The O-gah-pah or Quapaw Indians did not begin their existence as a people in Arkansas, nor did they end it there. However, that is where they were when European explorers encountered them for the first time. A fierce people who had learned in their past of the danger strangers could pose, they carefully assessed the whites. European memories make clear that the Quapaw enthusiastically welcomed the strange visitors. In light of this, one might wonder how the Quapaw, perhaps the friendliest native group that the Europeans discovered, ended up some distance away in Oklahoma. Or, one might ask, how did Arkansas history impact the Quapaw Indians? Unfortunately, the answer to these questions must proceed along the following line of thought: European settlers found the Quapaw to be eager, friendly, and supportive allies; used them to establish settlements and control over the land; and repaid their kindnesses by taking their land and driving them out of the territory.

Even before LaSalle, the French adventurers Marquette and Joliet made their way down the Mississippi River in 1673 and made contact with the Quapaw people in their new homeland. Although Hernando de Soto had made his way through parts of what would become Arkansas over 130 years before and described frequent encounters with natives there, it appears that the Quapaw migration occurred afterward. Certainly, they were there to welcome the Marquette and Joliet expedition. Oddly, this later expedition tells that almost none of the many natives encountered by the earlier expedition still remained in northeastern Arkansas. What became of the thousands of Indians described by de Soto? Most believe that they succumbed to diseases communicated by that first expedition, but it is impossible to know with certainty. Marquette and Joliet were followed by LaSalle. Again, the natives approached with care; however, “after some initial nervousness, the Quapaws received LaSalle and his men with numerous displays of public and private affection.”[2]

Determining relationships between the various Indian groups can be a complex enterprise and the classification systems sometimes overlap or clash.[3] After parting from their cousins, the Quapaws made their way downstream and settled far away near the mouth of the Arkansas River. They established four villages on both sides of the Great River. However, in doing so they pushed other Indian groups out of the area. Unfortunately, their traditional enemies, the Chickasaws, remained on the east bank. The history of conflict between the two tribes is long and bloody. Occasionally they also clashed with their cousins, the Osage. Osage Indians settled along the river named after them in west Missouri, “the closest of the Dhegiha tribes to the Quapaws.” Their hunting parties would sometimes make it as far south as Quapaw territory.[4]

For anyone who knows the end of the story, it may be a bit of a surprise to find that the interaction of Quapaw and whites in the early years often saw the Quapaw with the upper hand in the relationship. Mutual benefit drove their connections. At the same time, no small role ought to be assigned to misunderstanding. The relationships often evolved with Europeans believing they had established trading partnerships and made Christian catechumen of the Indians, while the Quapaw on the other hand believed they had achieved relations that they could use to advance their own interests. Still, for a time Europeans with their smaller numbers and intense trading interests had to adapt constantly to the changing terms established by the Quapaw.[5] Though most of the history would later see Europeans dominating and Quapaws submitting, in these years they and other Indian tribes "served Quapaw needs and played by Quapaw rules."[6] “The story often seemed less like diplomacy than the playground game of ‘Simon says,’ with no question who was Simon.”[7]

As Arnold wryly observed, “Except for the silence of its final letter, there is nowadays nothing very French about Arkansas.”[8] Yet the French played a crucial historical role in the developing relations of Europeans and Quapaw. In 1680 a delegation of Quapaw, Osage, and Chickasaws made their way to the French settlement of Kaskaskia hoping to make contact, establish a good relationship, and mostly seeking to trade hides for the white man’s tools and weapons.[9] In 1686 Henri de Tonti set up the first European settlement in the area destined to become Arkansas, “Poste de Arkansea,” or Arkansas Post. For doing so, he came to be regarded as the “father of Arkansas.”[10] La Salle had given him the land as a feudal land grant.[11] He speaks in his memoir of “a seigniory that M. de la Salle had given me” in the area.[12] The new settlement depended upon the hunting of the plentiful wild game in the area including bear, buffalo, and deer. Hides taken by whites and Quapaw and other Indians formed the economic basis of Arkansas Post.[13] Cherokee to the north on the St. Francis River and Osage further to the northwest on the Arkansas and Osage Rivers contributed to the trade and economic activity, but the Quapaw were closest in proximity and economic interests. Additionally, the French could count on the Quapaw for impressive military support when needed.[14]

The history of Arkansas Post demonstrates the precariousness of its existence throughout the early years. Still, it survived as a trading post, a fort, and a settlement under French control until the Spanish took it over in 1768 and altered its name more than once. For the Quapaw, little changed; they were still appreciated allies who fought bravely in battle when the Europeans needed them and who continued to represent a powerful, economically advantageous trading partnership. Spanish control came to an end in 1804 after the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory.[15] Even then their status as important allies did not change, “although the role assigned to them did.”[16]

West suggests that the Quapaws approached this new relationship with the Americans expecting things to remain the same—expecting to benefit from the relationship. Events early in the period encouraged them in this assessment. In 1806, for example, Quapaw captives were returned by Thomas Jefferson in a clear effort to maintain good relations. However, relations with this new country would prove to be enormously different than that with the French and Spanish. After all, the United States was not located an ocean away but on the same continent and pressing forward. A growing population, spreading frontier, and changing political leadership meant that the US would not be inclined to maintain old agreements with natives who stood in the way of their geographic and economic expansion.[17]

There had already been clear signs of the difficulty and trouble to come. The year before the Spanish turned control of the territory over, a New Orleans resident by the name of Daniel Clark described the Indians of the Mississippi from Cape Girardeau south to the Ouachita and Red Rivers. He tells that numerous Indian tribes had moved into the area. Some were even living with the Quapaws. However, he does not explain that the new groups were there because they had been displaced by the encroaching US population.[18] Already, the United States was pushing natives out and before its expansion.

In light of their long and impressive history of military activity, one might wonder why the Indians did not unite to oppose the settlers moving west. The explanation is neither complex nor satisfying. The various parties already had a long history of failure to unite even when they had a common enemy. In fact, the Osage Indians represented an earlier and admittedly smaller expansionist threat. “Most people in the late eighteenth-century Arkansas, Missouri, and Red River Valleys saw the Osages as the greatest threat to their land and lives.”[19] All impacted by their militant expansion had tried to negotiate an alliance to oppose the Osage. Unfortunately, the effort “failed because of each group's refusal to subordinate its own interests to the joint effort.[20] Indeed, this earlier failure compounded the animosity that the groups had for one another. As a result, later when there was an even greater threat from US expansion, no alliance could be wrought.[21]

The Louisiana Purchase was the beginning of the end for the Quapaw’s mutually beneficial relationship with the white man and for their presence in Arkansas. Moreover, that end would come with stunning speed. Hoffman summarizes the remaining history of the Quapaw in Arkansas in a sentence: They “were first ignored, then pressured to reverse gender roles as part of the ‘civilizing’ process so dear to the Sage of Monticello's heart, then forced off their land, and finally were removed again after most of them returned to Arkansas.”[22] Indeed, within the span of only a couple generations, there would be no more Quapaw nation in Arkansas.

The importance of the Louisiana Purchase lies in the fact that it precipitated such large-scale migration westward. In only a few years the number of new white settlers in the Arkansas area greatly outnumbered everyone who had been there before including those of Indian, French, and Spanish descent. The explanation for this phenomenon lies in the massive growth that had occurred in the US over the preceding century or so. Between 1700 and 1803, the population soared from 250,000 to twenty-two times that number, 5.5 million. This is what Walter Nugent termed, "a demographic inundation leading to complete political and cultural change."[23] Joseph Key points out that the Quapaw “had been able to incorporate earlier colonial intruders into their political and economic system.” However, he says, the pressure of so many thousands of settlers “undermined the culture of the Quapaw people.”[24] The white settlers came intent on the task of striking out a living from the land, brought black slaves by the thousands to accomplish that task, and in the process determined that the native groups, which occupied so much good land, could not remain.

Certainly, the Quapaw did occupy a great deal of good land; however, they had controlled far more only a short time before. By 1818, their population had diminished more than ten percent since the Louisiana Purchase a decade and a half before. In Tonti’s day, about 1700, he wrote of a time when there had been 1,500 Quapaw warriors, suggesting a total population of perhaps 7,500. However, by his day he estimated the men to number only 300, with a total population of 1,700.[25] Numbering probably below 500 in 1818, the Quapaw in an act of good faith toward their new allies gave up claims on a “vast area between the Arkansas and Red Rivers.”[26] In doing so, they gave the US the majority of their lands.[27] That land included “title to four hundred and eighty acres of what would become Little Rock.”[28] However, they continued to possess approximately two million acres in the southeast of the Arkansas Territory.[29] Thus, one sees the immensity of the landholdings that once belonged to the Quapaws.

Unfortunately, numbering less than 500, the Quapaw could not stand against the unending westward migration of innumerable whites. It was small comfort that other Indian peoples were feeling the same pressure, or that the settlers moving to Arkansas were fewer in number than those entering Missouri and Louisiana. Relative to the Quapaw population, the number of immigrants swelled. In fact, by the 1820s, even blacks in slavery to whites in the territory outnumbered the Quapaw.[30]

When Congress declared the Arkansas area a territory in 1819, it initiated a long series of events and negotiations with the Indians living there that would see them all removed before Arkansas received statehood in 1839. The fact that they possessed such good and large tracts of land meant that settlers soon demanded that the land be removed from their control. After all, the settlers suggested, the huge, Edenic tracts were not being well-managed by the Quapaw and could be far more productive if placed in the hands of better stewards.[31] However, US policy initially simply ignored the settler requests and the Quapaw in general. Eventually their demands, coinciding as they did with the established Indian removal policy of the US, were heard; overwhelming pressure was then exerted on the few remaining Quapaw to get them to abandon their remaining land claims.[32] Much to their surprise, they were then told that they would have to relocate to the Caddo Indian area south of the Red River.[33]

From that point the history of the Quapaws became swept up in decisions, controversies, and petty arguments which were beyond them and outside of their control. Upon arrival in the Red River area, they discovered that the Caddoes already there were not expecting and did not want them. Once settled, they were impoverished and beset with problems of weather that prevented them from escaping their poverty.[34]

The 455 who had made the journey lost sixty of their number due to starvation. They were badly led, abused, or ignored until finally in 1827 those who could, about one-third of the Quapaw, decided to return to Arkansas where they also had nothing. Within three years, the rest of the Quapaw had followed them back. With no food or money, they survived on the charity extended by those around them but continued to be pushed away until most ended up living in the swamplands. By 1833 the US once again directed its attention to the Quapaw problem. Unfortunately, this in itself was not necessarily an advantage for the Quapaw who once again became caught up in a flow of events upon which they could exercise little control or influence. Rather than doing the very hard work that would have been necessary to find a place for them in Arkansas, the Federal Government decided to remove the Quapaw once again, but this time to the Indian Territory north and west of Arkansas.[35]

The story of the Quapaw continued in their new land where they remain to this day. Before the century was over, the New York Times reported that the last of the Quapaw chiefs had died.[36] Some lived on. In their new home, some of their number did well and others less so. Some became rich as a result of new wealth discovered under the ground upon which they walked. Many remain poor and marginalized even now. Less and less of their culture and history is remembered as time passes although new money from massive casino developments promises to address the problem. A 1989 entry in the International Journal of American Linguistics reported the extinction of the Quapaw language.[37] However, they only this year had their “138^th annual powwow, the oldest powwow in the state and the second-oldest of its kind in the country.”[38]

Nonetheless, one suspects that the story of the Quapaw is a story of loss not just for the Quapaw, but for all Americans. How did the Quapaw, as friendly and helpful to the Europeans as any other group, end up far from where they began in Oklahoma? Through a long process, but one that greatly accelerated with the Louisiana Purchase—a process of utilitarian usage of human beings and one of disregard for promises and agreements. How did Arkansas history impact the Quapaw? Unfortunately, they appear to have been killed by the white man’s diseases, used to accomplish the white man’s purposes, ignored, marginalized, and removed so that their lands could be taken by white men.

Indeed this is a story of great loss for everyone. Any people who treat other peoples in such ways must have something missing, something lost from their very character and being. Now that the story is history and cannot be changed, one is tempted to dismiss it as the unfortunate choices of less humane and less civilized US ancestors. One might hope that this is the case.  However, one might also wonder if a people capable of such injustice in the past may also be capable of equal injustice in the future. There certainly have been other instances along the way, but hopefully history has taught some lessons which cannot be ignored.

 Bibliography

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Arnold, Morris S. The Rumble of a Distant Drum The Quapaws and the Old World Newcomers, 1673-1804. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000.

Baird, W. David. The Quapaw Indians: a History of the Downstream People. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.

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 Bolton, S. Charles. "Jeffersonian Indian Removal and the Emergence of Arkansas Territory." The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, October 1, 2003, 253-71. Highbeam Research.

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