Quapaw Indians

The Quapaw (Ugahxpa, or "Downstream People") are a Native American tribe that may have migrated from the Ohio River Valley to the Lower Mississippi and Arkansas River valleys before the time of European settlement. Other native peoples referred to the Quapaw as the "Akansea," from which the name of the state of Arkansas is derived. The Quapaw Indian Agency is now located in Ottawa County, Oklahoma.

Perhaps the first European explorer to encounter the Quapaw was Hernando de Soto in 1541. De Soto found a heavily fortified Quapaw village in Phillips County. Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet visited the tribe again in 1673. An expedition by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle stopped briefly at four tribal villages - Ugahpahti, Uzutiuhi, Tiwadimañ, and Tañwañzhita - 1682.

A smallpox epidemic devastated the tribe in 1697. In 1818 the Quapaw Indians ceded their lands west of present Rock Street in Little Rock to the United States in preparation for a move of the seat of government to the city from Arkansas Post near the mouth of the Arkansas River. That same year Pulaski County became part of the Missouri Territory. The Quapaw were removed by treaty to their present reservation in northeastern Oklahoma in 1834.

References

• S. Charles Bolton, "Under Three Flags," in A Documentary History of Arkansas, eds. C. Fred Williams, et al. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1984), p. 3-5.