Henri de Tonti

1. Henri de Tonti

2. The Establishment of Arkansas Post    Around 1682, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle claimed much of the central interior of North America for France with a vision of establishing trading post up and down the Mississippi River .  When la Salle visited the Arkansas 1682 as he and Henri de Tonty explored down the Mississippi River and up the Arkansas River, the local Quapaw Indians knew Arkansas as Arkansea.  It was at this time that Henri de Tonty, one of la Salle's lieutenants, asked for a piece of the area found by la Salle and himself while traveling part of the way up the Arkansas River .  La Salle granted him the wish, and in August of 1686, de Tonty settled ten of his men near the Quapaw village of Osotouy about thirty-five miles from the mouth of the Arkansas . Arkansas Post was the first European settlement in what would later become Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase, and for about a decade, was the only white settlement west of the Mississippi River.

4. French Rule of the Arkansas Post     After establishing the post that was known to the French as Poste de Arkansea, de Tonty left the post in the hands of Coutoure Charpenter so that he could focus the majority his attention on Illinois.  De Tonty did however show some optimism for the post although he left for Illinois by the following: In 1689, he granted land there to Jesuit priests for their use in teaching "the mysteries of our Holy Religion to the Savages who are upon our River of Akanzea.“  Settlement by Jesuits would be important in maintaining good relations with the Indians.  De Tonty pledged to provide support for a missionary and to build a mission house for the Indians.  However, the Jesuits did not take up the land grant, and nothing came of these plans.      With this and the languishing of the post after the desertion of Charpenter in 1687, the post was totally abandoned in 1700.  In 1721, the post was reestablished with a French military garrison.  Flooding and Chickasaw raids in 1749 forced the post to have to be moved upriver.  The French moved it back down river nine miles from the Mississippi River when war with England began in 1756 in order to help protect French river convoys .  In 1763, French rule of Louisiana, which included Arkansas Post, ends when France cedes Louisiana to Spain after the French and Indian War.

5. Spanish Rule of Arkansas Post     France cedes Louisiana to Spain after the French and Indian War.  Many French soldiers stayed on and swore allegiance to Spain, helping the to Spanish follow the French traditions of establishing fur trade along the river route and creating an alliance with the Quapaw.  In the 1770s, the post was moved several times due to flooding and was renamed Fort Carlos III.

6. Arkansas Post in the American Revolution     On April 17, 1783, Fort Carlos III was the site of the only American Revolutionary battle fought in Arkansas, which actually happened several months after the war ended James Colbert led a group of English trappers and Chickasaw Indians in an attack on Fort Carlos. Colbert and his men attacked the Spanish fort because the Spanish had secretly provided supplies to the Americans during the American Revolution and in 1779 had entered the war, siding with the French and Americans. With the help of the Quapaw, the Spanish were able to drive the men in Colbert’s group back and away from the fort.

7. Early Rule of the Arkansas Post by the U. S.     After the American Revolution ended, Arkansas changed hands twice more by 1803.   In 1800, Louisiana Territory is regained by France, now under the power of Napoleon.   In 1803, Napoleon, in need of money, sold all of Louisiana Territory to the United States, under the administration of Thomas Jefferson.  This purchase, known as the Louisiana Purchase, caused the doubling of the size of the United States.     The immigration of Europeans into Quapaw homeland from the Tonty's Poste de Arkansea up until this purchase caused the area around the Arkansas Post to become a melting pot for the Quapaw and European cultures. The Quapaw Indians and Europeans had lived in relative peace during this time.  Right after the purchase, relations with the Indians were still fine as the United States government set up a trading post at the post in 1805.  By 1810 however, the population had been increasing to where it was now at a point where the population of United States immigrants exceeded the population of the Quapaw Indians.  By 1817, hunting and trapping culture was giving way to a farm economy     With the birth of a farm economy and an increase in immigrant population, the friendly relations with the Quapaws began to break down.  As the population increased, a demand arose for land that those new people could farm.  This led the government to create a treaty that called for the Quapaw to move to Southwest Arkansas and Northeast Louisiana.  Much to the government's dismay, the Indians began moving back to traditional homelands on their own as they found their new surroundings unsatisfactory.  The colonists pressed the United States to finally remove all the Quapaw from that region .  In 1824, the government forced the Quapaw to sign a treaty stripping them of their land in Arkansas and shipping them to Indian Territory.

8. Arkansas Post as the Capital of Arkansas Arkansas became a territory on March 2, 1819.  The town at Arkansas Post became the capital of the new territory.  After that day, the population in the territory grew rapidly , and Arkansas Post was no exception.  Merchants of all kinds, doctors, and lawyers al flocked to the new capital.  Along with these people comes William E. Woodruff. He arrived at Arkansas Post on October 30, 1819, and on November 20 of that year, the first issue of the Arkansas Gazette was published, making it the first newspaper in Arkansas With the becoming of Arkansas as a territory, the government at the new capital ,Arkansas Post, started at a quick pace.  Although Arkansas was made into a territory by Congress on March 4, 1819, it did not begin its actual working territorial existence until July 4, when the appointments of James Miller as the first governor and Robert Crittenden as the first secretary had been made. Crittenden arrived that very day and started his duties. As of July 28,Governor Miller had still not made it to the post, but the first territorial legislature was held any way at Arkansas Post with Crittenden acting as governor. On November 1, the first term of the Circuit Court convened and the post where James Woodson Bates presided. On December 26, Governor Miller finally arrived to assume his duties as Governor. The next year seemed to carry the speed of the previous year as it entered the January of 1820.  In January, the first Supreme Court of the new territory was established at Arkansas Post with Judge Ben Johnson and Andrew Scott presiding. On February 7, the first regular session of the general assembly of the new territory met with delegates elected by the people.  During the year, a land office was established at Arkansas Post with William Douglas as registrar and Henry W. Conway as receiver.

9. The Move of the Capital Away from Arkansas Post Arkansas Post did not show the same expansion rate in 1821 as it did in the previous years however.  Early that year, a want for a state government that was more centrally located started developing, and on June 1, the Capital of Arkansas Territory was Officially moved away from the post to Little Rock.  The post remained the county seat for Arkansas County.  On November 24, Woodruff printed the last issue of the Arkansas Gazette to be printed at Arkansas Post.  Woodruff had decided to move his press to Little Rock to follow the capital and the huge piece of the population that had gone with it In the next few decades, the population at Arkansas Post would take a dramatic dive.By 1830, the population of the post had dwindled to around one hundred.  Then in 1849, Asiatic cholera broke at Arkansas Post killing a massive amount of the population.By 1855, the population had dwindled so far that the county moved the county seat to DeWitt.  With the loss of the county seat, the town soon fell to the status of a small farming community, a status that it would hold until the Civil War, when only a few buildings of the town remained.

10. Arkansas Post in the Civil War    When the Civil War broke out among the states, Arkansas had to make a decision as to which side to join.  In May of 1861, Arkansas joined the Confederacy.  By mid 1862, Union gunboats were in command of most of the Mississippi River.  When gunboats, went up the White River into the heart of Arkansas, the Confederates began to prepare defenses on the Arkansas River, an important water route to the capital at Little Rock. On September 28, 1862, Major General Theophilus H. Holmes, commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, placed Colonel John W. Dunnington, late lieutenant in the Confederate States Navy, in charge of the river defense of Arkansas. Colonel Dunnington built Fort Hindman at Arkansas Post in response to his new position and the concerns of the Confederacy.  The fort was completed by the end of that year, and it housed some five thousand soldiers and eleven rifle-guns. The Union thought of Fort Hindman as a threat to their supply lines, so General John McClernand brought 30,000 infantry upriver, supported b Rear Admiral David Porter's gunboat fleet. On January 10, 1683, the Union force opened fire on the fort; the gunboats kept up heavy fire as the infantry pushed back the Confederate front line. The next day the fighting continued with the gunboats putting the big guns at the fort out of commission and then lofting exploding shells over the trenches.  Late in the afternoon, the Confederates raised the white flag.

11. Arkansas Post up to the Current Day After the end of the Civil War, Arkansas Post was never able to make a recovery as a town. The shelling during the battle at Fort Hindman had ruined many of the buildings of the town and erosion was claiming other parts.  River traffic was starting to decline as railroads by passed Arkansas Post, and in 1912, the Arkansas River changed course, leaving the post half a mile from the river and destroying its importance as a trading port.  After all this, the post faded into history until 1929, when the state of Arkansas made a State Park out of the post.  In 1960, the National Park Services took over the administration of the site and built the Park up to what it is today. Arkansas Post also supports vast numbers of wildlife in that area.  This is one of the reason for preserving the post other than its importance in Arkansas and American History