The Chahta agreed to leave Mississippi in the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, signed on September 27, 1830 and ratified on February 24, 1831. The first emigrants came up the Arkansas River that winter, and the Arkansas Gazette announced on November 28, 1831 that they were on their way.
Arkansas Post
Autumn rain ruined the roads, so agents sent the emigrants by steamboat. The historian Arthur DeRosier called the storm that followed the worst blizzard recorded in Arkansas Territory to that date. Between late November and early December about 2,500 Chahta came ashore at Arkansas Post, where only sixty tents had arrived from Vicksburg and most supplies had gone on to Fort Smith. Snow fell on December 5, and the temperature reached zero on December 10. DeRosier writes that the old, the sick and the children suffered most. The Gazette of January 4 allowed that "some few cases of sickness and a few deaths" had occurred, fewer than the weather might have caused, and DeRosier notes that the paper also called the Chahta cheerful and content.
The Reindeer
David Folsom's party of 594, under Lt. Stephen Ryan, left the Post on December 13 with 44 wagons and 150 horses and reached the river opposite Little Rock on December 21. In January wagons carried more from the Post, twelve to fifteen miles on a good day, and February rain turned the roads to mud. More than a hundred horses died on the way to Camp Pope, three miles south of the town. On February 1 the Gazette counted about 1,800 leaving under Col. Wharton Rector and about 200 left behind for lack of wagons. The last party, about 200 under Col. Rutherford, set out on February 9.
Another party kept to the water. About 500 followers of Mushulatubbee had gone to Memphis, among them 406 under Peter Pitchlynn who meant to walk to Fort Smith, but the Mississippi swamp was impassable. Dr. John T. Fulton chartered the Brandywine to the Post, and the Reindeer brought them to Little Rock on January 22. The Gazette of February 22 reported that the steamboat Elk had taken Fulton's party aboard at the Dardanelles and landed them safely at Fort Smith. Pitchlynn's diary, whose editors say some dates are wrong, has him examining the Poteau and Arkansas bottoms that winter.
Other rivers, other years
The next fall, cholera struck about 500 Chahta landed at Rock Roe; two died aboard and ten more within three days, and the agent ordered them kept out of Little Rock. In April 1834 Lt. Joseph Harris's Tsalagi party camped sixteen days at Cadron in a cholera outbreak, and Harris reported 81 deaths, 45 of them children under ten. A federal study says a Mvskoke party of 630 reached Little Rock that year and 469 survived to Fort Gibson. Seminole parties began passing Arkansas Post in May 1836. In December 1837, 1,938 Chikashsha crossed Cadron Creek.
At Fort Smith National Historic Site, walk the bluff above Belle Point, where the Poteau meets the Arkansas and the Elk landed Fulton's party. Downriver, Lake Dardanelle State Park keeps the crossing at Norristown.