A Many-Storied Place

A Many-storied Place Historic Resource Study Arkansas Post National Memorial, Arkansas Theodore Catton Principal Investigator Midwest Region National Park Service Omaha, Nebraska 2017 A Many-Storied Place Historic Resource Study Arkansas Post National Memorial, Arkansas Theodore Catton Principal Investigator 2017 Recommended: {){ Superintendent, Arkansas Post AihV'j Concurred: Associate Regional Director, Cultural Resources, Midwest Region Date Approved: Date Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set. Proverbs 22:28 Words spoken by Regional Director Elbert Cox Arkansas Post National Memorial dedication June 23, 1964 Table of Contents List of Figures vii Introduction 1 1 – Geography and the River 4 2 – The Site in Antiquity and Quapaw Ethnogenesis 38 3 – A French and Spanish Outpost in Colonial America 72 4 – Osotouy and the Changing Native World 115 5 – Arkansas Post from the Louisiana Purchase to the Trail of Tears 141 6 – The River Port from Arkansas Statehood to the Civil War 179 7 – The Village and Environs from Reconstruction to Recent Times 209 Conclusion 237 Appendices 241 1 – Cultural Resource Base Map: Eight exhibits from the Memorial Unit CLR (a) Pre-1673 / Pre-Contact Period Contributing Features (b) 1673-1803 / Colonial and Revolutionary Period Contributing Features (c) 1804-1855 / Settlement and Early Statehood Period Contributing Features (d) 1856-1865 / Civil War Period Contributing Features (e) 1866-1928 / Late 19th and Early 20th Century Period Contributing Features (f) 1929-1963 / Early 20th Century Period Contributing Features (g) Non-contributing Features (h) Archeological Analysis 2 – Osotouy Unit Archeological Sites: Map from the Osotouy CLR 3 – Area Overview: Aerial photograph and unit boundaries from the Osotouy CLR 4 – Schematic of River Change: Maps from the Geologic Resources Inventory Report Bibliography 253 Index 279 List of Figures 1 – Location of Arkansas Post on Arkansas River 5 2 – Menard Mounds 13 3 – Stalking Buffalo, Arkansas, by George Catlin 18 4 – Buffalo Hunt under Wolf-skin Masks, by George Catlin 20 5 – Threshing rice on Grand Prairie near DeWitt, Ark. 31 6 – View of Post Bend 35 7 – Menard Mounds site map, 1881 41 8 – Edward Palmer, archeologist with the Mound Survey 43 9 – Ceramic from excavation at Menard Mounds in 1881 44 10 – Archeologist Clarence Moore 45 11 – Ford’s map of Menard Site, 1961 47 12 – De Soto at the Mississippi River 56 13 – De Soto’s burial in the Mississippi River 60 14 – “Teapot” form, Menard complex 70 15 – Henri de Tonty 75 16 – Tonty’s trading house in 1689 77 17 – Jean-Baptiste le Moyne de Bienville 84 18 – John Law 85 19 – Alexandre Chevelier de Clouet 98 20 – De Villiers’s 1779 map of Arkansas Post 103 21 – Map of Louisiana and British West Florida, 1763-1783 105 22 – Colbert’s raid on Fort Carlos III 107 23 – Carlos de Vilemont 112 24 – Calumet dancer 118 25 – Beaver pelts in trade 124 26 – Painted buffalo hide 131 27 – Osage: Tal-lee, Black Dog, Big Crow, by George Catlin 148 28 – Marie Felicite de Vaugine 154 29 – Thomas Nuttall 157 30 – Maid of Orleans steamboat 162 31 – Great raft on the Red River 163 32 – Louisiana Indians Walking along a Bayou, by Alfred Boisseau 177 33 – Scene on a cotton plantation 186 34 – The gunboat USS Baron de Kalb 193 35 – Survey map of approaches to Fort Hindman 194 36 – Brigadier General Thomas Churchill 195 37 – Major General John McClernand 196 vii List of Figures 38 – Major General William Tecumseh Sherman 199 39 – Battle of Arkansas Post mapped by historian Ed Bearss 201 40 – Union landing on White River 207 41 – Cotton worker’s cabin 213 42 – Caretaker’s house, 1963 218 43 – Congresswoman Catherine Dorris Norrell 223 44 – Interpretive sign, Old Townsite trail 227 45 – Little Post Bayou 228 46 – Fort Carlos III exhibit 230 47 – Paved footpaths, Old Townsite 231 viii Introduction Arkansas Post is a small place with a large history. It began in 1686 as a trading house situated next to the Quapaw village of Osotouy. Occupied by six men, four of whom soon left, this humble enterprise marked the beginning of colonial settlement in the lower Mississippi Valley. Begun anew in 1721-22 as both a military fort and a plantation of colonists, Arkansas Post became one of the linchpins of French dominion over the interior of North America through the next four decades of European colonization. After France ceded Louisiana to Spain in 1762, the fort and its associated settlement went on to serve for another four decades as an outpost on Spain’s frontier with Anglo America. In 1804, a U.S. flag was raised over the fort, and in 1819, Congress made the village of Arkansas Post the first capital of Arkansas Territory. As a river port in the early years of steamboat travel, Arkansas Post was on the Trail of Tears for Southeast Indian tribes who were forced to leave their homelands in the 1830s. In the second year of the American Civil War, Confederate forces turned the place into a stronghold to oppose a Federal advance up the Arkansas River. On January 10 and 11, 1863, a battle was fought there. Though the fort was destroyed in the battle and the old settlement nearly faded away afterwards, the place’s storied past was not forgotten. The site of the first territorial capital became a state park in 1929. Congress authorized Arkansas Post National Memorial in 1960, and the National Park Service (NPS) acquired the land base and established the unit in the National Park System four years later. The original area took in the old townsite of Arkansas’s territorial period together with a line of Confederate entrenchments built in 1862-1863. Almost no historic structures remained (archeological resources excepted). The historical significance of the site rested in its power of place, not in its historic resources, hence its designation as a national memorial rather than a national monument or national historic site. Development of the unit had barely gotten started when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed Lock and Dam No. 2 on the Arkansas River just two miles below Arkansas Post. The navigation pool behind the dam inundated lands in and around the national memorial and drastically changed the landscape. Of the national memorial’s 740 acres, just 305 acres remained as dry land. Bayous bordering the national memorial on the east and west were transformed from wetlands into broad, shallow bodies of water. The probable locations of the French and Spanish posts, as well as the site of the Confederates’ Fort Hindman, were submerged in the arm of the navigation pool known as Post Bend. All that remained was the high ground once occupied by the historic settlement. Whereas the fort and settlement once occupied a bend in the river, now the land has taken the form of a peninsula jutting into the navigation pool. There is so much expanse of water all around the Introduction place that a first-time visitor is hard-pressed to distinguish the Arkansas River channel from the rest of the navigation pool. Between the disorienting drowned landscape and the near absence of historic resources, Arkansas Post National Memorial presents a unique challenge for site-based interpretation of a historic site. Interpretation is not made easier by the fact that the place has so much history – nearly 200 years of history from the founding of Arkansas Post to the Civil War, plus a century and a half of history since. Over time, one aspect of the story or another has piqued more interest. When the state park was established, state and local supporters wanted in the first place to memorialize the site of Arkansas’s first territorial capital. As the NPS became interested in the site in the 1950s, the part of the Arkansas Post story that gave the place national significance was its early founding and nearly continuous occupation through the colonial era. After the national memorial was established, NPS historians argued that the Civil War battle deserved greater attention. In recent decades, American Indian history and perspectives have received more emphasis. In 1998, Congress authorized expansion of Arkansas Post National Memorial to include a second area, located six miles downstream from the existing area, which archeologists and historians had long suspected to be the site of the original French trading post and Quapaw village of Osotouy. Archeological investigations had long focused on the precontact Menard Mounds or Menard-Hodges site. When the investigations moved to an adjoining area called Wallace Bottom, the elusive archeological remains of Osotouy were likely discovered at last. Now Arkansas Post National Memorial consists of two units, the 389-acre Memorial Unit and the 360-acre Osotouy Unit, which features the precontact Menard Mound site, with the early contact period Wallace Bottom site being located just outside the unit on land owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The NPS initiated the present study, a Historic Resource Study for Arkansas Post National Memorial, to assist the NPS with identifying, evaluating, and managing historic resources found within the park. Typically, a Historic Resource Study identifies historic resources such as buildings, cemeteries, roads, and other elements of what are collectively called the built environment, and then it seeks to integrate the story of the built environment with the political, social, Location Map 1. Arkansas Post National Memorial is in southeast and economic history of the area. Arkansas on the lower Arkansas River. 2 A Many-Storied Place: Historic Resource Study, Arkansas Post National Memorial Because very few historical resources exist within this park, the present study is primarily concerned with the place. The national memorial’s most important historic resource is the place, the geographic expression that was known through three centuries as Arkansas Post.

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