ARKANSAS POST - 1686 AND LATER
Continued

Not much changed at Arkansas Post. The garrison slowly declined in size, down to 15 by 1770. Five Frenchmen succeeded Sieur de Raggio who had moved the post downriver in 1756. Spain was having trouble at home and was not too anxious to take over Louisiana. Finally, the authorities in New Orleans assigned a Spanish officer, Lieutenant Joseph Orieta, to command Arkansas Post in 1770. The French garrison was given the choice of switch ing allegiance to Spain or leaving the fort. Most of them switched allegiance. Thus, Spain took over Arkansas Post in 1770, and changed the name to Fort Carlos III, to honor the king of Spain.

A new commandant, French in name but in the employ of Spain, was assigned to Fort Carlos III on September 7, 1776, Captain Bathazar de Villiers. Ever since the fort had been relocated in 1756, the fort had been flooded almost annually. Things came to a head in a particularly damaging flood in 1778. De Villiers requested a removal of the fort to a new site, either the old De Tonti site of 1686 or the De la Houssaye site at Ecores Rouges. He found that the De Tonti site was separated from the river by a bayou named Lake DuMond and a swamp, so he favored Ecores Rouges. He reasoned it could be more easily defended, being above the cut-off between the Arkansas and White Rivers, and would be more effective in keeping out English interlopers. As river traffic had slowed to a virtual standstill except for spring supply boats by 1777, the site near the Mississippi was no longer needed. Finally, annual spring floods made this fort untenable. Governor Bernardo Galvez approved the request and Commander de Villiers reported the move completed on March 16, 1779.

The site of the first Fort Carlos III, or Fort Desha, or the Turner Place, was found first in 1882, and rediscovered in the summer of 1971. Plans were drawn up for an in-depth archeological investigation the next summer. However, in the spring of 1972 both the Arkansas and the Mississippi flooded, and the entire site had disappeared when the investigators came back in 1972.

De Villiers at Ecores Rouges found himself on a site consisting of three small rises separated by ravines. On one rise was a small Quapaw village, on another the village of some English speaking habitants, and on the third and largest rise a Franco-Spanish village and the fort. Do not imagine these habitants were farmers. They did some farming, but this was done by the women. The men were hunters, trappers or ne’er-do-wells that always accompany the fringe of settlement.

The fort, retaining the name of Fort Carlos III, was started in 1779 and completed in 1781. It consisted of red oak stakes, 10 to 16 inches in diameter split in two, reinforced by a similar stockade six feet high, backed by a banquette two feet high. At opposite corners were built bastions with openings for cannon equipped with sliding, bullet-proof panels. However, the fort had been built too close to the river bank, a bluff some 20 feet high, and almost every year the palisade facing the river had fallen in, and had to be rebuilt. A further complication was the international situation. The American Colonists had begun their Revolution in 1775, and France and Spain joined the Colonists in the war. They did not particularly care whether the Colonists became independent or not - they just wanted to embarrass their old enemy, the English.

To further this, Spain beefed up the garrison here in 1780 to 82 men.