The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 10, July 1906 - April, 1907 Page: 15

The Louisiana-Texas Frontier.

ineffectual to control this portion of the continent, served to define
more clearly their tentative frontier limits nearer the coast. At
the mouth of the Arkansas, at a point where Tonty had in 1686
established a small post, the Western Company maintained a
storehouse which served as a way station for voyageurs passing up
and down the river.1 During the winter and spring of 1722, La
Harpe pushed his explorations, by water and by land, some hundred
leagues up this river, till the mutinous temper of his party warned
him to avoid the fate of LaSalle.2 In 1719, M. Du Tissenet passed
from the country of the Illinois up the Missouri and Osage, to visit
the Indians bearing the latter name and the Pawnees and the
Padoucas (Comanches). Among these, on September 27, he took
possession of the country and erected a column with the royal
arms.3 Somewhat later De Bourgemont established Fort Orleans
on the Missouri, near the mouth of the Grand River, to serve as a
center for the Indian fur trade and as an entrepot for trade with
New Mexico, or as defense to Illinois against possible Spanish hos-
tilities. From this point, in 1724, he made an important journey
to the country of the Padoucas and neighboring nations.4
The Spaniards in New Mexico were not unmindful of the fact
that their province was the ultimate goal of these explorations.
Influenced by their vigorous representations, the viceroy ordered
Don Antonio Valverde Cossio, then governor of that province, to
send an expedition to the Pawnees, where he had heard that there
were French establishments, and also to examine the "Quartelejo"
with a view to locate a military post there. This latter place was
probably somewhere in northwestern Kansas, and had been visited
by Valverde on an expedition of the preceding year against some
predatory savages. It was while on this expedition that the governor
had heard of the nearby presence of the French.5
'French, Hist. Coll. La., III 126; V 34.
2Ibid., II1 99, 100; V 35, 36; Margry, VI 378.
'French, Hist. Coll. La., New Series, 151, 152; Margry, VI 313-315.
'Thwaite's Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, I 49,
note; Margry, VI 388 et seq., 398-452; Le Page du Pratz, Histoire de la
Louisiane, IV 141-241.
'Bandelier, A. F., The Expedition of Pedro de Villazur in Papers of the
Archclogical Institute of Amersca, V 179-206. See also French, Hist.
Coll. La., III 87; Historia XLTII, Opisculo I, Par. 55, where the number
of survivors is mentioned as thirteen. Some of the documents quoted by
Bandelier are still in the New lemeico Archives, in the Library of Con-
gress.