Quapaw
The Quapaw or Arkansas, officially the Quapaw Nation, is a U.S. federally recognized tribe comprising about 6,000 citizens. Also known as the Ogáxpa or “Downstream” people, their ancestral homelands are traced from what is now the Ohio River, west to the Mississippi River to present-day St. Louis, south across present-day Arkansas and eastern and southern Oklahoma. The government forcibly removed them from Arkansas Territory in 1834. The tribal capital is Quapaw, Oklahoma.
Name
The Quapaw broke from the other Dhegiha tribes and migrated down the Mississippi River into present-day Arkansas many generations before European contact. After that, the tribe began to refer to themselves as "Ogáxpa", which means the “Downstream” people." This was the name of their primary village or tribal band. Historically, it was more common for the people to identify by the name of their village or band. However, Ogáxpa would also sometimes be used to refer to the entire tribe. Over time, it would become the accepted name for the entire tribe. Colonial French would sometimes write this name as "Kappa".Algonquian-speaking people originally referred to the Quapaw as Akansa, an Illini word for “People of the South Wind”. As French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet encountered and interacted with the Illinois before they did the Quapaw, they adopted this exonym. Later the French voyageurs continued to use this term and adapted it as Arcansas. The French named the Arkansas River and Arkansas Post after the Quapaw. Other spellings in historical use included Akanza, Acansa, Acansea, Acansia, Accance, and Accancea.
English-speaking settlers who arrived later in the region adopted the name used by the French, adapting it to English spelling conventions. The term "Quapaw" comes from the American English attempt to say Ogáxpa.
History
Beginnings (before 1682)
The Quapaw are descended from a historical group of Dhegiha-speaking people who lived in the lower Ohio River valley area. The modern descendants of this language group include the Omaha, Ponca, Osage and Kaw, who are all independent tribal nations today. All Dhegiha-speaking tribes are believed to have migrated west and south from the Ohio River valley after 1200 CE.Scholars are divided as to whether they think the Quapaw and other related groups left before or after the Beaver Wars of the 17th century, in which the Five Nations of the Iroquois, drove other tribes out of the Ohio Valley and retained the area for hunting grounds. The oral history of the Quapaw people describes that the Quapaw separated from the Omaha, Ponca, Osage, and Kaw, near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, due to a lack of game. No correlation with gun bearing Iroquois running the Quapaw into Arkansas along with the Omaha, Ponca, Osage and Kaw is described by historic or modern Quapaw sources, and appears to be an entirely modern conjecture by scholars which is unsupported by the Quapaw. Similar and supporting oral history is well documented and supported by other Dhegiha tribes. It is also notable that there are carbon dated sites which are strongly correlated to the Dhegiha which demonstrate they were split and moved to the respective regions by 1500.
The Quapaw reached their historical territory, the area of the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers, at least by the mid-17th century. The timing of the Quapaw migration into their ancestral territory in the historical period has been the subject of considerable debate by scholars of various fields. It is referred to as the "Quapaw Paradox" by academics. Many professional archaeologists have introduced numerous migration scenarios and time frames, but none has conclusive evidence. Glottochronological studies suggest the Quapaw separated from the other Dhegihan-speaking peoples in a period ranging between AD 950 to as late as AD 1513. Linguistic studies also support an earlier separation date, within a few generations of the initial introduction of corn and long before the introduction of the horse.
File:DeSoto Map Leg 3 HRoe 2008.jpg|thumb|left|Map of the De Soto expedition through Mississippi and Arkansas
In 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto led an expedition that came across the town of Pacaha, between the Mississippi River and a lake on the Arkansas side. His party described the village as strongly palisaded and nearly surrounded by a ditch. Archaeological remains and local conditions in present-day Phillips County match this description. If the migration from the Ohio Valley preceded the entrada, these people may have been ancestors of the Quapaw.
The only chronicler of Indigenous heritage, Garcilaso, described this group as the Capaha. This chronicler was often more accurate that others when recording tribal information. Regardless, Dr. Rankin hypothesized that the Capaha may have been Tunica based on limited evidence of a single name found in a later Portuguese account, for which the original cursive is not recorded. Archeological sites around 1300 CE in the region have produced pipes, hides, and other items which are strongly associated with an influx of Dhegiha people that would be the Quapaw.
The first well-documented encounter between the Quapaw and Europeans occurred in 1673, when the Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette and French commander Louis Jolliet traveled down the Mississippi River by canoe. He reportedly went to the villages of the Akansea, who gave him a warm welcome and attentively listened to his sermons, while he stayed with them a few days. In 1682, La Salle passed by their villages, then five in number, including one on the east bank of the Mississippi River. Zenobius Membré, a Recollect father who accompanied the LaSalle expedition, planted a cross and attempted to convert the Native Americans to Christianity.
La Salle negotiated a peace with the tribe and formally "claimed" the territory for France. The Quapaw were recorded as uniformly kind and friendly toward the French. While villages relocated in the area, four Quapaw villages were generally reported by Europeans along the Mississippi River in this early period. They corresponded in name and population to four sub-tribes still existing, listed as Ugahpahti, Uzutiuhi, Tiwadimañ, and Tañwañzhita. The French transliterations were: Kappa, Ossoteoue, Touriman, and Tonginga.
Colonial era (1682–1803)
In 1686, at the request of the Quapaw, the French commander Henri de Tonti built a post near the mouth of the Arkansas River, which was later known as the Arkansas Post. This was the very first European settlement along the Mississippi River. This settlement was established at the Quapaw's design and request, primarily because the Quapaw wanted European firearms to use against their enemies who had already received them from the British. Tonti arranged for a resident Jesuit missionary to be assigned there, but apparently without result. About 1697, a smallpox epidemic killed the greater part of the women and children of two villages. In 1727, the Jesuits, from their house in New Orleans, again took up the missionary work.The Quapaw were staunch allies of the French and backed them in regional conflicts. In 1729, the Quapaw allied with French colonists against the Natchez during the Natchez War, which was also referred to as the Natchez Revolt. This conflict ultimately involved multiple tribes allying with the French against the Natchez, ultimately resulting in the practical extermination of the Natchez tribe. The Quapaw also allied with France during the Chickasaw Wars, which spanned from 1721 to 1763.
The French relocated the Arkansas Post upriver, both to avoid flooding and to maintain close proximity to the Quapaw who were also moving up the river for defensive purposes. After France was defeated by the British in the Seven Years' War, it ceded its North American territories to Britain and Spain. Spain took “control” of La Louisianne, which took included Arkansas and other former French territory west of the Mississippi River. The Spanish built new forts to protect its valued trading post with the Quapaw. Relationships with the Spanish were more strained than they had been with France due to a variety of complications. Eventually the Spanish and the Quapaw would come into good terms, however, and the Quapaw even signed a treaty during this time.
During the early years of colonial rule, many of the ethnic French fur traders and voyageurs had an amicable relationship with the Quapaw, as they did with many other trading tribes. Many Quapaw women and French men cohabitated. Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was founded by Joseph Bonne, a man of Quapaw-French ancestry.
19th century
Shortly after the United States acquired the territory in 1803 by the Louisiana Purchase, it recorded the Quapaw as living in three villages on the south side of the Arkansas River about above Arkansas Post. In 1818. as part of a treaty negotiation, the U.S. government acknowledged the Quapaw as rightful owners of approximately, which included all of present-day Arkansas south and west of the Arkansas River, as well as portions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma from the Red River to beyond the Arkansas and east of the Mississippi. The treaty required the Quapaws to cede almost of this area to the U.S. government, giving the Quapaw title to between the Arkansas and the Saline in Southeast Arkansas. In exchange for the territory, the U.S. pledged $4,000 and an annual payment of $1,000. A transcription error in Congress later removed most of Grant County, Arkansas and part of Saline County, Arkansas from the Quapaw claim.Under continued U.S. pressure, in 1824 they ceded this also, excepting occupied by the chief Saracen below Pine Bluff. They expected to incorporate with the Caddo of Louisiana, but were refused permission by the United States. Successive floods in the Caddo country near the Red River pushed many of the tribe toward starvation, and they wandered back to their old homes.
Sarrasin, their last chief before the removal, was a Roman Catholic and friend of the Lazarist missionaries, who had arrived in 1818. He died about 1830 and is buried adjoining St. Joseph's Church, Pine Bluff. A a memorial window in the church preserves his name. Fr. John M. Odin was the pioneer Lazarist missionary among the Quapaw; he later served as the Catholic Archbishop of New Orleans.
In 1834, under another treaty and the federal policy of Indian Removal, the Quapaw were removed from the Mississippi valley areas to their present location in the northeast corner of Oklahoma, then Indian Territory.
In 1824, the Jesuits of Maryland, under Father Charles Van Quickenborne, took up work among the local and migrant tribes of Indian Territory. In 1846, the Mission of St. Francis was established among the Osage, on Neosho River, by Fathers John Shoenmakers and John Bax. They extended their services to the Quapaw for some years.