Lost Prairie Raid of 1820

Arkansas’s southwestern quarter was the ancestral homeland of the Caddo Nation, now headquartered in Binger, Oklahoma. But it is not the only Native American nation to have been in the area. Settlers from the east began to trickle into Caddo land in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Most of these were of European and African ancestry, but some were Native American. The Caddos and their leaders granted the right to establish villages in their lands to groups of Delawares, Shawnees, and (in northern Louisiana) Coushattas. They also provided a haven for a group of Cherokee settlers whose time on the Red River was short and ended in violence. The event that ended their presence is here referred to as the Lost Prairie Raid of 1820.

Cherokee Settlement in the Arkansas Territory
Cherokee settlers had been coming into what would become Arkansas as early as 1782, when leaders applied to the Spanish government for permission to settle there. More extensive settlement started around 1810, when people led by Tahlonteskee and others moved to the Arkansas and White Rivers hoping to establish new homes that would allow them to maintain their communities and ways of living. The Treaty of 1817, among many other things, defined Cherokee territory in Arkansas as lying north of the Arkansas River. In 1819, American surveyors noted Cherokee settlements along Petit Jean Creek, south of the river, and the government pressured them to move north.

Many did move, but a few did not. There were divisions and interpersonal struggles among the Arkansas Cherokees, and those differences made a move north, closer to other Cherokee settlements, untenable. Therefore, a band led by Duwali (also known as the Bowl, John Bowles, or Tewulle) moved south, entering the Red River Valley, with the Caddos’ permission, in the fall of 1819.

Duwali
Duwali was born in North Carolina and grew up close to Tsiyu Gansini (Dragging Canoe) and other Cherokee leaders noted for their opposition to white encroachment. Linked to several instances of violence between Cherokees and white settlers, Duwali crossed the Mississippi River in the 1780s, seeking refuge outside of the United States. The Louisiana Purchase, in 1803, put him and his close associates back in American territory, and he and other Cherokee communities were on the south side of the Arkansas River when the Treaty of 1817 was signed. Rather than comply with the demand to move north, they opted to move far south to the Great Bend of the Red River.

The Red River in the 1810s
The choice of the Red River reflects several complex realities of Arkansas in the 1810s. The area was American territory under the Louisiana Purchase, but the Caddos held the real power, and it was the Caddos, not the U.S. government, who gave the Cherokees permission to settle there. U.S. government representatives at the nearby Sulphur Fork Factory note the importance of the Caddos in relations with Native American groups in the region and onto the Great Plains, and in international politics between themselves, the United States, and the Kingdom of Spain.

At the same time, American settlers from the east began to arrive, drawn by the sandy soils that made the area, and not the Delta, the early focus of the cotton frontier. Many of these early cotton settlements were operated by enslaved laborers. These American settlers were drawn to the prairies that dissected the canebrakes and forests of the area, as these needed less clearing than other lands. These early settlements included those on Long Prairie, Elam’s Prairie, and Lost Prairie.

The Cherokees’ first village was not on Lost Prairie on the south bank of the Red River but instead on the north side, in present-day Hempstead County. They moved to Lost Prairie after a few months in hopes that American settlers would see the south bank as Spanish, not American territory, and stay away. Traders in the area, including men like Robert Musick, hounded Cherokee settlers for their trade; according to government reports, the move to Lost Prairie was in part to get away from these merchants, who had a reputation for underhanded business tactics.

Their second village, on Lost Prairie, became the site of the 1820 raid. Historical and archaeological research on contemporary Cherokee settlements would suggest a small town consisting of log cabins furnished with items drawn both from traditional Cherokee culture and active engagement with international markets. The things they surrounded themselves with were likely similar in many ways to their non-native fellow immigrants, but the social lines drawn between them and their neighbors would prove to be deep and very important.

Fighting over Horses
For Cherokee and American settlers, the movement into Arkansas continued a long conflict. Many American families were coming from Tennessee and North Carolina and likely had family histories that involved fights with the Cherokees there. This foretold little goodwill between these new arrivals.

The flashpoint for the Lost Prairie Raid of 1820 may well have been an event that took place a few weeks before when some horses disappeared from a farm at Pecan Point. The Cherokees were blamed for their disappearance, and a group of white settlers set out from Pecan Point, in the vicinity of present-day Texarkana (Miller County), to reacquire them. They caught up with a group of Cherokees and Caddos who were in possession of the horses, exchanged gunfire, and chased off the Native Americans, save for one man, named in the papers as “Hog in a Pen,” who was to be taken back to Pecan Point for trial. Hog in a Pen likely faced a bleak future as a Native American apprehended for horse theft in the early nineteenth century. He was not without support, however, as the Arkansas Gazette reported: “As Hog in a Pen was being led back to Pecan Point, the group he had been with apparently regrouped and attacked his captors, freeing him. The captors returned to Pecan Point, with horses but without captives.”

There are two dimensions of this event that likely sparked intense feeling among white settlers. First, fighting against Cherokees was something they had grown up with, and having those conflicts in Arkansas would likely echo to their previous lives in Tennessee. Second, the Indian group involved in the fighting was reported to be a mix of both Cherokees and Caddos. This may have been seen as a sign of intertribal alliance against white settlers, provoking more concern. A brief report of the incident that appeared in the Washington Telegraph in July 1820 closes with “it would agree with the wishes of all the inhabitants on Red River to have them removed to the lands allotted to them in this territory.”

On June 20, 1820, around the time of the raid, Territorial Governor James Miller wrote to the U.S. Secretary of War, asking that annuities paid to tribes be routed through his office. He could then use this for leverage against the tribes then in Arkansas. He specifically referenced the Cherokees on the Red River as forming a “banditti” with other tribes in the area to steal horses and kill white settlers’ cattle and hogs.

The Raid
Details about the summer 1820 raid come from a letter dated August 19, 1821, by George Gray, agent at the Sulphur Fork Factory, near present-day Doddridge (Miller County). Note that this is over a year after the event took place, and he relates what was told to him by survivors, as he did not witness the event himself. He identified his source of information as a Cherokee leader who was visiting the Sulphur Fork Factory to seek help in obtaining recompense for a large amount of property lost during the raid. This is the only known written account of the engagement, and though the informer is referred to as a “Cherokee Indian Chief,” there is no indication that it was Duwali who made the claim.

First, the raid took place in “June or July” of 1820. This would be roughly one to two months after the affair involving Hog in a Pen. Given the concern that the event appears to have created among local settlers, it is likely that the raid was a response to this armed opposition by Cherokees and their allies.

The second point coming from Gray’s report is that the Arkansas Territorial Militia (ATM) was the non-Native force present. The earlier encounter was characterized as a posse gathered under the command of Captain Nathaniel Robbins, whereas this was an incident of greater planning. Two companies of the ATM assembled and marched on the Cherokee village. It remains unknown which two companies they were or where they were drawn from, though it should be noted that Nathaniel Robbins is mentioned as a militia officer in June 1820.

On that summer day in 1820, violence was both threatened and used. Gray wrote that the ATM was joined by an interpreter, a white man who spoke Cherokee. He is said to have informed the Native Americans that “whites were enraged against them and that they intended to put them all to death. The Indians immediately took the alarm and ran off and…were fired upon by the whites and an innocent Indian killed.”

Gray concluded the letter by noting that the Cherokees were given ten days after the attack to gather their belongings and leave Arkansas. They had a large amount of stock, which they were not able to collect in that amount of time and wound up leaving behind. Their claim to the U.S. government, mentioned earlier, amounted to $847.50 (around $23,000 in today’s money). Gray’s account was addressed to U.S. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, who would have ultimate say in whether they were compensated. Calhoun responded in November that the government would not pay.

Conclusion
After the raid, the Cherokees moved into Texas, where Chief Bowles would die in 1839, fighting Texans in the Battle of the Neches. Survivors moved to the Indian Territory. Their former homes on the Red River would soon be taken over by American farmers, including C. M. Hervey, who would consolidate much of the surrounding landscape into a large plantation staffed by more than 100 enslaved African Americans. The area remains an agricultural landscape in the twenty-first century.

For additional information:
Drexler, Carl G. “Dispossessing Duwali on Lost Prairie.” https://cgdrexler.wordpress.com/2016/10/28/disposessing-duwali-on-lost-prairie/ (accessed October 11, 2024).

Hoig, Stanley W. The Cherokees and Their Chiefs. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998.

“Indian Depredations.” Arkansas Gazette, February 26, 1820, p. 2.

“The Indians.” Arkansas Gazette, July 15, 1820, p. 3.

Smith, Foster Todd. “On the Convergence of Empire: The Caddo Indian Confederacies, 1542–1835.” PhD diss., Tulane University, 1989.

Carl Drexler
Arkansas Archeological Survey