9781422286067

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Central Mississippi River Basin: Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri

the hot springs in central Arkansas. During the first decade after the Louisiana Purchase, few white settlers came to Arkansas. In fact the largest immigrant group was the Cherokee Native American tribe, which was forced to leave its traditional lands in southeastern states like South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee due to the expansion of American settle- ments there. Large numbers of Cherokee came to Arkansas after the end of the War of 1812, and again in 1817. These Native Americans, and other tribes living in Arkansas would

villages along the Red River in the southeast. The Osage hunted in north- ern Arkansas, although most Osage villages were in what today is Missouri. The Quapaw were very friendly to the French. They lived in villages were near the mouth of the Arkansas River. The name Arkansas comes from Akansea , a French pho- netic spelling of a Native American word for the Quapaw tribe. In 1803, France sold its rights to the Louisiana Territory to the fledgling United States, which had been created when thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America declared their independence from Great Britain. This purchase more than doubled the size of the United States. U.S. President Thomas Jefferson sent the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the northern area of the new territory. Jefferson sent a less-well-known expedition, led by William Dunbar and George Hunter, to find the southern boundary of Louisiana. The Dunbar-Hunter Expedition explored the Red, Black, and Ouachita rivers and discovered

During the 1810s, the U.S. government imple- mented policies that removed Cherokee Indians from their homes and and forced them to move to new lands in the west, including Arkansas and Oklahoma.