ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 39, Summer 1980, p. 99   The Bear State Image: Arkansas in the Nineteenth Century By C. FRED WILLIAMS* University of Arkansas at Little Rock IN NOVEMBER 1849, a newspaper editor in Van Buren, Arkansas, wrote: People at a distance easily come to the conclusion that . . . a typical Arkansian is . . . a person in a semi-barbaric state, half alligator, half horse . . . armed to the teeth, bristling with knives and pistols, a rollicking daredevil type of personage, made up of coarseness, ignorance and bombast (1). Such an uncomplimentary description may have readily applied to residents in any number of frontier states in the mid-nineteenth century. But the persistent association of this image with Arkansas, long after settlement had spread into the plains and the Southwest, made that state unique among those west of the Mississippi River. How the image developed, why it lasted so long and its impact on Arkansans will be subject of this paper. Any analysis of the state's image must necessarily start with geography. Even a cursory look at a national, physical relief map will show clearly that terrain had a formative role in shaping the state's story. For example, Arkansas did not occupy a favorable position in east-west migration pattern of the American frontier. ______________________ *The author is chairman of the Department of History at the University of Arkansas Little Rock. This paper was delivered at the meeting of the Western History Association Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1978. 1. Van Buren Arkansas Intelligencer, November 3, 1849.           Contents  Words  Study Questions  Related Sites Next