Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States government for the relocation of Native Americans who held original Indian title to their land as an independent nation-state. The concept of an Indian territory was an outcome of the U.S. federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the U.S. government was one of assimilation.
The Chickasaw are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, United States. Their traditional territory was in northern Mississippi, northwestern and northern Alabama, western Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky. Their language is classified as a member of the Muskogean language family. In the present day, they are organized as the federally recognized Chickasaw Nation.
Jefferson County, Arkansas is a county located in the U.S. state of Arkansas in the area known as the Arkansas Delta that extends west of the Mississippi River. Jefferson County consists of five cities, two towns, and 20 townships. It is bisected by the Arkansas River, which was critical to its development and long the chief transportation byway. In 2020, Jefferson County's population was estimated at 67,260. The county seat and largest city is Pine Bluff. The county is included in the Pine Bluff metropolitan statistical area. The county seat and the most populous city is Pine Bluff.
Pine Bluff is the tenth-most populous city in the US state of Arkansas and the county seat of Jefferson County. It is the principal city of the Pine Bluff Metropolitan Statistical Area and part of the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Pine Bluff Combined Statistical Area. The population of the city was 41,253 in the 2020 census.
Robert Crittenden was an American lawyer who served as the first secretary of the Arkansas Territory from 1819 to 1829. He also served as the acting governor of Arkansas Territory from July to December 1819. Crittenden co-founded the Rose Law Firm.
Arkansas Post is an unincorporated community located along the north side of the Arkansas River in Arkansas County, Arkansas. It is home to the Arkansas Post National Memorial.
The Arkansas Post, formally the Arkansas Post National Memorial, was the first European settlement in the Mississippi Alluvial Plain and present-day U.S. state of Arkansas. In 1686, Henri de Tonti established it on behalf of Louis XIV of France for the purpose of trading with the Quapaw Nation. The French, Spanish, and Americans, who acquired the territory in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase, considered the site of strategic value. It was the capital of Arkansas from 1819 until 1821 when the territorial government relocated to Little Rock.
The Chickasaw Campaign of 1736, also known as the First Chickasaw War, consisted of two pitched battles by the French and allies against Chickasaw fortified villages in present-day Northeast Mississippi. Under the overall direction of the governor of Louisiana, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, a force from Upper Louisiana attacked Ogoula Tchetoka on March 25, 1736. A second force from Lower Louisiana attacked Ackia on May 26, 1736. Both attacks were bloodily repulsed.
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.
Levi Colbert was an early 19th-century Chickasaw leader and the namesake of Itawamba County, Mississippi.
The Chickasaw Wars were fought in the first half of the 18th century between the Chickasaw allied with the British against the French and their allies the Choctaws, Quapaw, and Illinois Confederation. The Province of Louisiana extended from Illinois to New Orleans, and the French fought to secure their communications along the Mississippi River. The Chickasaw, dwelling in northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, lay across the French path. Much to the eventual advantage of the British and the later United States, the Chickasaw successfully held their ground. The wars came to an end only with the French cession of New France to the British in 1763 according to terms of the Treaty of Paris.
The history of Arkansas began millennia ago when humans first crossed into North America. Many tribes used Arkansas as their hunting lands but the main tribe was the Quapaw, who settled in the Arkansas River delta upon moving south from Illinois. Early French explorers gave the territory its name, a corruption of Akansea, which is a phonetic spelling from the Illinois language word for the Quapaw. This phonetic heritage explains why "Arkansas" is pronounced so differently than the U.S. state of "Kansas" even though they share the same spelling.
The Arkansas Delta is one of the six natural regions of the state of Arkansas. Willard B. Gatewood Jr., author of The Arkansas Delta: Land of Paradox, says that rich cotton lands of the Arkansas Delta make that area "The Deepest of the Deep South."
John Jolly was a leader of the Cherokee in Tennessee, the Arkansaw district of the Missouri Territory, and Indian Territory. After a reorganization of the tribal government around 1818, he was made Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation–West. Jolly was a wealthy slave-owning planter, cow rancher, and merchant. In many ways, he lived the life of a Southern planter.
The Militia of the Territory of Arkansas, commonly known as the Arkansas Militia, was the forerunner of today's Arkansas National Guard. The current Arkansas Army National Guard traces its roots to the creation of the territorial militia of the District of Louisiana in 1804. As the District of Louisiana evolved into the Territory of Missouri and the first counties were organized, regiments of the Missouri territorial militia were formed in present-day Arkansas. Territorial governors struggled to form a reliable militia system in the sparsely populated territory. When the Arkansas Territory was formed from the Missouri Territory, the militia was reorganized, gradually evolving from a single brigade composed of nine regiments to an entire division composed of six brigades, each containing four to six regiments. The local militia organization, with its regular musters and hierarchy added structure to the otherwise loosely organized territorial society. The Territorial Militia was utilized to quell problems with the Indian Nations and was held in readiness to deal with trouble along the border with Mexico due to an ambiguous international border and during the prelude to the Texas War of Independence.
On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861, a significant number of Indigenous peoples of the Americas had been relocated from the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the Indian Territory, the Five Civilized Tribes, were suzerain nations with established tribal governments, well established cultures, and legal systems that allowed for slavery. Before European Contact these tribes were generally matriarchial societies, with agriculture being the primary economic pursuit. The bulk of the tribes lived in towns with planned streets, residential and public areas. The people were ruled by complex hereditary chiefdoms of varying size and complexity with high levels of military organization.
Quapaw, or Arkansas, is a Siouan language of the Quapaw people, originally from a region in present-day Arkansas. It is now spoken in Oklahoma.
The Battle of Arkansas Post, also known as the Colbert Raid and the Battle of Fort Carlos, was an unsuccessful British attempt to capture Fort Carlos III and the Franco-Spanish village of Arkansas Post, Louisiana in the American Revolutionary War.
Saracen Casino Resort is a casino in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, United States. The first purpose-built casino in Arkansas is owned by the Quapaw Nation, and named for Saracen, a Quapaw chief in the 1800s.
Joseph Tali Byrd is a Cherokee Nation and Quapaw Nation politician who served as the Quapaw Nation Chairman from 2020 until his resignation in 2023.
