Path Of Wisdom

Historic Trails In Northwest Arkansas Follow Same Route

Last updated Monday, August 25, 2008 5:48 PM CDT in Living

By Laurinda Joenks
THE MORNING NEWS

The trails followed the watershed of the Illinois and White rivers, sort of a continental divide of the Ozarks, McLarty continued. From this point, runoff ran east to the White or west to the Illinois.

"It was the only way through the two counties after a flood that you didn't have to cross a river," McLarty said.

A topographical map would show that, although there were lots of ups and downs, this was the flattest way to get through the area, he said.

"We surmise it was an old Indian trade route," McLarty said.

"Animals used it for thousands of years," Black added. "When the military cut the road, they weren't just going off into uncharted territory."

Soldiers built the road in the 1820s to connect the frontier base at Fort Smith with St. Louis.

"The old roads were in the most logical place," McLarty said. "And they're still there today."

Trail Of Tears

Northwest Arkansas sat on the edge of the frontier in the early 1800s, and the road through the region marked the last leg of the Trail of Tears for the Cherokee Indians forcibly removed from their lands in Georgia.

McLarty showed a picture of a typical Cherokee homestead in the 1830s in Rome, Ga.

"It looked very much like any other log home, with a spinning wheel and a cast iron skillet," he pointed out.

Chief James Vann in the 1740s encouraged the Cherokee to assimilate. They started farming, leaving behind hunting and gathering; they developed an alphabet and educated their children; they authored a constitution creating legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. They would take the good things the European culture would have to offer, McLarty said.

"In the 1820s, the Cherokee nation was only a fraction of what it once was," McLarty continued. "Then three things happened that were bad for the Cherokees."

Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828; he had run on a removal campaign. Also in 1828, gold was discovered in northern Georgia, and the state passed anti-Indian acts. The federal Indian removal act was signed May 28, 1830.

A minority faction of the Cherokee nation signed the Treaty of New Echota on Dec. 29, 1835, promising 1 acre of land for 1 acre of land in the Indian Territory if the Cherokee voluntarily left Georgia, McLarty reported. But a petition was submitted to Congress with 15,656 Cherokee signatures denouncing the treaty as a fraud. The Senate ratified the treaty by one vote on May 23, 1836, and the Cherokees were given two years to voluntarily remove to the west. By 1838, only 2,000 had left, and Gen. Winfield Scott was ordered to forcibly remove the Indians. On May 24, 1838, federal troops and the Georgia state militia began the roundup.

"The Trail of Tears really started on the front porch of every Cherokee household," McLarty said. "The worst conditions really were during the roundup, when they used bayonets to herd them. Conditions were similar to Civil War prison camps. They weren't quite as bad along the trip because they could travel and have food along the way."

Thirteen forced removal detachments made their way through Northwest Arkansas from September 1838 to March 1839, McLarty said. The first three groups were taken by barge up the Arkansas River to Little Rock and then walked to Fort Smith. Other groups came over land through Missouri and south to Northwest Arkansas.

As the groups entered the state at Pea Ridge, they were assigned to various depots for food and camp, including locations at Maysville, Mount Comfort, Cross Hollow, Springdale, Old Cincinnati and Westville, Okla. A group led by Capt. John Benge came through Huntsville and along Sixth Street and is commemorated with an often-overlooked park near Fayetteville High School.

But a group led by B.B. Cannon got stuck over the winter, and Cannon's diary records the burial of three little girls in three days. The death of Alsey Timberlake and her burial Dec. 27, 1837, near Cane Hill especially affected McLarty. He found a record in the National Archives showing Cannon ordered a coffin on that day for $2.25.

"She was 13, and she'd traveled with her family 1,800 miles," McLarty said. "Do you know how close that is to Indian Territory? She died within sight of it."

One teacher shared a more personal connection. Leona Prothers, a fifth-grade teacher at Washington Elementary, said her great-great-great-grandmother and grandfather traveled the Trail of Tears. The woman had a baby along the way, but later died on the trail and is buried near St. Paul. A local family adopted the baby and other children, Prother said.

The Cherokees' paths through Northwest Arkansas remain a mystery. A few years ago, the Heritage Trail group found land grant papers for the Cunningham family near Mount Comfort. A Cherokee group led by John Bell camped there. The Cunningham house was recently lost to a subdivision.

"We were the ones who found out," McLarty said. "We were just too late to save it. There is stuff all over Northwest Arkansas that we didn't know about three years ago. From points east, we know how far it was from there to here, but the research is ongoing."

Butterfield Stage

Dressed in the authentic 1850s garb of a farm wife - a split skirt, calico shirt and hat - Marilyn Heifner described life in 1859 Fayetteville.

The Census counted 1,500 to 1,800 in Washington County, compared to nearly 200,000 today, she said, crediting the information to Susan Young at the Shiloh Musuem in Springdale. Improved land sold for $5 to $15 an acre or 50 cents to $1.25 without improvements. Ten stores sold or bartered goods - the town sat 20 miles from Indian Territory, and that trade proved important, Heifner said.

Mail was delivered four times a week by stagecoach - in 19 days from San Francisco and in 48 hours from St. Louis.

Sept. 18 marks the 150th anniversary of the first stagecoach arrival in Fayetteville, Heifner said. Heifner, executive director of the Fayetteville Advertising and Promotions Commission, claimed a passion for the Butterfield stagecoach.

"In 1801, John Butterfield was born in New York," Heifner began. "His goal early in life was to be a stagecoach driver. By age 19, he was a driver and owned his own livery.

"In 1840, gold was found in California, and many people migrated to the West," Heifner continued. "In 1850, California became a state."

But the railroad hadn't reached the far-flung state, and mail from the rest of the United States arrived only after a nine-month tour around South America.

"The people demanded mail service," Heifner said. "In 1850, California threatens succession if there is no mail."

An 1857 bill authorized the postmaster general to issue a contract for delivery across the country. Traveling through the southern states, the Butterfield Overland Mail Co. held the $600,000 contract to deliver mail and freight across the country in 25 days.

"Today that contract would be worth $9 million," Heifner said. "And he had a couple of partners in the business - one named Wells and one named Fargo."

The contract allowed one year to start the service. Butterfield consulted with other stage companies to determine and clear routes, secure and build depots and more.

"In one year, he had accumulated 250 Concord coaches and 500 other vehicles, such as water wagons, hay wagons and lighter Celerity coaches," Heifner said. "He had 3,000 tons of hay stored along 2,800 miles and water wells dug at relay posts 12 to 14 miles apart. He hired 1,200 employees - including superintendents, road bosses, drivers, guards, conductors, keepers, blacksmiths, harness makers, hostlers and clerks. He spent $1 million, which would now be $15 million. He started with 146 stations and increased this to 200."

The stage started in Tipton, Mo., and for the first trip, Butterfield himself traveled six hours and 160 miles on the train to collect two sacks of mail in St. Louis.

"He wore a top hat and a yellow duster, and black pants stuffed into black boots," Heifner described.

Four-horse teams pulled the stage into Arkansas each Tuesday and Sunday heading west and each Monday and Thursday going east. Postage was 10 cents a mile, and passenger tickets cost $200 - equivalent of $3,000 for today's travelers, Heifner continued. Four to nine people could travel with the wagon - including seats on top - but Butterfield was known to say, "'There's always room for one more,'" Heifner quoted.

"They traveled day and night, giving new meaning to, 'Are we there yet?'"

Waterman Ormsby, a correspondent for the New York Herald, was a passenger on the first run to California, and his record of the trip was published in a book, "The Butterfield Overland Mail."

The stage arrived at the first stop in Arkansas, Elkhorn Tavern - recreated at the Pea Ridge National Military Park - in the middle of the night, although it was not an official stop, Heifner reported from Ormsby's record.

"They might stop there for a snack or drink," Heifner said. Part of the stage road south of Pea Ridge is preserved by the national park. "It looks like it did in 1858," Heifner said.

By 7 a.m., the stage reached Callahan Station in Rogers, and horses were changed, Ormsby recorded. (The building near the railroad tracks downtown now houses the Office of Human Concern.) The stage traveled through Cross Hollow south of Rogers - where Indians camped on the Trail of Tears and Civil War soldiers later dug entrenchments, Heifner said. It traveled through Lowell and stopped at Fitzgerald's Station in Springdale (then known as Shiloh). The Fitzgerald home and a stone barn built by a Butterfield crew remain on the site. The Gladden Hotel in downtown Springdale became another unofficial stop.

In Fayetteville, the stagecoach ran by the locations of today's Butterfield Elementary School, Butterfield Trail Village and probably along Maple Street, Heifner continued. It traveled along College Avenue to a stop at the site of the historic Washington County Courthouse. Here, the stage took on mail, changed horses and drivers and departed by noon, Ormsby recorded.

Arkansas education frameworks call for lessons on Arkansas and American history up to the Civil War, Prothers explained. She hopes to incorporate the transportation aspect in her lessons.

"And I'd like to get more stories," she said. "Kids love stories. They make it real."

"John Butterfield loved Fayetteville," Heifner said. "His wife ran the station there. He built a hotel across the street, and the stable set about where Fayetteville city hall is today."

At Park's Station in Hogeye, mules replaced horses to traverse the rough roads through the Boston Mountains. Passengers often got out to help push the stage, Heifner said.

A ferry carried the coach across the Arkansas River in the middle of the night at Van Buren, Ormsby recorded. From Fort Smith, the stage touched Oklahoma and spent a lot of time in Texas, Heifner added.

The stage line ran for 2 1/2 years, making two trips a week in each direction - usually in 22 days. The stagecoach traveled 120 miles a day and carried up to nine passengers, essential baggage and as many as 12,000 letters each trip.

"The Butterfield Overland Express was the first overland transcontinental mail by stagecoach," Heifner said. "It was the longest stagecoach line in world history - 2,812 miles. The Butterfield stage line was a major factor in the settlement of Arkansas and the West before the Civil War."

Civil War Roads

"Battles happen where roads are," explained the national park interpreter. "Troops march down the road, and they encounter other troops. That's where the battle happens. That's what happened at Pea Ridge," Black said.

"The battle was there because of the road. From St. Louis to Fort Smith, everybody used the same road. The Army went up and down it many times going to the Indian Territory."

The 43,000 acres of the national park in Pea Ridge include 2 1/2 miles of restored wire road and the longest restored section of the Trail of Tears in the region, Black reported. Park improvements, which will close the exhibits in the Visitor Center later this year, are planned to update displays and restore the landscape of 1862.

The battle of Pea Ridge determined control of Missouri, the Missouri and Mississippi rivers in St. Louis and, thus, commerce, Black said. "That's what war is really all about - money."

The campaign for Missouri lasted eight months, with the Union retaining control after the Pea Ridge battle.

"Pea Ridge was the largest battle west of the Mississippi," Black continued. This was one of the preeminent Civil War battles in the United States. The battle was decisive, but you don't know about it because it was in Arkansas.

"Arkansas at that time was the hinterlands. The frontier was 20 miles away."

Gen. Earl Van Dorn and his Confederate troops wintered in the Boston Mountains after retreating from the Aug. 10, 1861, battle at Wilson's Creek near Springfield, Black said. He started his 16,000 men marching north along the wire road March 4, with a plan to take St. Louis, Black said.

But 10,000 Union soldiers led by Brig. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis had entered Arkansas in mid-February and were camped along Little Sugar Creek near Elkhorn Tavern.

Van Dorn planned to surround and attack Curtis and his troops March 7, but things didn't go as planned, Black said. The rebels arrived late.

"The road was only as wide as a wagon, and marching at just four men across, it took a long time," Black said. The three-day march left the rebel troops tired, and about 3,000 men were lost along the way.

The second flank of the Confederate force - attacking from the east - fared better, however. They held Elkhorn Tavern and the crucial Telegraph and Huntsville roads.

"The park's Visitor Center is where Curtis makes last stand," Black related.

The next day, 10,000 Union troops charged at one time, Black said.

"The Union Army had 22 cannons," he said. "It was so loud, they could hear it in Fayetteville and Springfield. It was the first 'Thunder in the Ozarks' in March. It was artillery."

Van Dorn marched north with only a three-day supply of food, Black said. The troops marked the fourth day of the campaign by eating food from the well-stocked tavern.

"It was stocked full of food - pickles, sardines, oysters, eggs," Black said. "They were eating, not fighting. And their ammunition train was far behind. They had no ammunition."

Van Dorn ordered retreat, and the troops followed the well-traveled road back to their camp in the Boston Mountains. Missouri remained in Union control.

"But the war was not over in Arkansas," Black said. "The wire road got more use. (In December 1862, Union Brig. Gen. Frances) Herron on his way to Fayetteville passed the body of his dead horse lying there from a previous battle. They used these roads all the time."

The Confederate Army marched the route through the Boston Mountains again to attack Union forces at Prairie Grove in December 1862. And they again retreated, this time with Union troops following them to campaigns in Mississippi.

After the Southern defeat at Prairie Grove, lawlessness reined in Northwest Arkansas, Black said. Raiders - called "bushwhackers" on both sides, he said - traveled throughout the area.

"There was a mini-Civil War in Arkansas," Black said. "People from the same county fought on both sides. The First Washington Artillery for the Union was out of Fayetteville."

Many people living in Northwest Arkansas left the area, Black continued. Those with Southern sympathies headed for Texas, and those who sided with the North left for northern Missouri or Kansas.

"The only people left were those who had no way to go," he said.

"It was neighbor versus neighbor," Black continued. "That tears at society. It was so bad in Northwest Arkansas, they built fortified towns - Southern towns and Northern towns - and set up blockades of the mail. For the most part, it worked.

"This was not the place to be in 1863," he continued. "It was very dangerous, tough living for those who stayed here."

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