Bernard de La Harpe 1719

The villages La Harpe was riding toward belonged to the people now organized as the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. He reached them on the Arkansas River with nine other men, three of them Caddo guides, and 22 horses carrying trade goods. He described a town of about 6,000 people, mostly Tawakoni with some Taovaya, who honored the party with a calumet ceremony of feasting, gifts, songs and dancing, and he stayed ten days. In 1988 archaeologist George Odell excavated a Wichita village site south of present Tulsa and found French gun parts he thought La Harpe could have brought.

What the plaque says

Bernard de La Harpe 1719 This French explorer, seeking trade with the Wichita Indians, came north from Louisiana. On August 25, 1719, he camped three miles east of Hartshorne and the next day, following Gains Creek, passed here on his way to the Canadian River and the Wichita villages to the north. Oklahoma Historical Society 189-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Robbers Cave State Park — 7.4 mi
  A sandstone cave in the Sans Bois Mountains north of Wilburton, wrapped in outlaw stories, and the park that Boy Scouts, prison labor and the CCC built around it.
• Tvshkahomma Capitol Museum — 20 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's 1884 brick capitol in the Kiamichi valley, seat of its senate, house and supreme court until statehood, now the Nation's museum and the ground of its Labor Day Festival.

More markers nearby

• Mountain Station — 4.2 mi
• Riddle's Station — 10 mi
• Choctaw Capitols — 19 mi
• The Choctaw Nation Capitol Building — 20 mi