European Influence Begins
The written page has always changed history as well as recorded it.
It is no less so with the founding of Natchitoches.

Three identical letters written by a Spanish priest
were the catalyst which began our city.
Father Hidalgo wrote the letters to the governor of the
Louisiana territory of New France because the
Spanish government would not fund
his intended mission on the eastern border of Texas territory.


He believed that if the French crossed the border,
his financing for the new mission would be assured.
Delivered by Indian courier and dated January 17, 1711, only one of the
letters reached far away Mobile and Le Mothe de Cadillac.

The offer "to come and trade" at Hidalgo's mission
was an opportunity the French could not afford to pass by.

And so it was that Louis Juchereau de St. Denis
led a party of twenty-four Frenchmen, and as many Indians,
to the land of the Natchitoches to establish an outpost.

One member of this brave group was ship's carpenter
Andre' Penicaut, who kept a journal of the trip.
Although many historians question some of the dates and
distances in this work, Penicaut commented on their halt,

".at this spot we came upon the rest of the Nassitoches,
who had come overland and got there ahead of us.
They had with them a savage nation of their friends -
some two hundred men without their women and children
These savages were named Doustiony."

"Two or three days after we had rested,
M de St. Denis had some hatchets and picks given to the
Doustionys and to the Nassitoches. They cut down trees for us
and brought them to us so that we could construct two houses.
We built these in their villages,
one to contain our merchandise
and the other, the larger, to shelter us."

St. Denis left a number of his party at the warehouses to guard
their merchandise while he set out to find the Spanish
and Father Hidalgo's mission.

His journey created the El Camino Reale, or King's Road,
and led him to San Juan Bautista. There the Spaniards
discounted his passport and regarded him as a spy.


He was taken to Mexico City
where he was imprisoned for an indefinite time.

But St. Denis was a great diplomat as well as a soldier.
Upon his release, he married the beautiful senorita Emanuella Ramon,
and leda party of Spanish soldiers and missionaries back
across the trail he had blazed west.

The Spanish built the mission at Los Adias fifteen miles west
of the Natchitoches Post, fulfilling Father Hidalgo's plans
of expansion.

St. Denis eventually brought his bride to Natchitoches.
Their marriage, and St. Denis' diplomacy,
let to trade relations between two oft at war world powers.
It also became the beginning of a whole new culture in Natchitoches,
an aristocratic society which would emerge generations later with a fierce
pride in their Creole heritage.
Sources: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana,
Fleur De Lys and Calumet - McWilliams.