Where the River Changed: The Great Raft, Caddo Displacement, and the Making of the Red River Valley

This dissertation investigates the intersection of environmental engineering and Indigenous displacement in the Red River Valley during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Centered on the river corridor between Natchitoches, Louisiana and Fulton, Arkansas, the project explores how federal decisions—especially the removal of the Great Raft and the negotiation of the 1835 Treaty with the Caddo—permanently altered the region’s hydrology, land tenure, and cultural landscape. The analysis demonstrates that these efforts worked together to open the landscape to navigation, privatization, and settlement.

For decades, raft country posed a barrier to large-scale land claims. Its log-choked waterways, raft lakes, and swamps made the land difficult to survey and unattractive to Anglo-American settlers. The Caddo, however, adapted to this dynamic environment, using its inaccessibility to maintain cultural autonomy. As scholars such as Jim Tiller and Dayna Lee have noted, the homeland’s hydrological complexity allowed the Caddo to preserve political independence and sacred geography well into the nineteenth century. By the early 1830s, federal authorities recognized that the region’s environmental protections had to be dismantled in order to make the land accessible to speculators and settlers. Removal of the Great Raft and negotiation of the 1835 treaty proceeded together. One altered the terrain; the other redefined legal possession.

The first research question examines how the removal of the Great Raft after 1835 reshaped the hydrology of the Red River Valley and what archival sources reveal about its consequences. Sedimentological research by Torres and Harrelson confirms that raft removal drained wetlands, eliminated raft lakes, and destabilized flood regimes. Reports by Captain Henry Shreve, early land survey plats, and General Land Office maps track these environmental transformations and their direct impact on areas formerly occupied by the Caddo.

A second research question draws on the early nineteenth-century ethnographic records of Dr. John Sibley. His 1805 correspondence, preserved in the American State Papers and federal manuscript collections, documents Caddo village locations, ceremonial practices, and diplomatic functions prior to American expansion. These sources offer a rare glimpse into Caddo spatial and cultural organization before the river and the land around it were forcibly redefined. This component of the project reconstructs what Dayna Lee has called the sacred geography of the Caddo homeland.

The third question focuses on the 1835 Treaty with the Caddo, analyzing how its language used hydrological features to define cession boundaries and how settlers and land surveyors moved quickly to occupy the region regardless. Although the treaty appears in the Statutes at Large, further examination of patent records, GLO plats, and land acquisition maps reveals how former Caddo lands were absorbed into the legal and economic apparatus of the United States.

The fourth research question evaluates how early twentieth-century Corps of Engineers planning documents framed Indigenous presence and cultural resource impacts. While often focused on construction logistics, some records do note the existence of mounds, cemeteries, and former villages. These records indicate how such sites were interpreted—or ignored—within early federal land management practices and reveal the implications of limited cultural awareness in shaping later compliance policies.

The fifth and final research question addresses the cultural and archaeological consequences of the Red River Waterway Project during the mid-to-late twentieth century. By this time, federal agencies operated under emerging preservation laws, including the National Historic Preservation Act. Mitigation reports, contractor files, and internal planning records from the project show an uneven record of site documentation and consultation. While tribal involvement was minimal during this era, project records document evolving understandings of cultural resource responsibilities. This portion of the dissertation considers how engineering projects in the twentieth century completed a transformation of the landscape that had begun with the removal of the Great Raft.

The methodology relies on a combination of documentary analysis and spatial reconstruction. Primary sources include federal treaties, land survey plats, engineering reports, and early ethnographic accounts. The analysis incorporates GLO cartography and patent records to trace the legal redefinition of land ownership. Archival research is focused at the National Archives and in published government collections. In addition to documentary sources, the project integrates landscape-scale spatial analysis to evaluate hydrological change, settlement shifts, and the loss of cultural landmarks over time. While rooted in traditional historical methods, the study draws from models in environmental history, Indigenous studies, and settler colonial theory.

The analysis benefits from firsthand familiarity with the region’s archaeological record and long-term patterns of federal land management. Work experience in East Texas and engagement with the protection of Caddo sites has informed both the questions asked and the methods selected. Academic training in both history and anthropology supports a multidisciplinary approach that connects documentary archives with living landscapes.

This dissertation contributes to multiple fields of inquiry. It reframes the Red River not just as a physical boundary but as a historical actor in the displacement of Indigenous peoples. It also asks how rivers and landscapes were transformed to serve national expansion and how those transformations were encoded into law, memory, and infrastructure. By revisiting the coordinated removal of the Great Raft and the Caddo people, the dissertation offers a deeper understanding of how power was built into the river itself.