La Harpe's Post : Tales of French-Wichita Contact on the Eastern Plains
This major contribution to contact period studies points to the Lasley Vore site in modern Oklahoma as the most likely first meeting place of Plains Indians and Europeans more than 300 years ago. In 1718, Jean-Baptiste Benard, Sieur de la Harpe, departed St. Malo in Brittany for the New World. La Harpe, a member of the French bourgeoisie, arrived at Dauphin Island on the Gulf coast to take up the entrepreneurial concession provided by the director of the French colony, Jean Baptiste Lemoyne de Bienville. La Harpe's charge was to open a trading post on the Red River just above a Caddoan village
eBook, English, ©2002
University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, ©2002