars and his family on April 12, l783.[44]

Captain Pittman reported that at Fort Carlos II there was, within the stockade, “a barrack with three rooms for the soldiers, commanding officer’s house, a powder magazine, and a magazine for provision, and an apartment for the commissary.”[45]

The inventory of the structures within the stockade at Fort San Estevan of the Arkansas listed:

One house for commandant 36 feet long, 16 feet wide, with two galleries, two closets at each end of that of the back apartment. One double clay chimney covered with shingles. . . .

One barrack 50 feet long by 20 feet wide, covered with shingles, flanked on top with a double clay chimney and at the end a division which is used as a prison.

A kitchen of the commandant 20 feet long by 12 feet broad covered with shingles. . . .

A store house supported on props 45 feet long by 20 feet broad, covered with shingles with a division for war supplies.

An earthen oven near the fort. . . .
Three Sentry boxes
One flag staff.[46]