Introduction
Several historic sites on Kia Kima Scout Reservation evidence those settlers who came this way before the Scouts.
This area of Arkansas is considered the ancestral lands of several Native American tribes, including primarily the Osage Nation. Although the Osage Nation did not maintain any settlements within this area of northern Arkansas, it was used as hunting grounds.
As settlers began to move west across the continent, settlers first began to build homesteads in north-central Arkansas around the 1820s. Some purchased land from the government, others received land through the Homestead Act of 1862, and others simply settled on the land before the legal rights became an issue for them.