Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Arkansas far more than image of hillbillies painted by early visitors
Traveling across the state, one is amazed by the beauty of the Natural State and what it has to offer. Larger, well-developed metropolitan areas such as Fayetteville, Jonesboro and the Little Rock area interspersed with smaller towns and rich farmlands serve to remind us that we are far removed from the backward hillbilly image by which we have frequently been portrayed. That image, perhaps fomented by some of our earliest historians, has survived to the present time.
Thomas Nuttall, an English born naturalist, visited and chronicled some of the state’s earliest history. The title of Thomas Nuttall’s book, “A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory during the year 1819, with occasional Observation of the Manners of the Aborigines,” suggest that he might not have been overly impressed with the people and culture he encountered.
Arriving at Arkansas Port, Nuttall vividly described the squalor and general backwardness of the inhabitants. The village had 30 or 40 houses and a few stores occupied by poor and improvident people who were proceeding slowly in any efforts of improvement. He went on to say that nature had done so much but the people so little that it was difficult to determine the value and resources of the land. The homes were open galleries, totally unacceptable and destitute of comfort for winter. His description of the population certainly fits the typical hillbilly image: “It is to be regretted that the widely scattered state of the population in this territory is but too favourable to the spread of ignorance and barbarism. The means of education are, at present, nearly proscribed, and the rising generation are growing up in mental darkness.”
As he proceeded up the Arkansas River, Nuttall’s perspective did not change. He ran across rough frontiersmen, thieving Indians, and hired a guide who, he discovered later, had murdered a man for his property. At Cadron, present day Conway, he got stuck for days in a poorly constructed tavern where men gambled and drank day and night while cold January winds blew through the many cracks between the log walls. “Every reasonable and rational amusement appeared here to be swallowed up in dram drinking, jockeying, and gambling,” he grumbled as he described the location.
Further up river, he discovered coal layers in the cliffs near Spadra, described some of the beauty of the natural surroundings and created several painting of Nebo Mountain (which he misnamed Magazine) and of Cavanal Mountain near Fort Smith. Encountering ticks, malarial fever, and warring Indian tribes, he eventually journeyed back to England, where he composed his widely read, and generally negative, views of the inhabitants of Arkansas.
Henry Schoolcraft, another journalist and Arkansas visitor stated, “in manners, morals, customs, dress, contempt of labor and hospitality, the state of society is not essentially different from that which exists among the savages.”
Further compounding the state’s appearance as populated by hillbillies, Sanford Faulkner, supposedly traveling with Archibald Yell, Ambrose Sevier, and perhaps Albert Pike, stumbled across a log cabin occupied by a squatter in the Boston Mountains. From that encounter, the Arkansas Traveler story and song depicting the typical Arkansan became a part of our state’s lore and image.
Arkansas has long struggled with the perception of being backward uneducated. Although far from perfect, when you travel our state today, you enjoy enough forests, mountains and streams to appreciate the Natural State while passing the new business and industry that makes us a thriving, progressive Arkansas.
Curtis Varnell, Ph.D., is a longtime teacher in the area, the author of several books on local history, a regular columnist on that topic and the science and social studies coordinator for the Guy Fenter Education Service Cooperative at Branch. Email him at curtis.varnell@wscstarfish.com.