Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe

Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe[1][2] (4 February 1683 in Saint-Malo – 26 September 1765) was a French explorer who is credited with using the name "Little Rock" in 1722 for a stone outcropping on the bank of the Arkansas River used by early travelers as a landmark.

In 1718, La Harpe left France, along with 40 men, and established a trading post in April 1719 on the Red River near what is now Texarkana, Texas.

[3] (This same year, another French explorer, Claude Charles Du Tisne also journeyed west to visit a different Wichita village in Kansas.)

He then turned north to cross the rugged east–west ridges of the Ouachita Mountains which rise more than 300 metres (980 ft) above the intervening valleys.

Opinions differ as to its location, but after a dig at the Lasley Vore Site in 1988, University of Tulsa anthropologist George H. Odell claimed that archaeological evidence points to it being located about 13 miles (21 km) south of Tulsa, Oklahoma near the western bank of the Arkansas River.

The presence of various Wichita tribes suggests that the village was a melting pot and probably a trade center for the entire region.

En route, an Indian man and woman traveling with him were killed by Apaches and La Harpe became lost in the mountains and had to eat his horses.

[6] According to the Handbook of Texas Online, la Harpe's ship, Subtile, had been destined for Matagorda, winding up in Galveston Bay only by mistake.