Boundary dispute

Arkansas could have been far different state

An acquaintance recently inquired about the puzzling history of Arkansas’ western border. I must admit that I knew little other than the fact that Arkansas once included part of Texas and most of Oklahoma. A little reading on this topic led to more reading, for this is not an easily grasped tidbit of our heritage.

The confusion ultimately comes from problems associated with establishing the borders of the lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The modern state of Louisiana was the first named state to emerge from the Purchase. Shortly after, Missouri Territory, which included what is now Arkansas, decided to go for statehood, and Arkansas was spun off as a separate territory in 1819.

Arkansas Territory, as recognized by Congress in March 1819, included more than 100,000 square miles. The western border was the 100th meridian, far out on the plains. The Missouri state line provided the northern border. On the south Arkansas was separated from the Mexican province of Texas by the Red River, although Miller County stretched across the Red and included a number of Americans.

While still an infant territory, Arkansas lost almost one-half of its land mass when the federal government relocated several eastern Indian tribes on to reservations in the western half of Arkansas Territory. For several years most of the northwestern quarter of Arkansas Territory was given over to the Cherokees. In 1820 the Choctaws of Mississippi were ceded a large reservation that occupied much of the southwestern quarter of Arkansas. The entire Territory of Arkansas had an 1820 population of 14,255 — about the size of modern Blytheville.

No sooner had the ink dried on the Choctaw treaty than Arkansans began complaining of the loss of land, noting that perhaps as many as 5,000 settlers would have to be relocated. In 1823 Congress proposed a western border on a line running due south from the southwestern corner of Missouri. Eventually Missouri Sen. Thomas Hart Benton took up the cause of the displaced Arkansans and eventually secured Congressional recognition of a western border for Arkansas that would begin “at a point 40 miles west of the southwest corner of the State of Missouri, and run south, to the right bank of the Red River,” a boundary that would have retained thousands of square miles for Arkansas. The bill also appropriated $10,000 to negotiate a new treaty with the Choctaws.

The Choctaws, who turned out to be pretty good negotiators, immediately sent a delegation to Washington to defend their interests. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun found the Choctaws resolute, despite his spending $2,500 on liquor for the Indian delegation.

The talks dragged on, but finally both sides agreed to a new north-south line that would begin on the Arkansas River 100 paces east of the old Fort Smith and proceed due south to the Red River. Arkansas officials were unhappy, but Washington was tired of negotiating and forced acceptance.

To survey this new boundary, Calhoun selected James S. Conway, the brother of Territorial delegate Henry W. Conway, and later the first governor of the state of Arkansas. Conway, not surprisingly, sympathized with his fellow white Arkansans, and he failed to survey a true north-south line, but rather, swerved westward and thereby deprived the Choctaws of 137,500 acres of reservation. That explains why Arkansas’ southwestern border is not straight north-south. (The Choctaws fought this land grab in the courts for years, finally winning a small monetary compensation in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1886. In 1888, the Choctaw were finally paid $68,102.00, or 50 cents per acre.)

The boundary from Fort Smith to the north was established in 1828, when a treaty was signed with the Cherokees to relocate them farther west. This treaty made the western limit of Arkansas run due north from the edge of the Choctaw reservation at Fort Smith to the corner of Missouri. Arkansas officials were again indignant at the loss of lands to the Indians, and when Arkansas applied for statehood in 1836, wording was included in the proposed state constitution to reclaim the lost lands “whenever the Indian title shall be extinguished.” Congress would hear none of this, and the offending phrase was removed from the constitution before Arkansas was admitted.

Can you image how different Arkansas would be today if we extended westward to the Texas Panhandle? Historian Michael B. Dougan has envisioned a state that extended into the plains, making Arkansas “much more of a Western state, greatly [enhancing] the mineral resources, and eventually [giving] Arkansas sufficient oil to rank among the leading states in the South.” Instead, it can be argued that the presence of Indian Territory on Arkansas’ western border relegated the state to perpetual “frontier” status.