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Chapter 7. A New Order
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Chapter 7 A New Order, 1808–1822 Between the 1790s and 1820, some 5,000 settlers crossed the Mississippi to build farms and ranches along the Arkansas River between the Quapaw and Arkansas Osage towns and to hunt deer, bear, and buffalo for profit on Osage lands upriver. Beginning in the 1810s, these settlers engaged the Arkansas Osages in a bloody decade-long war, simultaneously waging a political battle to convince the United States government to view the Osages as an enemy of progress and to compel land cessions from them. The settlers eventually defeated the Osages militarily and politically, ending those Indians ’ century-long domination and forcing them off their prime hunting and farming lands. This is a familiar story in nineteenth-century America; however , these early trans-Mississippi expansionists were not Anglo-Americans, but Cherokees. Cherokee settlers from the East crossed the Mississippi to build farms and ranches along the lower Arkansas River and to hunt farther west. These Cherokees were taking advantage of United States officials’ and reformers ’ desire to use the region as an “Indian Territory” to which their country could move southeastern Indians. Cherokee immigrants’ familiarity with both Indian and United States ways would allow them to make the Arkansas Valley their own native ground. As the Cherokees fought the Osages for these lands, they adopted the Anglo-American myth of western lands as an uninhabited wilderness, drawing a metaphorical border between themselves as “civilized” and the Osages as “savage.” Having already established good relations with the United States, the Cherokees built connections with the Quapaws and other Indians in the mid-continent, organizing an anti-Osage coalition and isolating the Osages. Whereas Spanish attempts to subdue the Osages had failed miserably, the Cherokee alliance would be more successful. And the Cherokees would prove a more useful ally to the Quapaws and their friends than the United States had been. Map 5. Arkansas Valley, early 1800s. 0 0 50 100 Kilometers 50 100 Miles G u l f o f M e x i c o Colorado R. B r a z o s R . Tr i n i t y R . S a b i n e R . Red R. Ouachit a R . Arkansas R. M issouri R. C anadian R. S t . F r a n c i s R . M i s s i s s i p p i R . Y a z o o R . P e a r l R . B l a c k W a r r i o r R . T o m b i g b e e R . Tennessee R. A l a b a m a R . C o o s a R . Ohio R. O s age R. W a b a s h R . Cumb erland R. White R. N e o s h o R . Arkansas Post Concordia Little Rock St. Louis Fort Osage Ste. Genevieve Kaskaskia Cape Girardeau New Madrid Natchitoches Ouachita Nacogdoches Cherokees Arkansas Osages Caddos Wichitas Chickasaws Quapaws Pawnees Missouri Great Osages Pan-Indian Settlement Little Osages O Z A R K M T S . O UACHITA MTS. New Orleans Baton Rouge Nogales Manchac Fort Pickering Natchez Ft. Adams B l a c k R . Fort Smith V e r d i g r i s R . Cahokia Pointe Coupée Mobile Pensacola Biloxi Choctaws [54.227.104.229] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:24 GMT) * * * The Cherokee Trail of Tears of 1838 has a deserved reputation as one of the cruelest injustices of American history. The United States army forced over 10,000 Cherokees away from their homes in Georgia to travel more than 1,000 miles to lands west of the Mississippi. At least 4,000 died as a result. But why did some Cherokees move west in earlier decades? For these Cherokees, the Arkansas Valley provided opportunities that European settlement had eroded in the East. Cherokees had crossed the Mississippi on hunting expeditions since at least the 1780s, and some stayed there year round. With only a tiny white population, the lands west of the Mississippi were better for hunting . The game was more plentiful, fewer farms impeded their hunting parties , the Quapaws were welcoming, and most of the whites who did live there were, conveniently, traders.1 Whether a Cherokee hunter came seasonally or permanently, the Arkansas Valley provided a place to continue practices that, by the late eighteenth century, were threatened in the East. Hunting and making war de- fined...