Fort St. Louis
The fort that wasn’t
In his search for the Mississippi River in 1685, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle ended up instead in what is known today as Matagorda Bay, Texas. His main supply ship, l’Aimable, had run aground, and his escort ship Le Joly had returned to France, taking back half of his prospective colonists. This only left the small ship La Belle, which could not carry all the supplies and people. La Salle needed a place of shelter for his remaining colonists and soldiers. He marched them inland to a bluff on a creek he called Rivière aux Boeufs (River of Buffalo), the modern-day Garcitas Creek in Victoria County. There the group began to set up a temporary camp that would provide shelter while La Salle continued an overland search for the Mississippi River. This settlement site would become known as Fort St. Louis, although it was never a fort and was never meant to be more than a temporary outpost.
In February 1685, La Salle ordered La Belle and l’Aimable to enter St. Louis (Matagorda) bay, but the supply ship l’Aimable ran aground. La Salle was forced to look for a nearby location on which a temporary encampment could be built. A site was located four miles from the edge of the bay and thirty miles from the coast. In July 1685 it was secured, a camp was set up, and plans were made to fortify the position. This site was called “Grand Camp” by some of the colonists.
The building of the settlement was slow, and 30 men died in the first building phase. Eventually using timber salvaged from the l’Aimable, the first wood building was constructed. A small chapel was built that was made of stakes driven into the ground and covered with a grass/reed roof. Eight bronze cannons recovered from the l’Aimable were brought to the site and placed at the edges of the settlement. There were approximately 180 people when they established the camp including soldiers, men brought as laborers, religious missionaries, six young women, and one family with children. When La Salle left on his first overland journey in late 1685 searching for the Mississippi River, he took most of the soldiers and able-bodied men with him. He left behind only 34 people at the settlement.
Disease, poor conditions, and occasional conflict with Native Tribes continued to take its toll on the settlers and soldiers. When La Salle returned to the camp in 1686, having failed to find the Mississippi River, the original group of 180 was down to 40 people. He set out again in early 1687 heading east on what would be his final journey. La Salle took 17 people with him and left 23 at the settlement. La Salle was murdered during this journey, and some members of his party, including one child, stayed with Caddo tribes instead of continuing on. Eventually 6 men from La Salle’s party of 17 made the long journey from Texas, up the Mississippi River to Canada, and then back to France. Those left behind at “Grand Camp” never knew what had happened to the expedition. Around Christmas of 1688, the remaining colonists were killed in conflict with the neighboring Karankawa. Only five children survived, saved by the Native women, and raised within the tribe.
The Spanish having learned of the French attempt to establish a colony in Texas, sent expeditions by sea and over land from Mexico looking for the colony site. The French camp was located by General Alonso de León in 1689, several months after the final, fatal attack. They tore down and burned the structures, and buried the eight cannons. In 1690, General de Leon found four of the French children among the American Indian Tribes, and in 1691 the expedition of Domingo Terán de los Ríos found the other two. These children, the six colonists who made it back to France, and six men who had previously left La Salle’s expedition, were the only survivors of the colony.
The camp on the banks of the Rivière aux Boeufs never had an official name, and it was never intended to be a permanent settlement. Though it was small and only lasted for three years, La Salle’s colony had a lasting impact on the history of Texas. It had the first Christian chapel, first Christian marriage, and the first European birth in Texas. The presence of the French in Texas led the Spanish to map the Gulf Coast of Texas and to the establishment of missions and presidios in what is now South and East Texas. In 1713 the journal account of Henri Joutel, a member of the expedition, was published. In it La Salle’s camp was called “St. Lewis.” The name Fort St. Louis, referring to La Salle’s colony, began appearing on maps of New Spain and the Americas by 1720.
Excavations in the 1950s sponsored by the Texas Memorial Museum found hundreds of artifacts on a site near Garcitas Creek that they thought were linked to the site of Fort St. Louis. In 1996 the eight bronze cannons, which had been buried by the Spanish in 1689, were recovered, confirming that the site, located on the Keeran Ranch in Victoria County, was the location of La Salle’s 1685–1688 camp.
