The Gentlemen and the Deerslayer: Contrasting Portraits of Pioneer Arkansas

uniquely positive tone of Friedrich Gerstacker's portrait of Arkansas life is highlighted when his account is compared with other early travel- er's reports. The earliest considered here were produced by two Scots- men, William Dunbar and George Hunter, who 1804-1805 ascended Ouachita River through Louisiana and south Arkansas as far as pres- ent-day Hot Springs. Each man kept a journal. Almost fifteen years later, winter of 1818, New Yorker Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and a travel- ing companion named Levi Pettibone explored White River country of north central Arkansas search of lead deposits, at almost same time as English botanist Thomas Nuttall traveled up Arkansas River from Arkansas Post to Fort Smith. Another fifteen years passed before geolo- gist George William Featherstonhaugh, another Englishman, crossed state from northeast to southwest 1834. Gerstacker was last of this crew. First arriving January 1838, he didn't leave for good until July 1842.This adds up to six journal-keeping travelers, who traversed every quadrant of Arkansas over a nearly forty-year span of territorial and early statehood times. Read as a group, they divide sharply into two camps, with Gerstacker constituting an outlier party of one and others so wholly agreement their accounts could many places be freely substituted one for another. A closer look at their contrasting portraits reveals Gerstack- er's attitudes and perspectives more clearly.From earliest accounts, majority party, gentleman scientists all, was conspicuously unimpressed by pioneer settlers they encountered. Hunter's journal entry for November 6, 1804, chastises old settlers, cheifly Canadian French, of Ouachita River country for of forethought & industry that leaves them want of almost every com- fort, except what is absolutely necessary for subsistance.1 Dunbar, five days later, observed that summer these people content themselves with making corn barely sufficient for bread during year; this man- ner they always remain extremely poor; some few who have conquered their habits of indolence (which are always a consequence of indian mode of life) and addicted themselves to agriculture, . . . taste a little sweets of civilized life.2 On November 13, from a point close to Arkansas/Louisiana border, Hunter described rudimentary Bark cab- in of a Spaniard and his family: It was one story high, about 15 feet square, an earthen floor, chimney composed of mud and grass mixed; The furniture were, one bed for whole family which consisted of man & his wife[,] four Children, eldest girl of about 16. After their five years residence, Hunter went on to report, there was no appear- ance of any crop or any store of any kind of vegetable produce, altho he had winter before him already commenced. His summary judgment is succinct: Thus are indolence & poverty allied.3Nuttall and Schoolcraft visited a more settled region a little more than a decade later, but their reports are remarkably similar. Nuttall's assess- ment, written from Arkansas Post on February 3, 1819, was as hostile to French settlers as Hunter's, judging the sum of general industry as totally insufficient for support of any thing like a town, even as the love of amusements, here, as most of French colonies, is carried to extravagance, particularly gambling, and dancing parties or balls.4 Schoolcraft's report, echoing Dunbar, offers a retrograde preference for hunting over agriculture as a primary impediment to development of civilized society: Gardens are unknown, he wrote on December 9, 1818, from White River country on Missouri border north of Lead Hill. Corn and wild meats, chiefly bear's meat, are staple articles of food. In manners, morals, customs, dress, contempt of labor and hospitality, state of society is not essentially different from that which exists among savages. …

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