Two hundred years ago was one of the most momentous years in the history of our state. In March 1819 Arkansas became a territory--separate from Missouri. In the autumn of that year a young printer named William E. Woodruff established the Arkansas Gazette, which would go on to become the newspaper of record for the state.
Preceding both of these events was the arrival of a young botanist, Thomas Nuttall, the first scientist to venture into what would become Arkansas.
Born in Yorkshire, England, in 1786 to a working-class family, Nuttall was apprenticed to a printer as a teenager. Though he completed his apprenticeship, Nuttall's real interests lay in botany and the sciences. He left a job offer in England to sail for the United States, where he settled in Philadelphia, then the center of scientific inquiry in the young republic.
With neither a college degree nor independent means, young Nuttall might have been presumptuous to assume that he could find a place in botany in America. However, he had the good fortune to seek out the nation's most famous botanist, Benjamin Barton. The good professor immediately took on Nuttall as a protege, and the academic salons of Philadelphia were opened to him. Before long, his mentor was underwriting collecting trips, including one that took him all the way to the Mandan Villages on the upper Missouri River.
When the U.S. and Britain went to war in 1812, Nuttall returned to England where he busied himself writing the 600-page Genera of North America Plants, a book that immediately became the leading study on the subject when published in 1818.
The ink on his new book barely had time to dry before Nuttall was off on an exploration that would take him for the first time to the American South and then, he hoped, west to the Rockies. In October 1818, the 32-year-old naturalist left Philadelphia, traveling on a paved road west toward Pittsburgh. It was the last paved road Nuttall would see until his return two years later.
Traveling as most Americans did at the time, Nuttall made use of riverboats--down the Ohio River to the Mississippi, then downstream to the Arkansas River, disembarking at Arkansas Post in January 1819.
Here's how he described the town that would in a few months become the territorial capital of Arkansas: "An insignificant village, containing three stores, destitute even of a hatter, a shoe-maker, and a taylor [sic], and containing about 20 houses, after an existence of near a century, scarcely deserved geographical notice, and will never probably flatter the industry of the French emigrants ..." He described the dress worn by the locals: "Blanket capeaus, moccasins, and overalls of the same materials, are here, as in Canada, the prevailing dress, and men and women commonly wear a handkerchief on the head in place of hats and bonnets."
There was no misunderstanding Nuttall's British views of the French, but his xenophobia did not extend to individual Frenchmen. For example, he developed quite a friendship with Joseph Bogy, a long-time merchant at the Post. "Monsieur B. was by birth a Canadian, and, though 70 years of age, possessed almost the vigour and agility of youth." He concluded Arkansas Post "owes much to his enterprise and industry."
Nuttall could on occasion be condescending in his views on the "Arkansa" Indians, after whom the state took its name. He was especially critical of the Quapaw fondness for alcohol and their "superstitions and ideas of the supernatural."
On the whole, however, Nuttall was impressed with the Quapaw Indians, noting that: "They bear an unexceptionally mild character, both amongst the French and Americans, having always abstained, as they say, from offering any injury to the whites." While the Quapaw men "pay little attention to agriculture," as hunters "they are industrious."
A keen student of American Indian languages, Nuttall comments for the first time, as far as I know, on how the word "Arkansas" was an early corruption of the word "O-guah-pa," or Quapaw. He wrote, "The name of Akansa or Arkansa, if ever generally assumed by the natives of this territory, is now, I am persuaded, scarcely ever employed; they generally call themselves O-guah-pa or Osark ..." Nuttall believed "Arkansa" should actually be called "Osark," which would prevent confusing the area with the name of the river. Later that year William E. Woodruff settled the matter when he chose "Arkansas" as part of the name for his newspaper.
Nuttall explored and collected botanical specimens extensively through much of Arkansas, including the part of the territory that is now Oklahoma. However, his scientific interests stretched well beyond botany,
Nuttall's diaries are full of interesting comments on Arkansas places and features. He mentions Mount Magazine, which today we know is Arkansas' highest elevation at 2,823 feet, being named by the French because it looked like a "magazine or barn." He is especially taken with Mamelle [sic] Mountain, in the western part of what is today Pulaski County. The mountain, which got its name from the French word for breast, later became known as Pinnacle Mountain. Nuttall includes two sketches of the mountain in a published journal of his Arkansas trip.
Having contracted malaria and a severe fever, Nuttall left Arkansas in January 1820. Within a year he published his account of the venture, A Journal of Travels into the Arkansa Territory During the Year 1819. He then became curator of the Harvard University botanical gardens, serving until 1834. In 1837 he published Collections Towards a Flora of the Territory of Arkansas, but the larger work was never developed. He did publish two large catalogs of American birds, giving testimony to his diverse interests.
In 1842, Nuttall inherited an estate in England, but the will provided that he must live there for at least half of each year. He never returned to Arkansas, though he occasionally revisited his old haunts in Philadelphia and Boston. He died in 1859 at the family seat of Nutgrove near Liverpool.
Nuttall's journal is available from the University of Oklahoma Press in a fine annotated edition. The University of Arkansas Press recently published a book which carefully analyzes four early visitors to Arkansas, including Nuttall. Titled Arkansas Travelers: Geographies of Exploration and Perception, 1804-1834, the 277-page hardbound volume is written by Andrew J. Milson, a historian and geographer at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 06/30/2019