Ouachita River

It is mid-July and I am paddling my kayak along the banks of the Ouachita River in Caldwell Parish. The steep, sandy banks of the river are matted with dangling vines, oaks, water elms, persimmon trees, water hickory, and clusters of wild mallow blooms in white and pale pink with dark crimson centers. In the shallow water, big-scaled fish breach and splash me with their tails. I hear a distress call and look up to see a water snake in a vine eating a desperate, wiggling frog, hind feet first. I head out to the middle of the river, and it is so hot that I jump out of my kayak into the dark, murky water. Today the river is sluggish and lazy, and I swim pulling my kayak down the middle of the warm river. A concerned fisherman pulls up beside me and asks, “Are you all right?”

He must think I’m crazy, but I assure him that I am fine.

The Ouachita River begins its meandering journey as a small, shallow stream in the Ouachita Mountains near Eagleton, Arkansas. It tumbles over a rocky streambed until it empties into Lake Ouachita near Hot Springs, Arkansas. Flowing about 510 miles downstream from the dam, the river continues its winding course before crossing into Louisiana at Upper Ouachita River National Wildlife Refuge. Among fifty-one other streams, rivers, and bayous, the Ouachita has been designated a “Natural and Scenic River” from the Arkansas line to the mouth of Bayou Bartholomew, as part of the Louisiana Natural and Scenic River Act. The Ouachita finally joins the Tensas River and Little River at Jonesville to become the Black River. 

The general consensus of historians is that the word “Ouachita” comes from the Caddo word “wishita,” meaning “good hunting ground.” The spelling of the word in early historical documents is “Washita.” As a young Girl Scout in the Monroe area I learned that “Ouachita” meant “silver waters,” but there is no substantiation of this meaning. In certain light, the ripples on the river emit a silver shimmer.

Naturalists can discover rich, biodiverse habitats along the entire length of the river, and it is noted for its excellent fishing and as the home of abundant wildlife. Even once-rare species, like the black bear and bald eagle, are now found along its wild banks. The Ouachita Valley is a vital artery of the Mississippi Flyway and provides resting, feeding, and breeding sites for migratory waterfowl and Neotropical migrants like warblers and hummingbirds.

There is much evidence of early Native-American life along the rich, alluvial shores of the river in the form of earthen mounds and artifacts. The ancient peoples used the river for transportation, food, and trade. In the 1990s Dr. Joe Saunders, regional archaeologist of the Louisiana Division of Archaeology, and amateur archaeologist Reca Jones made the phenomenal discovery along the banks of the Ouachita River south of West Monroe of eleven ancient mounds and connecting ridges. The site, now called Watson Brake, is among the earliest mounds in North America and its occupation has been radiocarbon dated between 3,500 and 2,800 B.C. According to Saunders, bone fragments from the site provide a record of the variety of animals that lived in and along the Ouachita during these ancient times. The assortment is amazing: fish (drum, buffalo, channel and blue catfish, bass, crappie, and bream), mammals (beaver, raccoon, muskrat, otter, gray squirrel, fox squirrel, cottontail rabbit, swamp rabbit, and white-tailed deer), waterfowl (duck and geese), and other birds (turkey and ruffed grouse). Approximately five thousand years later, many of these same animals can be found in diverse habitats in and along the river.

One of the most important early accounts of the Ouachita River is found within the 1804—1805 journals of William Dunbar and George Hunter. After the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and at the same time he sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the Pacific Northwest portion of the new lands, President Thomas Jefferson instructed the two Scottish immigrants to conduct a scientific expedition into the lower Louisiana Purchase. Although originally this “Grand Expedition” was to explore the sources of the Red and Arkansas rivers, their trip was altered and resulted in a shorter journey up the Ouachita River to the area known as “the hot springs” in present-day Arkansas. According to the recently published analysis of their journals, The Forgotten Expedition, 1804-1805, The Louisiana Purchase Journals of Dunbar and Hunter, this shorter expedition resulted in valuable geographical information that was later used to draw accurate maps of the Ouachita and Black rivers, cultural information such as “the first records in English of names and locations of settlers, settlements, trails, and footpaths along these waterways,” and details of the region’s human populations. Also, they described the different landscapes along the river, along with plants and animals, and provided scientific documentation of species that no longer exist in the Ouachita Valley such as American bison, mountain lions, swans, whooping cranes, and red wolves. They made scientific observations of the hot springs,  recording temperatures, and mineral composition and discovering that microorganisms lived in the hot water. 

In 1869, Colonel Samuel Lockett began a topographical survey of the state in an army ambulance pulled by a pair of mules. In the book, Louisiana As It Is, A Geographical and Topographical Description of the State, Lockett relates the story of Lone Grave Bluff. “It is named for the solitary grave that stands on the summit at least 135 feet above the surface of the waters.” According to Lockett, Mrs. Graves was the wife of an Alabama man who came to Louisiana in 1845 to work on a nearby plantation. During the first year of their marriage, they would often climb to the top of the bluff and “spend a quiet Sabbath afternoon gazing upon the broad fields of cotton, corn” and watch for steamboats traveling on the river. When the woman became critically ill, she begged her husband to bury her on the bluff opposite their home “so she might still look down upon the scene of their happiness.” 

Heading toward Enterprise, a pale, pearly dawn engulfs my car as I cross the Ouachita River at daybreak aboard the Duty Ferry. It is the only ferry still operating on the river, and the tugboat churns the green water as it pivots on the side of the barge to push us across. My mother’s people lived, fished, and hunted in this area along the river, and I think I must have some river water flowing in my blood. Its rippled surface sparkles in the early morning light and a wispy mist embraces the western bank. Nestled somewhere in a thicket, a Carolina wren trills his aubade. A solitary great blue heron lifts off the bank in a slow, graceful arc and wings its way down the river. For this moment, we are all a part of this ancient, flowing river’s story.