The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985 Page: 19
476 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Ecology of the Red River in i8o6
Dearborn, "are all in the enjoyment of health and unanimity, pleased
with the prospect, & resolved on the prosecution of the expedition let
what will oppose." 39
Leaving Natchitoches on June 2, the expedition soon passed the
beautiful pine-clad bluffs called Grand Ecore and the last scattered
French houses. For the next 430 miles they would pole and drag their
boats through a lush wilderness, untapped and fertile ground for a
naturalist.
The Red River Valley possessed some ecological features that were
typical of the western Mississippi drainage, while others were atypical
and singular. Among the latter, the most dramatic was the Great Raft.
The raft was an enormous logjam born sometime around o200 A.D.
when, it is believed, a Mississippi flood backed up the waters of the
Red, producing a reverse flow that caused an accumulation of drift-
wood the river could not wash out. Over the centuries the raft had
climbed upriver like a gigantic snake, adding nearly a mile of timber
to its upper end every spring. Its basic skeleton was composed of ex-
ceedingly durable red cedar from the great virgin stands of the middle
Red River, so that its lower end rotted away at only two-thirds the
rate of accumulation. By 18o6 the Great Raft was a tangle of drifted
timber almost one hundred miles long.40 Moreover, as the notes of the
two explorers make clear, the Great Raft was disrupting the environ-
ment and changing the river valley. As it climbed the river it blocked
the mouths of tributary streams, annually creating new lakes and
swamplands, killing the climax hardwood forests that had been at least
ten centuries evolving, and replacing them with a world of black
waters, and rotten, standing timber. By damming the river, in effect,
and diverting its flow through adjacent lowland tributaries, the raft
s9Custis's account in Flores (ed.), Jefferson and Southwestern Exploration, 125; Edwin
James, Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains Performed in
the Years z819-1820 .. . , Reuben Gold Thwaites (ed.), Early Western Travels, 1748-
z846, part 4, p. 67. The names of the Caddo guides are provided by John Sibley, A Re-
port from Natchitoches in 1807, ed. Annie Heloise Abel (New York, 1922), entries for
Feb. 21 and Apr. 14, 1807, pp. 13-14, 21; John R. Swanton, Source Material on the His-
tory and Ethnology of the Caddo Indians, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American
Ethnology Bulletin 132 (Washington, D.C., 1942), 77; Freeman's account in Flores (ed.),
Jefferson and Southwestern Exploration, 131, 134-
40Custis, MS report, June 1, 18o6; Freeman in Flores (ed.), Jefferson and Southwestern
Exploration, 1I1. The best discussion of theories regarding the formation of the Great
Raft is in H. N. Fisk, Geology of Avoyelles and Rapides Parishes, Geological Bulletin No.
18 (New Orleans, 1940), 40-42. See also Arthur C. Veatch, "The Shreveport Area," in
Gilbert D. Harris and A. C. Veatch, A Prelimnary Report on the Geology of Louisiana
(Baton Rouge, 1899), 16o-174. The date of the raft's formation comes from Clarence
Webb to D. L. F., Apr. 26, 1979.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985, periodical, 1984/1985; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101210/m1/41/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.