The Rumble of a Distant Drum: The Quapaws and Old World Newcomers, 1673-1804 - Softcover

"The best book on the subject. . . . Highly recommended." --Library Journal "It is indeed a pleasure to recommend a book that looks objectively at colonial diplomacy from the tribal point of view." --Journal of the West "A very valuable book on one of the earliest and least known outposts of the French and Spanish empires." --Louisiana History "Arnold's clear, non-polemic narrative most importantly humanizes the Quapaws, stripping away platitudes and stereotypes and giving them back their roles as complex actors in the colonial adventures of the region." --Ann M. Early, State Archaeologist

The Rumble of a Distant Drum opens in 1673 when Marquette and Jolliet sailed down the Mississippi River and found the Quapaw already in residence in the Arkansas Post, where the Arkansas River flowed into the Mississippi. Here, they established the first European settlement in this part of the country, thirty years before New Orleans and eighty years before St. Louis. Morris S. Arnold draws on his many years of archival research and writing on colonial Arkansas to produce this elegant account of the cultural intersections of the French and Spanish with the native American peoples. He demonstrates that the Quapaws and Frenchmen created a highly symbiotic society in which the two disparate peoples became connected in complex and subtle ways - through intermarriage, trade, religious practice, and political/military alliances.