9781422286067

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Central Mississippi River Basin: Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri

including Arkansas, which La Salle named Louisiana. La Salle’s friend Henri de Tonti established the first European settle- ment in the region at Arkansas Post in 1688. It was located near the spot where the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers converged. The trading post was a place where fur trappers and mountain men could trade with Native Americans. The main tribes living in this region during the 18th and early 19th cen- turies were the Caddo, Osage, and Quapaw peoples. The Caddo lived in

so that hostile Native Americans would not know that the feared Spanish leader was dead. The next Europeans to explore the region were French. More than a cen- tury after De Soto, in 1682, the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, led an expedition down the Mississippi River from present-day Illinois all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. La Salle claimed for France the Mississippi River and its entire drainage basin. That massive territory included a million square miles in the center of North America,

Restored buildings at Arkansas Post, the first European settle- ment in the region. French and Spanish fur traders used the post to trade with Native Americans, particularly the Quapaw people. In 1819 Arkansas Post was designated the first capital of the Arkansas Territory, but it was replaced as capital by Little Rock two years later. Today, Arkansas Post is a national park.