In March, 1719, Benard de la Harpe left the feeble little French post at
Natchitoches with six soldiers and a sergeant [Footnote: For an interesting
contemporary map of the French establishment at Natchitoches, see Thomassy,
_Geologie pratique de la Louisiane._]. His errand was to explore the
country, open trade if possible with the Spaniards, and establish another
post high up Red River. He and his party soon came upon that vast
entanglement of driftwood, or rather of uprooted forests, afterwards known
as the Red River raft, which choked the stream and forced them to make
their way through the inundated jungle that bordered it. As they pushed or
dragged their canoes through the swamp, they saw with disgust and alarm a
good number of snakes, coiled about twigs and boughs on the right and left,
or sometimes over their heads. These were probably the deadly
water-moccason, which in warm weather is accustomed to crawl out of its
favorite element and bask itself in the sun, precisely as described by La
Harpe. Their nerves were further discomposed by the splashing and plunging
of alligators lately wakened from their wintry torpor. Still, they pushed
painfully on, till they reached navigable water again, and at the end of
the month were, as they thought, a hundred and eight leagues above
Natchitoches. In four days more they reached the Nassonites.

These savages belonged to a group of stationary tribes, only one of which,
the Caddoes, survives to our day as a separate community. Their enemies the
Chickasaws, Osages, Arkansas, and even the distant Illinois, waged such
deadly war against them that, according to La Harpe, the unfortunate
Nassonites were in the way of extinction, their numbers having fallen,
within ten years, from twenty-five hundred souls to four hundred.
[Footnote: Benard de la Harpe, in Margry, VI. 264.]

La Harpe stopped among them to refresh his men, and build a house of