Fort St. Francis

Fort St. Francis was erected by the French near the St. Francis River in 1738 during a military campaign against the Chickasaw Indians.

French authorities launched a campaign against the Chickasaw, who were allied with English colonists, in 1736 that resulted in the disastrous defeat of the French and their allied Indians. Undeterred, they planned another, larger campaign two years later against the Chickasaw.

The French began building a force that included colonists and Native Americans from as far away as Canada, 120 French troops, thirty Creole and European workmen, and likely several enslaved men led by Captain Jacques Coustilhas. The force was dispatched on September 6, 1738, to establish a base near the St. Francis River from which the campaign against the Chickasaw could be organized.

Arriving in December 1738, they cleared a tract of forest an eighth of a league from the mouth of the St. Francis River and began work under the direction of engineer Bernard De Verges, Coustilhas having died on the journey north. They built Fort St. Francis—a square stockade with four bastions—to house officers’ quarters, barracks for the enlisted men, a powder magazine, and a three-oven bakery.

After a few months, the French realized that Fort St. Francis—located on saturated lowlands with no roads—would not suffice as a base for operations against the Chickasaw, and so they constructed Fort Assumption on the east side of the Mississippi River where Memphis, Tennessee, is located today. Fort St. Francis continued to serve as a storage site and bakery for the expedition.

The French ultimately negotiated a peace treaty with the Chickasaw, who agreed to expel the English, among other details, and were back in New Orleans by late April 1740. The French commander “ordered both Fort Assumption and Fort St. Francis to be breached so that they would not be available for reuse by the Chickasaw at a later date.”

Archeologist Ann M. Early, noting that the area around the mouth of the St. Francis River remains rural and largely undeveloped in the twenty-first century, surmised that the site of Fort St. Francis might still survive “if the river has not claimed it.”

For additional information:
Dickinson, Samuel Dorris. “Colonial Arkansas Place Names.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 48 2 (Summer 1989): 137–168.

———. “Lake Mitchegamas and the St. Francis.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 43 (Autumn 1984): 197–207.

Early, Ann M. “The Great Gathering: The Second French-Chickasaw War in the Mississippi Valley and the Potential for Archeology.” In French Colonial Archeology in the Southeast and Caribbean, edited by Kenneth G. Kelly and Meredith D. Hardy. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017.

Newhall, David S. “Chickasaw War.” Mississippi Encyclopedia. https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/chickasaw-war/ (accessed October 31, 2024).

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System