Arkansas

B

1

The de Soto Expedition

Landing his army in Florida in 1539, de Soto explored the area of the southeastern United States, searching for mineral treasure. After crossing the Mississippi in 1541, the expedition explored Arkansas for gold and silver. Finding none, they turned back, and de Soto died in 1542. Some archaeologists and historians believe he died in Arkansas. His soldiers furtively sank his body in a river in fear that the local people would desecrate it if they found it. He had made enemies all along his route by his attempts to dominate the residents and confiscate food and supplies from them.

The expedition left in 1543, and only a pitiful remnant survived to return to their starting point in Mexico. The expedition was also a disaster for the Native Americans because the Spanish brought European diseases to which they had no immunity. A severe population decline soon occurred, almost certainly caused by the spread of these diseases. The central Mississippi Valley was almost empty of people by the time the French arrived in 1673.

B

2

French Activities

The Spanish did not return after 1543. France, however, was interested in exploring the Mississippi as a route for trade. In 1673 a French party of seven explorers, led by Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet, came down the river from the north. At the southern end of their journey they visited the four villages of a people now called the Quapaw, who lived where the Arkansas River flows into the Mississippi. One of their villages had a name recorded as Arkansea, which the French called Arkansas. That name was given to the river, the region, and later the state.

The Quapaw spoke a language of the Siouan group, and most of the languages in that group were spoken near the Great Lakes or the Atlantic coast. Thus historians and archaeologists are divided as to whether the Quapaw were a remnant of the Mississippian culture or had recently come to the area.

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Tempted by the prospect of a trading empire on the Mississippi, French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, continued where Marquette left off. From Arkansas he followed the Mississippi to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico in 1682. On the basis of this exploration he claimed all the land drained by the Mississippi for France, naming it Louisiane (in English, Louisiana). La Salle granted land in Arkansas to his trusted lieutenant Henri de Tonty, who in 1686 founded a trading station at Poste des Arkansas (Arkansas Post), near the Quapaw villages. This was the first French settlement west of the Mississippi and in the lower Mississippi Valley.

Besides the Quapaw, the French encountered other Native American peoples. The most powerful were the Osage, a Siouan-speaking tribe who lived in Missouri but sought to exclude the Quapaw and others from hunting in western Arkansas. Osage dominance limited the growth of the little colony at Arkansas Post. On the Red River lived the Caddo, who were probably descended from the peoples encountered by de Soto. They were weakened by disease and about 1805 were driven out of the state into Texas by Osage aggression. Another small tribe, the Taensa, had been pushed into the present-day state of Louisiana by 1673.

B

3

Mississippi Bubble

In 1717 a Scottish financier named John Law, director of a French bank, evolved an elaborate plan to populate Louisiana with white settlers and exploit the wealth of the Mississippi Valley. He sent white colonists and black slaves to Arkansas Post and planned to establish a duchy there for himself. The project, which came to be known as the Mississippi Bubble, collapsed in 1720 because Law issued thousands of shares of overpriced stock to finance it. Most of the colonists abandoned Arkansas Post and camped on the lower Mississippi above the new city of New Orleans.

Later, the colonists at Arkansas Post supplied bear oil, tallow, buffalo meat, skins, and furs to the New Orleans market. Other settlements arose at the mouth of the White River in 1766; at Hopefield, opposite the future site of Memphis, in 1797; and at Helena, also in 1797. But settlement was slow, and by 1800 Arkansas had fewer than 400 settlers.

C

Louisiana Purchase

In 1762 France ceded Louisiana to Spain; at the end of the French and Indian War (1754-1763), the part east of the Mississippi was ceded to Great Britain. After the Spanish joined the French and Americans against Great Britain in the American Revolution (1775-1783), a British force attacked Arkansas Post in 1783. The attack was unsuccessful, and the territory remained in Spanish hands at the end of the Revolutionary War. It was returned to France in 1800 by the Treaty of San Ildefonso. Three years later the region, including all the land that is now Arkansas, was bought by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. In 1806 most of the present state became the Arkansas District.

Further explorations were made, mainly along the rivers, and new settlements were established. In 1804 President Thomas Jefferson sent William Dunbar and George Hunter to survey the Ouachita River and the Hot Springs area. In 1806 Lieutenant James B. Wilkinson, the son of territorial governor James Wilkinson, explored the Arkansas River from Kansas down to the Mississippi, and in 1818 Henry Rowe Schoolcraft traveled down the White River.

In 1812 the Arkansas District became Arkansas County of the Territory of Missouri. In 1819 the separate Arkansas Territory was organized, with its capital at Arkansas Post.

D

Arkansas Territory

In 1821 Little Rock, a new town 128 km (80 mi) up the Arkansas River from Arkansas Post, became the territorial capital. In 1824 and 1825 the Osage and Quapaw concluded treaties surrendering their lands in Arkansas. However, after 1817 the federal government moved parts of the Cherokee and Choctaw nations into western Arkansas from east of the Mississippi. This caused conflict between whites and Native Americans and hindered white settlement. After the Choctaw and Cherokee, in 1825 and 1828 respectively, traded their lands in Arkansas for new lands in the west, settlement proceeded rapidly. As the whites came in, the Quapaw were moved—first to Louisiana and, in the mid-1800s, to a reservation in Oklahoma. The Osage were moved by 1836, first to a reservation in Kansas and later to land they bought from the Cherokee in Oklahoma. The settler population of Arkansas Territory, which had been only 1,062 in 1810 and 14,273 in 1820, jumped to more than 50,000 by 1835 as more settlers streamed in. Spurred by the population boom, Arkansas petitioned for admission to the federal Union and received it on June 15, 1836, becoming the 25th state.

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