Strong Saint-Louis

The Strong Saint-Louis with the Texas, was founded in 1685 by the explorer French Rene Robert Cavelier of the Room and the members of its unfortunate colony on the banks of the Garcitas Creek, a few kilometers inside the grounds since the mouth of the Lavaca Bay. A Spanish forwarding led by Alonso de León falls on the remainders from the fort at the time of spring 1689, three or four months after the Indians Karankawa killed the majority of the French except for five children whom they captured.

History

The French arrived in the middle of the coast of Texas by accident. The colonists wished in fact to be established with the mouth of the the Mississippi but a bad calculation off-set them 600 km in the west in the Baie of Matagorda. The colony that they establish is hardly luckier than their navigation. Whereas they build small, but robust, extremely with the beams and the wood which they could save of the one their ships shipwrecked men, they are attacked by the diseases and malnutrition.

The Room, with the only ship which remains to him, Beautiful the , undertakes then research towards the east to try to find the Mississippi. Unfortunately for him, it is with more than 600 km of the river. At the time of one of these forwardings, its last boat, Beautiful the , is taken in a storm and is failed in bay of Matagorda in February 1686. During the third pedestrian forwarding, its 36 surviving fellow-members mutinent themselves and assassinate it the March 19th 1687, close to Navasota.

The twenty colonists remaining of Strong Saint-Louis survive until the end of 1688 or the beginning of 1689 when Karankawa attack. All are killed except for some children who are taken along in captivity. For Karankawa, French is of the intruders. When the Spanish soldiers arrive in April 1689, they find the fort ransacked and the remainders of three of the colonists. They give them a decent burial and burn what remains Strong Saint Louis with an aim of undoubtedly erasing any trace of the French presence. The Spaniards also bury the eight French guns, undoubtedly hope to return to seek them later. They will return to establish their clean Presidio on this site in 1722 but it did not find the guns.

Archaeological excavations

Historians and archeologists will discuss a long time exact site of Strong Saint Louis, some express doubts on the fact that the Spaniards beat to them presidio on its ruins as they claimed it. Archaeological research on the site of Garcitas Creek close to Texas Memorial Museum in 1950 puts at the day of the traces strong Spanish and many objects of French origin. But the French guns are not found, the doubt persists. It will be raised when a peasant found the guns with a metal detector on the site of Garcitas Creek. In 1996, archeologists of Texas Historical Commission are elected to excavate and document the place where the eight guns rest, aligned well which had not been born for 300 years.

This discovery put an end to the historical debate on the site of the fort and led to the research pushed concerning Strong Saint-Louis and the presidio by Texas Historical Commission (THC). Under the direction of Doctor Jim Bruseth and the assistance of the director of project Mike Davis, the archeologists of the THC excavated the site until in 1999. They charted the sites of the fort and the presidio and learned from new details concerning the two times of occupation. One of most important discovered was that of the tombs of three French buried by the Spaniards.

Homonymy

There exists or was many Saint-Louis forts:

the Fort Saint-Louis with the Quebec builds by Samuel de Champlain in 1620.
the Strong Saint-Louis (which was called in the beginning Extremely-Royal) with the Martinique, built in 1672 under the impulse of the General governor of the French West Indies Jean-Charles of Baath. See also List of the general governors of the French West Indies.

Sources

Strong Saint-Louis on texasbeyondhistory.net
the Beautiful one on thc.state.tx.us

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