RIVER BASIN SALVAGE PROGRAIVI — ROBERTS 547 



farther downstream was another site which had been both a military 

 fort and a trading post. Technically the two were not a single site 

 since their locations were separated by several hundred feet and they 

 belonged to different periods. Historically they are known by the 

 same name, Fort Lookout. The military post was built in 1856 and 

 was abandoned in 1857 when the garrison moved farther downstream 

 to the regimental headquarters at Fort Eandall. The company 

 quarters and officers' houses were dismantled, made into a raft, and 

 floated down the river to Fort Randall. Because so little was left, 

 the fonner location of the fort was not definitely known until a River 

 Basin Surveys party found and established identification of the site in 

 1950. At the same time the party noted the remains of a trading post 

 and did some diggmg in them. The Fort Lookout trading post had 

 long been a puzzling problem because different explorers had reported 

 it in widely separated locations. From a study of the records the 

 National Park Service historians concluded that there must have been 

 three posts bearing the name at different periods. Evidence from 

 the excavated site indicates that it represented Fort Lookout II of the 

 period circa 1833-1851. Maximilian in 1833 referred to it as "The 

 French Post," and Chittenden in 1840 mentions that Capt. Joseph 

 La Barge and Narcisse LeClerc had taken possession of the unoccupied 

 buildings at Fort Lookout. There seems to be some question concern- 

 ing the actual abandomnent of the post, but evidence found during 

 the digging indicated two occupations. It is known that an American 

 Fur Company factor was there in 1846 and a large number of Sioux 

 were camped nearby. It did not operate long thereafter because by 

 1851 it was reported to be in ruins. 



In South Carolina, before the waters of the Clark Hill Reservoir 

 covered the site, excavations in the ruins of Fort Charlotte showed 

 that the main foundations and a considerable portion of the lower 

 walls were still in place. The fort had been a square masonry struc- 

 ture measuring 170 feet on each side and had had bastions at the four 

 corners. Structures within the fortification must have been of a more 

 perishable nature because, with the exception of a small masonry 

 buildmg which must have been the powder magazine, no traces of 

 barracks or offices were found. Numerous nails and bits of glass and 

 china typical of that period were recovered, but there was little in the 

 way of militaiy objects. The digging showed that the fort had been 

 built on the site of a former Indian camp or village. Artifacts from 

 the aboriginal level suggested occupation by a group of Creeks who 

 undoubtedly had moved on a number of years prior to the erection of 

 tlie fort in 1766. It was placed there as a defense against the Creek 

 and Cherokee Indians who from time to time raided tlie Scotch-Irish, 

 French Huguenot, and German settlements of the Long Canes region 



