USA > Louisiana > The province and the states, a history of the province of Louisiana under France and Spain, and of the territories and states of the United States formed therefrom, Vol. III > Part 25
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Town, fifteen miles below Helena. Quiguate would appear to have been in the southern part of Arkansas county, on the Arkansas river, and may have been near the site of Toltec, or on bayou Meta. The Casqui towns were possibly in the southern part of Phillips county, south and west of Old Town, and one of them is believed to have been Indian Bay, on the White river. Caligoa has been unconvincingly referred to Northern Arkansas and more plausibly, but not definitely, to Jackson, Independence or Lawrence county. Tatalicoya was possibly on the Arkansas river. Qui- pana may have been on the site of Mound Prairie, Hempstead county.
After the death of DeSoto more than a century elapsed before the Arkansas country was again visited by Europeans. In 1673, Marquette, a devoted Catholic missionary, and Joliet, a fur trader, who had spent years among the Indians on the lakes, came down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers as far as the mouth of the Arkansas river. Marquette made the first map of the country west of the Mississippi. On this map dated 1673, the "Arkansea" Indians are located near the mouth of the river that bears their name. No cartier mention of them has been found. The next. explorer to visit the country may have been Father Louis Henne -. pin, in 1680. After him, in 1682, came LaSalle, who took formal possession of the country, and named it Louisiana, in honor of Louis XIV, then king of France. LaSalle returned to Canada and thence to France, leaving the Chevalier Henri de Tonty in command. The first settlement in Arkansas was made June, 1686, under the auspices of Ponty, about three leagues below the historie post of Arkansas by Contere and De Laimay, and four other Frenchmen, all of whom, except the two named, not having heard from Tonty, soon returned to St. Louis. This was the first white settlement in Arkansas. LaSalle came back to Louisiana and in 1687 was murdered by several of his companions on or near the Trinity river in Texas.
During the period 1699-1766, the province of Louisiana includ- ing Arkansas, a vast region extending west from the Mississippi from its source to its mouth, was under French control. The French governors were: Sauvolle, 1699-1701 ; Bienville, 1701- 13: Du Mays; Cadillac, 1713-16; De L'Epinay, 1716-18; Bien- ville ( 2nd term), 1718-24; Boisbriant, 1724-26; Perier, 1726-32; Bienville (3d term), 1732-43; De Vaudreuil, 1743-53; Kerlerec, 1753-63; D'Abadie, 1763-65; Captain Aubry, 1765-66. Sauvolle and Bienville were brothers. Bienville, the greater of the two,. ruled in Louisiana nearly thirty years.
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Their brother, Pierre Lemoyne, the Sieur D'Iberville, who explored the waters of Louisiana in 1688-99 and was the chief promoter of carly colonization, was greater than either of them. He has passed into history as "the father of Louisiana." At the end of the French and Indian war, France ceded Canada to Eng- land, and Louisiana to Spain, Spain did not want Louisiana, but wanted to prevent England from obtaining it. Spanish control of Arkansas extended through the period 1762-1803. The Spanish governors were: D'Ulloa, 1706-68; Captain Aubry, 1768-69; General O'Reilly, 1769-70; Unzaga, 1770-77; Galvez, 1777-85; Miro, 1785-92; Carondelet, 1793-07: Gayoso, 1797-99; Casa Calvo, 1799-1801 ; Salcedo, 1801-1803. The population of all Arkansas settlements in 1766 was eighty-eight. The total French population in what is now Arkansas was only 196 in 1785 ; in 1799 it was 308. The population of Arkansas in 1810, after seven years of American rule, was 1,062; in 1820, there were 14,255 people within the present limits of the state. From 1820 to 1830 Arkan- sas outstripped all the states in the Union in increase of popula- tion, except Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. From 1830 to 1840, Michigan was the only state that excelled it in this respect. From 1840 to 1850, it kept pace with all the states except Iowa and Wis- consin, while from 1850 to 1860 it outstripped all the states except lowa, California and Texas. The Civil war, many engagements of which were fought within the borders of the state, did not stay its growth, and when peace blessed the country with prosperity, Arkansas made the remarkable record of almost doubling its pop- ulation in the sixth decade of its existence. Each succeeding cen- sus has shown a marked increase in its population until in 1900 it numbered 1.311.564 souls. In 1838 the entire taxed wealth of this state was, in round numbers, fifteen million dollars. In 1860 this had grown to one hundred and twenty-two million dollars. The Civil war closed showing a taxed valuation of about thirty-eight million dollars. The loss of more than eighty million dollars in property, besides other ravages of war, was a tremendous blow to the energies and hopes of the people, but their recuperative pow- ers and the remarkable natural resources of the state enabled them in less than a quarter of a century, not only to regain the full taxed value of 1860, but to increase it more than sixty per cent. The assessment of all the real and personal property of Arkansas to-day amounts to more than two hundred million dollars. The entire wealth of the United States increased from $16,902,903- 5.13 in 1880, to $25,246,589,80.1 in 1890, a gain of $7,346,596,261, or 43.46 per cent. Arkansas increased from $86,400,364 in 1880,
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ARKANSAS, FROM 1541 TO 1819.
to $174,737,755 in 1890, a gain of $88,228,391, or 102 per cent. That is to say, its increase in taxed wealth during the decade 1880-90, was greater than the whole amount of its property in 1880. Thus, while the population had increased more than forty per cent, the wealth had increased more than 100 per cent. Both of these elements indicated a condition of health in its industries that invites the work, the wealth and the wisdom of other states. Thousands of men come to Arkansas each year from the North, the West and the South-many foreigners come-bringing their wives and children, their property and their hopes. They come to search for greater prosperity and happiness, and the increasing percentage of advance in population favors the inference that they find what they seek. Let us look more closely into the history and resources of this state, confident that they will interest and invite men representing the vigor, valor and virtue of every clime.
'Arkansas Post, according to M. Dumont's "Historical Memoirs of Louisiana," as translated in "French's Historical Collections," part V, was "properly only a continuation of the establishment formed by the French around the stake-encircled house which Joutel and his companions reached in the month of July, 1687, and where, before arriving, they perceived a cross planted, which consoled them in their pains and hardships." Joutel thus des- cribes his sensation and those of his companions on beholding the cross : "It is easy to imagine what inward joy we conceived at the sight of the sign of our salvation. We knelt down, lifting up our hands and eyes to heaven, to return thanks to the Divine Goodness for having conducted us so happily." They were wel- comed by Coutere and DeLaunay, the two original Arkansas settlers, and all tarried some days, making friendships with the Indians, and one, Bartholomew, a Parisian, remained with the Frenchmen resident there. Settlement at Arkansas Post had begin, but it was to be slow, though the post was a point of importance in territorial history. Hoping to make the settlement on the Arkansas permanent, Tonty granted the church a site for a mission and offered to provide for the support of a missionary for three years. . His deed to the church, given at Fort St. Louis, within the present limits of Illinois, November 20, 1689, was for several thousand acres of land including Arkansas Post and lying on either side of the river. Father Allouez was the first mission - ary sent by the church under this plan, and during the eighteenth century his successors, braving sickness and violent death and accepting either or both, labored among the Indians in this vicin- ity. T'onty's interest in the settlement never flagged, and when
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he died at Biloxi in 1704 his faith in it had not wavered ; but after France had expended millions to promote settlement in the Mis- sissippi country and Joli Law's enterprise had failed, little growthi or development had come to Arkansas Post. 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 benevo- lence of William Penn to the peaceful settlers on the Delaware. It required the feebleness of the grand monarch to discover Jolm Law, the father of inflated cheap money and national financial ruin. 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 attempt to create wealth wholly by legislation is sure to be followed by general bankruptcy and ruin. In September, 1717, Law's Company . of the West was granted the commerce and control of Louisiana. Law arrived at New Orleans with Soo immigrants in August of that year. Instead of coming up the Mississippi, they landed at Dauphine island to make their way across by land. The reign of the Company of the West over Louisiana was a romance or a riot of folly and extravagance. It was to people and create a great empire on cheap money and a monopoly of the slave trade. For fourteen years it controlled Louisiana ; then it gave up the trust, the dreams and illusions of case 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 few of the settlers were located at Arkansas Post, up the Arkansas river and on Red river, and like most of the others of Law's followers, they made a virtue of necessity and remained because they could not get away.
"The people sent by Law came," says Dumont, "and settled about a league from the Arcancas Post, in the depths of the woods, where they found a beautiful plain surrounded by fertile valleys, and a little stream of fine clear, wholesome water. . This settle- ment began to prosper; pavilions were already erected for the officers, and cabins for the workmen ; almost all, as I have said, were Germans, married men. Large store houses were even built, and everything seemed to promise that it would soon become flourishing, when those who composed it, learning of the fall of their patron, disbanded." When M. LeBlane sent men to take possession of the grant made to him on the Yazoo river about
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.IRK. INSAIS, FROM 1511 TO 1819.
1728 by the Company of the West, the little garrison kept till then by the company at that place retired to the Arkansas Post, then commanded by the Sieur de la Boulage. Writing of Arkansas Post about 1740, Dumont said, "There is no fort in the place, only four or five palisade houses, a little guard house, and a cabin which serves as a store house."
The post is depicted on maps of English, French and Spanish possessions of 1745 and on a well known French map of forty-five years earlier. On Joutel's maps of LaSalle's expedition of date about 1695 a French fort is designated practically on the site of Arkansas Post. According to tradition, the real settlement of the town began about the time of the relinquishment of French posses- sion. County records contain entries concerning this locality of date as early as 1760 and there are extant baptismal and burial records relating to this place dated 1772-93. William, Gabriel and Elislia Winter and Joseph Stillwell and their families settled at the post in 1798, on lands granted the previous year to the men named by the Baron de Carondelet. In 1803, when the territory . was ceded to the United States, the post was the official residence of the commandant. The names of early commandants are not obtainable. Captain Chalmette was in command in 1780; Captain Don Joseph Valliere probably in 1786-90; Don Carlos Villemont, 1790-1801 ; Francis Caso y Luengo, 1802-03; Ignace el Leno in 1804. In the spring of 1804 El Leno resigned the post to Maj. James B. Many, who had been sent by General Wilkinson to receive it. Port Esperanza (Camp Esperance), on the site of Hopefield, was transferred to American authority at the same time. This was the second town established within the territory of the present state of Arkansas. March 26, 1804, congress divided Louisiana into the territory of Orleans and the district of Louisiana. The latter division, embracing the present Arkansas, included that part north of the thirty-third parallel and was often called Upper Louisiana. Its government was attached to that of Indiana territory, of which General Harrison was governor. In the autumn of 1804, Governor Harrison and three judges estab- lished courts at St. Louis and Major Many was continued in authority at Arkansas Post.
Gen. James Wilkinson, commander of the American armies, was governor of the district and the territory of Louisiana 1805-07. June 27, 1806, the legislature of the territory of Louis- jana constituted the southern part of the district of New Madrid, the district of Arkansas, the first deputy governor of which, Ste- phen Warrel, was soon succeeded by Robert W. Osborne. As a III-17
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part of the plan of exploration of Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike, whose name is perpetuated in that of Pike's Peak, Lieut. James B. Wil- kinson was, in 1806, sent to explore the Arkansas river from the Great Bend to its mouth, a task which he and his party accom- plished with two canoes between October 27, 1800, and January 9, 1807. He made a map of that part of the river between the mouth of the Poteau, (the present site of Fort Smith), and Arkansas Post, showing Hot Springs and (probably ) Magazine mountain and noting no human beings by the way except a party of French hunters near the present site of Little Rock . and another near the present site of Pine Bluff. The Hot Springs had been visited in 1804 by Dunbar, who had been com- missioned by President Madison to explore the Ouachita river, and by Don Juan Filhiol, one time commandant at Ouachita post, who described the region in detail and later claimed the springs under an alleged grant from Governor Miro. In 1806, occurred the historic events that resulted in the discovery of Burt's conspiracy, by which he is said to have sought to plant on the Ouachita a government, founded on the separation of Louisiana from the United States, of which he aspired to be the head, with the further design of overthrowing Spanish authority in Texas and Mexico. Less that twenty years before, General Wilkinson had been accused, but not proven guilty, of treasonable intrigue with Spain. Burr sought his aid and Wilkinson exposed him to the government.
Gen. Meriweather Lewis, a Virginian, a famous explorer and a personal friend of President Jefferson, was governor of Louis- iana from August, 1807, mmtil his death two years later. In the summer of 1868, ill feeling between the governor and certain Osage Indians resulted in the withdrawal of governmental pro- tection from the Osages. The rapid settlement of the country - displeased the Osages and an offer on their part to sell their land to the United States led to the treaty at Fort Clark, November, 1808, by which 48,003,815 acres between the Missouri and the Arkansas rivers, the Mississippi and a line north and south between Fort Clark, in Southwest Missouri as states are now bounded to a place on the Arkansas, now in Crawford county, designated as Frog bayou, were transferred to the United States. Of this land, 14,830,432 acres were in Arkansas.
By cessions in 1819 and in 1825, the Osage Indians transferred to the United States all remaining lands of the Great and Little Osages in Arkansas and in the tracts between the Arkansas and Red rivers and north of the Arkansas river, between the Verdi-
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ARKANSAS, FROM 1541 TO 1819.
gris and the western Osage boundary, known as Lovely's Pur- chase. Thus was extinguished the Indian title to 46,149,735 acres, almost 16,000,000 acres of which were in Arkansas. Major Lovely, a soldier of the revolution, had become a friend of the Cherokees and an Indian trader on the Arkansas. As an Indian agent, he had bought the lands of the Lovely Purchase irregularly from the Osages and his claim was not recognized by the government. By treaties in 1818 and in 1824 the land of the Quapaws passed to the proprietorship of the United States. Of the Osages and Quapaws the government had now bought 86,000,000 acres, of which 33,406,720 acres, including Arkansas as now bounded, was a part. According to Indian tradition, as stated by Shinn, "the Indians occupying the vast region of what is now Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas were of one stock or family"-the Dakotas, a people made up of Quapaws, Osages, Missouris, lowas, Kansas, Arapahoes, Otoes, Omahas, Poncas, Sioux, Crows, Assini- boines, Mandans and Minnetarees, fourteen tribes in all. "The ancestors of the various tribes which make up this family came from the East. They traveled down the Ohio, possibly driven westward by the Algonquins. At the mouth of the river they separated ; the Omahas, Poncas, Osages and others went up the Mississippi-the rest went down that river. Those who went up were called 'Umaha' or 'Omaha'-'to go against the wind and stream.' Those who went down were called 'Ugaqpa' or 'Quapaw,' from 'ugaqpa' or 'ugaha'-'to float down the stream.'" The Onapaws came into this grand domain at what is now the northwest corner of the state and made settlements and built towns along the Mississippi. Later they occupied most of the country south of the Arkansas. The Osages extended their settlements throughout what is now Southern Missouri and thence as far south as the Arkansas. When these treaties were made the Quapaws were the only remaining representatives of the Arkansas tribe of which they were a part. Both the Osages and the Arkan- sas have left remains of archaeological value ; those of the Arkan- sas are more valuable. In an arca including contiguous parts of Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee having Pecan Point, Ark., nearly in its center, many relics have been discovered. The find- ing of many near Pecan Point is taken as evidence that once Indians were numerous in what is now Mississippi county. Nearly all of the territory of this state was once possessed by the Osages and Arkansas. The Caddo Indians lived in the southwest part and wandered at will in all parts of the present state, but
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never claimed much of its lands. In 1825, when they withdrew from the territory, the Quapaws numbered some 700 souls, the Great and Little Osages in Arkansas, 1,200.
In 1817, about 3,000 Cherokees lived on lands in Arkansas which were claimed by the Osages and Quapaws. Their first settlement was on the St. Francis river and they abandoned it for another on White river. They had been coming over from Tenn- essee since 1785. In the interest of harmony, the government induced them to relinquish part of their old domain cast of the Mississippi for an equal area between the White and Arkansas rivers. The treaty was opposed by the upper or former Chero- kees but was concurred in by many Lower Cherokees who joined their people in Arkansas, rejoicing in the acquisition of new and promising hunting grounds. Soon the Osages laid claim to a part of the Cherokees' new possessions and assumed a hostile attitude toward them. Thus began a series of difficulties in which the Cherokees were involved, first with their red and later with their white neighbors, in none of which do they appear to have been willful aggressors, and which were not finally settled until 1828. Then the Cherokees, who had, 1821-25, been moved on to their reservation, exchanged 4,240,000 acres of land and their improvements there for 7,000,000 acres in Indian territory and other considerations, including an annuity of five hundred dollars to George Guess, inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, and numer- ous other annuities, besides fifty thousand dollars in cash and corn mills to be erected on their new reservation to replace those they had in operation in Arkansas, where they were also growing cotton. A factor in reconciling conflicting interests, establishing peace between the Cherokees and Osages and amicable relations between Indians and whites and bringing about the removal of the Cherokees, was a government agency set up convenient to the disputed territory. In 1820, the American Board of Foreign Missions established the Dwight mission station and school which exerted a constant and potent influence for good. It was named in honor of Pres. Timothy Dwight of Yale college and at its head was the Rev. Cephas Washburn, called by the Cherokees Oo-kuh-squah-fuh. . Hempstead states that "he was assisted by his brother-in-law, the Rev. Alfred Finney, and Messrs. Orr and Jacob Hitchcock. During September, 1820, two cabins were erected, and the Revs. Washburn and Finney departed for Elliott, a mission station in the Choctaw country, where their familie and Miss Minerva Washburn had been left in January, 1820. They returned to the Dwight mission May 10, 1821.
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ARKANSAS, FROM 1511 TO 1819.
During the summer of 1821 considerable was done in the way of putting up buiklings and making arrangements for commencing a boarding school. In December, 1821, the mission was reenforced by the arrival of Miss Ellen Stetson and Miss Nancy Brown and Mr. Asa Hitchcock. Shortly after the arrival of the party there were two weddings at the mission. Miss Minerva Washburn married Mr. Orr and Miss Nancy Brown married Mr. Jacob Hitchcock." This was the first protestant mission in Arkansas. It was located at Old Dwight, near Russellville. On the way to it, Mr. Washburn preached in "a small cabin made of round logs with the bark on," at Little Rock, July 4, 1820, to fourteen men, no women being present. The only dwelling near it was that of Col. Moses Austin, erected a year before. The Cherokees were at war with the Osages and there was much to discourage Mr. Washburn, but in two years a hundred Cherokee boys and girls were pupils in his school, in which he employed seven assistant teachers, and which later attracted patronage from many of the leading white families in the territory. It antedated any other organized institution of learning in Arkansas.
After the Quapaw treaty of 1818, the western boundary of the domain ceded to the government by the Quapaws, a line inter- secting the sources of the Kiamishi and Poteau rivers, was popu- larly accepted as the western boundary of Arkansas. Settlements were made east of it and some west of it. In 1819 two hundred settlers west of this line were required to relocate east of it. In 1820, by the provisions of a treaty, the Choctaws in Alabama and Mississippi gave their lands east of the Mississippi for lands in Indian territory and in Arkansas south of the Arkansas river and west of a line described by Shinn as "beginning on the Arkansas river, opposite the termination of the old Cherokee line at Point Remove and running southwestwardly to a point on the Red river three miles below the mouth of Little River." This was the beginning of new trouble for the Choctaws, for many settlers in Arkansas and for the state and general governments. Hardly had the Indians begun to settle on the north shore of Red river and on the south shore of the Arkansas, than, in 1821, a survey of the line from Red river 115 miles to Point Remove revealed the fact that 2,625 whites, constituting 375 families, were living on Choctaw lands between the old western boundary and the new one. The Choctaws refused to recognize the Kiamishi-Poteau line but consented in 1825 to accept lands between the Red river and the Arkansas river west of a line extending from the bank of the 'Arkansas 100 paces cast of the old fort at Fort Smith
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directly south to Red river. The few settlers on the eastern edge of the reservation were given other land west of the new line by the government. By this treaty much of Miller county was included in the Choctaw lands. Another portion of it fell within Texan territory, and in the course of events the county was abolished. A strip forty miles wide, off the western side of Arkansas, had been added to Indian territory.
From 1809 to near the end of 1812, Gen. Benjamin A. How- ard, of Kentucky, was governor of Louisiana territory by appoint- ment of President Madison. The character of the population was changing. The Frenchmen, sedate and serene, had given place to the typical backwoodsmen, honest, but adventurous, generally belligerent and usually American ; and following the latter came other men who looked like them but who were schemers or tools of schemers. Thousands of fraudulent so-called Spanish land grants were sold to persons, who, passing as settlers under Span- ish grants, demanded of the government the protection in their pretended rights that had been accorded by treaty to actual Span- ish settlers. In 1811 occurred the New Madrid earthquake, breaking up the land so that large tracts, especially southwest from New Madrid, were submerged and have since been known as "sunk lands," causing a loss of farms and improvements to settlers on those parts. Not a few of these unfortunates were within the present limits of Arkansas. In 1812, under the name of Louisiana, Orleans territory was admitted to statehood and louisiana territory became known as Missouri territory and was divided into six districts of which the district of Arkansas, not quite as large as the present state, was one, with Arkansas Post as its seat of justice. In 1812 the population of Arkansas Post is said to have been considerable. The settlement at Esperance had then been abandoned.
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