The North Little Rock Site on the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail:
Historical Contexts Report

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Amanda L. Paige, Research Assistant
Fuller Bumpers, American Native Press Fellow
Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., Director

Note:  The Site Reports of the ANPA are intended for use by the general public.   Permission to reprint them in their entirety is required by the authors.

Part II:

Physical Features of the North Little Rock Site and Its Surroundings, 1830-Present

To assist in evaluating the possibilities for interpreting the North Little Rock site as a major site on the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, it is necessary to examine the physical features of the site and its surrounding areas that might provide contexts for interpretation for the general public.  Following, therefore, is a historical survey of the occupation of the site, followed by descriptions of physical features at North Little Rock and Little Rock related to Indian removal.

Historical Survey of Occupation of the North Little Rock Site

The future significance of the North Little Rock site in Indian removal was ensured by its location at the intersection of major transportation routes in Arkansas Territory.  When removal began, the most practical routes through Arkansas were the rivers.  The Arkansas was the greatest of these, and the only one to cross the territory east to west, but it was not without problems.  Water levels fluctuated with rainfall upstream, and in periods of low water, steamboats were forced to dock or set at anchor until the water rose.  However, navigation remained possible up to certain points on the river for most of the year.  These places benefited from the constant movement of people and goods, and the settlement highest up the river to be reached year round enjoyed great business as most merchants and entrepreneurs considered it the drop-off point for the settlements up river or settlements in the interior at a distance from the stream.  On the Arkansas, this settlement was Little Rock, named for the “Little Rock,” which branched out like “five fingers” into the water and provided a natural dock for steamboats.1

In addition to its location on the Arkansas River, the North Little Rock site was near one of the oldest land routes in the region:  the Southwest Trail, which crossed the river about four miles below the site, connecting Missouri and the Red River country.  When Little Rock became the territorial capital in 1821, a ferry there became a necessity.     The first ferry owner at the North Little Rock site was Edmund Hogan, who established a ferry directly across from the "point of rocks," perhaps as early as 1816 2  By the time Indian removal began, the ferry was owned by Robert Crittenden, formerly acting governor of Arkansas Territory.  His ferry was the point where the military road, constructed in 1827, left the river bank and led north and west toward Fort Smith.

The Military Road was the only practical route for land travelers from central Arkansas to the Indian country west of Arkansas.  Built first to connect Little Rock and the military post at Fort Smith, it extended beyond that point to Fort Coffee and Fort Gibson in Indian Territory by the time removal began.  Land travelers from Memphis and other points east had no direct land route through eastern Arkansas to the eastern terminus of the military road at Crittenden’s ferry. Yet that was the direction that all overland removal parties would have to take.  A crude road ran from Arkansas Post by way of the Grand Prairie to Samson Gray’s on Bayou Meto near present-day Jacksonville, and there intersected the Southwest Trail, by then called the Daniels Ferry Road.3  In 1826, construction began on a projected road from Memphis to Little Rock.  A route was cleared from the Mississippi opposite Memphis, through the Mississippi Swamp, to a few miles beyond William Strong’s just west of the St. Francis River, but it soon became apparent that a direct route to Little Rock was not feasible because of the swamps in the Cache River and Bayou de View watersheds.  Thus in late 1827, a new route was laid out.  Beginning at the sixty-fourth mile marker west of Memphis, the road went southwesterly to Mouth of Cache, the original name for present-day Clarendon, where there was a ferry over the White River.  From there the route went northwesterly across the Grand Prairie to Samson Gray’s, to which settlement a road had been contracted to be built from Little Rock earlier that year  (See Part III).4  This road ran northeast from the river bank east of Crittenden’s ferry, passed through the cypress swamps, skirted the low hills near the present-day Springhill exit on Interstate 40, and continued eastward to intersect the Daniels Ferry road, now State Highway 161 just south of present-day McAlmont.

In February 1832, David Rorer opened a second ferry on the North Little Rock site about a quarter of a mile below Crittenden’s, which was leased at the time to John H. Cocke, who owned a farm on the north side, and James H. Keatts.5  Rorer had come to the area in 1826.  At that time, Alexander S. Walker owned a large farm near the North Little Rock site, and Wright Daniel (sometimes written Daniels), had a farm on the river near Big Rock where he had first settled, west of Crittenden’s ferry.  In 1816 he had moved four miles down the river to the old Francis Imbeau Quapaw grant, where he opened a ferry and, later, a stage route to Arkansas Post.  Thomas Nuttall, who visited Daniel in 1819, described this site as the point where the Southwest Trail crossed the river:  “From this place proceeds the road to St. Louis, on the right, and Mount Prairie settlement, and Natchitoches on Red River, on the left.  From all I can learn, it appears pretty evident that these extensive and convenient routes have been opened from time immemorial by the Indians. . . . The distance from Mr. Daniels’, on the banks of the Arkansas, to Red river, is believed to be about 250 miles.  The Great Prairie being from here to the north-east, is said to be about 40 miles distant, and there is likewise a continuation of open plains or small prairies, from hence to the Cadron settlement.”  In 1827, Rorer married Daniel’s daughter, Martha Daniel Martin, widow of James Martin, who had died the year before.  When Daniel died later that year, Rorer ran Daniel’s farms and bought ferry rights on the Arkansas near Big Rock, although he did not, at that time, attempt to establish a ferry.  In the settlement of Daniel’s estate in 1829, Rorer and his wife became owners of the James H. Martin home and other property on the north bank opposite Little Rock.6 Though Rorer would ultimately own more than 600 acres, it was the northeast fractional quarter of Section 2, Township 1 North of Range 12 West that became important in removal history, for it was there that he established his ferry.  This site is at the foot of present-day Locust Street (on early maps as Woodruff Street), immediately east of the point where the Interstate 30 bridge reaches the north bank.

Rorer’s Ferry, commonly referred to thereafter as the lower ferry, presented formidable competition for the Crittenden Ferry, or Little Rock Ferry, which had enjoyed a monopoly on ferriage at apparently exorbitant fees.  Rorer installed a new type of ferry described as “Brown’s patent improvement in the propulsion of ferry boats,” which operated using a series of buoy boats and crossed twice as fast as the old-style ferry.  Rorer also maintained a tavern and stable as a public house for the accommodation of travelers who arrived too late to be ferried across the river, for it operated only in daylight.  The tavern was one large room, where all guests, men and women slept.  Rorer allegedly had the eccentric habit of going about the room, jerking covers from people’s faces to see who was in bed.  He was said to have parties that lasted all night, with a fiddler who could only play one tune, “Roaring River.”7

On May 2, 1832, the Arkansas Gazette described Rorer’s “Novel Mode of Ferrying”:  “One end of a rope or wire chain, of sufficient strength for the purpose, and long enough to reach diagonally across the river, is made fast on one bank only, above the landing-place, at as great a height from the ground as practicable, and extended to within a few feet of the Ferry-boat, (an ordinary Ferry-flat), to which the other end of the rope or chain is connected by a rope passing through pulleys at each end of the boat, and over the steering wheel and round the upper gun-wail, so as to form an angle above the boat.  The main rope is kept out of the water by three buoy boats, built nearly in the form of a half-circle—a greater or less number of which are required according to the width of the stream to be crossed.  The boat, suspended as it were by the rope in this manner, is propelled diagonally across the stream, by the force of the current operating on a lee-board, placed against the upper gun-wail of the boat, which is raised or lowered at pleasure by means of a wheel and pulleys.  The boat when under way lies quartering across the current, with her bow up stream at an angle of about 45 degrees.  The position of the boat is never changed—running, with one end foremost in crossing the river, and with the other foremost when returning.” 8

On October 16, 1832, William F. Pope arrived at Rorer’s house.  In later years he offered the following description of the ferry, which confirms the Gazette’s earlier description:  "In construction it differed but little from those now in use on our smaller streams, consisting of a long flat bottomed hull, with two bows.  It was the method of propulsion that made it unique.  This was accomplished by means of buoys or buoy boats, as they were called.  These buoy boats were about twelve feet long and some four feet wide amidships, the two ends coming to a sharp point.  These buoy boats were some fifteen or twenty in number and were staunchly built, and entirely floored over.  In the center of each of them was a post, varying in height from three to ten feet, according to the location of the buoys.  At the top of each of these posts was a large pulley, through which a large rope, one and one-half inches in diameter, ran.  This rope was attached to a large cottonwood tree on the north side of the river, opposite the foot of Main Street and about fifty feet above the ground.  The other end of the rope was passed through the pulleys on the buoy boats.  These boats were distributed along at regular intervals, the last on being located about one hundred and fifty feet above the ferry landing on the Little Rock side.  The rope passing through the pulleys on the last buoy boat had a slack of about fifty feet.  To this part of the large rope a pulley was attached, through which a smaller rope ran and was fastened to each of the upper corners of the ferry boat.  At each end of the boat was what was called a leeboard, some fifteen inches wide, and which was raised or depressed by a lever.  On starting from either shore this leeboard was so depressed as to swing the end of the boat quartering upstream, the buoy boats assuming the same position. The action of the water against the leeboard gave the necessary impetus to the ferry boat to carry her across the river.  On coming to within forty or fifty feet of the shore a vigorous pull upon the rope would straighten the course of the boat directly across the river and bring it to the landing.  To prevent the buoy boats from drifting together a smaller rope was tied to the same cottonwood tree lower down, and attached to the bottom of the posts on the buoy boats.  The speed of a ferry boat propelled in the manner I have attempted to describe was very rapid, indeed, almost equal to that of steam." 9 This ferry was used during the Choctaw removal during the 1832-1833 removal season.

In June 1833, everything on the site, including Rorer’s Ferry, was destroyed by a flood that had higher waters than anyone in the region could remember.  Albert Pike, writing a few years after the flood, described it this way:  “There came a succession of heavy rains, and the river rose to high-water mark.  The rise was red, and salt, and evidently came from the desert prairie.  The rains ceased, and people supposed the rise was over.  Suddenly the river began to swell higher and higher.  The water came down colder and clearer.  The snows had melted on the Rocky Mountains. . . .The river was filled with fragments of houses, dead cattle, huge trees, rushing on to the Mississippi.  Cattle, hogs, even deer and bear, unable to escape from the bottoms, were all drowned. . . . The crops were ruined; whole farms were filled up with sand; and the channel of the river entirely altered.  Such is the Arkansas.”10    According to the Gazette, “All of the plantations on the north side of the Arkansas, for several miles above and below this place, are under water.  Scarcely an acre of land under cultivation has escaped and a number of out-houses have been swept off.  We are really distressed to hear, that nearly the whole of Maj. [James] Danley’s dwelling house, about a mile and a half above town, has been swept off, and a deep channel cut through his plantation, through which the water runs with great velocity, sweeping the plantations below of Mr. [Conway] Scott, Col. [Alexander S.] Walker, Mr. [John H.] Cook [Cocke] and Mr. Rorer.” 11

Rorer replaced his buoy boat ferry with a horse-drawn ferry in 1834.  This ferry was described by G. W. Featherstonhaugh, an English geologist in 1834.  He approached the North Little Rock site on the Military Road from the northwest and described the scene that greeted him:  “Evening was drawing nigh, when we came to a rich black alluvial bottom, upon which, the weather having been dry for some time, we found a good road.  I was well aware what this bottom indicated, and a little after sunset we came upon the bank of the far-famed Arkansa [sic]. The river was a delightful object to us; at length we saw the waters gliding along, that rise amidst the glens and valleys of the Rocky Mountains, and, to our great satisfaction, also beheld the town of Little Rock on the opposite side of the river, in which we hoped to find some repose and amusement for a few days, before advancing to the Mexican frontier.  The river was unusually low, and we had to get down a very precipitous track to reach the team-boat that was to ferry us across.  On board of this we led our horse, and soon reached the opposite bank, where the ascent was so very abrupt that it was with great difficulty we got Missouri [his cart] to the top.”12

This ferry was used to ferry Chickasaws across the river as well as to ferry subsistence and forage from the Little Rock side to supply removal parties at the North Little Rock site.  Rorer sold the ferry along with his extensive land holdings on the north side of the river to William E. Woodruff, publisher of the Arkansas Gazette and contractor for supplying subsistence and forage for removal parties.13 Other than the structures at Rorer’s ferry and whatever structures, if any, were at the Little Rock ferry, the North Little rock site consisted of small farms.  This is how Albert Pike said the site appeared in October of 1833:  “Directly opposite the town is a bottom about a mile wide, only cleared in here and there Days of Little a spot; and about two miles above the town, an abrupt promontory, called Big Rock, juts into the river on the north side.”14 This, then, is how it would have appeared to the Choctaws, who arrived there a month later (See Part IV).  The impression of William Wyatt, who traveled through the site in November 1836, the same period as Muscogee removal, was this:  “Started on the morning of the 19th and traveled 10 miles to Little Rock.  Saw some good bottom land on the north side of the Arkansas river.  Crossed in a horse boat and entered the town of Little Rock.  This is a considerable town, situated on the south side of the Arkansas river, and on a beautiful rock bluff—being high, having a smooth back country for miles—and presents a beautiful appearance on the river.” 15

Although the town of D’Cantillon was laid off and platted at the site in 1838 and 1839, nothing that resembled a town was established until much later in the nineteenth century.16 The promoters advertised “a good opening for a trading house, especially of heavy goods and family groceries,”17 but terrain worked against such development.  Much of North Little Rock sits in the basin of a former cypress swamp.  Plats of the area from the mid-1850s and maps from the 1860s show a land dominated by cypress swamps, with scattered cultivated fields along the river (See Illustrations 1 and 2). Indeed, even in the early twentieth century, the swamps dominated the landscape (See Illustration 3).   Swamps and the site’s potential for flooding, as in 1833, deterred capital investment.  Artists’ renderings of the site during the Civil War and later periods show few dwellings or other structures near the river front (See Illustrations 4, 5, and 6).  As late as 1889 the population of Argenta, as it was called by then, was only 1500, and, a contemporary source said, “It has grown almost wholly since the Civil War.”18 Argenta was incorporated in 1904 and the name officially changed to North Little Rock.

Physical Features Related to Removal through the Site

Today no structures exist that stood at the time of removal.  However, a number of miles of streets and roads within the city and its surrounding region follow the exact or approximate routes used in removal.  From the east the Memphis-to-North Little Rock route followed State Highway 161 from Jacksonville to Prothro Junction on Highway U. S. 70.  From there it turned west, following the approximate route of Broadway to its intersection with State Highway 165.  There it angled southwest, following Washington Avenue for about two blocks and angled southwest again, becoming what is now Lincoln Avenue.  Lincoln reaches a dead end at Buckeye Street on the eastern edge of the former site of railroad shops built in the late nineteenth century.  West of that area, the route followed Ferry Street, which is only a few blocks long and is obliterated by structures about two blocks east of the old Rorer Ferry site directly east of the Interstate 30 bridge (See Illustrations 7 and 8).

The ferry site at the foot of Locust street is occupied by the North Little Rock Marina, with a public boat launching ramp.  Land configuration at the site has been altered by revetment and partially covered by water levels raised by construction of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System by the U. S. Corps of Engineers in the 1960s.  Maps from the 1950s indicate that Ferry Street at that time still came into the old ferry site, and photographs from the 1960s offer some details regarding the site before inundation (See Illustrations 9 and 10). 

From the ferry site the road closely followed the riverbank just under a quarter of a mile to the site of Crittenden’s Ferry, where the Military Road toward Fort Gibson left the river.  This segment of the road lies within the city’s Riverfront Park.  (See Illustration 11) 

After leaving the river at Crittenden’s Ferry, the Military Road followed what is now Main Street north and turned to the northwest, passing through the break in the hills at Levy and thereafter following approximately the route of State Highway 365.  Much of this segment of the route at the North Little Rock site has been obliterated by the Union Pacific rail yards and shops, and little of it is evident in the present-day street patterns of the city (See Illustration 12).

Physical Features Relative to Indian Removal at Little Rock

Although only two removal parties of Choctaws are known to have gone directly through the village of Little Rock in 1831, it is the point of reference in most removal documents related to the site. Afraid that the Choctaws would spread cholera among the local citizens, the city fathers in 1832 asked the United States to build a road from Rorer’s ferry east of town to intersect the road leading to Washington and the Red River country (later known as the Military Road).  The bypass road apparently followed what is now Ferry Street from the river, but no other evidence of this road exists in Little Rock street patterns.  Apparently the bypass road had been obliterated soon after removal by city platting.  William E. Woodruff, in directing people to his ferry in 1842, indicates right angles in his directions to travelers who came up the Military Road to Little Rock:  “Travelers arriving from the south will turn to the right, at DeBaun’s corner, (Alhambra), and proceed down Markham to First Street (4th street below), which will lead them to the river in sight of the Ferry landing.”19

Steamboats carrying removal parties sometimes docked at the Little Rock at the foot of present-day Rock Street.  Rarely were Indians allowed off the boats, but a notable exception was Cherokee Chief John Ross and his party, whose steamboat Victoria docked and Cherokees came ashore to bury Ross’s wife Quatie in the City Cemetery.20 Only the top few feet of the Little Rock outcropping are visible above the water level today (See Illustrations 13 and 14). 

Albert Pike gives the following description of Little Rock as it appeared in 1833:  “The houses are a motley mixture; consisting of every variety, from brick blocks of two stories to log cabins—standing in a juxtaposition.  The greater number, however, are shingle palaces.  There are no public buildings, (unless you give the churches the name, of which there are three, two wooden and one brick, except the State house. . . . It is a great, awkward, clumsy, heavy edifice, of brick, with a smaller building on each side—one a court house, and the other for secretary’s office, &c.  The main building is partly covered with tin; and is commonly called ‘Pope’s folly’—after the Hon. John Pope, Ex-governor of the territory, its projector.”21  

Only three or four buildings stand in Little Rock today that stood during all or part of removal.  The Old State House, on which construction began in 1833, with its prominence high above the river would have been visible to Choctaws and Chickasaws who crossed the river and to Muscogees, Florida Indians, and Cherokees, whether they passed upstream aboard boats or remained on the north bank and went up the Military Road as the Bell Detachment did (See Illustrations 15 and 16).   At Third and Rock streets is the Hinderliter Grog Shop and at Second and Rock the Woodruff Print Shop (See Illustration 17).22 The latter, which at the time of removal had a second story, has peripheral significance to removal.  William E. Woodruff’s newspaper, the Arkansas Gazette, received contracts for publishing the government’s proposals for bids to supply rations and forage for removal.  Many of the forms used for receipts came from his press.  Woodruff was also the contractor for subsistence and forage for a number of removals as well as half owner of the ferry formerly owned by Rorer, operating it during the Chickasaw removal.  Hiram Abiff Whittington worked for Woodruff.  In 1830, in a letter to this brother, Whittington described the structure in the context of Little Rock:  “You must know that Little Rock is a place half woods, half water, and half clay (not Henry), with log cabins strewed about here and there without any regard to order, regularity or convenience, and now and then a frame house is seen standing like a yellow-leg among a flock of sheep; besides about a dozen brick buildings, one of the largest of which is the one wherein your humble servant earns his daily bread by the sweat of his brow.  It is a two-story house, with four rooms upstairs and four down.  The largest room above is the printing office, Mr. Woodruff has an office on the lower floor, where he edits the paper, keeps a book-store, transacts a land agency business, etc.  His wife and one child, mother-in-law, etc. occupy the balance of the house.”23

The McHenry House, now known as the Ten Mile House, on Stagecoach Road (Highway 5, formerly a part of the Military Road) was a public house, supply depot, and encampment point for Chickasaw and, perhaps, Choctaw removal contingents (See Illustrations 18 and 19).  The present structure, dating probably from the mid-1830s, replaced the original log structure, according to present-day owners.24

Undetermined Sites

 At both the North Little rock site and at Little Rock were other features of significance to removal, but their exact locations remain undetermined.

On the North Little Rock site, William E. Woodruff, who operated the lower ferry, apparently maintained a store house.  In November 1838, Lt. Edward Deas, who was attending the Bell Contingent of Cherokees, shipped “a considerable quantity of the baggage, pot-ware and etc.” of the group to Little Rock.  George W. Long accompanied the cargo.  Woodruff received $10 for storage and for handling the baggage “from the steam boat to the store house,” where he held it until December 15, apparently when the Cherokees arrived at the North Little Rock site.25 The absence of receipts for ferriage of the baggage suggests that it was stored on the north side, where the Bell party encamped.  The location of the structure has not been determined. At that time, Woodruff owned the lands surrounding the ferry site.  Somewhat later, in 1842, he advertised that he had livestock lots on both sides of the river near the ferry for the convenience of drovers.  He also had at that time five stores and houses to rent on Water Street at the lower landing on the Little Rock side.26

The United States also maintained a warehouse on the Little Rock side.  Captain Jacob Brown used it to store leftover items following removal seasons and to keep rations delivered by steamboat.27   In December 1838, John Percifull hauled six loads of pork and flour from the warehouse to the Little Rock Ferry for subsistence of the Chickasaws.  His charges indicate a short haul at a dollar a load, compared to the two dollars he charged for each load of corn hauled from Pope’s farm to the ferry and four loads of fodder from Keatts’ farm to the ferry, a trip of about four miles.28  In 1837 a local teamster was hired to transport rations from the steamboat landing to warehouses “situated in the upper part of the city.”29  The language indicates that it was away from the river, and may well have been where the Arsenal was later built.  However, the site of the government warehouse remains uncertain.

Also uncertain is the location of a government lot, which Captain Brown fenced in early 1832.  In February 1832 he wrote, “I have commenced fencing in a lot of about eighty acres, three miles from this, on the river; the advantages of which will be to receive the teams on their return to this place from the Kiamichi, where they will be refitted, the wagons put in repair, harness, &c, the crippled and broken down oxen and horses nursed and recruited, and the whole put in readiness for subsequent emigrating movements; in the mean time, they will be used to fill the several depots with provisions. . . .The land I am fencing belongs to the United States.  A detachment of the 7th infantry having occupied it, and having erected several cabins, renders the position valuable for this service, as it will give quarters for the teamsters, blacksmiths, wagon repairers, and stowage for all the utensils belonging to the wagon train; tents, provisions, &c.”  When the troops abandoned the site, it was called Camp Interference and was described as being “about 3 miles below this town, near the bank of the Arkansas.”30 

Finally, another yet unidentified feature is what was commonly referred to as Camp Pope, consistently referred to as three miles south of Little Rock.31  It was an encampment site used by Choctaws and Chickasaws before their journey from Little Rock to Fort Towson (See Section IV for various references to this site). Best estimates place this site beyond the junction of Roosevelt Road and Asher Avenue, perhaps farther west on Asher.  Three Mile Creek, which is associated with this site but has not been identified, may be the small branch of Fourche Creek that crosses Asher Avenue just beyond Roosevelt Road.  However, its volume of water might not have been sufficient to sustain large encampments.  Given the way distance estimates were made in the nineteenth century, Three Mile Creek could hve been what today is known as Coleman Creek.

Notes

1.  Grant Foreman, “River Navigation in the Early Southwest,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 15 (June 1928), 44-46; Dallas T. Herndon, Centennial History of Arkansas (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing, 1922), I: 3.

2.  Hogan, a Georgian, had served in the War of 1812 and settled on the river opposite the “Little Rock” shortly thereafter. When Thomas Nuttall visited the site during his 1819 journey up the Arkansas river, he noted that “there are a few families living on both sides upon high, healthy, and fertile land.” From Hogan’s place, he could look across the river at the Little Rock: “The façade or cliffs, in which it terminates on the bank of the river is called the Little Rock, as it is the first stone which occurs in this place. . .formed of a dark greenish coloured, fine-grained, slaty, sandstone, mixed with minute scales of mica, forming what geologists commonly term the grauwache slate, and declining beneath the surface at a dip or angle of not less than 45 degrees from the horizon.” Thomas Nuttall, A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory During the Year 1819, ed. Savoie Lottinville (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 115. Some sources say Hogan established the ferry as early as 1818, but Nuttall makes no mention of it. Hogan sold the ferry in 1820 to William Russell, who the following year sold the ferry rights and a piece of land on the north side to Robert Crittenden and William Trimble. It was in Crittenden’s hands when removal started. See Walter M. Adams, North Little Rock (Little Rock: August House, 1986), 20, 23. See also Alonzo D. Camp, “Ferries Over the Arkansas,” Pulaski County Historical Review, 29 (Fall 1981), 52n.

3. For evidence of the Arkansas Post road, see, e. g., advertisement for stage route, Arkansas Gazette, September 19, 1832, and announcement of contracts for Choctaw rations, Arkansas Gazette, September 26, 1832.

4. For a history of road building over the eastern sixty-four miles, see Julia Ward Longnecker, “A Road Divided: From Memphis to Little Rock Through the Great Mississippi Swamp,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 44 (1985), 203-219. See also Arkansas Gazette, November 13, 1827

5.    Arkansas Gazette, April 11, 1832.

6. Adams, North Little Rock, 20, 25; Margaret Ross, “Lawyer David Rorer Dabbled in Politics During Nine Years in Arkansas Territory,” Arkansas Gazette, May 21, 1967; Pulaski County Records, Deed Book E, p. 440 and Book F, p. 110-114; “David Rorer,” Dictionary of American Biography, Dumas Malone, ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935), 16:153-154. The Francis Imbeau property lay south and east of the junction of Highway 70 and Highway 165 in Rose City. Traces of the old post road appear on early plat maps. The road went north to Samson Gray’s on Bayou Meto, through Moss’s Prairie, and southeast through the Grand Prairie. Nuttall visited Daniel in 1819: “From this place proceeds the road to St. Louis, on the right, and Mount Prairie settlement, and Natchitoches on Red River, on the left. From all I can learn, it appears pretty evident that these extensive and convenient routes have been opened from time immemorial by the Indians. . . . The distance from Mr. Daniels’, on the banks of the Arkansas, to Red river, is believed to be about 250 miles. The Great Prairie being from here to the north-east, is said to be about 40 miles distant, and there is likewise a continuation of open plains or small prairies, from hence to the Cadron settlement.” Nuttall, A Journal of Travels, 114-115.

7. Ross, “Lawyer David Rorer”; Ross, “Lawyer David Rorer’s Ferry Was a Landmark in the Pioneer Days of Little Rock,” Arkansas Gazette, May 28, 1967.

8. Arkansas Gazette, May 2, 1832.

9. See William F. Pope, Early Days in Arkansas (Little Rock:  Frederick W. Allsopp,1895), 74-76

10.   Albert Pike, “Letters from Arkansas,”  New-England Magazine, 9: 266-267, retrieved from http://cdl.library.cornell.edu.

11.  Arkansas Gazette, June 19, 1833.

12.  G. W. Featherstonhaugh, Excursion through the Slave States.  Reprint ed.  (New York:  Negro Universities Press, 1968), 94. 

13.    Arkansas Gazette, April 8, 1834; Margaret Ross, “Lawyer David Rorer’s Ferry.”

14.  Albert Pike, Letters from Arkansas (New York:  George Dearborn, 1836), 29.

15.  William N. Wyatt, Wyatt’s Travel Diary, 1836  (Chicago:  Private Printing, 1930), 10.

16.  Adams, North Little Rock , 30-33.

17.  Arkansas Gazette, July 18, 1838.

18.  Biographical and Historical Memoirs of  Pulaski, Jefferson, Lonoke, Faulkner, Grant, Saline, Perry, Garland, and Hot Spring Counties, Arkansas (Chicago:  The Godspeed Publishing Company, 1889), 404.

19. Arkansas Gazette, February 9, 1842.  J. DeBaun was a merchant; the Alhambra was apparently the name of his store.

20.  Arkansas Gazette, February 6, 1839.

21.  Pike, Letters from Arkansas, 30.

22.  For brief sketches of the history of these two structures, see the web site of the Historic Arkansas Museum: http://www.arkansashistory.com/homes.asp.

23.  Margaret Smith Ross, ed., Letters of Hiram Abiff Whittington, 1827-1834 (Little Rock: Pulaski County Historical Society, 1956), 18.

24.  Leslie Newell Peacock, “What Price History?” Arkansas Times, June 29, 2001; Frederick Hampton Roy and Charles Witsell, How We Lived:  Little Rock as an American City (Little Rock:  August House, 1984), 35-36.

25.   Wayne Gibson, “Cherokee Treaty Party Moves West:  The Bell-Deas Overland Journey, 1838-1839,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 79 (Fall 2001), 327, 335n.

26.   Arkansas Gazette, February 2 and 9, 1842.

27.   See, e. g., 23rd Congress, 1st Session, Senate Executive Document 512, I: 232, hereafter cited as Document 512.

28.  Receipt No. 3, Chickasaw Emigration C1039-38, Record Group 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Letters Received, National Archives Microfilm Publication M234, Roll 144

29.  Receipt No. 2, Pitcher and Walters, Chickasaw Emigration C816-38, ibid.

30. Senate Executive Document 512, I: 436; Arkansas Gazette, February 1, 1832.

31.  See, e. g., Arkansas Gazette, January 4, 1832.

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