In 1673, when Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet ventured into the Arkansas region, residing there were the Caddo, Osage, and Quapaw native peoples. Beginning with the establishment of the Poste des Arkansas (Arkansas Post) in 1686 at the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers, the French fur trade brought radical changes to native societies. Organized by René-RobertCavalier de La Salle's lieutenant, Henri de Tonti, Arkansas Post drew the Quapaw together with French habitants (farmers), coureurs de bois (literally, "runners of the woods," i.e., fur trappers), and a small French mercantile elite, generating ultimately a class of métis (mixed blood) hunters and traders. In 1762 France ceded Louisiana to Spain, whose rule rested lightly on the inhabitants of the post and did little to change it; as of 1798, its residents numbered 337, along with 56 slaves. After the retrocession to France of Louisiana in 1800 and its purchase by the United States in 1803, Arkansas made its transition from French to American rule, to which the French Creole elite took some exception because of its discomfort with majoritarian republican government, the imported English common law, and a new judicial system.
Following the War of 1812 (1812-1815), settlers from Tennessee and Kentucky seeking land and opportunity flowed rapidly into the expansive Arkansas district of the Missouri Territory, formed in 1812. After Arkansas became a territory in 1819 and the Missouri Compromise (1820) secured slavery, more planters arrived in the Red and Mississippi River deltas. The total population rose from 1,062 in 1810 to 14,273 in 1820. Immigration slowed in the 1820s, but by 1830 the population had reached 30,388. The number of slaves rose from 136 in 1810 to 1,617 in 1820 and then to 4,576 in 1830, mostly the result of slaveholder immigration. The slaves who were marched into the territory suffered the deepest pangs of loss and the worst initial hardships. But for both them and the voluntary pioneers, who homesteaded mostly across the Ozark highlands and plateau, the dreaded "seasoning" process, fears of disease, illness itself, death, and feelings of isolation were commonplace. In this context, plain-preaching Methodist circuit riders and Baptist ministers organized camp meetings and fledgling churches. The Monroe administration relocated Choctaws and Cherokees to Arkansas from 1817 through 1820. A significant portion of the Cherokees, whose numbers reached about five thousand, were successful in building schools, comfortable homes, and farms that were well fenced and stocked with cattle, prompting some contemporaries to conclude that the Cherokees showed the imprint of "civilization" better than many white settlers. The near constant warfare between the Cherokees and the encroaching Osages, however, generated fears. The suspicion and demands of settling whites prompted Congress to remove all the tribes by 1828, a change that was particularly traumatic for the Quapaws. Removal created a turbulent western boundary abutting the new Indian Territory, which U.S. soldiers at Fort Smith policed haphazardly.
Dominated after 1819 by secretary of the Arkansas Territory Robert J. Crittenden, politics in the territory featured a scramble for status, wealth, and power. Most of the leaders were Democratic Republicans and, after 1824, nominal supporters of John Quincy Adams. Merchants, lawyers, and land speculators with ordinary backgrounds, however, vied for position with men, like Crittenden, from slaveholding families in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. Competition for offices to obtain profits from federal lands and other perquisites spurred jealousies and factions. Public debate generated editorial warfare and duels. Political bloodshed was grist for the national press and for travel books that often depicted Arkansas as extraordinarily lawless and backward (an image that reflected both the moralistic worldview of genteel critics and the "premodern" forms of communal regulation and violent self-help that allmale grand juries often indulged in deference to traditional notions of manliness and honor). Opposition to the Crittenden clique was led by territorial delegate Henry W. Conway and his cousin, Ambrose H. Sevier. This opposition had developed into the Jacksonian Democratic Party by statehood in 1836.
Government and economic development were intertwined. Through the 1820s, territorial delegates petitioned Congress for more liberal land policies and funds to clear waterways, build roads, and improve frontier defense. Moving the capital from Arkansas Post to Little Rock in 1821, the legislature established basic laws, counties, and the militia, adhering to a minimalist system of local government. County courts in towns such as Little Rock (Pulaski), Arkansas Post (Arkansas), Davidsonville (Lawrence), and Washington (Hempstead) administered estates; assessed and collected taxes; licensed merchants, tavern keepers, and ferries; and enlisted residents to build roads and bridges. Increasingly after the War of 1812, pioneer families, mostly in the uplands, concentrated on subsistence farming and household production (raising corn, herding hogs, and making cloth and other items to achieve some level of selfsufficiency). Most yeomen remained unwilling to risk time, energy, and resources on cash crops and slaves. But transportation improvements, especially the arrival of the steamboat in 1820, connected settlers in the Arkansas, White, and Red River valleys with the commerce in agricultural products and commodities on the Mississippi River. In the late 1820s, a minority of the yeomanry occasionally grew cotton for the market, while a small segment of it employed slaves in this endeavor and were successful enough to join the ranks of substantial slaveholders. By 1830, cotton had become the principle cash crop in the territory.