The land that is today the state of Arkansas was first settled thousands of years ago by people called the Bluff Dwellers. These people lived in caves in the Ozark Mountains. Other natives moved in over time and became various Native American tribes such as the Osage, the Caddo, and the Quapaw.
Who first settled in Arkansas?
Early inhabitants, exploration, and European settlement
Spanish and French expeditions traveled the Mississippi regions in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the Italian-born French explorer Henri de Tonty founded the Arkansas Post on the lower Arkansas River in 1686.
Who were the first white settlers in Arkansas?
Arkansas Post Beginnings – Prehistory to 1763
Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and his expedition were the first Europeans to explore this area, but it was the arrival of the French 130 years later that began the exploration, settlement, and transformation of the Lower Mississippi valley.
Where was the first settlement in Arkansas?
Location: Arkansas County, on Ark. 1 and 169, about 8 miles northeast of Gillett; address, 1741 Old Post Road Gillett, AR 72055. Arkansas Post, founded near the mouth of the Arkansas River, was the first European settlement in the lower Mississippi Valley and the territory of the later Louisiana Purchase.
Who lived in Arkansas before it became a state?
Native Americans, known as bluff dwellers, first lived in Arkansas. They had a thriving culture along the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers as far back as 500 A.D. In the 16th and 17th centuries, both the Spanish and the French explored the region.
What are the 3 main Native American tribes indigenous to Arkansas?
History of the Tribes
Those most prevalent in Arkansas included the Caddos, Quapaws, Osages and later, Cherokees, as they traveled through Arkansas on the Trail of Tears to present day Oklahoma.
Where did slaves in Arkansas come from?
The first people enslaved by Europeans entered what was to become Arkansas in about 1720, when settlers moved into the John Law colony on land given to them on the lower Arkansas River by the king of France.
What is the oldest town in Arkansas?
Batesville is the oldest existing city in the State of Arkansas.
Were there plantations in Arkansas?
Lakeport Plantation is a historic antebellum plantation house located near Lake Village, Arkansas. It was built around 1859 by Lycurgus Johnson with the profits of slave labor.
What immigrants settled in Arkansas?
More than half of Arkansas’s immigrants in the late nineteenth century were of German, English, or Irish descent. Most settled in urban areas, with Little Rock home to 20 percent of the state’s foreign born population and Fort Smith home to 10 percent.
How many slaves were in Arkansas before the Civil War?
The growth of slavery in the state was directly linked to this expansion. By 1860, Arkansas was home to more than 110,000 slaves, and one in five white citizens was a slave owner.
When were slaves freed in Arkansas?
On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, shifting the emphasis of the Civil War from a fight to save the Union to a fight for freedom. Arkansas’s capital city of Little Rock (Pulaski County) fell to Union forces in September 1863.
When did settlers come to Arkansas?
On June 18, 1541, Hernando de Soto’s Spanish expeditionary force crossed the Mississippi River and became the first Europeans to enter Arkansas.
Is Arkansas a Native American name?
The word “Arkansas” came from the Quapaw Indians, by way of early French explorers. At the time of the early French exploration, a tribe of Indians, the Quapaws, lived West of the Mississippi and north of the Arkansas River.
Why isn’t Arkansas pronounced Arkansas?
So why do we pronounce them differently? We can thank the French. Arkansas was named for the French plural of a Native American tribe, while Kansas is the English spelling of a similar one. Since the letter “s” at the end of French words is usually silent, we pronounce Bill Clinton’s home state “Arkansaw.”
What do you call a person from Arkansas?
Although “Arkansan” has become the standard usage, some of the state’s best-known writers have argued in favor of “Arkansawyer.” To confuse the issue further, another term, Arkansians, was used even earlier than either Arkansawyer or Arkansan.
Did the Trail of Tears Go through Arkansas?
Arkansas has hundreds of miles of the Trail of Tears, and of the nine states traversed by the trail, is the only state that witnessed the removal of all five of the Southeastern tribes as they moved west. Arkansas State Parks has five parks that lie along these removal routes.
Where did the Cherokee live in Arkansas?
Historians estimate that by the early 1800s, as many as 3,000 Cherokees were living in the area along the St. Francis River in northeast Arkansas (and southeast Missouri), and along Illinois Bayou and the Arkansas River in Pope County.
Where is Indian Territory in Arkansas?
Arkansas Territory, which included the present State of Arkansas plus most of the state of Oklahoma, was created out of the southern part of Missouri Territory in 1819. Originally the western border of Missouri was intended to extend due south all the way to the Red River, just north of Louisiana.
What was the state with the most slaves?
Distribution of Slaves
Virginia with 490,867 slaves took the lead and was followed by Georgia (462,198), Mississippi (436,631), Alabama (435,080), and South Carolina (402,406). Slavery was just as important to the economy in other states as well. Several relied on the free labor of over 100,000 slaves.
How was Arkansas different than other states in the South when it came to slavery?
Terms in this set (8)
How was Arkansas different from other southern states when it came to slavery? About 80% of Arkansas families never owned slaves. Even though the number of slaves in the state had increased during the Antebellum period, there was still fewer in Arkansas than in almost any other southern state.