Arkansas Post, Arkansas was the first permanent French settlement in the lower Mississippi River valley and was the first territorial capital of the State of Arkansas. It was also the site of the only Revolutionary War combat in Arkansas as well as the site of an American Civil War battle.
On 17 April1783BritishColonel James Colbert conducted a raid against Spanish forces controlling Arkansas Post as part of a small campaign against the Spanish on the Mississippi River. Colbert's Raid was the only Revolutionary War battle fought in Arkansas.
In 1803 Arkansas Post became a part of the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The post was selected as the first capital of the Arkansas Territory and became the center of commercial and political life in Arkansas. Prior to statehood the territorial capitol was moved to Little Rock, Arkansas and Arkansas Post lost much of its importance.
During the American Civil War the Post became an important strategic site as it was the confluence of two major rivers. In 1862 the Confederate Army constructed a massive earthwork known as Fort Hindman named after Confederate General Thomas C. Hindman. In January 9-11 of 1863 Union forces conducted an amphibious assault on the fortress backed by ironclad gunboats and destroyed both the fort and the civilian areas of Arkansas Post.
ArkansasPost (Arkansas County) was the first and most significant European establishment in Arkansas.
His plan was to establish a military post and create an agricultural colony that would sell crops to the soldiers at ArkansasPost, as well as New Orleans and French Illinois.
From 1731 on, ArkansasPost was a center of colonial trade and diplomacy with the Quapaw and other Indians, including Osage, Caddo, Chickasaw, and other bands that came to hunt and trade in the region.
Catholicism first arrived in Arkansas via Spanish explorers and a French Jesuit missionary, and there were a few Catholics living at ArkansasPost (Arkansas County) during the French and Spanish colonial era of the eighteenth century.
Once Arkansas became attached to the American Union by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the area underwent a demographic and religious metamorphosis.
After the smallest increase of Catholic population in the twentieth century during the 1970s, the number of Catholics jumped from 56,911 to 107,524 by 2005, or from 2.4 percent of the population in 1980 to 3.9 percent a quarter century later.
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