CAMDEN — The morning of Friday Dec. 27 is foggy. In the mist, figures bustle about a keel boat making preparations to launch the vessel on the waters of the Ouachita River. The captain stands with a knife draped around his neck, giving instructions about rowing and navigating the channels, meanwhile the crew moves wooden barrels of provisions.
Although this is a scene out of history, it only occurred last week, as the Early Arkansas Reenactor Association set forth to launch the keel boat “Aux Arc” from the banks of Camden, looking very much like spirits draped in period-accurate clothing.
The crew, nine people from Arkansas and Texas, is dedicated to recreating the Hunter Dunbar expedition.
Don Lee, an adjunct English Instructor at Arkansas Tech University, became involved after attending a lecture on mountain men in Arkansas.
“The whole purpose of all of this is to sort of recreate as close as you can the experience, it’s from colonial time — The French and Indian Wars up to 1840 that’s the cutoff,” Lee said. “So, ideally, everything looks like it falls between those two dates. Like if you have an ice chest you put it in a wooden thing so it looks period. It’s kind of like if you have a historical district in town. The houses have to look right on the outside, you can have a disco on the inside, as long as it looks right on the outside.”
Ed Williams and a group of other historical enthusiast built the “Aux Arc” in 2004. Since that time they have taken several trips down the Ouachita.
“The name of the keelboat ‘Aux Arc’ was derived from the early French references to Arkansas,” reads the Arkansas Early Reenactors website. “The 1758 warehouse manager at the French Post at Arkansas, located in what is now northern Desha county, several times ended his letter postings with, for example, ‘Aux Arkansas le 22 Septembre 1758.’ Aux Arc translated into English tends to mean ‘From or at the Arkansas Tribe,’ indicating that the Post was located near the Tribal villages of the Quapaw Tribe. With the intention of replicating the Dunbar-Hunter expedition, the Early Arkansas Reenactors Association constructed a keelboat typical of the boat used in the expedition.”
According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas website, Eco Fabre was notable to the expedition because “two significant events occurred. First, the explorers found a tree with curious Indian hieroglyphs carved onto its trunk. The carvings portrayed two men holding hands and may have been the site of trade between Europeans and Native Americans. Second, on Nov. 22, as Hunter cleaned his pistol on the flatboat, the gun discharged. The bullet ripped through his thumb and lacerated two fingers. It continued through the brim of his hat, missing his head by only fractions of an inch. Hunter remained in severe pain and danger of infection for over two weeks. His eyes were burned, and he could not see to record entries in his journals and was little help to the expedition”
This trip was originally planned to take the crew 40 miles to Calion Arkansas at a speed of roughly 3 miles per hour. Though the dense fog set back the original departure time of 9 a.m. until later in the day.
“We started out trip down the Ouachita in 2004, with the idea of getting all the way to the Mississippi River, not all in one trip,” Williams said. “We did about 60 to 80 miles a year. It’s about 380 river miles from here to the Mississippi.”
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the crew, as this weekend’s weather cut the trip short and the crew did not make it Calion.
Williams recounted a time in Columbia, Louisiana when a late December thunderstorm struck
“Sky turned black, you couldn’t see anything. Lightning, the wind was coming up, the only way we could see was that there was a cell tower nearby and lightning kept striking the cell tower. It lit up the area,” Williams said.
Among the the crew for this trip were two Camden Natives, Don Banks and Emily Jordan-Robertson.
“It was a wonderful experience, everyone should do it,” Banks said.
Banks said that the rain that besieged the “Aux Arc” did not deter the crew.
“You put on a slicker suit and kept rowing,” he said. “The thing is that the thing is man-powered. So we took turns rowing. There were three teams. Two people rowed and one person one person operated the tiller. We rode for an hour. We had a little hour glass that we turned over and watched.”
Robertson, who first learned of the expedition when Williams was in Camden for another history event, said, “It was tough but fun.”
“In a nutshell, I spend a lot of time on a bicycle and I do an occasional hundred mile a ride in a day,” he said. “All the while you’re going ‘This is fun. This is fun,’ but at some point you’re going ‘This is really hard work and tough, and what in the world did I get myself into?
“A day or so later you reflect on it and think about all the awesome memories that you made and how cool it was and it’s like ‘Where do you sign up for the next trip?’ It was a tough trip in knowing that in histories past, those guys really did have a pretty tough life. I’m thankful for modern times. It makes me more appreciative of all the modern conveniences we have today. I feel like I have seven or eight new brothers and uncles out of the deal.”