way; but when, in the autumn of 1716, he ventured
another journey to the Mexican borders, still hoping to be allowed to
trade, he and his goods were seized by order of the Mexican viceroy,
and, lest worse should befall him, he fled empty-handed, under cover of
night.[370]

In March, 1719, Benard de la Harpe left the feeble little French post at
Natchitoches with six soldiers and a sergeant.[371] 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.[372]

La Harpe stopped among them to refresh his men, and build a house of
cypress-wood as a beginning of the post he was ordered to establish;
then, having heard that a war with Spain had ruined his hopes of trade
with New Mexico, he resolved to pursue his explorations.

With him went ten men, white, red, and black, with twenty-two horses
bought from the Indians, for his journeyings were henceforth to be by
land. The party moved in a northerly and westerly course, by hills,
forests, and prairies, passed two branches of the