Note 126 — Chapter VII

Nuttall’s description of the course of the road below Little Rock is confusing. By the thermal springs he means the site of Hot Springs, where the road forked. The eastern branch followed the Ouachita to the side of the modern town of Monroe, seat of Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, where was Nuttall’s “post of Washita;” thence it ran southwest to Natchitoches, on Red River, an old French mission town, founded in 1714, now the seat of Natchitoches Parish. The other branch ran almost directly south to Natchitoches, and on Darby’s map of 1816 is marked, “Trace from Natchitoches to Hot Springs.”

Mount Prairie was not on the headwaters of the Saline Fork of the Ouachita where Nuttall’s map places it. The name suggests the old French “upper settlement” on Red River, which was near the old Caddo village, situated in Long Prairie, south of Red River, about fifty miles above Little River. In this prairie was a hill which the Indians regarded with superstitious veneration. However, the settlements on Red River, near the mouth of the Kiamichi, are probably meant (see post, notes 182, 184). The trail from St. Louis to Little Rock, which passed through Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was followed by Major S. H. Long on his expedition into Arkansas (1810). Members of Long’s exploring party of 1819–20, who followed this “great road” from the Saline to Little Rock, called it then an “obscure path.”—Ed.