National and International Dimensions

On 15 April 1817 Captain John Fowler, the factory agent at Natchitoches, set out to explore the Sulphur Fork area. His trip was arduous and frustrating. The log-jammed “raft” on the Red River forced him to detour via Lake Bistineau. After crossing Bistineau, he lost his horse.

After two days of searching for the animal, he loaded his baggage on the interpreter’s horse and continued walking. Arriving at Bayou Bodcau, the flooded conditions forced him to continue on an improvised raft. But progress proved difficult. After traveling up Bocau for around forty-five miles, he finally rafted across, arriving near a village of the Coushatta Indians.

The location of the village was about thirty miles south of Sulphur Fork. Here, Fowler decided it best to catch a ride by boat back to Natchitoches from a Major Riddle, who commanded an available craft. After a two-week journey, he had failed to arrive at Sulphur Fork. Yet he gathered valuable information about the possible location.

Fowler reported that around 500 Choctaw warriors in addition to the Coushattas lived in the area. Fowler thought that a location at Sulphur Fork would even attract tribesmen from the Trinity and Sabine rivers. But he was not pleased with whites in the area.

In fact, he saw nothing but the “worst of white men.” These were traders who exchanged whiskey for valuable furs and pelts. And their paltry exchanges left Native Americans with insufficient clothing. Fowler hoped that a fairly-operated trading house would secure the friendship of Natives and stop the abuses of unlicensed and unscrupulous traders.

By 25 June 1818 Fowler sent the first correspondence from Sulphur Fork. The location was on the Sulphur River, sometimes called the “little river,” and three-fourths a mile from the confluence of the Sulphur and Red River. A United States army detail of a sergeant and twelve men had helped construct a temporary house and storage building. But reports issued later that summer were disturbing.

On 4 July, a letter indicated that over one hundred Delaware and Shawnee tribesmen had arrived from the Upper Mississippi, and more were expected to follow. Of course, we now know that this diaspora was the result of Americans pushing into Indiana and Illinois.

Following the defeat of Chief Tecumseh in the War of 1812 and favorable government land purchase provisions, the Northwest Territory became a destination for land-hungry settlers. Thus, many of the Native Americans in the area chose to move farther west. A letter on 10 August added that the Delawares and Shawnees were “very fierce” and strongly opposed to the settlement of whites on the right bank of the Red River and on the left bank of the “little river.”

A letter on 29 August mentioned the ripple effects caused by actions against the Creeks along the border between Alabama and Spanish Florida.

During 1816 and 1817, hostilities between Creeks, also known in the area as Seminoles, and American settlers in Alabama erupted. In March 1818 General Andrew Jackson had led a force of 5,000 troops and Indian allies into Spanish Florida. In the process, Jackson executed Seminole leaders and two British subjects sympathetic to the Seminoles.

Yet it is doubtful that Jackson had official permission for the invasion. Realizing that it could not defend Florida, Spain sold it to the United States the following year. Word of the invasion reached Sulphur Fork. And the August letter revealed that a white man had been circulating the rumor that Creeks had defeated Jackson. This hearsay was enough to move some Native Americans around the Red River to talk of uniting to drive out whites. The agent was so concerned that he requested two or three companies of soldiers to reinforce the factory.On 4 May 1819, another communication mentioned the buildings at Sulphur Fork. The main structure was two-storied, nineteen by thirty-nine feet, constructed of hewn pine logs. A gallery, nine-feet wide, extended along the whole length of the house.

The factory agent lived on the second floor; the first floor being used as a store and lumber storage. In addition, there was a house for pelts, thirteen by eighteen feet and two stories high. A cook house measured sixteen by sixteen and had a chimney of “cat and clay.” Finally, there were two cabins used for storage.

But hopes for a successful factory failed to materialize. First, the agent had difficulty securing laborers for construction and maintenance.

Assigned army troops proved reluctant to take orders from him and did not care to work on projects. Civilian laborers were also difficult to hire. And no replacements arrived for discharged soldiers. By November 1819 only eight soldiers and a corporal remained. Second, it was difficult to get supplies.

It sometimes took six months for orders to arrive. The trip could be made by keel boat through the raft, but conditions, either high or low water, sometimes complicated travel. Third, supplies that did arrive were not always implements that would induce tribesmen to give up hunting for farming. Fourth, pelts, improperly prepared or stored, were subject to worm infestations. By the time they reached a buyer downriver, their conditions sometimes made them unacceptable. Finally, the governmental policy toward Native Americans was evolving.

Following the termination of the War of 1812, the government focused on enticing Native Americans to voluntarily relocate west. In 1819 Congress created an Indian civilization program.

It provided funds for educating Natives through Christian missionaries in Native schools. The object was to teach domestic crafts to girls and farming, carpentry, and blacksmithing to male students. Moreover, the government encouraged Native Americans to move west to assigned lands in what is now Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas.

Also, the government constructed a string of frontier forts from Minnesota to present Oklahoma to protect Indians from each other and whites. Finally, Spain was not an industrialized nation. Americans did not have to fear Spanish agents wooing Natives with Spanish-manufactured goods.

And Spain did not have the resources to garrison many troops or settlers along the Red River. Thus, the threat of foreign intervention had been reduced. Considering these developments, trading factories were soon abolished.

Sulphur Fork closed as a government agency in 1822. Although it continued under private operation, it finally ceased in 1825. It only lasted around seven years. Yet its existence reflected national and international developments and influenced the backwoods and swamps of Miller County, Arkansas.