Quapaw

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English-speaking settlers who arrived later in the region adopted the name used by the French, adapting it to English spelling conventions. The term "Quapaw" comes from the American English attempt to say Ogáxpa.

Scholars are divided as to whether they think the Quapaw and other related groups left before or after the Beaver Wars of the 17th century, in which the Five Nations of the Iroquois (based south of the Great Lakes and to the east of this area), drove other tribes out of the Ohio Valley and retained the area for hunting grounds.Louis F. Burns, "Osage" Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, retrieved 2 March 2009 The oral history of the Quapaw people describes that the Quapaw separated from the Omaha, Ponca, Osage, and Kaw, near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, due to a lack of game. No correlation with gun bearing Iroquois running the Quapaw into Arkansas along with the Omaha, Ponca, Osage and Kaw is described by historic or modern Quapaw sources, and appears to be an entirely modern conjecture by scholars which is unsupported by the Quapaw. Similar and supporting oral history is well documented and supported by other Dhegiha tribes. It is also notable that there are carbon dated sites which are strongly correlated to the Dhegiha which demonstrate they were split and moved to the respective regions by 1500.

The Quapaw reached their historical territory, the area of the confluence of the Arkansas River and Mississippi rivers, at least by the mid-17th century. The timing of the Quapaw migration into their ancestral territory in the historical period has been the subject of considerable debate by scholars of various fields. It is referred to as the "Quapaw Paradox" by academics. Many professional archaeologists have introduced numerous migration scenarios and time frames, but none has conclusive evidence. Glottochronological studies suggest the Quapaw separated from the other Dhegihan-speaking peoples in a period ranging between AD 950 to as late as AD 1513. Linguistic studies also support an earlier separation date, within a few generations of the initial introduction of corn and long before the introduction of the horse.

In 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto led an expedition that came across the town of Pacaha, between the Mississippi River and a lake on the Arkansas side. His party described the village as strongly and nearly surrounded by a ditch. Archaeological remains and local conditions in present-day Phillips County match this description. If the migration from the Ohio Valley preceded the entrada, these people may have been ancestors of the Quapaw.

The only chronicler of Indigenous heritage, Garcilaso, described this group as the Capaha. This chronicler was often more accurate that others when recording tribal information. Regardless, Dr. Rankin hypothesized that the Capaha may have been Tunica based on limited evidence of a single name found in a later Portuguese account, for which the original cursive is not recorded. Archeological sites around 1300 CE in the region have produced pipes, hides, and other items which are strongly associated with an influx of Dhegiha people that would be the Quapaw.

The first well-documented encounter between the Quapaw and Europeans occurred in 1673, when the Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette and French commander Louis Jolliet traveled down the Mississippi River by canoe. He reportedly went to the villages of the Akansea, who gave him a warm welcome and attentively listened to his sermons, while he stayed with them a few days. In 1682, La Salle passed by their villages, then five in number, including one on the east bank of the Mississippi River. Zenobius Membre, a Recollects who accompanied the LaSalle expedition, planted a cross and attempted to convert the Native Americans to Christianity.

La Salle negotiated a peace with the tribe and formally "claimed" the territory for France. The Quapaw were recorded as uniformly kind and friendly toward the French. While villages relocated in the area, four Quapaw villages were generally reported by Europeans along the Mississippi River in this early period. They corresponded in name and population to four sub-tribes still existing, listed as Ugahpahti, Uzutiuhi, Tiwadimañ, and Tañwañzhita. The French transliterations were: Kappa, Ossoteoue, Touriman, and Tonginga.

The Quapaw were staunch allies of the French and backed them in regional conflicts. In 1729, the Quapaw allied with French colonists against the Natchez people during the Natchez War, which was also referred to as the Natchez Revolt. This conflict ultimately involved multiple tribes allying with the French against the Natchez, ultimately resulting in the practical extermination of the Natchez tribe. The Quapaw also allied with France during the Chickasaw Wars, which spanned from 1721 to 1763.

The French relocated the Arkansas Post upriver, both to avoid flooding and to maintain close proximity to the Quapaw who were also moving up the river for defensive purposes. After France was defeated by the British in the Seven Years' War, it ceded its North American territories to Britain. This nation exchanged some territory with Spain, which took over "control" of Arkansas and other former French territory west of the Mississippi River. The Spanish built new forts to protect its valued trading post with the Quapaw. Relationships with the Spanish were more strained than they had been with France due to a variety of complications. Eventually the Spanish and the Quapaw would come into good terms however, and the Quapaw even signed a treaty during this time.

During the early years of colonial rule, many of the ethnic French people fur traders and voyageurs had an amicable relationship with the Quapaw, as they did with many other trading tribes. Many Quapaw women and French men cohabitated. Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was founded by Joseph Bonne, a man of Quapaw-French ancestry.

Under continued U.S. pressure, in 1824 they ceded this also, excepting occupied by the chief Saracen below Pine Bluff. They expected to incorporate with the Caddo of Louisiana, but were refused permission by the United States. Successive floods in the Caddo country near the Red River pushed many of the tribe toward starvation, and they wandered back to their old homes.

Sarrasin (alternate spelling Saracen), their last chief before the removal, was a Roman Catholic and friend of the Lazarists missionaries (Congregation of the Missions), who had arrived in 1818. He died about 1830 and is buried adjoining St. Joseph's Church, Pine Bluff. A a memorial window in the church preserves his name. Fr. John M. Odin was the pioneer Lazarist missionary among the Quapaw; he later served as the Catholic Archbishop of New Orleans.

In 1834, under another treaty and the federal policy of Indian Removal, the Quapaw were removed from the Mississippi valley areas to their present location in the northeast corner of Oklahoma, then Indian Territory.

In 1824, the Jesuits of Maryland, under Father Charles Van Quickenborne, took up work among the local and migrant tribes of Indian Territory (present-day Kansas and Oklahoma). In 1846, the Mission of Francis Xavier was established among the Osage, on Neosho River, by Fathers John Shoenmakers and John Bax. They extended their services to the Quapaw for some years.

The following passages from the early 20th-century Catholic Encyclopedia describe the Quapaw from the non-Native perspective of that time.

A tribe now nearly extinct, but formerly one of the most important of the lower Mississippi region, occupying several villages about the mouth of the Arkansas River, 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 Nation in the north-western part of the state. They are of Dhegiha language 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 is Ogaxpa, which signifies "down-stream people", as distinguished from Umahan or Omaha, "up-stream people". To the Illinois and other Algonquian tribes, they were known as 'Akansea', whence their French names of Akensas and Akansas. According to concurrent tradition of the cognate tribes, the Quapaw and their kinsmen originally lived far east, possibly beyond the Alleghenies, and, pushing gradually westward, descended 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 Nation and Kansa, descended to the mouth of the Arkansas, while the Omaha, with the Ponca, went up the Missouri River.