Spanish Bluff (English)

n many details, President Jefferson's instructions to James Freeman were identical to the orders he had issued to Meriwether Lewis in June of 1803. Most notably, he wrote to both that "if at any time a superior force authorized or not authorized by a nation should be arrayed against your further passage and inflexibly determined to arrest it, you must decline its further pursuit and return."

On July 28, 1806, they found two superior forces arrayed against them. One was a contingent of about 700 Spanish soldiers under the command of Captain Don Francisco Viana, under orders to prevent the exploring party from proceeding any farther until the boundary between Louisiana and Spanish territory was agreed upon by their respective governments. Most of them were under cover on the elevated point from which this photograph was taken, a landmark about 615 miles from the mouth of the Red that folklore has dubbed Spanish Bluff.

The other was "not authorized by a nation." It was shallow water, and they were still 200 miles from the homeland of the Pani (Pawnee) Indians, where they had planned to set up an advance camp, and to purchase horses for the final trek to the headwaters of the Red River--which they still erroneously presumed would be in proximity to Santa Fe.

So, on July 30 the "Grand Excursion" started back downriver, secured horses from the Caddo Indians, marched overland around the Great Raft, arrived back at Natchitoches (NAK-uh-tosh) on August 23, and disbanded. Compared Lewis and Clark's, the Freeman-Custis expedition was a failure, and Thomas Jefferson did not wish to call widespread attention to it. Thus the story was quickly relegated to the footnotes of U.S. history--until Dan Flores' edition of the journals, Jefferson & Southwestern Exploration, was published by The University of Oklahoma Press in 1984.

Based on Dan Flores, J&SE, 199-207 and note 35

--Joseph Mussulman