Don Joseph Bernard Vallière d'Hauterive, commandant of Arkansas Post, courtesy of the Historic Arkansas Museum
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Thanks to the exploration of Marquette and Joliet and of LaSalle, the French dominated early colonial efforts in the Mississippi Valley during the 17th century. One of their earliest settlements, pre-dating even New Orleans, was Arkansas Post, founded in 1686 as a trading establishment among the Quapaw at the mouth of the Arkansas River by Henri deTonti, LaSalle's lieutenant. Hunters, trappers, and Indian traders French influence up the western tributaries of the Mississippi to encompass a vast territory they dubbed "Louisiana" in honor of Louis XIV.
In 1763, however, following losses to the British in the Seven Years War, France ceded its holdings in Louisiana to Spain rather than lose them to England. Spain governed the region and its largely Indian and French subjects for four decades. Their rule proved particularly unfortunate for the inhabitants of Arkansas Post, who suffered when Spain granted a monopoly on trade with the Osages, the area's principal source of furs, to the traders of St. Louis. This coupled with the swampy, flood-prone, and disease-ridden locale of Arkansas Post to spell doom for colonial ambitions in Arkansas. Add to that the devastating impact of European diseases on the native population. As a result Arkansas ended the 18th century wilder and more sparsely inhabited than at any time in the previous thousand years.
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