Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas

A surviving letter of this date from Jean-René Poisson of Toulouse, France, to friend Etienne d’Avril mentions Une Tapisserie d’Arkansas (“A Tapestry of [or from] Arkansas”), which he recently acquired from the descendant of a soldier stationed at Arkansas Post. Poisson describes the tapestry as depicting “scenes of the savage life so common in America” and expresses incredulity that any “civilized person” would fight in order to remain on that continent (the American Revolution was then ongoing), although he added that if the scenes of feasting in Arkansas were accurate, “perhaps I could suspend my judgment of that strange country, for truth be told, looking at this tapestry, I do become quite ravenous.”