Category: History Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN-10: 0738523852
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 160
Copyright: Oct 1 2002
The founding of Springdale, Arkansas began in 1840 when Jo Holcombe discovered a crystal clear spring and called it Shiloh. Here he would build the church around which this thriving city would grow.
The Cherokee and Osage had long watered at the spring on the Springfield Plateau of the Ozarks, and when the white man was allowed to settle after the removal in 1828 a few hardy souls homesteaded the area, but it would be ten years before the charismatic Joseph Holcombe christened the place and set about building a city.
The coming of the Butterfield stage line, the Frisco Railroad, a through highway and a huge trucking industry guaranteed the settlement a permanent place in history.
The book tells the story of those early settlers and their descendants and contains 125 old photographs from the files of Shiloh Museum.
Excerpt
“But what is civilization? Is it a practical knowledge of agriculture? Then I am willing to compare farms and gardens of this Cherokee nation with those of the mass of the white population in the Territory...Does it consist of morality and religion? Our people have built, wholly at their own expense, the only meeting house in the Territory...” Cherokee Nu-Tah-R-Tuh (No Killer)
The place of which Nu-Tah-R-Tuh spoke was his home, land of the northwest Arkansas Territory. And his people, known as the Western Cherokee, were about to lose that home, as had the Osage and Choctaw before them. Yet another treaty would be broken to open this rugged, remote country to the white man, whose need to settle land west of the Mississippi appeared insatiable.
