A rich French Creole named Louis Bringier of New Orleans visited Arkansas in 1810-1812 and took notes. Later he published a long description of his tour, providing a primitive sort of geological survey of much of what would become Arkansas Territory in seven years.
Bringier's observations are all the more valuable because he was educated and had a sharp eye. He also transacted a little business while living in the unsurveyed lands between the Mississippi River and what is today Oklahoma. And he lived through the New Madrid earthquakes.
Bringier was the first-born son of Emanuel Marius Pons Bringier, one of the richest businessmen and planters in French Louisiana. Louis was born in 1773, just before his father immigrated to Martinique before settling in Louisiana.
The senior Bringier, part of an old French family of wealth, proceeded to establish vast farming operations, exporting cotton, indigo, tobacco, and sugar. The family home in St. James Parish was known as Maison Blanche for its exterior of white marble. It appears that Louis and his brother were sent to Paris for their educations. The senior Bringier gave plantations to Louis and his five siblings as they reached maturity.
The reason for Louis Bringier's foray into the wilds of the Arkansas River Valley is unknown, though one source indicated he might have left home in humiliation over large gambling losses.
But he was not destitute, since he traveled with at least one enslaved servant, and in November 1810 he paid $200 for a 20-acre parcel of land at the mouth of the St. Francis River. The following August he paid $400 for "a Negro girl named Eliza, about 12 years old."
In 1813 he sold his enslaved property before returning to his plantation. The bills of sale, written in French, were recorded in the official deed book at Arkansas Post. He was back home in time to participate in the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815.
Bringier published his notes on "... the regions around the Mississippi and its confluent waters" in 1821 in the American Journal of Science and Arts, a respected but not widely distributed journal.
The notes were published in a series of topical paragraphs with no connecting narrative. For example, Bringier does not explain why he was there, but rather "I happened to be passing in its neighbourhood" when the New Madrid earthquakes began.
"The surface was sinking," Bringier wrote, "and a black liquid was rising up to the belly of my horse, who stood motionless, struck with a panic of terror." He later observed the "sunk lands" left by the earthquakes, where he saw "modern lakes, whose beds were, not long since, part of the forests."
Bringier was greatly taken with "the hot springs of Wachitta," which he believed to be "the most efficacious thermal waters in the United States." He was amazed to find 280 people--"a number had come more than 1,000 miles from home"--using the springs under the most primitive conditions. "It is much to be regretted," Bringier wrote, "that visitors find no accommodations."
It is clear from many of his comments that Bringier had training in geology; he made frequent references to minerals, land forms, and soil. He was much impressed with the marble deposits of "the territory of Missouri known by the name of Laurence [sic] county"--meaning today's northern and northeastern Arkansas.
Bringier was impressed with the geological and mineral diversity of the Ouachita Mountains. He recognized the special nature of "the Cove of Wachitta," known today as Magnet Cove, a basin containing about five square miles with a diameter of about three miles. According to the Arkansas Geological Survey, the Magnet Cove basin has produced about 100 different minerals. Today it is bisected by Arkansas 51.
Bringier reported the kaolin clay found in the area was "of a very superior quality" for porcelain. That clay, from modern Saline County, made possible the famed Niloak pottery produced at Benton.
About five miles from the Cove, Bringier found "a quarry of razor hones," the mineral novaculite. The man who "discovered" the novaculite deposit extracted 400 pounds of these whetstones the previous year. Noting that those stones sold for $1 to $2 per pound, Bringier wrote that the same man "is now loading a flat boat with them." He concluded that the hones--which would come to be known throughout the nation as Arkansas Stones--were "much superior to those imported from Turkey."
Bringier had a deep relationship with Indians living in modern Arkansas and Oklahoma. He lived among the Indians for months at a time and developed a strong feeling for the Osage people, though he was not at all taken with the Cherokees.
He studied the lead mines of Missouri, the driftwood blockage on the Red River, mastodon bones, and prehistoric Indian mounds. He made a quick study of the complex known today as Toltec Mounds, providing the first written description of the site. He recognized that the mounds were surrounded by a defensive "fortification," and estimated that the two main mounds were "about 80 feet in height."
Today the site--east of Keo in Lonoke County--is known as Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park and has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
Bringier returned to Arkansas in the summer of 1816 as part of a spy mission for the Spanish government. I have written previously on that remarkable expedition. At the end of the War of 1812, American settlers began pouring into the lands recently opened by the Louisiana Purchase.
The Spanish, rightfully fearing the land lust of the Americans, were worried. Since the Spanish knew little about Arkansas, they devised a plan to send a party of spies up the Arkansas River under the guise of mineral prospecting.
The mission was led by Jean Laffite, famed as a pirate and hero of the Battle of New Orleans, and Major Arsene Latour, author of the secret document sent to the Spanish after the expedition. Perhaps Bringier was brought along because of his knowledge of minerals, which would legitimize the cover. Indeed, Bringier did undertake mining operations in at least one location.
The Spanish were not happy with the report, and it lay in an archives until discovered years later by accident.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist. Email: Arktopia.td@gmail.com.