Arkansas: Fort Smith

As we traversed from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Fort Smith, Arkansas the scenery began to noticeably change. It was a great relief to pass from the largely barren plains to a more verdant landscape with rolling hills, dense vegetation and even some woodlands. Being further south the trees still had their autumn foliage, with a glorious palette of shades of yellows, reds and oranges. Sadly, it was a grey and windy day so it was not the best condition for appreciating the landscape’s splendour. The wind also provided some other challenges. Since we bought our roof box for our van we now present a sizeable target for the wind, and on days like this driving is a bit like taming a bucking bronco, which makes the journey all the more tiring for the driver!

It was mid-afternoon when we arrived at Fort Smith and we decided to fill the time up by visiting the Fort Smith National Monument. This is the site of a frontier fort constructed in 1817 on the banks of the Arkansas River to control the Indian Territories which bordered Arkansas (what is now Oklahoma and Kansas). The growth in white populations on the East Coast increasingly put pressure on land, so in 1830 President Andrew Jackson initiated the Indian Removal Act. Tribes from the East, namely the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, were put into concentration camps and from there they were forcibly bought together on new lands many miles from their homes. Many suffered greatly during these evictions and died in transit to their new territories. The routes travelled by these poor people is now called the “Trail of Tears”. The more one hears of the suffering of these tribes, which continues to this day, the more shameful it all seems. You would think the Government could do more to improve the plight of these people if it so desired. As time moved on these Indian Territories, being sovereign to the Indians, became a haven for criminals from all races and creeds. To meet this new challenge the role of Fort Smith became more about law enforcement rather than fighting civil unrest. The former barracks became a prison, a most unpleasant one at that, earning the name “Hell on the Border”. Running this jurisdiction was Judge Issac Parker (known as the hanging judge), a tough but fair man who recruited some hard, brave men as US Marshals to cross into Indian Territory and retrieve criminals and bring them back to face justice, which they did pretty successfully. All this story was very well presented throughout the museum – which is the old prison/barracks of Fort Smith. They even have grimly reconstructed the gallows, which could hang about 15 at a time. Some 160 inmates met their deaths this way.