The French
Meanwhile, by the late 1600s, France rivaled Spain in the mercantilist sweepstakes. Voyages down the Mississippi River from French bases in Canada by explorers such as Joliet, Marquette, and La Salle, and subsequent French claims to the vast lands drained from the west by the Mississippi,which they dubbed Louisiana (and which included all of present-day Oklahoma except the Panhandle) in honor of their dictatorial monarch, Louis XIV-helped establish this enhanced French power. From the 1718 founding of New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, French traders and explorers flocked northwest through Oklahoma rivers in search of furs.
The French posed a grave threat to Spanish hegemony over present-day Oklahoma and, indeed, the entire western Mississippi River Valley. Their men proved to be active and vigorous travelers along rivers such as the Arkansas, Red, Canadian, Grand, and Verdigris. They formed alliances with influential Indian tribes such as the Comanches in the Southern Plains and the Wichitas in eastern Oklahoma, and in fact did not hesitate to intermarry with Indian girls. They also traded
a galaxy of items to the Indians, including clothing, tools, and trinkets, and-unlike the Spanish-weapons, ammunition, and whiskey.
Gradually, the French parlayed these practices into a loose control over most of present-day Oklahoma and the western Mississippi watershed. This ended, temporarily, in 1763, as England defeated the combined forces of Spain and France in the sprawling mercantilist Seven Years War, whose North American theater gained the name of the French and Indian War. That vast conflict exhausted all of its participants, including the English, who demanded the ceding of Florida by Spain.
Read the entire Oklahoma story in John J. Dwyer's The Oklahomans: The Story of Oklahoma and Its People volume 1 of a 2-part series on the 46th state and the people who make this state very special. |