I think that we are making great progress here. Please see my
insertions below.
Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA
----- Original Message -----
From: "aletheia kallos" <aletheiak@...>
To: <boundarypoint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 8:12 PM
Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Re: stretching the quest for a real stretchable
latex tripoint to stretch
> well ok i am very glad i asked then
> even if i seem to you driven when i am only mildly &
> playfully curious
> & might never have thought of this long forgotten
> quest again if the cleanup hadnt been called for in
> this mornings news
> & glad again even if you did feel forced to clean up &
> or answer for yourself
> which of course you werent
>
> & may i say again
> it again seems to me you still havent yet really begun
> to answer the question i actually asked & meant
I'm lost as to what you have "asked and meant" (other than for a
tripoint). If I haven't answered your question by the end of my
insertions, please plainly state it. I will gladly try to answer it.
> while admittedly offering or reoffering yet another
> titillating diversion
>
> & out in the sabine river yet this time rather than up
> the calcasieu
As I suppose you know, the source of the Calcasieu River is in
north-central Vernon Parish. From there northward, the Neutral Ground
boundary (as generally understood) wanders a bit, following various
streams here and there.
> but in looking again at your earlier map
> i do see more clearly now where the area of my
> uncertainty is focussed
My map (the one in the BP Files section) is based on the description of
the boundary in the book by Louis R. Nardini, Sr. cited earlier. This
book is a local history of the Natchitoches area. Nardini was know as
not the most careful historian, but this particular book is primarily a
collection of what purport to be original sources. For the boundaries
of the Neutral Ground, Nardini quotes from a letter by Peter Samuel
Davenport to Governor Claiborne in "the archives at Natchitoches." I
have searched in vain at the courthouse and the historical library at
Natchitoches for any such letter, so I have just had to take Nardini's
word. He gives the boundary from the mouth of the Calcasieu River to
the source of Arroyo Hondo as seems to be widely accepted. From there
he seems to go due north a short distance to Bayou Pierre and up it to
the 32nd parallel, then west along it to the Sabine, then down to the
Gulf of Mexico. This description, however, is not perfectly rendered in
Nardini's book. The book presents one particular line of type twice,
and I have always wondered if another line that should have been
included was left out or if there were other scramblings. Being unable
to find the original document, I had to go with what I had.
Now that you have shown us the J. Villasana Haggard article in
SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, which I have never before seen, it is
my opinion that the description at the beginning of Haggard's seventh
paragraph is the correct version of what Nardini so poorly rendered.
(It matches, right down to the phrase about Arroyo Hondo fading into
Sibley's Marsh.) The critical difference that seems to have been
deleted in Nardini's confused typography is the ascent of Bayou Pierre,
not to the 32nd parallel, but to the west bank of Bayou Pierre Lake at
Bayou Pierre Settlement. Haggard, in his ninth paragraph, then goes in
a straight diagonal line from the settlement to the confluence of the
32rd parallel and the 94th meridian on the Sabine (near modern
Logansport). I will henceforth countenance Haggard and not Nardini!
If you will abandon the Google cache of Haggard's article and go to the
July 1945 issue of the SHQ at http://tinyurl.com/ffqm9 (scrolling down
about one-third of the long page), you will find that you can roll your
mouse over the blue footnote reference numbers in the text and get a box
with the source. Haggard's source for the eastern boundary at footnote
reference 7 is a letter of September 18, 1806, by Salcedo [Spanish
military officer] to Claiborne [Governor of the Territory of Orleans]
found in Volume 200, pages 134-141 of Hacket's transcriptions of the
Archivo General Indias, Provincias Internas. Obviously, Davenport (as
quoted by Nardini) and Salcedo (as quoted by Haggard) were singing off
the same page in their respective letters to Governor Claiborne.
> for i find i am not really even able to follow you as
> far north as the 32nd parallel yet
> whether by the route you show on that map ascending
> bayou pierre
> as it seems from this distance
> or by the slightly more westerly route you seem to
> favor in todays analysis
> ascending the sabine red drainage divide
My route north of the source of Arroyo Hondo (which you correctly show
in your TopoZone link below) goes due north to Bayou Pierre (the stream)
and then up the bayou. This was my understanding of this part of the
limits of the Neutral Ground when I made the map and it is today. The
"slightly more westerly route" on the divide, of which I wrote Friday,
is the historic boundary of the French claim to Louisiana as the land
drained by the Mississippi River. This divide would be the historic
boundary beyond wherever the northern limit of the Neutral Ground
happened to be. That is the only context in which I intended to put
forward the divide. It was not one of the limits of the Neutral Ground.
> & really almost no matter by which route
> if indeed either
>
> for my more pressing questions really are
> on what authority do you deliberately place the
> northeast corner of the neutral ground anywhere on the
> 32nd parallel
Nardini's now-known-to-be-flawed typography! The northeast corner
should be about nine miles farther northwestward up the bayou at the
Bayou Pierre Settlement on Bayou Pierre Lake.
> & on what authority then proceed to extend its
> northern limit westward along that parallel as far
> west as the sabine & or 94th meridian
In this latter respect, I am now in agreement with Haggard that the
northern limit of the Neutral Ground runs diagonally from Bayou Pierre
Settlement to the specified geocord confluence near Logansport on the
Sabine.
> for that really is the bigger part of the entire
> question of
> how exactly do you get the neutral ground from the
> natchitoches adaes area to the logansport area
Answered in insertions above.
> let alone beyond
>
> for i assume the little horned proruption at your
> northwest corner is a slip of the pen rather than
> anything deliberate
You assume correctly, except that it was a slip of the computer mouse.
The drawing was done digitally.
> but that everything up to that point is quite
> deliberate
It was, but it now stands to be corrected in light of Haggard in lieu of
Nardini.
> or is it
>
>
> here is how someone else gets there
> http://www.enlou.com/maps/1805territorymap.htm
> following the area outlined in black & labeled neutral
> ground
> but i have no more confidence in this map than in
> yours much beyond arroyo hondo
Beyond Arroyo Hondo, that map seems to follow Bayou Pierre, but it never
knows where to stop doing so. It follows the eastern and northern
boundaries of De Soto Parish all the way to Texas. That parish boundary
dates from 1843, so it is of no consequence to the present discussion.
> for i do see the source of arroyo hondo here at around
> 31d47m30s
> http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=31.79261&lon=-93.19231&s=500&size=l&u=6&datum=nad27&layer=DRG
> as stipulated by some unknown authority toward the end
> here
> http://www.enlou.com/places/neutralground.htm
> but i dont know what is meant there by the bayou
> pierre settlement
Haggard's source describes the Bayou Pierre Settlement as being on Bayou
Pierre Lake (really a swamp) shown here: http://tinyurl.com/h6e2g .
> & i could just as easily imagine stopping the
> specified due north line where it first reaches bayou
> pierre in about nlat 31d49m17s here
> http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=31.82148&lon=-93.19291&s=500&size=l&u=6&datum=nad27&layer=DRG
> or where it reaches the red river at about nlat
> 31d53m20s here
> http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=31.88885&lon=-93.19413&s=500&size=l&u=6&datum=nad27&layer=DRG
> as stipulated by some other unknown authority in
> footnote 7 here
> http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:xgWTjE0DeCAJ:www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v049/n1/contrib_DIVL798.html+%22bayou+pierre+settlement%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=safari
> or else
> running it as shown in the equally questionable but at
> least historical map at the very end of the above link
That map is an accurate depiction of the limits of the Neutral Ground as
Haggard has reconstructed them from his historic sources.
> etc
> etc
> because there must be other versions of the northern
> reaches of the neutral ground available too
>
>
> & beyond that
> i do see bus&ss at least appearing to favor the
> drainage divide on the louisiana state historical
> diagram & the louisiana purchase diagram
> while mentioning in text that spain still didnt
> recognize the american claim west of the mississippi
> river til 1819
> which i trust is just a misstatement for
> west of the red river til 1819
> or west of the sabine red drainage divide til 1819
> or west of a line running parallel to the red but a
> few miles west of it
> etc
> yikes
>
> but in any case i do understand there was some
> consensus about the sabine red drainage divide
> at least approximately
> in those latitudes during those years
>
> so i suppose i am prepared to accept some point upon
> or near that divide as the answer to my question
The divide would intersect Haggard's diagonal northern boundary of the
Neutral Ground approximately three miles west-northwest of downtown
Mansfield. I would nominate that as your tripoint.
> but i dont undertand how the 32nd parallel could have
> come into play
> except as someones rationalization & sidestepping of
> the apparent
> f a c t
> that the neutral ground actually had no northern limit
> nor perhaps even any eastern limit much beyond arroyo
> hondo
See Haggard's sixth paragraph.
[End of insertions.]
> or i am deceived
>
> & for this reason i see not even any stretchable latex
> tripoint yet but just a void
>
>
> now you may say
> well isnt that silly & pointless
>
> but i say
> yes it certainly is
> &
> for lack of a real closing line & a real tripoint the
> whole idea of a neutral ground or of any territory or
> zone of any kind is lost at a certain point
>
> so it is actually rather important as well as rather
> silly to stretch this latex tripoint & this quest for
> it
>
> --- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "Lowell G.
> McManus" <lgm@...> wrote:
>>
>> The map that I promised was a map of the 1806-1819
> de facto Neutral
>> Ground, worked out as a practical solution between
> the American and
>> Spanish military officers in the field (quite
> independent of their
>> political bosses higher up). It is found in the BP
> Files section with
>> the name neutral.jpg and is explained in the last
> two paragraphs of BP
>> post 14285 at your third link below.
>>
>> I did not indicate any tripoint between the Neutral
> Ground and the
>> remainders of American Louisiana and Spanish Texas
> because of
>> uncertainty in the location of the international
> boundary north of the
>> Neutral Ground. Indeed, it was that same
> uncertainty that necessitated
>> both the Neutral Ground in the first instance and
> the Adams-de Onís
>> treaty that would replace it with a de jure boundary
> in the second. The
>> only reason that the de facto Neutral Ground was not
> erected farther
>> north was that the land north of the 32nd parallel
> was not yet the
>> subject of much interest (navigation on the Red
> River being blocked by
>> the "Great Raft," a 150-mile log jam that was
> removed by 1839).
>>
>> However, if you are driven to find a tripoint (which
> you undoubtedly
>> are), I, as a resident of the former Neutral Ground,
> can offer some
>> analysis that might be helpful.
>>
>> In the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the USA bought
> from France the French
>> claim to Louisiana, without specifying any western
> boundary. Most
>> strictly, that could be interpreted historically as
> the land west of the
>> Mississippi River that drained into the same. This
> means that the
>> drainage divide between the basins of the Red and
> Sabine rivers would
>> have been the boundary. The USA was desirous of the
> most liberal
>> (western) interpretation of the boundary of
> Louisiana as it could put
>> over on the Spanish. Thus, the 1804 creation of the
> Territory of
>> Orleans was "to extend west to the western boundary
> of the said
>> cession." In 1812 when Louisiana was admitted to
> the Union, its western
>> boundary was specified at the middle of the Sabine
> River to the 32nd
>> parallel, and from there due north. Note that this
> was in the midst of
>> the life span of the de facto military Neutral
> Ground and was seven
>> years before the 1819 Adams-de Onís treaty would
> place the de jure
>> US-Spanish boundary on the west bank of the Sabine
> River to the 32nd
>> parallel and thence northward. So, it is clear
> that, in 1812, the
>> Congress was admitting into the Union prospectively
> the western fringes
>> of Louisiana that it hoped eventually to obtain de
> jure. The US waited
>> until after the 1819 treaty was fully ratified in
> 1821 before it
>> occupied the erstwhile Neutral Ground militarily
> with the establishment
>> of Fort Jesup in 1822.
>>
>> So, if you forced me to draw you a tripoint at the
> northern end of the
>> Neutral Ground, I would place it in De Soto Parish
> at the intersection
>> of the Sabine-Red drainage divide with the 32nd
> parallel, centered
>> roughly six miles southeast of Mansfield. Actually,
> the complexity of
>> the drainage divide in that vicinity seems that it
> would produce three
>> tripoints, with a Spanish exclave surrounded by the
> USA and the Neutral
>> Ground. Of course, it never came to that.
>>
>> Of more fascination to me is the anomaly that
> existed in the western
>> half of the Sabine River. Since the 1812 admission
> of Louisiana had
>> prematurely placed its western boundary at the
> middle of the river, and
>> the 1819 treaty placed the international boundary on
> the west bank, that
>> left the western half of the Sabine as unorganized
> territory of the
>> United States until 1848. That's when the Congress
> authorized the State
>> of Texas (annexed three years earlier) to extend its
> jurisdiction to the
>> middle of Sabine Pass, Sabine Lake, and the Sabine
> River to the 32nd
>> parallel. That narrow part of the State of Texas,
> in which I swam three
>> weeks ago, was never part of the Republic of Texas!
>>
>> Lowell G. McManus
>> Leesville, Louisiana, USA
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "aletheia kallos" <aletheiak@...>
>> To: <boundarypoint@yahoogroups.com>
>> Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 11:52 AM
>> Subject: [BoundaryPoint] stretching the quest for a
> real stretchable
>> latex tripoint to stretch
>>
>>
>> > this fresh news item about an imminent neutral
> ground
>> > cleanup party
>> >
> http://www.2theadvocate.com/features/travel/4201376.html
>> > jogged my memory back to this excellent golden
> oldie
>> >
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BoundaryPoint/message/14259
>> > which you may also recall
>> > along with its equally illustrious second shoe
>> > dropping
>> >
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BoundaryPoint/message/14285
>> >
>> > but which still left one guessing & reaching &
>> > stretching for any handle at all on the elusive
> but
>> > allegedly real
>> > de facto latex neutral ground tripoint
>> > which actually lived
>> > or else was really stillborn
>> > if thats not stretching it in this case too
>> > during the first decades of the 19th century
>> >
>> > my guess is
>> > the quest got stretched into an unresolved
> sawanabori
>> > of the calcasieu
>> > which however interesting & possibly even
> contributory
>> > to an ultimate resolution of this supposed
> lalatxtx
>> > tripoint
>> > came to a dead stop there in any case
>> > like a snapped elastic band
>> >
>> > but all efforts to pin la latex tex down thus far
>> > reported here
>> > i believe
>> > & all my subsequent efforts too
>> > have resulted only in establishing a vague triarea
> &
>> > triline at the farthest reaches of the lalatxtx
> condo
>> > or nondo
>> > extending perhaps all the way from about zwolle to
>> > about logansport
>> > & thus perhaps comprising several hundreds of
> square
>> > miles of 1806lalatx1819 territorial uncertainty
> too
>> > rather than any specific & exact 1806lalatxtx1819
>> > tripoint
>> >
>> > like say very roughly all the sabine riverfront on
>> > this map
>> >
> http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=31.93501&lon=-93.93668&s=250&size=l&u=4&datum=nad27&layer=DRG
>> > or better yet if zoomed out once or twice
>> >
>> >
>> > but did i miss the promised tripoint treasure map
>> > or hasnt it surfaced yet
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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