History of the Great Raft

1. The Great Raft on the Red River

For hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans, the environment of the Red River was affected by a phenomenon unique among all the great rivers in North America. An enormous log jam that extended 100 to 150 miles clogged the lower part of the river in what is now Northwest Louisiana and Northeast Texas.



This log jam was known as the Great Raft.





2. Formation of the Great Raft

The Red River alluvial valley contains the most erodible soils of any major river valley in the United States. For centuries before the arrival of the Industrial Age and westward migration, periodic flooding of the Red River carved into the forests that lined the river’s banks. As they were torn loose from the soil, trees filled the river and formed a series of intermittent log jams from the present-day Arkansas-Louisiana border to the area of Natchitoches, Louisiana.



The Great Raft raised the banks of the river, created new distributaries, and spawned numerous lakes along lower elevations of rivers and streams flowing into the Red. Many of these lakes have disappeared. But Caddo, Cross, Wallace, Bistineau, and Black Bayou lakes were preserved by the construction of dams in the early 20th Century. These lakes are still known today as Great Raft Lakes.



The Great Raft was not stationary. It was a living thing. As pieces of the raft deteriorated or broke up and floated downstream, new logs and debris were added to the upper end. Over time, although the raft was constantly changing, its overall length remained consistent – between 130 and 150 miles. For centuries, the Caddo Indians were the great beneficiaries of this phenomenon. The raft afforded them protection from competing tribes. They also understood and successfully exploited the ever-changing nature of their environment caused by the Great Raft. As log jams in the river shifted and stream courses changed, left behind were fertile, open fields where the Caddos grew abundant crops of corn, beans, squash and other foods.





3. Discovery of the Great Raft

Prehistoric Caddo artifacts and other archaeological evidence indicate that a dense population thrived along the Red River from the Great Bend area near Fulton, Arkansas, south to area of the Great Raft before European contact. The first intrusion by Europeans was the Hernando de Soto Expedition in 1542, under the leadership of Luis de Moscoso following de Soto’s death near the Mississippi River.



In part because of the conditions caused by the Great Raft, the Caddos remained largely untouched by Europeans for another 150 years before an expedition under the direction of the first Spanish Governor of Texas, Domingo Teran de los Rios, made contact with them in 1691. That expedition produced the first map of a Caddo settlement on the Red River that illustrates that the Caddos occupied small farmsteads and family compounds that seem best suited to exploit sites created by the meandering river and its distributaries.





4. Exploration of the Great Raft

After the United States won independence from Great Britain, western expansion began. Early settlers and pioneers began migrating into the French-held territory between the Mississippi and Red Rivers. Following the Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore the Missouri River and beyond to the Pacific Coast, and, in 1806, the lesser known Freeman and Custis Expedition to seek the headwaters of the Red River.



Before the Expedition was turned back by Spanish troops in the vicinity of Oklahoma, they encountered the Great Raft on the river north of Natchitoches and described the river as a concentration of cedar, cottonwood, and cypress trees covered in bushes and weeds so thick that “a man could walk over it in any direction.” It was, Freeman wrote, “an almost impenetrable mass.” Freeman was convinced that no human effort could ever dislodge the Great Raft from the river.



Nevertheless, riverboat men ventured into the waters of the Red and searched for routes that would reach the Arkansas Territory, where the U S Army had established several forts and had difficulty and considerable expense supplying them by overland routes. Other interests complained that the Great Raft stifled commerce and development, helped the Indians dominate trade, and discouraged white settlement. In 1828, Congress authorized $25,000 for the removal of the Great Raft. After several unsuccessful attacks on the Great Raft ended in frustration, one man emerged who was convinced the Great Raft could be removed.





5. The Clearing of the Great Raft