When the old Dwight mission station was established on Illinois Bayou, north of the river, in Pope County, the Rev. Cephas Washburn, a Presbyterian minister, took charge of it. The Cherokee settlement, under their chief, Black Hawk, then extended for five miles down the river, and at some distance from it. The settlement was like a town, of five miles in length. Each Indian family had its wigwam and patch of land, containing from one to five acres attached. All these patches adjoined each other, so that it was one continued field, composed of patches of a few acres, in the midst of which was a wigwam or cabin, in which the families resided. This accounts for the young growth of timber which has been cleared within the memory of some of the present inhabitants.

The first explorers and temporary occupants of what is now Pope County were hunters and trappers. They conveyed information of its many beauties and advantages to the posts and older settlements. Most of the earliest settlement was along the Arkansas River and in some of the interior valleys. The pioneers were, in the main, men of worth and determination. Their work was in a wilderness, where they were often compelled to combat savage beasts, and sometimes fiercer men. Perhaps some made but a brief tarry, and then pushed on into a newer field, leaving no descendants here. The majority, however, have left a record in the county's history. Many reared large families, whose descendants may look backward now and think with pride of the skill and endurance displayed by their ancestors in laying the foundations upon which modern Pope County stands. Never were there more honest or more hospitable people than these pioneers who broke the forest and began to open the way before advancing civilization. While such a life as theirs might not satisfy the present generation, they seem to have been suited to it. Were some of the refined and cultured people of today (1890) suddenly taken back to the log cabin of their forefathers, what a contrast would be presented to them between the old order of things and the new.

Open-hearted, generous hospitality, instead of formality and suspicious welcome then prevailed; personal inconvenience was not then thought of; a desire to assist others rather than himself characterized the average early settler, and to a thoughtful mind it is indeed a serious question, whether or not, with all boasted advancement and progress, people of today are superior to their ancestors in those nobler elements of moral courage, deference to others and the consideration of the community before the individual. The life of the pioneers was anything but dull, though, as a rule, not one in ten saw a newspaper more than once or twice a year, and the only news that reached them from the East was brought by the last newcomer, by some traveler through the country, or perhaps, by letters, that did not arrive until about three weeks after they had crossed the Mississippi.