QUAPAW
592
QUAPAW
the mouth of the Arkansas, chiefly on the west
(Arkansas) side, with one or two at various periods
on the east (Mississippi) side of the Mississippi, and
claiming the whole of the Arkansas River region up
to the border of the territory held by the Osage
in the north-western part of the state. They are of
Siouan linguistic stock, speaking the same language,
spoken also with dialectic variants, by the Osage and
Kansa (Kaw) in the south and by the Omaha and
Ponca in Nebraska. Their name, properly Ugakhpa,
signifies "down-stream people", as distinguished
from Umahan or Omaha, "up-stream people". To
the Illinois and other Algonquian tribes the}- were
known as Akansea, whence their French name of
Akensas and Akansas. According to concurrent
tradition of the cognate tribes the Quapaw and their
kinsmen originallj- lived far east, possibly beyond the
AUeghenies, and, pushing gradually westward, de-
scended the Ohio River — hence called by the Illinois
the "river of the Akansea" — to its junction with the
Mississippi, whence the Quapaw, then including the
Osage and Kansa, descended to the mouth of the
Arkansas, while the Omaha, vsith the Ponca, went up
the Missouri.
The Quapaw. under the name of Capaha or Pacaha, were first encountered in 1541 by de Soto, who found their chief town, strongly palisaded and nearly surrounded by a ditch, between the Mississippi and a lake on the Arkansas (west) side, apparently in the present Phillips County, where archteologic remains and local conditions bear out the description. The first encounter, as usual, was hostile, but peace was finally arranged. The town is described as having a population of several thousand, by which we may perhaps understand the whole tribe. They seem to have remained unvisited by white men for more than 130 years thereafter, until in 1673, when the Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, accompanying the French comiiiaiider Louis Jolliet, made his famous voy- age down the Mississippi, to the villages of the "Akan- sea" who gave him warm welcome and listened with at- tention to his exhortations, during the few days that he remained until his return. In 1682 La Salle passed by their villages, then five in number, of which one was on the east bank of the Mississippi. The Re- collect, Zenobius Membre, aecompanj'ing La Salle, planted a cross and attempted to give them some idea of the Christian's God, while the commander negotiated a peace with the tribe and took formal possession of the territory for France. Then, as always, the Quapaw were uniformly kind and friendly toward the French. In spite of frequent shiftings the Quapaw villages in this early period were generally four in number, corresponding in name and popula- tion to four sub-tribes still existing, viz. Ugahpahti, Uzutiuhi, Tiwadimaii, and Tauw'anzhita, or, under their French forms, Kappa, Ossoteoue, Touriman, and Tonginga.
In 1683 the French commander, Tonti, built a post on the Arkansas, near its mouth at the later Arkansas Post, and thus began the regular occupa- tion of the Quapaw country. He arranged also for a resident Jesuit missionary, but apparently without result. About 1()97 a smallpox visitation greatly reduced the tribe, killing the greater part of the women and children of two villages. In 1727 the Jesuits, from their house in New Orleans, again took up the work, and Father Du Poisson was sent to the Quapaw, with whom he remained two years. On the morning of 27 November, 1729, while on his way to New Orleans on behalf of his mission, he was preparing to say Mass at the Natchez post on request of the garri.son, when the signal for slaughter was given and he was struck down in front of the altar, the first victim in the great Xatchez massacre. In the en- suing war, which ended in the practical extermination of the Natchez, the Quapaw rendered efficient ser-
vice to the French against the hostile tribes. A
successor (Father Cavette) was appointed to the
Arkansas mission, but details are unknown. It was
vacant in 1750, but was again served in 1764 by
Father S. L. Meurin, the last of the Jesuits up to the
time of the expulsion of the order. Fathers Pierre
Gibault (1792-94), Paul de St. Pierre (c. 1795-98), and
Max-well undoubtedly attended the Indians.
Shortly after the transfer of the territory to the I'nited States in 1803 the Quapaw were officially re- ported as living in three villages on the south side of Arkansas River about twelve miles above Arkansas Post. In 1818 they made their first treatj' with the government, ceding all claims from Red River to beyond the Arkansas and east of the Mississippi, with the exception of a considerable tract between the Arkansas and the Saline, in the south-eastern part of the state. In 1824 they ceded this also, excepting eighty acres occupied by the chief Saracen (Sarrasin) below Pine Bluff, expecting to incorporate with the Caddo of Louisiana, but in this they were disappointed, and after being reduced to the point of starvation by successive floods in the Caddo country about Red River, most of them wandered back to their old homes. In 1834, under another treaty, they were re- moved to their present location in the north-east cor- ner of Oklahoma. Sarrasin. their last chief before the removal, was a Catholic and friend of the Lazarist mis- sionaries (Congregation of the Missions) who arrived in ISIS and ministered alike to white and Indians. He died about 1830 and is buried adjoining St. Joseph's Church, Pine BlufT, where a memorial win- dow preserves liis name. The pioneer Lazarist mis- sionary among the Quapaw was Rev. John M. Odin, afterward Archbishop of New Orleans. In 1824 the Jesuits of Maryland, under Father Charles Van Quickenborne, took up work among the native and immigrant tribes of the present Kansas and Oklahoma. In 1846 the Mission of St. Francis was established among the Osage, on Neosho River, by Fathers John Shoenmakers and John Bax, who extended their ministration also to the Quapaw for some years. The Quapaw together with the associated remnant tribes, the Miami, Seneca, Wyandot and Ottawa, are now served from the Mission of "Saint Mary of the Quapaws", at Quapaw, Okla., in charge of a secular priest and several Sisters of Di^•ine Providence, about two-thirds of the surviving Quapaw being reported as Catholic. From perhaps 5000 souls when first known they have dwindled by epidemics, wars, re- movals, and consequent demoralization to approxi- mately 3200 in 1687, 1600 in 1750, 476 in 1843, and 307 in 1910, including all mixed bloods.
Besides the four established divisions already noted, the Quapaw have the clan system, with a number of gentes. Polygamy was practised, but was not com- mon. Like the kindred Osage they were of cere- monial temperament, with a rich mythology and elaborate rituals. They were agricultural, and their architecture and general culture when first known were far in advance of that of the northern tribes. Their towns were palisaded and their "town houses", or public structures, sometimes of timbers dovetailed together, and roofed with bark, were frequently erected upon large artificial mounds to guard against the frequent inundations. Their ordinary houses were rectangular, and long enough to accommodate several families each. They dug large ditches, con- structed fish weirs, and excelled in the pottery art and in the painting of skins for bed covers and other pur- poses. The dead were buried in the ground, some- times in moimds or in the clay floors of their houses, being freciucntly strapped to a stake in a sitting posi- tion and then carefully covered with earth. They were uniformly friendly to the whites, while at constant war with the Chickasaw and other southern tribes, and are described by the earlier explorers as differing
