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| "The Arkansas Traveler" by Edward Payson Washburn, 1858. |
Arkansans have been portrayed as backwoods hillbillies who lack education
and intelligence since the area’s earliest years. An early visitor to the Arkansas
Territory, Henry Schoolcraft, was instrumental in the development of the
negative stereotype.
Schoolcraft was born in New York in 1793. As a boy, he became
enamored with rocks and spent a lot of time studying geology. As an adult, he
channeled that interest into a mining career. In 1818, Schoolcraft came to
Missouri to scout mining interests, then moved south into the Ozarks.
He tried to recruit people for his Ozarks excursion, but all
declined except Levi Pettibone, a fellow New Yorker.
Schoolcraft and Pettibone were not experienced outdoorsmen. Early
in the trip, Schoolcraft made mistakes, including not hiring an experienced
guide. He also wanted to “live off the land” during the trip but brought only a
weapon used to hunt large game. He didn’t bring equipment to hunt smaller game,
such as rabbits and squirrels.
The Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks largely were uncharted. As Schoolcraft
and Pettibone wandered through the woods, they got lost numerous times. While
following the North Fork of the White River, they encountered their first
Arkansans — a family in a cabin at Bennet’s Bayou. The travelers had not seen
anyone for 20 days, and Schoolcraft was eager to meet the cabin owner.
As Schoolcraft approached, he noticed the house was draped with
deer and bear skins. The cabin’s owner, a man identified only as “Wells,”
invited Schoolcraft inside. The cabin was well-built and fairly new, but Schoolcraft
thought it was primitive and dirty. In his diary, Schoolcraft described the
cabin as “the abode of man beyond the pale of the civilized world.”
The man’s family also disturbed Schoolcraft. The boys were dressed
in animal hides, and the girls wore buckskin frocks. Schoolcraft wrote “all
were abundantly greasy and dirty.”
The family also lacked social niceties, Schoolcraft wrote. “They
could only talk of bears, hunting and the like. The rude pursuits and the
coarse enjoyments of the hunter state, were all they knew.” None of the house’s
residents could read, and the closest thing to government was the justice of
the peace of Lawrence County, which was about 100 miles away.
Schoolcraft was similarly critical of everyone he met in the
Ozarks. To him, Arkansas was an alien place that was more than geographically
far away from his native New York. It was also far away culturally,
economically and religiously from what he knew.
When Schoolcraft returned to New York in 1819, he published the
diary of his travels in a book called, “Journal of a Tour into the Interior of
Missouri and Arkansas in 1818 and 1819.” The book was the first glimpse northeasterners
had of Arkansas, which became a Territory in March 1819.
The picture of Arkansas that Schoolcraft painted in his book was
not pretty. He repeated tales of illiterate hunters, near feral children and
crushing isolation. After reading his book, few New Yorkers were willing to
make the trek to Arkansas. In Schoolcraft’s words, Arkansas was “beyond the
pale of the civilized world.” That
reputation stuck, even as Arkansas developed.
At least one other writer traveled to Arkansas and had similar
criticism of the state. In the 1930s, writer H.L. Mencken made a trip from
Baltimore, Maryland, to Arkansas. “Such shabby and flea-bitten villages I had
never seen before, or such dreadful people,” Mencken said afterward. In
response, the Arkansas legislature, in session at the time, passed a resolution
to pray for Mencken’s soul.
Arkansas might have started out as the rough-and-tumble, backwoods
territory Schoolcraft described, but as the state developed, so too did its
culture, education, economy and amenities. Despite the progress, for many, the
hillbilly stereotype persists today.
For more information about Schoolcraft, visit the Arkansas State
Archives at http://archives.arkansas.gov
or call 501-682-6900.
