[ARKANSAS] Geographische-statistisch und historische Charte von Arkansas

Weimar: im Verlage des geographischen Instituts, 1828. Copper-engraved map, with original outline colour, in excellent condition. The highly important first printed map to focus on Arkansas.

This map depicts the Arkansas Territory, formed in 1819, as one of the jurisdictions carved out of the massive Louisiana Purchase. It includes all of the lands making up the modern state of Arkansas, as well as the Indian Lands that now form the main portion of Oklahoma. The Indian Lands were not divided from Arkansas Territory until 1828, the same year that this map was printed. The present map is remarkable in that it is the first ever printed map to focus on Arkansas itself. The portrayal of the territory is far more advanced and of a larger scale than that depicted on the map that appeared in Carey & Lea's American Atlas (Philadelphia, 1822) that relegated the depiction of Arkansas to a small lower portion of the map. The present map is also an important document of the early development of Arkansas, showing the fledgling settlements that hug the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers, such as Helena and Little Rock, the future state capitol. The territory features nine named and one unnamed county while the vast Indian Lands to the west are inhabited by the indigenous Choctaw nation and the Cherokee peoples who were exiled there from their native lands in the southern Appalachians. The territory of Arkansas was organized in 1819, and included both present day Arkansas and present day Oklahoma. The southern border between what is now Texas and the territory was the Red River, as it is today. The search for suitable cotton growing land led settlers from southeastern Arkansas into Texas, and in 1828, the year this map was published, the Mexicans sent a fact-finding mission to Texas to assess the growing "Anglo" problem in Eastern Texas. Interestingly, Arkansas became a state in 1836, the same year Texas became a Republic.