WEBVTT - Ep. 96: The Arkansaw Image 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:09.320 Eighteen fifty one movie did gets published. There's one mention 0:00:09.480 --> 0:00:14.320 of Arkansas, Arkansas always portrayed as crazy, violent, and stupid, 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:20.280 only one line. I've waited my whole life for this opportunity. 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:23.880 Perhaps this was even the primary reason for my birth 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:27.840 and what some have called the creation state, the Bear State, 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:32.800 my beloved Arkansas. If this is the last Bear Grease 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:37.040 podcast I ever make, my soul will be satiated by 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:41.040 the sweet nectar of having had the last word, by 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.400 being given a chance to explain things that the world, 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:48.320 in its frivolous pursuit of progress, has yet to slow 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:52.640 down enough to understand. I'm quite certain this is the 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:56.560 greatest place on planet Earth. But on this episode we're 0:00:56.560 --> 0:01:01.080 gonna talk about the Arkansas image. Say it was the 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:04.400 most picked on state in America in the twentieth century, 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:06.760 But there are a lot of other places kind of 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:10.880 like us. So why we've been branded as a haven 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:16.000 for barefoot, uneducated, feuding and poverty stricken folks gifted with 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:21.160 an inferiority complex and defensiveness as part of our cultural inheritance. 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:24.800 It's time we set the record straight and separate fact 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:29.560 from fiction. We'll learn those characterizations weren't far from the truth, 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:33.800 but they were oversimplified and myopically viewed by a nation 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.319 who deeply wanted us to be that. We'll explore the 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:41.520 power of regional identity and why Arkansas is still shaking 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:45.880 its frontier image. We'll talk with doctor Brooks Blevins, doctor 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:49.680 Jeanie Wayne, and doctor Bob Cochrane to understand the roots 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:53.160 of this image, its impacts, both good and bad. And 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:56.600 we'll have some surprised guests that will certainly shock you. 0:01:57.160 --> 0:01:59.600 We'll talk with the curator of one of the finest 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:03.400 museums of American art in the country. We'll hear from 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:07.240 the founder of Walmart. Yeah, I said, we'll hear from 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:13.280 him directly, and we'll hear a never before released interview 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:18.200 with none other than Arkansas's own first son, Bill Clinton. 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:22.320 You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. And regardless of 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:26.080 if you care anything about Arkansas, you're gonna learn something 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.359 about the complexity of how things came to be as 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.640 they are and how meaningful it can be to be 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:37.880 connected to place. I really doubt, for real you're gonna 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:41.440 want to miss this one. But before we start, I 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.960 want you to take an inventory of the image of 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:47.560 Arkansas that you have in your mind. What do you 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:50.320 think when you hear about this state? Where did it 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:54.120 come from? From the very earliest days, there has been 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:58.520 this sort of defensive inferiority complex that is just it's 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:01.800 almost part of your hair. Is someone who grows up 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:04.280 in Arkansas, you just expect people are going to make 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:15.760 fun of you. My name is Clay Nukeam and this 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:19.880 is the Bear Grease Podcast where we'll explore things forgotten 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:24.320 but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:28.200 we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:33.560 close to the land, presented by f HF gear, American 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:37.800 maid purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:50.360 be as rugged as the place. As we explore, happened 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:54.360 happened in Arkansas. Where else could it have happened? But 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:58.480 the creation state, the finishing up country, a state where 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:01.160 the soil runs down to the center of the earth 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:04.040 and the government gives you title to every inch of it. 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:07.600 Then it's air. Just breathe them and they'll make you 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:11.160 snort like a horse. It's a state without fault. It 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:23.840 is Jim Dogged, the big Bear of Arkansas. The Arkansas 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:27.159 image has been brewed since the late sixteen hundreds, and 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:30.760 it's still alive today. I'll be braving the river of 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:34.599 stereotypes and honest to God truth to see which one 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:38.600 makes it to the other side. My friend doctor Brooks Blevins, 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:41.719 I think loves Arkansas as much as I do, and 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:44.599 that's what qualifies us to speak so frankly and with 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:48.679 such keen perception. And he says that the Arkansas image 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:55.160 is associated with violence, ignorance, shiftlessness, laziness, with generous doses 0:04:55.160 --> 0:05:02.120 of racism, moonshining, clannishness, barefootedness, floppy hat in general cussedness. 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:09.920 But in the positive column, our Canstans are known as independent, resourceful, nonconformists, 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:15.839 close to nature, unpretentious, generous, and non materialistic. There are 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:19.280 two sides to every story, and if I know one thing, 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:24.320 it's this. Things are usually more complex than they seem. 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:27.680 So I suggest that if you're not from here, you 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:32.600 just listen and learn. This place is full of squirrel dogs, fortune, 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:38.080 five hundred companies, banjo pickers, world class American art, a president, 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:41.240 and some fine mules. By the time we get to 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:44.560 the end of this, you might be wishing you were barefoot, 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:48.159 grinning ear to ear, eating at fancy restaurants, and living 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.320 the high life in Arkansas like me and Brent Reeves. 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:57.440 On the last episode, we establish that prior to the 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:01.320 Civil War, the newly formed state of Arkansas was branded 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.640 to America as the Bear State, fueled by a firebrand 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:10.479 comedic genre of writing that featured bear hunting called Southwest Humor. 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:16.120 It portrayed eccentric Southern characters speaking in dialect and outlandish 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:20.840 tales from what Jim Dog called the creation State Arkansas. 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:24.400 The short story The Big Bear of Arkansas was published 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:27.880 in New York City and had a virality that pushed 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:31.120 everybody and their brother to start writing and even painting 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:34.960 about Arkansas bear hunting, and this place was truly a 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:38.360 haven for bear hunters. On our Death of a Bear 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.240 Hunter episode, a man named Erskine was killed in the 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:45.080 early eighteen forties by bear being made by dogs, and 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:48.440 Native Americans buried his body in a shallow grave roughly 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:52.520 twenty five miles from my house in Independence County, Arkansas. 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:56.039 There is a community called oil Trough, where market hunters 0:06:56.160 --> 0:07:00.440 established a commercial bear rendering facility that shipped bear oil 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:03.640 and hollow logs down the White River to the Mississippi 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:06.039 and then to New Orleans to be burned in street 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.520 lights and used by those Cajun chefs who preferred bear 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:13.200 grease over other oils. It's recorded that nine hundred and 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:16.440 thirty six bear skins and a considerable amount of bear 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:19.200 oil were shipped in eighteen o six by a single 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:23.920 company in the Rivertown, Arkansas Post. A traveling rider once 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:26.880 described a bear hunter he saw in Hot Springs, Arkansas, 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:29.800 in eighteen thirty four. He said the man was a 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:34.200 singular fellow who shunned society, was dressed altogether in skins 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.560 of animals he killed, and seemed never to have washed. 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:40.360 He lived in the woods miles from the springs, and 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:43.680 only visited when he had bear and deer skins to sell. 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:47.480 This writer met another hunter near the Catto River. He 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:51.040 said he was a genuine hunter, dressed in leather prepared 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.160 by himself from the skins of animals he'd killed. He 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:56.440 was going with his rifle on his shoulder and his 0:07:56.560 --> 0:08:00.400 dogs some twenty miles off to hunt bears. The man, 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:04.160 although between thirty and forty years old, had never been 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:07.360 out of his neighborhood and had no idea of the 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:12.040 world beyond his own pursuits. This was the Arkansas that 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:16.640 people wanted to talk about. But this backwoods romantic image 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:20.000 of bear hunters would be the bright spot compared to 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:23.360 what was about to come. Over the next two hundred years, 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:26.840 Arkansas would become the most maligned and made fun of 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:31.120 place in America. But why there were lots of places 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:36.920 with poverty and hunting, Why Arkansas. Doctor Brooks Blevins wrote 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:41.200 a book in two thousand and seven titled Arkansas Arkansas, 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:45.000 How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and good old Boys defined the State. 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:49.080 It's an incredible book. In the title, the first Arkansas 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:51.559 has spelled correctly, but the second is spelled with a 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:54.200 W at the end, the way the bear hunter gym 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:58.120 dogget spelled at. In eighteen forty one, doctor Blevins makes 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:01.280 a case that there are two arc and saws, which 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:03.640 I think by the end of this you'll agree with. 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:08.800 Let's talk about identity. Here's doctor Blevins. You're right, we 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:14.880 don't allow anything to go unlabeled or unbranded, and we 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:19.760 have a little shorthand ways of characterizing everybody and everything, 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:23.199 and states were no different. You know, you think about it. 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:27.240 Every state went through its frontier stage, and every state 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:31.040 had these trappers and hunters and things like that at 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:35.640 one stage in their development. But most states eventually get 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.600 to sleught that off and go on about their business 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:42.960 and modernize. But Arkansas because of the timing when it 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:45.200 becomes a state right there and the kind of the 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:48.160 heart of the Southwestern humor era when people were writing 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:50.920 all these stories, because Arkansas in many ways and in 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:54.800 many places still was kind of a frontier. When it 0:09:54.840 --> 0:09:58.880 becomes a state, it gets branded at that moment, and 0:09:59.080 --> 0:10:03.280 that brand really sticks with it for years and years 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:07.280 to come. Doctor Blevins makes a strong case that the 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:11.320 frontier image of Arkansas never really gets replaced, even though 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:15.240 all states had a frontier period. But perhaps we've gotten 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:18.280 ahead of ourselves. I think we need to go even 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:22.240 further back to understand Arkansas's origins. We're gonna have to 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:25.679 go way back. This is doctor Jeanie Wayne of the 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:30.680 University of Arkansas. What does the name Arkansas mean? Well, 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:35.600 it's It was the name that the group of Illinois 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:40.600 Indians who were accompanying the Marquette and Joliette trek down 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:45.120 the Mississippi River in the seventeenth century gave to the 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:48.880 Indians that we know of as the Quapaw, but the 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:52.520 way they pronounced it was something like Arkansas, and the 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:55.440 French pronunciation, Oh really, so they were trying to say 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:59.240 Qua Paul they were called. The Illinois were calling them 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:03.960 what they believed their name to be. The French interpreted 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:09.000 it as Arkansas of something like Kansa, and it became 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:13.120 it was ultimately corrupted to Arkansas. What about I've heard 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:17.760 Arkansas means land of the downstream people. That's the downstream people. Okay, 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:22.520 that was the word that meant land of the people downstream, 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:25.680 which was downstream on the Mississippi from Illinois, and the 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:29.360 Illinois Indians considered then the downstream people because they were 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:34.400 part of their their people at some point land of 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:39.080 the downstream people. Even our naming by the Native Americans 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:42.920 is suddenly dismissive. Our name is in relationship to an 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:46.760 unnamed place upstream. We don't even get our own landmark. 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.080 Or maybe I'm reading into this and it's just my 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:54.959 Arkansas persecution complex talking. It's hard to know because this 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:58.040 is the only people the Nucambs have had out into 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:01.480 the known world since the early thirties when we arrived 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:04.960 in the Washetaw Mountains of Montgomery County near the community 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:09.000 of Bumblebee, Arkansas. And we all know that Bumblebee wings 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:11.920 are too small for them to fly, but despite the 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:16.320 negative press, they've made quite the name for themselves. So 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:21.960 his Arkansas. It's believed Arkansas was first inhabited by Paleo 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:26.680 Indians ten to twelve thousand years ago. In fifteen forty one, 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:30.040 the Spaniard Hernando de Soto was the first European to 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.360 set foot here, and not surprisingly, the old codre was 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:36.440 looking for gold. He didn't find any, but he found 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:41.920 substantial agrarian villages of numerous native tribes in Arkansas. He 0:12:42.080 --> 0:12:46.120 walked into a thriving civilization of what anthropologists called the 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:51.600 Mississippian culture. De Soto declared himself the son of the Sun. 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:54.640 He wreaked havoc on the tribes for the year he 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:57.440 was here Before he died of fever. His body was 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:00.319 wrapped in a blanket, weighted with sand and sunk in 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:03.200 the Mississippi River. It would be over one hundred and 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:07.080 forty years before another European dude would come here. In 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:10.520 sixteen eighty two, a French guy named LaSalle found the 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:16.040 majority of the villages De Soto reported completely gone, nothing 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:20.480 but ruins. It's an incredible mystery, but it's believed De 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:26.920 Soto and his six hundred men carried smallpox, plague, yellow fever, tuberculosis, 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:31.040 to flu typhus, and measles to the tribes, nearly wiping 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:35.959 them out. And tree ring analysis of that time shows 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:39.880 an incredibly severe one hundred year drought that hit the 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:45.040 tribes with a double wammy of crisis. Whatever happened, most 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:48.439 of them were gone. LaSalle ends up in a small 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:52.319 village of friendly Quawpaus and in sixteen eighty two makes 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:56.719 the first European settlement here called Arkansas Post, just up 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:00.400 the Mississippi River, on the White River. Why is this 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:07.719 important to the Arkansas image? We're about to learn the 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:11.760 French presence in Arkansas was very light, and the French 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:15.600 hunters became dependent in their own way upon the Quapa 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:21.600 for military alliance for agricultural goods, and they engaged in trade. 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:26.400 They engaged in a kind of cultural blending. So yes, 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:33.480 they intermarried. They intermarried. They again, the military alliances intermarried 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:37.080 trade and there was a descriptive pray or word used 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:41.080 to describe Matisse. Yeah, so the French and the Quapaw 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:47.440 and they're them intermarrying the Matisse. It's unusual for us 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:50.000 to imagine this, but there were times early on when 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:54.080 the tribes accepted Europeans, helped them, and they even lived together. 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:58.360 At Arkansas Post the cultural lines blurred in the extreme 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:02.160 isolation form in what they called the Matisse. That's a 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:05.480 French word which means mixed and in this case a 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:09.160 unique blend of the French and Quapole. Do you remember 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:12.600 how I said the Big Bar of Arkansas, Jim Dogget's 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:16.680 philosophical doctrines sounded non European to me. Well, this is 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:20.280 probably why some of the European backwoods cultures had one 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:24.040 hundred and fifty years of deep Native American influence in 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:28.000 the seventeen hundreds. However, this would backfire on the image 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:31.440 of Arkansas, as Native Americans began to get a worse 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:35.760 and worse rap in the colonies. A Frenchman named Francois 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:39.880 wrote of the people at Arkansas Post quote, they passed 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:45.240 their time playing games, dancing, drinking, or doing nothing similar 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.680 in this as other things to the Savage peoples with 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:52.080 whom they passed the greater part of their lives. A 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:55.440 guy in Louisiana wrote about these people in Arkansas Post, 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:58.600 and he said, these men consist of scum of all 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:02.240 kinds of nationals who have become stuck here through their 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:06.760 fondness of idleness and independence. Hardly do they know they 0:16:06.800 --> 0:16:11.200 are Christians. They excel in all vices and their kind 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:14.400 of life as a real scandal. End of quote. And 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:18.200 not to belabor the point, but Louisiana and Morris Arnold 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:22.920 accused the hunters of Arkansas at this time of being murderers, rapists, 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:27.560 and fugitives from justice, and as lazy, shiftless, given to 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:33.000 excess drinking and laburtonage, and irredeemably lawless and a moral 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:36.840 that gum that stings a little, but it might have 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:41.200 been true. This was the beginning of the Arkansas image, 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:46.200 all the way back in the sixteen and early seventeen hundreds, 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:50.240 and things don't get better for Arkansas. Here's doctor Blevins. 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:56.320 You know, first impressions are very powerful. That first impression 0:16:56.400 --> 0:16:58.840 can stick you with you for a long long time. 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:01.960 And in many ways that's what happens to Arkansas. Its 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:05.320 first impression on the national scene is of this kind 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:11.000 of backwoods bear hunting place that's semi civilized, probably a 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:14.440 little dangerous, and maybe, you know, not the funniest place 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:17.600 to visit. And when it gets branded with that, what 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:20.600 happens is for the rest of the nineteenth century and 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:23.320 into the twentieth century, there's just kind of this continual 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:29.680 piling on of imagery. The imagery just started piling on. 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:34.280 And to give a very short version of European immigration 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:37.800 into Arkansas, for one hundred years after the establishment of 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:40.680 the Arkansas Post in sixteen eighty three, there was very 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:44.240 little happening here until the late seventeen hundreds when the 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.520 number of market hunters increased, and they were here in 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:52.240 good number through the time when Arkansas achieved territorial status 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:55.760 in eighteen nineteen. That's when the numbers of people started 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:59.439 to increase. Just remember all that it's important. Trust me, 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.520 this is a but people in Arkansas have to carry 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.639 a lot of stuff, okay, and this is really important. 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:12.200 Arkansas had a unique geography that created isolation. The Indian 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:15.720 territory bordering Arkansas to the west created a border the 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.720 Mississippi River to the east, the giant swap of the 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:22.480 East Arkansas Delta and the challenges of the mountain regions 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:27.560 of Arkansas created this unique geographic isolation they called the 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:31.960 mill Pond effect. Arkansas was on the weights and nowhere, 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:36.359 and typically the people who settled here were impoverished, indebted, 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:41.920 running from something pretty wild. The opinions of people can 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:45.679 be influential, especially when they have the powerful pen of 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:50.280 identity scripting in their hand. A dude from Albany, New 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:55.080 York named Henry Rose Schoolcraft was one such writer. He 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:58.280 was a young grainhorn geologist that came to the ozarks 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:02.040 of Arkansas in eighteen eighteen looks at the possibility of mining. 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:06.239 Nobody remembers or cares about the minerals he found here 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.080 because he didn't find much. But my word, did he 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:12.080 ever brand the state. He was kind of a punk. 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:21.040 Here's doctor Blevins on Schoolcraft. He wasn't the first explorer 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:24.200 from outside of Arkansas to come through and write about 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:27.120 the place and publish it and for people to read about, 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:30.359 but his was probably the most notable. He comes through 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:35.439 in eighteen eighteen and eighteen nineteen, so well before the 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:39.359 state very sparsely settled. He spends almost all of his 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:43.439 time in the Ozarks and the northern third of the state. 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:48.960 And Schoolcraft is he's a New Yorker and he's college educated. 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:53.560 He's sort of a budding geologist. But he you know, 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:58.480 he writes this report of his travels through the Ozarks 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:01.320 and it's published just to come years after he does 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:04.680 this trip. He writes some very very negative things about 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:07.040 the people that he came into contact with. Not all 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:09.280 of the people, but for the most part, he's very 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:15.040 very negative. Well, probably most famously, Schoolcraft visits a family 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:19.359 by the name of Welles in northern Arkansas, probably you know, 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:24.200 somewhere in the mountain Home vicinity. And he has nothing 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:27.000 whatsoever good to say about the Wells family. I mean, 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:31.679 he really, he really hammers them pretty good. He calls 0:20:31.760 --> 0:20:36.119 the children abundantly greasy and dirty. They're all dressed in buckskin. 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:39.679 And he says of the mother of the family and 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:43.399 the children they could quote only talk of bears hunting 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:46.560 and the like, the rude pursuits and the course enjoyments 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:50.639 of the hunter state where all they knew and for him, 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:52.320 you know that, I mean, there were no books in 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:55.760 the house. There was there was nothing that reminded anybody 0:20:55.760 --> 0:21:01.160 of civilization there, and so he was completely repulsed by 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:04.880 the food, by what they were wearing, by what their 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:07.360 house looked like, by the fact that all they could 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:09.919 talk about was hunting. I mean that's what their life 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:12.320 revolved around. Yeah, I mean there were you know, there 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:15.919 were all kinds of hides stretched out on the house, 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:19.680 and you know, it was just their entire lives were 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:24.440 repulsive to him. I wish Schoolcraft would have just stayed 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:27.240 in his lane and wrote about rocks and mountain erogeney, 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:31.000 keeping the cultural anthropology to the people who know a 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:34.919 thing or two about human life. Dirty sap sucker. He 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:41.560 called Arkansans a wild, semi civilized race of backwoodsmen. As 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:47.960 judgy as Schoolcraft was, he made some interesting observations. He wrote, quote, 0:21:48.440 --> 0:21:52.760 the hunter, although habitually lazy and holding in contempt the 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:56.320 pursuits of agriculture so far at least as is not 0:21:56.440 --> 0:22:00.600 necessary to his own subsistence, is nevertheless a slave to 0:22:00.720 --> 0:22:04.159 his dog, the only object around him to which he 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:08.840 appears really devoted to him. All days are equally unhallowed, 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:11.000 and the first and the last day of the week 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:17.240 finding him alike sunken unconcerned sloth and stupid ignorance. That 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:21.119 was a little harsh, bro And in deep human history, 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:24.880 hunter gatherers chose not to partake in large scale agriculture 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:27.520 because they hunted for food and they were saving their 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:30.880 energy for the hunt. Secondly, you got the dog thing 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:34.280 partially right, but it's not the only thing we're devoted to. 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:37.440 But goodness, a good hunting dog is hard to beat. 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:43.160 Another thing Schoolcraft noted as unusual was the violence, which 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:47.199 would become a big part of the Arkansas image. He wrote, quote, 0:22:47.720 --> 0:22:52.240 without moral restraint, brought up in the uncontrolled indulgence of 0:22:52.280 --> 0:22:55.720 every passion, and without regard of religion, the state of 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:59.600 society among the rising generation in this region is truly deplorable, 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:04.160 and their childish disputes boys frequently stabbed each other with knives, 0:23:04.520 --> 0:23:08.000 two instances of which have occurred since our residence here. 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:11.960 No correction was administered in either case, and the act 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:15.280 being rather looked upon and is a promising trait of character. 0:23:15.920 --> 0:23:19.320 End of quote. You guys know that my annoyance with 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:22.520 Schoolcraft is partly tongue in cheek. It sounds like he 0:23:22.600 --> 0:23:26.440 witnessed some bad characters, but he wasn't the only one 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:30.560 who saw it. The Englishman Thomas Nuttall spent some time 0:23:30.600 --> 0:23:34.119 in the Ozarks before statehood, and he said, quote, the 0:23:34.240 --> 0:23:37.840 population in this territory is but too favorable to the 0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:42.120 spread of ignorance and barbarism. The means of education are 0:23:42.240 --> 0:23:46.399 at present nearly proscribed, and the rising generation are growing 0:23:46.480 --> 0:23:49.840 up in mental darkness and have almost forgot that they 0:23:49.920 --> 0:23:55.040 appertained to the civilized world. End of quote. What's interesting 0:23:55.240 --> 0:23:58.440 is that not everybody was as hard on Arkansas as 0:23:58.480 --> 0:24:03.160 these two city slicking punk elites. Our good buddy, Frederick 0:24:03.240 --> 0:24:06.640 Gerstalker spent six years in America, and much of it 0:24:06.760 --> 0:24:10.840 in the Creation State. His perception of Arkansas was vastly 0:24:10.880 --> 0:24:15.320 different than Schoolcraft. He said, quote, I have traversed the 0:24:15.400 --> 0:24:18.679 state in all directions and met with as honest and 0:24:18.880 --> 0:24:22.000 upright people as are to be found in any part 0:24:22.040 --> 0:24:24.960 of the Union. End of quote. He was here about 0:24:25.000 --> 0:24:28.359 twenty years after Schoolcraft, so maybe some people of higher 0:24:28.440 --> 0:24:33.040 character showed up, or Schoolcraft was looking for fault. When 0:24:33.160 --> 0:24:37.680 leaving the state, Gerstalker said, quote, of all I had 0:24:37.720 --> 0:24:41.480 seen in America, Arkansas was the one which pleased me 0:24:41.520 --> 0:24:44.679 the most. I may perhaps never see it again, but 0:24:44.840 --> 0:24:47.920 I shall never forget the happy days I passed there. 0:24:48.320 --> 0:24:51.240 There were many a true heartbeats under a coarse frock 0:24:51.480 --> 0:24:56.520 or a leather hunting shirt. Perhaps most famously, Washington Irving, 0:24:56.760 --> 0:25:01.960 America's first well known author, passed through, and he wrote, quote, 0:25:02.280 --> 0:25:05.919 the inhabitants have none of the eagerness for gain, the 0:25:06.040 --> 0:25:09.560 rage for improvement which keep our people continually on the move. 0:25:10.080 --> 0:25:14.280 He said, they quote resided in a contented state of poverty, 0:25:14.680 --> 0:25:18.240 worked little, they danced a great deal, and the fiddle 0:25:18.400 --> 0:25:21.720 was the joy of their heart. End of quote. As 0:25:21.720 --> 0:25:25.719 he left Arkansas, he wrote quote, as we swept away 0:25:25.840 --> 0:25:28.960 from the shore, I cast a wistful eye upon the 0:25:29.000 --> 0:25:31.959 moss grown roofs, and the ancient elms and the village, 0:25:32.400 --> 0:25:37.159 and prayed that the inhabitants might long retain their happy ignorance, 0:25:37.600 --> 0:25:41.240 their absence of all enterprise and improvement, their respect of 0:25:41.280 --> 0:25:45.760 the fiddle, and their contempt for the almighty dollar. End 0:25:45.800 --> 0:25:50.200 of quote. Schoolcraft, not all and Irving were all here 0:25:50.320 --> 0:25:55.080 during Arkansas's territorial period from eighteen nineteen to eighteen thirty six. 0:25:55.640 --> 0:25:58.440 It's easy to see the direction this is all going, 0:25:59.040 --> 0:26:03.159 but it's just getting started. Remember that inventory that you 0:26:03.200 --> 0:26:06.840 took about Arkansas. You might be seeing the breadcrumbs of 0:26:06.880 --> 0:26:11.320 your modern ideas about us leading you way back. And 0:26:11.400 --> 0:26:13.560 I know that there's been a lot of information to 0:26:13.640 --> 0:26:17.359 process here. But in Arkansas, our intellects have to work 0:26:17.480 --> 0:26:20.879 double hard to overcome our ignorance. So we're used to 0:26:20.960 --> 0:26:26.000 fast thinking sage calculations and doing this intellectual calculus on 0:26:26.040 --> 0:26:29.560 the fly. If you need to pause and rewind, feel 0:26:29.600 --> 0:26:36.560 free to. So back to our story how Arkansas became 0:26:36.600 --> 0:26:39.680 the most belittled state in America. In eighteen thirty six, 0:26:39.760 --> 0:26:42.920 we became a state, but we weren't ready. We only 0:26:42.920 --> 0:26:47.320 had fifty two thousand people, no infrastructure, not much agriculture. 0:26:47.600 --> 0:26:52.119 But something was a brewin here's doctor Blevins. And the 0:26:52.119 --> 0:26:55.080 only reason it becomes a state so quickly is because 0:26:55.359 --> 0:27:00.639 politicians in those days compromisers, tried to maintain peace in 0:27:00.680 --> 0:27:05.119 the country by maintaining a balance between slave states and 0:27:05.240 --> 0:27:08.600 free states in the US Senate, and Michigan was ready 0:27:08.640 --> 0:27:12.800 to join the Union as a free state, and Arkansas 0:27:12.920 --> 0:27:16.280