The Red River, also known as the Red River of the South, is a major river in the southern United States of America. The river was named for the red bed of its watershed. It is one of several rivers with this name.
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History of the Red River
Native American cultures along the river were diverse, and may have used specialised techniques for the different environments (see article: Palena River).
At the time of European contact, the eastern Piney Woods were dominated by the many historic tribes of the Caddoan Confederacy.
They had abundant game and fish, as well as good land for growing staple crops. The middle part of the Red River was dominated by the Wichita and Tonkawa.
This area was a prairie where the Indians built portable and temporary teepees for shelter.
They practised limited agriculture and followed game in seasonal nomadic hunting cycles. The Lipan Apache Plains Division dominated the area west of the Red River until the 18th century, when they were displaced by the invading Comanche from the north.
In 1806, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Red River Foundation to explore parts of the new Louisiana Purchase lands by travelling up the Red River.
He said in a letter to William Dunbar that it was “indeed, next to the Missouri, the most interesting water on the Mississippi”.
After navigating the maze of bayous at the river’s confluence and anchoring the floating wooden “Great Raft”, the expedition was stopped by the Spanish near present-day New Boston, Texas.
In 1805, Mr Zebulon Pike, on a mission to locate the source of the Red River, ascended the Arkansas River, made his way to the part of its mouth that turned out to be the Rio Bravo, and was sent home by the Spanish authorities.
A more successful exploration of the upper reaches of the river to its two sources was the 1851 venture under Captain Randolph Barnes Marcy, assisted by Brevet Captain George B. McClellan. The latter was an important general in the American Civil War.
In April 1814, it was Captain Henry Miller Shreve who sailed and explored the river and took a steamboat, the Enterprise, up the Red River (see article: Candelaria River).
Fulton and Livingston, who claimed the exclusive right to navigate the waters of Louisiana by steamboat, sued Shreve in the District Court of New Orleans.
Features
The Red River basin covers 65,590 square miles (169,900 km2) and is the southernmost river system of the Great Plains.
Its watershed is in the states of Texas and Oklahoma, but also includes parts of Arkansas and Louisiana.
Its watershed is characterised by flat, fertile agricultural land with few large cities.
The Red River basin is very arid and receives little precipitation. As a result, much of the river across the Texas-Oklahoma border is intermittent, and its flow varies greatly until it makes its big turn south into Arkansas.
Most agriculture in the basin is supported by groundwater, which is recharged by rainfall and river flow.
In its lower reaches, the river flows through a series of wetlands where its flow slows dramatically.
Location and map of the Red River
The Red River is the second largest drainage basin in the southern Great Plains. It rises in two branches (forks) in the Texas Panhandle and flows east to form the border between the states of Texas and Oklahoma.
It forms a short border between Texas and Arkansas before entering Arkansas, turning south near Fulton, Arkansas, and flowing into Louisiana, where it joins the Atchafalaya River.
Red River Basin
The total length of the Red River is 1,360 miles (2,190 km), with an average flow of over 57,000 cubic feet per second (1,600 m3/s) at its mouth.
Although once a tributary of the Mississippi River, the Red River is now a tributary of the Atchafalaya River, a distributary of the Mississippi River that flows separately into the Gulf of Mexico. It is connected to the Mississippi by the Old River Control Structure.
The south bank of the Red River formed part of the border between the United States and Mexico from the Treaty of Adams-Onís (effective 1821) until the annexation of Texas and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Watch the Red River video below to learn more.