Biographical and historical memoirs of Pulaski, Jefferson, Lonoke, Faulkner, Grant, Saline, Perry, Garland and Hot Spring counties, Arkansas, comprising a condensed history of the statebiographies of distinguished citizens...[etc.], Part 4

Author: Goodspeed, firm, publishers, Chicago. (1886-1891. Goodspeed publishing Company)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Chicago, St. Louis [etc.] The Goodspeed publishing co.
Number of Pages: 826

USA > Arkansas > Faulkner County > Biographical and historical memoirs of Pulaski, Jefferson, Lonoke, Faulkner, Grant, Saline, Perry, Garland and Hot Spring counties, Arkansas, comprising a condensed history of the statebiographies of distinguished citizens...[etc.] > Part 4
USA > Arkansas > Garland County > Biographical and historical memoirs of Pulaski, Jefferson, Lonoke, Faulkner, Grant, Saline, Perry, Garland and Hot Spring counties, Arkansas, comprising a condensed history of the statebiographies of distinguished citizens...[etc.] > Part 4
USA > Arkansas > Grant County > Biographical and historical memoirs of Pulaski, Jefferson, Lonoke, Faulkner, Grant, Saline, Perry, Garland and Hot Spring counties, Arkansas, comprising a condensed history of the statebiographies of distinguished citizens...[etc.] > Part 4
USA > Arkansas > Hot Spring County > Biographical and historical memoirs of Pulaski, Jefferson, Lonoke, Faulkner, Grant, Saline, Perry, Garland and Hot Spring counties, Arkansas, comprising a condensed history of the statebiographies of distinguished citizens...[etc.] > Part 4
USA > Arkansas > Jefferson County > Biographical and historical memoirs of Pulaski, Jefferson, Lonoke, Faulkner, Grant, Saline, Perry, Garland and Hot Spring counties, Arkansas, comprising a condensed history of the statebiographies of distinguished citizens...[etc.] > Part 4
USA > Arkansas > Lonoke County > Biographical and historical memoirs of Pulaski, Jefferson, Lonoke, Faulkner, Grant, Saline, Perry, Garland and Hot Spring counties, Arkansas, comprising a condensed history of the statebiographies of distinguished citizens...[etc.] > Part 4
USA > Arkansas > Perry County > Biographical and historical memoirs of Pulaski, Jefferson, Lonoke, Faulkner, Grant, Saline, Perry, Garland and Hot Spring counties, Arkansas, comprising a condensed history of the statebiographies of distinguished citizens...[etc.] > Part 4
USA > Arkansas > Pulaski County > Biographical and historical memoirs of Pulaski, Jefferson, Lonoke, Faulkner, Grant, Saline, Perry, Garland and Hot Spring counties, Arkansas, comprising a condensed history of the statebiographies of distinguished citizens...[etc.] > Part 4
USA > Arkansas > Saline County > Biographical and historical memoirs of Pulaski, Jefferson, Lonoke, Faulkner, Grant, Saline, Perry, Garland and Hot Spring counties, Arkansas, comprising a condensed history of the statebiographies of distinguished citizens...[etc.] > Part 4

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Their light canoes have vanished From off the crested waves- Amid the forests where they roamed There rings no hunter's shout. And all their cone-like cabins That clustered o'er the vale, Have disappeared as withered leaves, Before the autumn gale.

HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.

CHAPTER I !!.

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT-DE SOTO IN ARKANSAS-MARQUETTE AND JOLIET-LA SALLE, HENNEPIN AND TONTI-FRENCH AND ENGLISH SCHEMES OF CONQUEST AND DREAMS OF POWER-LOUISIANA -THE " BUBBLE" OF JOHN LAW-THE EARLY VICEROYS AND GOVERNORS-PROPRIE- TARY CHANGE OF LOUISIANA-FRENCH AND SPANISH SETTLERS IN ARK- ANSAS-ENGLISH SETTLERS-A FEW FIRST SETTLERS IN THE COUNTIES-THE NEW MADRID EARTHQUAKE- OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Hail, memory, hail! In thy exhaustless mine From age to age unnumbered treasures shine! Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey, Aud place and time are subject to thy sway .- Rogers.

ERDINAND DE SOTO, the discoverer of the Missis- o sippi, was the first civilized white man to put foot upon any part of what is now the State of Arkansas. He and his band of adventurous followers had forged their way over immense obstacles, through the trackless wastes, and in the pleas- ant month of June, 1541, reached the Mississippi River at, as is supposed, Chickasaw Bluffs, a short distance be- low Memphis. He had sailed from San Lucan in April, 1538, with 600 men, twenty officers and twenty-four priests. He represented his king and church, and came to make discoveries for his master in Florida, a coun- try undefined in extent, and believed to be the richest in the world.

His expedition was a daring and dangerous one, and there were but few men in the tide of time who could have carried it on to the extent that did this bold Spaniard. The worn and deci-

mated band remained at the Chickasaw Bluffs to rest and recuperate until June 29, then crossing the river into Arkansas, and pushing on up the Mississippi River, through brakes and swamps and slashes, until they reached the higher prairie lands that lead toward New Madrid; stopping in their north course at an Indian village, Pacaha, whose location is not known. De Soto sent an expedition toward the Osage River, but it soon returned and reported the country worthless .* He then turned west and proceeded to the Boston Mountains, at the head-waters of White River; then bending south, and passing Hot Springs, he went into camp for the winter on the Ouachita River, at Autamqua Village, in Garland County. In the spring he

*It is proper to here state the fact that some local in- vestigators, and others who have studied the history of De Soto's voyaging through Arkausas, do not believe that he reached and discovered the river as high up as Mem- phis. They think he approached it a short distance above the mouth of Red River, and from that point made his detour around to Red River. Others in the State, who have also studied the subject thoroughly, find excellent evidence of his presence iu Arkansas along the Mississippi, particularly in Mississippi County. See "History of Mississippi County, Ark." After examining the testi- mony carefully I incline to the account as given in the context as being the most probable .- Ed.

HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.

floated down the river, often lost in the bayous and overflows of Red River, and finally reached again the Mississippi. Halting here he made dil- igent inquiries of the Indians as to the mouth of the great stream, but they could give him no infor- mation. In June, one year from the date of his discovery, after a sickness of some weeks, he died. As an evidence of his importance to the expedition his death was kept a secret, and he was buried at night, most appropriately, in the waves of the great river that gave his name immortality. But the secrecy of his death was of no avail, for there was no one who could supply his place, and with his life closed the existence, for all practical pur- poses, of the expedition. Here the interest of the historian in De Soto and his companions ceases. He came not to possess the beautiful country, or plant colonies, or even extend the dominions of civilization, but simply to find the fabled wealth in minerals and precious stones, and gather them and carry them away. Spain already possessed Florida, and it was all Florida then, from the At- lantic to the boundless and unknown west.

The three great nations of the old world had conquered and possessed-the Spaniards Florida, the English Virginia and New England, and the French the St. Lawrence. The feeblest of all these colonizers or conquerors were the English, and they retained their narrow foothold on the new continent with so little vigor that for more than a century and a half they knew nothing of the country west of them save the idle dreams and fictions of the surrounding savages. The general world had learned little of De Soto's great western discoveries, and when he was buried in the Missis- sippi all remained undisturbed from the presence or knowledge of civilized men for the period of 132 years.

Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit priest, had made expeditions along the Northern lakes, pros- elyting among the Indian tribes. He had con- ceived the idea that there was a great western river leading to China and Japan. He was joined in his ambition to find this route, and the tribes along it, by Joliet, a man fired with the ambition and daring of the bold explorer. These two men,

with five employes, started on their great adven- ture May 17, 1673. They found the Upper Mis- sissippi River and came down that to the month of the Arkansas River, thence proceeding up some distance, it is supposed to near where is Arkansas Post. Thus the feet of the white man pressed once more the soil of this State, but it was after the lapse of many years from the time of De Soto's visit. Marquette carried into the newly discovered country the cross of Christ, while Joliet planted in the wilderness the tri-colors of France. France and Christianity stood together in the heart of the great Mississippi Valley; the discoverers, founders and possessors of the greatest spiritual and tem- poral empire on earth. From here the voyagers retraced their course to the Northern lakes and the St. Lawrence, and published a report of their discoveries.

Nine years after Marquette and Joliet's expe- dition, Chevalier de La Salle came from France, accompanied by Henry de Tonti, an Italian, filled with great schemes of empire in the new western world; it is charged, by some historians of that day, with no less ambition than securing the whole western portion of the continent and wresting Mexico from the Spaniards. When Canada was reached, La Salle was joined by Louis Hennepin, an ambitious, unscrupulous and daring Franciscan monk. It was evidently La Salle's idea to found a military government in the new world, reaching with a line of forts and military possession from Quebec, Canada, to at least the Gulf, if not, as some have supposed, extending through Mexico. He explored the country lying between the North- ern lakes and the Ohio River. He raised a force in Canada and sailed through Green Bay, and, sending back his boat laden with furs, proceeded with his party to the head waters of the Illinois River and built Fort Creve Coeur. He detached Hennepin with one companion and sent him to hunt the source of the Mississippi. He placed Tonti in command of Creve Cœur, with five men, and him- self returned to Canada in the latter part of 1681, where he organized a new party with canoes, and went to Chicago; crossing the long portage from there to the Illinois River, he floated down

HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.

that stream to the Mississippi and on to the Gulf of Mexico, discovering the mouth of the Mississippi River April 5, 1682, and three days after, with becoming pomp and ceremony, took possession, in the name of France, of the territory, and named it Louisiana, in honor of his king, Louis XIV. The vast region thus acquired by France was not, as it could not be, well defined, but it was intended to embrace, in addition to much east of the Mississippi River, all the continent west of that current.

After this expedition La Salle returned to France, fitted out another expedition and set sail, ostensibly to reach the mouth of the Mississippi River and pass up that stream. He failed to find the river, and landed his fleet at Metagordo Bay, Texas, where he remained two years, when with a part of his force he started to reach Canada via Fort St. Louis, but was assassinated by one of his men near the Trinity River, Texas, March 19, 1687, and his body, together with that of his nephew, was left on the Texas prairie to the beasts and buzzards. La Salle was a born commander of men, a great explorer, with vast projects of empire far beyond the comprehension of his wretched king, or the appreciation of his country- men. Had he been supported by a wise and strong government, France would never, perhaps, have been dispossessed of the greatest inter-continental colonial empire on earth-from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains. This was, in fact, the measure of the territory that La Salle's expedition and military possession gave to France. The two great ranges of mountains, the north pole and South America, were really the boundary lines of Louisiana, of which permanent ownership belonged forever to France, save for the weakness and inef- ficiency of that bete noire of poor, beautiful, sunny France-Louis XIV. In the irony of fate the his- torian of to-day may well write down the appella- tion of his toadies and parasites, as the grand monarque. La Salle may justly be reckoned one of the greatest founders of empire in the world, and had poor France had a real king instead of this weak and pompous imbecile, her tri-colors would have floated upon every breeze from the Allegha-

nies to the Pacific Ocean, and over the islands of more than half of the waters of the globe.

The immensity of the Louisiana Territory has been but little understood by historians. It was the largest and richest province ever acquired, and the world's history since its establishment has been intimately connected with and shaped by its influence. Thus the account of the Territory of Louisiana is one of the most interesting chapters in American history.

Thirteen years after the death of La Salle, 1700, his trusty lieutenant, Tonti, descended the Mississippi River from the Illinois, with a band of twenty French Illinois people, and upon reaching Arkansas Post, established a station. This was but carrying out La Salle's idea of a military pos- session by a line of forts from Canada to the Gulf. It may be called the first actual and intended per- manent possession of Arkansas. In the meantime, Natchez had become the oldest settled point in the Territory, south of Illinois, and the conduct of the commandant of the canton, Chopart, was laying the foundations for the ultimate bloody massacre of that place, in November, 1729. The Jesuit, Du Poisson, was the missionary among the Arkansans. He had made his way up the Mississippi and passed along the Arkansas River till he reached the prairies of the Dakotahs.

The Chickasaws were the dreaded enemy of France; it was they who hurried the Natchez to that awful massacre; it was they whose cedar bark canoes, shooting boldly into the Mississippi, inter- rupted the connections between Kaskaskia and New Orleans, and delayed successful permanent settlements in the Arkansas. It was they who weakened the French empire in Louisiana. They colleagued with the English, and attempted to extirpate the French dominion in the valley.

Such was Louisiana more than half a century after the first attempt at colonization by La Salle. Its population may have been 5,000 whites and half that number of blacks. Louis XIV had fostered it by giving it over to the control of Law and his company of the Mississippi, aided by boundless but transient credit. Priests and friars dispersed through tribes from Biloxi to the Da-

HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.

kotahs, and propitiated the favor of the savages. But still the valley of the Mississippi remained a wilderness. All its patrons-though among them it counted kings and high ministers of state-had not accomplished for it in half a century a tithe of that prosperity which, within the same period, sprung naturally from the benevolence of William Penn to the peaceful settlers on the Delaware.

It required the feebleness of the grand mon- arque to discover John Law, the father of in- flated cheap money and national financial ruin. In September, 1717, John Law's Company of the West was granted the commerce and control of Louisiana. He arrived at New Orleans with 800 immigrants in August of that year. Instead of coming up the Mississippi, they landed at Dau- phine Island to make their way across by land. The reign of John Law's company over Louisiana was a romance or a riot of folly and extravagance. He was to people and create a great empire on cheap money and a monopoly of the slave trade. For fourteen years the Company of the West con- trolled Louisiana. The bubble burst, the dreams and illusions of ease and wealth passed away, and but wretched remnants of colonies existed, in the extremes of want and suffering. But, after all, a permanent settlement of the great valley had been made. A small portion of these were located at Arkansas Post, up the Arkansas River and on Red River, and like the most of the others of Law's followers, they made a virtue of necessity and re- mained because they could not get away.

John Law was an Englishman, a humbug, but a magnificent one, so marked and conspicuous in the world's history that his career should have taught the statesmen of all nations the simple lesson that debt is not wealth, and that every at- tempt to create wealth wholly by legislation is sure to be followed by general bankruptcy and ruin.

The Jesuits and fur-traders were the founders of Illinois; Louis XIV and privileged companies were the patrons of Southern Louisiana, while the honor of beginning the work of colonizing the southwest of our republic belongs to the illustri- ous Canadian, Lemoine D'Iberville. He was a wor. thy successor of La Salle. He also sought to find

the mouth of the Mississippi, and guided by floating trees and turbid waters, he reached it on March 2, 1699. He perfected the line of communication between Quebec and the Gulf; extended east and west the already boundless possessions of France; erected forts and carved the lilies on the trees of the forests; and fixed the seat of government of Louisiana at Biloxi, and appointed his brother to command the province. Under D'Iberville, the French line was extended east to Pascagoula River; Beinville, La Sueur, and St. Denys had explored the west to New Mexico, and had gone in the northwest beyond the Wisconsin and the St. Croix, and reached the mouth of and followed this stream to the confluence of the Blue Earth. D'Iberville died of yellow fever at Havana, July 9, 1706, and in his death the Louisiana colony lost one of its most able and daring leaders. But Louisiana, at that time, possessed less than thirty families of whites, and these were scattered on voyages of discovery, and in quest of gold and gems.

France perfected her civil government over Louisiana in 1689, and appointed Marquis de San- ville, royal viceroy. This viceroy's empire was as vast in territory as it was insignificant in popula- tion-less than 300 souls .* By regular appoint- ments of viceroys the successions were maintained (including the fourteen years of Law's supremacy) until by the treaty of Fontainbleau, November 3, 1762, France was stripped of her American pos- sessions, and Canada and the Spanish Florida; everything east of the Mississippi except the island of New Orleans was given to England, and all Louisiana, including New Orleans west of the Mississippi River and south of the new southern boundary line of Canada, was given to Spain, in lieu of her Florida possessions. Hence, it was No- vember 3, 1762, that what is now Arkansas passed from the dominion of France to that of Spain.

The signing of this treaty made that day the most eventful one in the busy movements of the

* The title of France to the boundless confines of Louisiana were confirmed by the treaty of Utrecht. The contentions between England and France over the Ohio country, afterward, are a part of the annals of the gen- eral history of the country.

HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.

human race. It re-mapped the world, gave the English language to the American continent, and spread it more widely over the globe than any that had before given expression to human thought, the language that is the alma mater of civil liberty and religious independence. Had France perma- nently dominated America, civil liberty and repre- sentative government would have been yet unborn. The dogmatic tyranny of the middle ages, with all its intolerance and war, would have been the herit- age of North America.

Thus re-adjusted in her domain, Louisiana re- mained a province of Spain until October 1, 1800, when the Little Corporal over-ran Spain with his victorious legions, and looted his Catholic majesty's domains. Napoleon allowed his military ambition to dwarf his genius, and except for this curious fact, she was the man who would have saved and disenthralled the French mind, and have placed the Gaul, with all his volcanic forces, in an even start in the race of civilization with the invincible and cruel Anglo-Saxon. He' was the only man of progressive genius that has ever ruled poor, un- fortunate France. The treaty of St. Ildefonso, secretly transferring Louisiana from Spain again into the possession of France, was ratified March 24, 1801. Its conditions provided that it was to re- main a secret, and the Spanish viceroy, who was governor of Louisiana, knew nothing of the trans- fer, and continued in the discharge of his duties, granting rights, creating privileges and deeding lands and other things that were inevitable in breeding confusions, and cloudy land titles, such as would busy the courts for a hundred years, inflict- ing injustice and heavy burdens upon many inno- cent people.

In 1802 President Jefferson became possessed of the secret that France owned Louisiana. He at once sent James Monroe to Paris, who, with the resident minister, Mr. Livingston, opened negotia- tions with Napoleon, at first only trying to secure the free navigation of the Mississippi River, but to their great surprise the Emperor more than met them half way, with a proposal to sell Louisiana to the United States. The bargain was closed, the consideration being the paltry sum of $15,000,000.

This important move on the great chess-board of nations occurred April 30, 1803. The perfunc- tory act of lowering the Spanish ensign and hoist- ing the flag of France; then lowering immediately the tri-colors and unfurling the stars and stripes, it is hoped never to be furled, was performed at St. Louis March 9, 1804. Bless those dear old, nation-building pioneers! These were heavy drafts upon their patriotic allegiance, but they were equal to the occasion, and ate their breakfasts as Span- iards, their dinners as Frenchmen, and suppers as true Americans.

The successful class of immigrants to the west of the Mississippi were the French Canadians, who had brought little or nothing with them save the clothes on their backs, and an old flintlock gun with which to secure game. They colonized after the French mode of villages and long strips of farms, and a public commons. They propitiated the best they could the neighboring Indian tribes, erected their altars, hunted, and frolicked, and were an honest, simple-minded and just people, but little vexed with ambitious pride or grasping avarice. The mouth of the Arkansas River was the attractive point for immigrants on their way to the Arkansas Territory, and they would ascend that stream to Arkansas Post. There were not 500 white people in the Territory of (now) Arkansas in 1803, when it became a part of the United States. In 1810 the total population was 1,062. So soon as Louisiana became a part of the United States, a small but never ceasing stream of English speak- ing people turned their faces to the west and crossed the "Father of Waters." Those for Ar- kansas established Montgomery Point, at the mouth of White River, making that the transfer place for all shipments inland. This remained as the main shipping and commercial point for many years. By this route were transferred the freights for Arkansas Post. The highway from Montgomery Point to the Post was a slim and indistinct bridle path. The immigrants came down the Cumber- land and Tennessee Rivers to the Ohio in keel- boats and canoes, and were mostly from Tennes- see; beckoned to this fair and rich kingdom by its sunny clime, its mountains and rivers, and its pro-

HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.

- ductive valleys, all enriched with a flora and fauna surpassing the dream of a pastoral poem.

The French were the first permanent settlers of Arkansas, and descendants of these people are still here. Many bearing the oldest French names have attained to a position among the most emi- nent of the great men of the trans-Mississippi. Sometimes the names have become so corrupted as to be unrecognizable as belonging to the early illus- trious stock. The English-speaking people speak- ing French names phonetically would soon change them completely, The Bogys and Lefevres, for instance, are names that go back to the very first settlements in Arkansas. "Lefevre" on the maps is often spelled phonetically thus : "Lafaver." Representatives of the Lefevre family are yet numerous in and about Little Rock, and in other portions of the State.

Peter L. Lefevre and family were among the very first French settlers, locating in the fall of 1818 on the north side of the river on Spanish Grant No. 497, about six miles below Little Rock. His sons were Peter, Enos, Francis G., Ambrose, Akin, Leon and John B., his daughter being Mary Louise. All of these have passed away except the now venerable Leon Lefevre, who resides on the old plantation where he was born in the year 1808. For eighty one years the panorama of the birth, growth and the vicissitudes of Arkansas have passed before his eyes. It is supposed of all living men he is the oldest representative surviving of the earliest settlers; however, a negro, still a resident of Little Rock, also came in 1818.

The first English speaking settlers were Ten- nesseeans, Kentuckians and Alabamians. The ear- liest came down the Mississippi River, and then penetrating Arkansas at the mouths of the streams from the west, ascended these in the search for future homes. The date of the first coming of English speaking colonists may be given as 1807, those prior to that time being only trappers, hunters and voyagers on expeditions of discovery, or those whose names can not now be ascertained.

South Carolina and Georgia also gave their small quotas to the first pioneers of Arkansas. From the States south of Tennessee the route was

overland to the Mississippi River, or to some of its bayous, and then by water. A few of these from the Southern States brought considerable property, and some of them negro slaves, but not many were able to do this. The general rule was to reach the Territory alone and clear a small piece of ground, and as soon as possible to buy slaves and set them at work in the cotton fields.

In 1814 a colony of emigrants, consisting of four families, settled at Batesville, then the Lower Missouri Territory, now the county seat of Inde- pendence County. There was an addition of fif- teen families to this colony the next year. Of the first was the family of Samuel Miller, father of (afterward) Gov. William R. Miller; there were also John Moore, the Magnesses and Beans. All these families left names permanently connected with the history of Arkansas. In the colony of 1815 (all from Kentucky) were the brothers, Richard, John, Thomas and James Peel, sons of Thomas Peel, a Virginian, and Kentucky companion of Daniel Boone. Thomas Curran was also one of the later colonists from Kentucky, a relative of the great Irishman, John Philpot Curran. In the 1815 colony were also old Ben Hardin-hero of so many Indian wars-his brother, Joab, and William Griffin, Thomas Wyatt, William Martin, Samuel Elvin, James Akin, John Reed, James Miller and John B. Craig.

Alden Trimble, who died at Peel, Ark., in April, 1889, aged seventy-four years, was born in the Cal Hogan settlement, on White River, Marion County, June 14, 1815. This item is gained from the obituary notice of his death, and indicates some of the very first settlers in that portion of the State.

Among the oldest settled points, after Arkan- sas Post, was what is now Arkadelphia, Clark County. It was first called Blakelytown, after Adam Blakely. He had opened a little store at the place, and about this were collected the first settlers, among whom may now be named Zack Davis, Samuel Parker and Adam Highnight. The Blakelys and the names given above were all locat- ed in that settlement in the year 1810. The next year came John Hemphill, who was the first to dis-

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Biographical and historical memoirs of Pulaski, Jefferson, Lonoke, Faulkner, Grant, Saline, Perry, Garland and Hot Spring counties, Arkansas, comprising a condensed history of the statebiographies of distinguished citizens...[etc.], Part 4

Author: Goodspeed, firm, publishers, Chicago. (1886-1891. Goodspeed publishing Company) Publication date: 1889 Publisher: Chicago, St. Louis [etc.] The Goodspeed publishing co. Number of Pages: 826

Author: Goodspeed, firm, publishers, Chicago. (1886-1891. Goodspeed publishing Company)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Chicago, St. Louis [etc.] The Goodspeed publishing co.
Number of Pages: 826