FOOTNOTES:
[98] Beards Town appears in Finley’s Atlas of 1826 just west of Little Meto Creek, thirty-five or forty miles above the Post, but it disappears from later maps. Beards Town was opposite the modern village of Heckatoo.—Ed.
[99] Big Bayou Meto is the first important northern tributary of the Arkansas. It now forms part of the boundary between Jefferson and Arkansas counties. Little Bayou Meto is a few miles farther up.—Ed.
[100] Daniel Mooney was one of the earliest settlers in Arkansas after the cession to the United States. His name appears on the records of Arkansas County as early as 1804. In 1814 he was appointed sheriff by William Clark, then governor of Missouri Territory, of which Arkansas was still a part.—Ed.
[101] The name of this chief is preserved in the village of Heckatoo. Heckatoo (Heketon, in correspondence of Indian agent) removed with his tribe to Indian Territory and died there. His successor was a half-breed named Sarrasin, who in his old age returned to his native country, and persuaded Governor William F. Pope (1829–35) to allow him to die in his former home.—Ed.
[102] This treaty was signed by William Clark and Auguste Chouteau, commissioners for the United States, on August 24, 1818, and ratified by the Senate December 23. Nuttall does not give the boundaries quite correctly. The cession line passed up the Arkansas and the Canadian Fork to the source, thence south to Red River, and down its middle to the “Big Raft,” thence directly to a spot on the Mississippi thirty leagues in a straight line below the mouth of the Arkansas. All claims to lands north of the Arkansas and east of the Mississippi were also abandoned. The reservation, lying within the limits specified, was bounded by a line running due southwest from Arkansas Post to the Ouachita, thence up the river and the Saline Fork to a point directly southwest from Little Rock, from that point to Little Rock, and down the right bank of the Arkansas to the point of beginning. See American State Papers: Indian Affairs, ii, p. 165. This reservation was ceded by the treaty of November 15, 1824.—Ed.
[103] The name is a corruption of ká-ede, meaning chief. There are three groups of the Caddo family; the northern is represented by the Arikara of North Dakota; the middle, principally by the Pawnee of southern Nebraska; and the southern, by the Caddo, Wichita, Kichai, and other tribes. The home of the southern group included southwestern Arkansas, eastern Texas, and most of Louisiana.—Ed.
[104] Another name for the Quapaw. See ante, p. 122.—Ed.
[105] William Clark, the brother of George Rogers Clark, who conquered the Northwest during the Revolutionary War, and the associate of Meriwether Lewis on the famous transcontinental expedition of 1803–06, was born in Virginia in 1770. He entered the army in 1792, and shared in several Western campaigns, notably that of Wayne in 1794–95. In 1796 he left the service on account of ill health, and became a hunter and trapper. After the expedition to the Pacific coast, Clark was stationed at St. Louis as Indian agent and brigadier-general of militia. In 1813 he became governor of the Missouri Territory, which at first included Arkansas. Upon the admission of Missouri to statehood, he was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs, and remained at St. Louis in this capacity until his death, in 1838.—Ed.
[106] Few settlers had entered this region prior to Nuttall’s journey, and most of these were thinly scattered along the river. Many of the English names which Nuttall mentions on the following pages are those of men who had settled on the river, in Jefferson County, during the year or two preceding his visit. Morrison was on the south bank. The Dardennes, or Dardennis, and the Masons, mentioned below, were on the north side.—Ed.
[107] Plum Bayou, not shown on ordinary maps, flows southeast through the centre of the north half of Jefferson County, roughly parallel to the river, which it enters six miles above New Gascony. Most of its course is through the township of the same name. A village called Plum Bayou is near the northwest corner of the county, four or five miles north of the source of the stream.—Ed.
[108] Nuttall doubtless means Major Lewismore Vaugine, mentioned a few lines below.—Ed.
[109] The infertile plant cultivated in the vicinity of the city of London, has received the name of Vitis odoratissima, by the gardeners, an epithet which does not express any peculiar character.—Nuttall.
[110] Although Vaugine was for several generations a prominent name in the Southwest, and is still borne by the township in Jefferson County in which the county town is located, it is difficult to distinguish the different individuals who possessed it. It was borne by one of the French officers who remained in Louisiana after its cession to Spain; and it was the name of another Frenchman who emigrated to New Orleans late in the eighteenth century, removed later to Arkansas Post, and finally settled, as farmer and trader, four miles below Pine Bluff, where he died in 1831, aged sixty-three years. As the latter served as major in the War of 1812–15, he is probably the Major Lewismore Vaugine of the text; but his relationship to the first mentioned does not appear. Other members of the family were prominent in Jefferson County as late as the close of the War of Secession.—Ed.
[111] Nathaniel Prior (sometimes spelled Pryor and Pryer) enlisted under Lewis and Clark as a private, being later appointed sergeant. In 1807, then an ensign, he was appointed to escort to his home the Mandan chief Shahaka (“Big White”), who had visited Washington at the request of the explorers. Prior’s party were fired upon by the Sioux, and compelled to return to St. Louis; it was not until September, 1809, that Shahaka could be returned to his people—this time escorted by an expedition under Pierre Chouteau. Prior continued in the regular army until 1815, at which time he was a captain.—Ed.
[112] According to local histories, the first permanent white settler at this point was Joseph Bonne, a French trapper and hunter, who came about 1819.—Ed.
[113] This bluff is the site of the town of Pine Bluff, seat of Jefferson County. The town was laid out about 1837, and incorporated in 1848; but the county was organized in 1829, the court being from the beginning held at the “Bluff.” For ten years there served as court-house a house which Bonne built in 1825, on the river bank between Chestnut and Walnut streets of the present town, on land which has since caved into the river. When built, it was near the camp of the Quapaw chief Sarrasin (see ante, note 101).—Ed.
[114] Metif, from French métif, meaning of mixed breed; specifically, the offspring of a white and a quadroon.—Ed.
[115] Ambrose Bartholomew was one of the early settlers on the north bank of the river.—Ed.
[116] See ante, note 85; also Cuming’s Tour, volume iv of our series, note 195. The date of this visit of Tonty is not exactly known, but it was in the spring of 1686. He left Illinois to seek La Salle in February, and left Texas for the return journey on Easter Monday. He was again in Illinois on June 24.
Other settlers at Pine Bluff besides Bonne were John Derresseaux and one Prewett. The preponderance in this neighborhood of settlers of French blood is indicated not only by the names of persons, but also by the fact that New Gascony is the name of one of the oldest towns.
It is said that the first white man in Jefferson County was Leon Le Roy, one of Tonty’s men, who deserted from the Post in 1690. He was held in captivity for fourteen years by the Osage, and when he escaped was captured and adopted by the Quapaw, whom he taught the use of firearms. When the Quapaw treaty of 1818 was made, one chief gave the commissioners, as an emblem of friendship, a gun said to be the one which Le Roy had a century earlier taught the Quapaw to use. This weapon is preserved in the Smithsonian Institution, at Washington.—Ed.
[117] Cupressus disticha.—Nuttall.
[118] Great Prairie, or Grand Prairie, as it is usually called, is the low upland north of the Arkansas. The tract especially designated by this name is about ninety miles long and from ten to fifteen wide, and roughly runs parallel to the river.—Ed.
[119] Peter Lefevre, a French Canadian, settled in the fall of 1818 on the north side of the river about six miles below Little Rock. Descendants still dwelt upon the identical spot a few years ago. The name is common in the early history of this section. In corrupted form it is preserved in Fourche la Fave Creek, which flows eastward through Perry County.—Ed.
[120] About the year 1814, Wright Daniels located on the north side of the river, four miles below Little Rock. Robert Jones came to the same neighborhood in 1818.—Ed.
[121] See post, note 126.—Ed.
[122] The Cayas of La Vega are the modern Kansa.—Ed.
[123] Called La Petite Rochelle by the French, to distinguish it from the larger rocky promontory two miles farther up the river. A few settlers located here as early as 1818. Little Rock became the capital of the territory in 1821, and the same year it was proposed to rechristen it Arkopolis. Although never officially adopted, this name appears on some old maps.—Ed.
[124] Edmund Hogan, from Georgia, was said to be the first permanent settler of Pulaski County. Upon the organization of the county in 1819, he was appointed justice of the peace.—Ed.
[125] The Saline joins the Ouachita a few miles from the southern boundary of Arkansas, but its headwaters are in Saline County, which joins Pulaski on the west. This river should be distinguished from the Saline branch of Little River, a tributary of the Red. The settlement here referred to was near the point where the road to Hot Springs crossed the Saline. It was begun (1815) by William Lockert (or Lockhart), from North Carolina; other families came in 1817. See James, Expedition, volume xvii of our series, p. 300 (original pagination).—Ed.
[126] Nuttall’s description of the course of the road below Little Rock is confusing. By the thermal springs he means the site of Hot Springs, where the road forked. The eastern branch followed the Ouachita to the side of the modern town of Monroe, seat of Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, where was Nuttall’s “post of Washita;” thence it ran southwest to Natchitoches, on Red River, an old French mission town, founded in 1714, now the seat of Natchitoches Parish. The other branch ran almost directly south to Natchitoches, and on Darby’s map of 1816 is marked, “Trace from Natchitoches to Hot Springs.”
Mount Prairie was not on the headwaters of the Saline Fork of the Ouachita where Nuttall’s map places it. The name suggests the old French “upper settlement” on Red River, which was near the old Caddo village, situated in Long Prairie, south of Red River, about fifty miles above Little River. In this prairie was a hill which the Indians regarded with superstitious veneration. However, the settlements on Red River, near the mouth of the Kiamichi, are probably meant (see post, notes 182, 184). The trail from St. Louis to Little Rock, which passed through Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was followed by Major S. H. Long on his expedition into Arkansas (1810). Members of Long’s exploring party of 1819–20, who followed this “great road” from the Saline to Little Rock, called it then an “obscure path.”—Ed.
[127] The Mamelle is at the mouth of a stream which is still marked on the maps as the Maumelle, a corruption of the original. The name was not infrequently applied by the French to hills of breast-like form. This peak is now called “The Pinnacle.”—Ed.
[128] A granitic formation is exposed in central Arkansas, extending from Pulaski County to Pike. Argentiferous galena is found throughout this area, but is especially rich around Silver City in Montgomery County. The Spaniards left numerous old diggings as evidence of their knowledge of the existence not only of lead, but of more valuable metals. At one time considerable quantities of silver were obtained from lead mines a few miles north of Little Rock. A gold “craze” was caused in 1809 by the finding of a nugget in the same neighborhood where Nuttall places the silver mine.—Ed.
[129] Hist. Louisian. p. 219, London Edition.—Nuttall. Comment by Ed. Second London edition (1764).
[130] Major James Pyeatt and his brother Jacob came from North Carolina in wagons in 1807, and the settlement which grew up about them was called Pyeattstown. It was twelve miles above Little Rock, but has disappeared. Here resided for a time James Miller, first governor of Arkansas Territory. See post, note 214.—Ed.
[131] The Mamelle terminates a range of hills to which it gives name (known locally as the Maumelle Mountains). North of this lies the valley of Fourche la Fave River, and between this valley and that of the Arkansas rises another range of hills. See post, note 181.—Ed.
[132] The name of this stream is derived from Lefevre, the name of a French family prominent in early Arkansas history (see ante, note 119). The sources of the stream are near the western boundary of the state, in Scott County; its headwaters are only a few miles from those of Little River, a tributary of the Red, and those of the Ouachita lie between; it flows slightly to the north of east.—Ed.
[133] The site of Cadron settlement was the mouth of Cadron Creek, thirty-eight miles above Little Rock, in Faulkner County. In 1820 it was made the seat of justice for Pulaski County against the wishes of Governor James Miller, who favored Pyeattstown, his own residence. In time Cadron fell into decay, and it has now disappeared from the map.—Ed.
[134] John McElmurray settled at Cadron prior to 1818. In the spring of that year he had for neighbors Benjamin Murphy, Harvey Hager, and families named McFarland and Newell.—Ed.
[135] Hot Springs, now the famous health resort in Garland County. The spot was widely known among the Indians, and De Soto, led on by their reports, probably visited it in 1542. Summer parties of wealthy planters began to frequent the region early in the nineteenth century, and to such visits were doubtless due the well-marked roads from Natchitoches, described above (see ante, note 126). The town of Hot Springs is of late growth; it was a mere village in 1860. A tract of four square miles surrounding the springs was purchased in 1877 by the government, and is now a national park.—Ed.
[136] For a further account of this mineral, which appeared to be undescribed, see a note in the Essay on the Geological Structure of the Valley of the Mississippi, which I published in the first part of the second volume of the Journal of the Academy of the Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.—Nuttall.
[137] The name may be a corruption of Massengill. Two brothers of this name, who had been Tories during the American Revolution, drifted into the region in 1818, and soon passed on before the advancing tide of civilization. On the Pecannerie settlement and the character of its people, see post, pp. 280–281.—Ed.
[138] If the date given by local authorities is correct, Nuttall is wrong in asserting that no grist-mill had been set up prior to his visit. William and John Standlee are said to have erected a grist- and saw-mill in 1818, the first within the present limits of Faulkner County.—Ed.
[139] Or Point Remove, whose name is derived from the action of the current. For the boundary of the Cherokee reservation, see post, note 145.—Ed.
[140] The Little John (or Petit Jean) enters the Arkansas at the northeast corner of Yell County. Tradition says that the stream is named for a Frenchman of small stature, named Jean, who was here killed by the Indians.—Ed.
[141] A Strobilaria, more commonly considered as a species of Phytolite.—Nuttall.
[142] Magazine Mountain rises two hundred and eighty feet above the level of the stream. It terminates on the river in the headland called the “Dardanelle,” to be described a few pages below.—Ed.
[143] Charlevoix also remarks, “I cannot find out to what language the Cherokees belong, a pretty numerous people, who inhabit the vast meadows between the Lake Erie, and the Mississippi,” and adds, that the Iroquois make war with them. Hist. Journal, p. 115, London Ed.—Nuttall.
[144] Purchas’s Pilgrims, vol. IV., p. 1539.—Nuttall.
[145] It is not now believed that the Cherokee ever occupied the Carolina coast. It is more probable that they came from the north, a century or two before De Soto visited them. Their traditions and the researches of archæologists indicate that their original home was northwest of Lake Superior, whence they migrated southeast, coming up the Ohio and the Kanawha valleys, and finally descending the Great Valley of the Appalachians to their historic seat. They are thought to have built, en passant, the mounds of the Ohio region.
The removal policy was a gradual development. Even before the close of the eighteenth century—soon, in fact, after the treaty of Hopewell (1785)—bands began to cross the Mississippi; and as the pressure of white population increased the migration was facilitated by treaties. In 1803, President Jefferson suggested the desirability of removing the tribe beyond the river, and the Act of 1804, dividing the Louisiana Purchase, appropriated $15,000 for this purpose. In 1809, Jefferson encouraged a part of the tribe which was discontented with existing conditions to send a delegation to inspect lands on the Arkansas, with a view to exchanging their old range for a new one in that region. The exchange was not consummated until 1817, by which time the migration of families and small parties had swelled the number in Arkansas to two or three thousand. The treaty of July 8, 1817, gave the Arkansas Cherokee a tract lying between the White and Arkansas rivers, bounded on the east by a line running northeast from Point Remove on the Arkansas to Shield’s Ferry on White River, and on the west by a parallel line starting from Table Rock, just above Fort Smith. This reserve was surrendered in 1825 for seven million acres in Indian Territory. The main body of the eastern Cherokee were removed to the Territory under a treaty made in 1835.—Ed.
[146] Derdanai, or “Dardonnie,” is said to mean “sleep with one eye.” The name and the appearance of the rocks suggest the Dardanelles, whence, it is alleged, the modification of the name to Dardanelle. The Cherokee agency was located on this site in 1820; but the town proper dates from the coming, some years later, of white settlers ejected from Indian lands. The modern town of Dardanelle is the most important commercial town on the river between Little Rock and Fort Smith.—Ed.
[147] When first encountered by whites in 1560, the Natchez occupied a considerable tract on the east side of the Mississippi. Their chief village was near the site of the modern Natchez. According to their own traditions, they came from the Southwest, and their customs—worship of the sun, human sacrifices, etc.—indicate a connection with the Indians of Mexico and Yucatan. The men were of large stature, few being under six feet. The tribe soon acquired dissolute habits from the whites, and rapidly dwindled in numbers. Hostilities with the French began in 1715, and continued intermittently until 1740. The Choctaw and Chickasaw became involved, the former as allies of the French, and the latter, incited by the English, as allies of the Natchez. The final result of the wars was the extinction of the Natchez as a distinct tribe, although a remnant long persisted among the Chickasaw and Muskogee; in 1835 this remnant numbered three hundred souls.
The Chetimachas were a small tribe which dwelt on Lake Grand, in southern Louisiana.—Ed.
[148] Tallantusky (Tollontuskee, Tollunteeskee, Tolontusky, Talootiske, etc.) was one of the chiefs who signed the treaty of October 25, 1805, at Tellico, Tennessee. This rewarded Tallantusky and another chief, Doublehead, by certain secret reservations; and for this and further abuses of his power Doublehead was afterwards slain by decree of other chiefs of his tribe. To Tallantusky is due the establishment of the first mission among the Cherokee of Arkansas. While visiting the eastern Cherokee in 1818, he met an officer of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and invited him to send missionaries to his people. As the result, Cephas Washburn and Alfred Finney, accompanied by their families, established Dwight mission, opposite Dardanelle, in the spring of 1820. The station was named in honor of Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale College, and a pioneer organizer of the mission board.
Tallantusky’s brother, here mentioned, was Jolly the chief, referred to in the text a few lines below. See following note.—Ed.
[149] John Jolly (Oolooteka), brother of Tallantusky, and his successor as chief, had removed from the mouth of the Hiawassee, in Tennessee. There young Samuel Houston, famous later as the emancipator of Texas, had won his friendship and been adopted as his son. After the Arkansas Cherokee had removed to Indian Territory, Houston settled near Jolly (1829), and married his niece, Talihina, daughter of a half-breed named Rogers. See post, note 153.—Ed.
[150] Reuben Lewis. See Bradbury’s Travels, volume v of our series, note 93—Ed.
[151] Nancy Ward was born about 1740. Her father was a British officer, and her mother a sister of the principal chief of the Cherokee. The Indians believed her to be the inspired mouthpiece of the Great Spirit, and allowed her a voice in their councils with the power of deciding the fate of captives. She was friendly to the whites, and several times saved captives from death. In 1776 she warned the settlers of the Holston and Watauga rivers of the hostile plans of her kinsmen, and in 1781 represented her tribe in seeking peace from the frontiersmen. She is described as tall, erect, and beautiful, with prominent nose, regular features, clear complexion, long, silken black hair, large, piercing black eyes, and an imperious yet kindly air.—Ed.
[152] See Long’s Voyages, our volume ii, note 31.—Ed.
[153] James Rogers signed the treaty of July 8, 1817, as one of the deputies of the Cherokee on the Arkansas. Whether he is the John Rogers here referred to does not clearly appear. John Rogers figures during the difficulties with the Osage, as the person charged with the task of bringing Osage captives from the Cherokee east of the Mississippi, not long after Nuttall’s visit. Samuel Houston’s wife, Talihina, was the daughter of a half-breed named Rogers, quite possibly the person mentioned in the text.—Ed.
[154] John D. Chisholm was one of the deputies who signed the treaty of July, 1817, on behalf of the Arkansas Cherokee. Whether or not he was the person guilty of the crime referred to, is uncertain.—Ed.
[155] It would be impracticable to give here a full history of the difficulties between the Cherokee and Osage. They began with the advent of the first Cherokee bands in Western Arkansas, for the Osage claimed the land. A treaty of peace between the two tribes was made at a council held at St. Louis in October, 1818, but it proved ineffective. In the summer of 1820, Governor James Miller, of Arkansas Territory, made a second unsuccessful effort to pacify the tribes. The United States government compelled them to conclude a treaty of peace in 1822, but petty depredations continued long after.—Ed.