Lake Mitchegamas and the St. Francis

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Arkansas Historical Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Arkansas Historical Quarterly.Although it did not attain the importance of the area around the mouths of the Arkansas and White rivers, the confluence of the St. Francis River with the Mississippi River was geographically significant from pre-Columbian times up to the early 1800s. Here earth and water joined to provide a luxuriant habitat for wildlife which attracted people.After receiving the waters of L' Anguille River, the St. Francis curves through the lowland immediately east of the southern segment of Crowley's Ridge to empty into the Mississippl. From the flat bottom lands of alluvium the hilly and broken ridge rises to a height of 325 feet above sea level. Ravines, cutting through the sides of this broad elevation, expose wind-blown loess soils on top of beds of water-worn gravels. Once numerous springs trickled from these beds.Mixed hardwoods, bald cypress, cottonwood, and canebrakes covered the lowland. On the ridge grew several varieties of oaks, more than one kind of hickory, ash, maple, cherry, walnut, butternut, beech, basswood, the sugar tree, the cucumber tree, sassafras, sweetgum, mulberry, and the tulip tree. Wild grape vines looped themselves over limbs and in sunny places blackberry brambles were thickly intertwined.Both large game and small game thrived in these woods. Bear and deer multiplied, and bison moved down from prairies up L' Anguille. Myriads of waterfowl and passenger pigeons rested here during their migratory flights. Bald eagles built nests in tall cypress trees and parakeets, having fine sea-green plumage, easily blended into the foliage except for the pink spot on their crown and the red around their neck. *The author is a retired newspaper editor and translator of colonial and contemporary French and Spanish historical works. He is the second native Arkansan who trained for a career in American archaeology. John Gould Fletcher was the first.This content downloaded from 91.