Today, Arkansas is known as “The Natural State.” But that is not the only nickname our state has been called. Previously, it was labeled “The Land of Opportunity,” “The Wonder State,” and before that, “The Bear State.”  The latter title is certainly rooted in the history of the territorial days and early statehood, for the bear population was quite large in Arkansas. The animal provided a number of marketable products ranging from skins to oil.

George William Featherstonhaugh (most commonly pronounced fan-shaw), who visited Arkansas in the early 1830s, wrote about his encounter with a bear hunter in Hot Springs. Featherstonhaugh offered the following description about meeting with the man, whom he had hoped would guide the traveling party further west. Clearly, primitive, frontier conditions prevailed in the Ouachita Mountains region at the time. Featherstonhaugh’s book about his 1830s journey, “Excursion Through the Slave States,” was eventually published in 1844.

“All roads of every kind terminate at the Hot Springs; beyond them there is nothing but the unbroken wilderness, the trails and fords of which are only known to a few hunters. We accordingly entered into a negotiation with a backwoodsman, who was highly recommended for his resolution and knowledge of the country; but he was far from being eager to engage in our service, objecting that this was the season when bear-hunting commences; and although he admitted that I offered him more money than he could earn, yet, he said, if he was to go, ‘he couldn’t stand it, ‘cause the bars [sic] was so fat this year.’

“This man was a very singular fellow, who shunned society, was dressed altogether in the skins of animals he had killed, and seemed never to have been washed, and to have no beard. He lived in the woods many miles from the Springs, and only visited them when he had bear and deer skins to sell.

“The account this man gave me of the manner in which the bear is pursued by some of the professed and more opulent hunters was curious. When the bears are fat, they can surrender a good skin and from twenty to twenty-five gallons of oil. Then out he sallies, prepared for an absence of several weeks, dressed in a jacket and leggings of buckskin, for garments of any other material would soon be torn from his back by the briars. When he gets to the scene of operations he kills two or three buffaloes, if he can, for their skins, which he hangs up on poles in the form of a tent, leaving one side open in front of his fire, toward which his feet are placed when he sleeps. This is also his storehouse: his skins, his meat, his oil, are all deposited here, until their accumulation induces him to take them home.”