by Mary Anne Parker, Debbie Van Winkle, and Shea Lewis
Photo by Cindy Cox
When the Spanish expedition led by Hernando de Soto arrived in what is now known as eastern Arkansas and the St. Francis River in June of 1541, a scribe described the unknown area: “Along the entire bank of that river and throughout the vicinity, there were numerous fields of corn and a great number of fruit trees, all of which proved the land to be fertile.” In the short period since then, life on the St. Francis River has changed drastically. Parkin Archeological State Park preserves and interprets a section of the St. Francis River today, yet the focus is not on the river itself but what took place next to it.
A relationship between humans and the river was developed by the very first inhabitants of the area, and that relationship still exists today. The river has provided opportunities for countless individuals to improve their lives. Visitors come to Parkin Archeological State Park with different perspectives and personal experiences—and their own ideas about why the park should be preserved today.
The historic fabric of the park is filled with strands that are begging to be interpreted. Opportunities to experience the places where history happened abound. Through living history, museum exhibits, artifacts, archeological tours, artifact demonstrations, special workshops, and school events, visitors have the chance to develop a connection to the archeological site. When visitors leave, it is a goal of the park to have widened their perspectives on the area—past and present—and allow their personal experiences to connect to those who have used the land next to the river.
The St. Francis River begins its journey in southeast Missouri and meanders its way some 470 miles before joining the Mississippi River just north of Helena, Arkansas. Along this route, the St. Francis emerges from mountains and flows gently through cane forests, swamplands, and the Ozarks, all the while transitioning from a small, clear stream to a lake and eventually into a muddy tributary.
Throughout the course of written history, and much before it, the St. Francis River itself witnessed vast amounts of change. Clovis points found on Crowley’s Ridge, an unusual geological formation located just west of the river, indicate that the St. Francis River valley has been continuously occupied for at least 12,000 years. Large-scale Mississippian towns, provinces, and societies, of which as many as 22,000 have been documented in eastern Arkansas alone, flourished up and down the banks of the St. Francis and her tributaries from approximately 1000 to 1600 A.D. Later, the St. Francis guided conquistadors who crossed the Mississippi, French who explored her banks to the south, and then early American entrepreneurs who logged, trapped, and traded up and down her banks.
The St. Francis River was a source of food, water, and raw materials. The Casqui people are portrayed here digging clay for making pottery while children gather river mussels in the shallows. Courtesy Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism
Mississippi Delta rivers are not known to sit idly and watch change roll by. The St. Francis River is no exception, willingly participating as an active partner ofchange alongside her banks. The most consistent threat to residents living beside the St. Francis is and always has been flooding. Inhabitants of the ancient village of Casqui, located within the state park today, built their entire village eight to 12 feet above her banks to defend themselves from the St. Francis’s seemingly moody ebbs and flows. In 1811–1812, the New Madrid earthquakes again sent permanent residents, as well as itinerant fur trappers and traders along the banks of the St. Francis, into a frenzy, as literally tens of thousands of acres in three Arkansas counties slipped into an endless marsh of “sunken lands” beneath her waters. Again in 1927, the St. Francis affected historic Parkin—along with every other county along her banks—when she was out as much as 14 feet above flood stage for up to a four-month period, forcing the evacuation of every resident in nearby towns.
While the St. Francis River bides her time witnessing and inflicting change, change has not altogether passed her by. The damming of the St. Francis provided flood control, recreation, and water supply. The building of levees guided her away from her historic mood swings, bends, and turns, and towards a more “civilized” course. Flood drainage ditches relieved farmers’ plights of bad crops, dry years, and flood problems, but led pesticides, insecticides, and other foreign agents into her waters. The crystal clear St. Francis River that de Soto encountered in 1541 is a far cry from today’s slow, silt-laden, and shallow channel.
Changes along the winding St. Francis are not limited by time and geography alone. This ever-shifting river also changes lives. The clarity and moderate temperament of the St. Francis River has lured people to settle this area from as long ago as 1000 AD. The water of this river has grown crops, satisfied thirst, provided sustenance, fortified towns, transported goods and people, and given centuries of occupants the building blocks upon which to build their daily lives.
Chief Casqui’s mound today, where the cross was raised by de Soto, is a tangible reminder of what has taken place next to the St. Francis River and is a centerpiece of Parkin Archeological State Park. Courtesy Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism
These attractive qualities sometimes came at a price. When Hernando de Soto and his army of conquistadors encountered the area in 1541, his scribes recorded the struggles of the village of Casqui alongside the St. Francis River. In the early to mid-16th century, the small Mississippian empire of Casqui was in perpetual warfare with the neighboring Pacaha over rule of this desired waterway and the fertile lands that the river had created. Though the Pacaha tribe was located on the mighty Mississippi River, the St. Francis’s bends and curves made for a more conducive site for animals to nest, villages to thrive, and, more importantly, for people to be able to defend. These reasons, along with the egos and power lust of the leaders, led to the constant conflict de Soto noted alongside the St. Francis in the 16th century.
In addition to the constant conflict, the village was also experiencing a period of prolonged drought. With 2,000 mouths to feed in this village and many thousands more in the surrounding chiefdom, the ruler, Casqui, and his people eagerly welcomed the Spaniards in hopes of assistance. This initial encounter between Casqui and de Soto included an exchange of gifts, including fish from the St. Francis.
Over the course of the visit, an alliance of sorts was formed and Casqui endeavored to persuade de Soto to aid his people. Casqui entreated the powerful conquistador to call on the Spanish gods to grant them rain as relief from the drought. Not only did de Soto promise prayer, but he had an enormous cross erected next to the chief’s house, on top of the ceremonial mound that towered over the village. The scribes on the expedition wrote that it took 100 men to raise the enormous cross that overlooked the St. Francis and ushered in the first known Christian ceremony west of the Mississippi. One of the witnesses’ accounts documented on the day following the ceremony, it rained.
The St. Francis River provided fertile soil and moisture that produced a dense forest. The Northern Ohio Cooperage and Lumber Company capitalized on that gift and harvested millions of board feet of lumber with basic tools and equipment. Courtesy Farris Collection
Because of a number of factors—warfare, drought, and population growth—the village was abandoned and settlement in this small corner of the river would be sparse until the river’s qualities were again harnessed on a large scale with the Northern Ohio Sawmill. The river once again employed the building of an empire. Sawmilling cleared the giant bald cypress trees from this swampy morass and paved the way for the fertile agricultural dynasty of the Arkansas Delta. In 1906, the Northern Ohio Cooperage and Lumber Company set up a mill on the shores of St. Francis River and built a new village where the ancient village of Casqui once stood. The company harvested millions of board feet of lumber, primarily cypress, that was shipped all over the United States.
Lumber was not the only thing created by the company. The fledgling town of Parkin, Arkansas, would be home to mill-manufactured resident housing, a church, a boarding house, a company store, shotgun-style homes, a Masonic lodge, and much more. The mill side of Parkin was affectionately termed “Sawdust Hill.” To accommodate the children of the predominantly black workforce, the company built a one-room schoolhouse and dubbed it the Northern Ohio School. The segregated schoolhouse provided a first-through eighth-grade education for the children of the mill workers until the 1950s. The school has been renovated and is now actively interpreted as part of the park along with the compelling story of the shaping of the Delta and early 20th-century rural Arkansas.
In order to use the river more effectively, mill workers and other Arkansans in the Delta began building levees to protect their towns and drainage ditches to empty the swamps. More and more people were able to move onto the richest farmland in the world, and as the economy boomed, caution about what the St. Francis had done throughout history was thrown to the wind. No one in Arkansas was terribly concerned about above-average rainfall in Canada during the fall and winter of 1926. Yet by the spring of 1927, the Mississippi River was 80 miles wide throughout eastern Arkansas and had laid her claim to the St. Francis, the White, and the Arkansas Rivers, as well as all of their drainage districts, thus creating the worst flood in U.S. history.
As Mark Twain said in the book Mark Twain in Eruption, “The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise….” The Flood of ’27, as it came to be known, swept a path of complete destruction through the Delta. In Arkansas alone the flood left between a quarter and a half of the state under water, more than 100 people dead, and thousands more displaced. In the hamlet of Sawdust Hill, those who could not or did not escape before the flood sought refuge on the remnants of the mound built by the Casqui people centuries earlier.
Even though the Great Depression was technically a couple of years away, the St. Francis River witnessed things just about as bad as they could get in 1927. The Great Depression did eventually impact Parkin, an already relatively poor area. The impact was devastating, but work was available at the sawmill, area farms, or by digging mussel shells along the banks of the St. Francis River. With all of the relief packages that started with the New Deal, under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Northern Ohio School was selected as one of the pilot locations for a program that would later become the National School Lunch Program.
As much damage as this river can inflict on nearby residents, its occupants can be even more devastating to the river. The cypress forests that held the soil in place were cleared by the sawmill industry. Every year the plows that dig into the soil to plant cotton, soybeans, rice, and milo displace more of this rich topsoil, which ends up as silt in this once crystal-clear river. Pesticides, fertilizers, and trash continue to make their way into this historical river, sullying its significant legacy.
Despite all of these negative changes wrought by the interactions of the river and people, the overarching ambiance is joyful. The St. Francis River has enriched the lives of the people who have lived along its shores. It has provided food and recreation for people who fish, both ancient and modern. The shells of the mussels have been crushed and added to Mississippian pottery, probed for pearls, cut into buttons, and treasured for their iridescent beauty. During a time of Jim Crow laws and oppression, members of the Shady Grove Missionary Baptist Church on Sawdust Hill looked to this river for comfort and solace as a place to baptize their parishioners. And generations have turned to its cooling waters for swimming and fun on hot Arkansas summer days.
The St. Francis River continues to produce untold stories. During the spring of 2008, Parkin Archeological State Park’s station archeologist received a phone call. After some of the worst flooding along its banks in over 30 years, a group of fishermen made a discovery atop one of the sandbars. There, partially underwater, partially exposed, was a dugout canoe. The fishermen were ecstatic. Was it an ancient Indian vessel? Was it a dugout from French fur trappers in the 1600s? Was it an early 20th-century canoe that just looked old? Only the St. Francis and future research, including carbon dating, can be sure. One thing is for certain: the St. Francis River will continue to inspire fishermen, park interpreters, and visitors for generations to come.
Parkin Archeological State Park exists today to research and interpret what takes place along the banks of the St. Francis River. The meeting between Casqui and de Soto and the shaping of the Arkansas Delta are two compelling stories that are being uncovered and explored. Research is ongoing. Discoveries are being made. Stories like those of the exposed dugout canoe are waiting to be told. How these stories are interpreted will dictate the relationships that are developed between the park and its visitors. Opportunities have been provided for an unknown number of people to enrich their lives alongside the St. Francis River. These opportunities still exist today, for visitors and residents alike, because of the partnership between the Arkansas Archeological Survey, Arkansas State Parks, and the ever-changing St. Francis River.
Mary Anne Parker, CIG, and Debbie Van Winkle, CIG, are park interpreters and Shea Lewis, CHI, CIM, is the park superintendent at Parkin Archeological State Park in Parkin, Arkansas. They can be reached at maryanne.parker@arkansas.gov, debbie.vanwinkle@arkansas.gov, and shea.lewis@arkansas.gov, respectively.
Mark Carr works on public relations, government affairs, and safety communications at AEP River Operations in Chesterfield, Missouri.
This issue of Legacy focuses on the interpretation of rivers. At first glance, you might imagine that, because rivers are a natural feature, this issue would focus on natural heritage. But the opposite is the case. As authors proposed articles for this issue, it became abundantly clear that when we think of rivers, we don’t just think of the veins of rushing (or sometimes trickling) water that dissect our maps. We think of the people who lived along the shores, depending on rivers for sustenance, transportation, or whatever else affected their lives or livelihoods.
