Editing Arkansas (section)

===Early history===
{{Main|New France|Louisiana (New France)|French and Indian War|Treaty of Paris (1763)|New Spain|Louisiana (New Spain)|Treaty of Aranjuez (1801)}}
[[File:Chromesun toltec mounds photo01.jpg|thumb|left|[[Platform mound]]s were constructed frequently during the [[Woodland Period|Woodland]] and [[Mississippian culture|Mississippian periods]].]]
Before European settlement of North America, Arkansas was inhabited by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. The [[Caddo]], [[Osage Nation|Osage]], and [[Quapaw]] peoples encountered European explorers. The first of these Europeans was Spanish explorer [[Hernando de Soto (explorer)|Hernando de Soto]] in 1541, who crossed the Mississippi and marched across central Arkansas and the Ozark Mountains. After finding nothing he considered of value and encountering native resistance the entire way, he and his men returned to the Mississippi River where de Soto fell ill. From his deathbed he ordered his men to massacre all the men of the nearby village of Anilco, who he feared had been plotting with a powerful polity down the Mississippi River, ''[[Quigualtam]]''. His men obeyed and did not stop with the men, but were said to have massacred women and children as well. He died the following day in what is believed to be the vicinity of modern-day [[McArthur, Arkansas]], in May 1542. His body was weighted down with sand and he was consigned to a watery grave in the Mississippi River under cover of darkness by his men. De Soto had attempted to deceive the native population into thinking he was an immortal deity, sun of the sun, in order to forestall attack by outraged Native Americans on his by then weakened and bedraggled army. In order to keep the ruse up, his men informed the locals that de Soto had ascended into the sky. His will at the time of his death listed "four Indian slaves, three horses and 700 hogs" which were auctioned off. The starving men, who had been living off maize stolen from natives, immediately started butchering the hogs and later, commanded by former [[aide-de-camp]] Moscoso, attempted an overland return to Mexico. They made it as far as Texas before running into territory too dry for maize farming and too thinly populated to sustain themselves by stealing food from the locals. The expedition promptly backtracked to Arkansas. After building a small fleet of boats they then headed down the Mississippi River and eventually on to Mexico by water.<ref name="HUDSONKNIGHTS">{{cite book| author-link =Charles M. Hudson (author) |last= Hudson| first=Charles M.|title= Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun| url =https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780820318882 | url-access =registration | year=1997|publisher= [[University of Georgia Press]] |pages = [https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780820318882/page/341 341–351] |isbn= 9780820318882}}</ref><ref>Davidson, James West. ''After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection'' Volume 1. Mc Graw Hill, New York 2010, Chapter 1, p. 2,3</ref>

Later explorers included the French [[Jacques Marquette]] and [[Louis Jolliet]] in 1673, and Frenchmen [[Robert La Salle]] and [[Henri de Tonti]] in 1681.<ref>{{cite web |last= Sabo III |first= George |title= First Encounters, Hernando de Soto in the Mississippi Valley, 1541–42 |url= http://arkarcheology.uark.edu/indiansofarkansas/index.html?pagestate=First%20Encounters |date= December 12, 2008 |access-date= May 3, 2012 }}{{Dead link|date=July 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref><ref>Fletcher 1989, p. 26.</ref> Tonti established [[Arkansas Post]] at a Quapaw village in 1686, making it the first European settlement in the territory.<ref name="ce">Arnold 1992, p. 75.</ref> The early Spanish or French explorers of the state gave it its name, which is probably a phonetic spelling of the [[Illinois language|Illinois]] tribe's name for the [[Quapaw]] people, who lived downriver from them.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0302b&L=ads-l&P=7800 |title=Linguist list 14.4 |publisher=Listserv.linguistlist.org |date=February 11, 2003 |access-date=July 30, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081208035440/http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0302b&L=ads-l&P=7800 |archive-date=December 8, 2008 }}</ref><ref name="Arkansas" group="lower-alpha" /> The name Arkansas has been pronounced and spelled in a variety of fashions. The region was organized as the [[Territory of Arkansaw]] on July 4, 1819, with the territory admitted to the United States as the state of Arkansas on June 15, 1836. The name was historically {{IPAc-en|ˈ|ɑr|k|ən|s|ɔː}}, {{IPAc-en|ɑr|ˈ|k|æ|n|z|ə|s}}, and several other variants. Historically and modernly, the people of Arkansas call themselves either "Arkansans" or "Arkansawyers". In 1881, the [[Arkansas General Assembly]] passed Arkansas Code 1-4-105 (official text):
<blockquote>Whereas, confusion of practice has arisen in the pronunciation of the name of our state and it is deemed important that the true pronunciation should be determined for use in oral official proceedings.</blockquote>
<blockquote>And, whereas, the matter has been thoroughly investigated by the State Historical Society and the Eclectic Society of Little Rock, which have agreed upon the correct pronunciation as derived from history, and the early usage of the American immigrants.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Be it therefore resolved by both houses of the General Assembly, that the only true pronunciation of the name of the state, in the opinion of this body, is that received by the French from the native Indians and committed to writing in the French word representing the sound. It should be pronounced in three (3) syllables, with the final "s" silent, the "a" in each syllable with the Italian sound, and the accent on the first and last syllables. The pronunciation with the accent on the second syllable with the sound of "a" in "man" and the sounding of the terminal "s" is an innovation to be discouraged.</blockquote>
Citizens of the [[state of Kansas]] often pronounce the [[Arkansas River]] as {{IPAc-en|ɑr|ˈ|k|æ|n|z|ə|s}}, in a manner similar to the common pronunciation of the name of their state.

Settlers, such as fur trappers, moved to Arkansas in the early 18th century. These people used Arkansas Post as a home base and [[entrepôt]].<ref name="ce" /> During the colonial period, Arkansas changed hands between [[France]] and [[Spain]] following the [[Seven Years' War]], although neither showed interest in the remote settlement of Arkansas Post.<ref>Arnold et al. 2002, p. 82.</ref> In April 1783, Arkansas saw its only battle of the [[American Revolutionary War]], a brief [[Battle of Arkansas Post (American Revolutionary War)|siege]] of the post by British Captain James Colbert with the assistance of the [[Choctaw]] and [[Chickasaw]].<ref>{{cite journal |last= Din |first= Gilbert C. |title= Arkansas Post in the American Revolution |journal= The Arkansas Historical Quarterly |date= Spring 1981 |volume= 40 |issue= 1 |pages= 17–28 |doi= 10.2307/40023280 |jstor= 40023280 }}</ref>