Return to First Page---ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume XLVIII, Summer 1989 p. 141 BARTHOLOMEW.---"Bartholome was the name of a Frechman [Frenchman] who lived near Pine Bluff in 1819 (Nuttall). This name, however, was already in use in 1804, when Dunbar and Hunter ascended the Ouachita. (See their Observations, p. 126). Bayou in Lincoln, Drew, and Ashley counties." Bartelemi, the French form of the name, was in use in 1784 (12) and probably had been given to the bayou long before that. The bayou most likely was named for a French hunter from the Ouachita or the Arkansas, for this stream afforded an alternate route between Arkansas Post and Lower Louisiana settlements when the Mississippi was high. Louis Barthelemy, Nuttall reported, was of mixed Quapaw-French descent and "in fact" was Indian in his habits, paying no attention to farming. BELLE POINT.---Dr. Branner quoted Major Stephen H. Long: "The site of Fort Smith was selected by Major Long in the fall of 1817, and called Belle Point in allusion to its peculiar beauty (13)." Because of other French place names along the Arkansas, it can be assumed that Long himself did not bestow the name. According to tradition, this beautiful promontory was the place which coureurs de bois annually chose for their rendezvous (14). BODCAW.---Dr. Branner noted that "The original land map (1824) has it spelled Bodcau. This, and the fact that this stream is called Badeau in Louisiana, lead me to believe that Bodcaw comes from Bodcau, which is from Bodeau by a clerical error . . . One difficulty with this theory is that the lake into which the Badeau flows in Louisiana is called the Bodcau. Another one is that as long ago as 1805 Dr. John Sibley said this stream was called Badkah by the Indians. Dunbar and Hunter, p. 103. Stream and township in Lafayette county." A Nevada County community also takes its name from the nearby Little Bodcaw. In 1779 Louisiana Governor-General Esteban Miro referred to it as Batea. Bodcaw seems to have been derived from an Indian word, perhaps Choctaw bokko, meaning "mound," hillock," "bank (15)." ________________________ 12. Don Juan Filihol to Governor-General Esteban Miro, September 1, 1784, Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Papeles Procedentes de Cuba, Legajo 197, Folio 640-647. 13. Edwin James, comp., An Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains Performed in the Years 1819 and '20 by Order of the Hon. J. C. Calhoun, Sec'y of War; under the command of Major Stephen H. Long (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1823), II, 260. 14. Edwin C. Bearss and A. M. Gibson, Fort Smith, Little Gibraltar on the Arkansas (Norman, 1969), 8. 15. S. D. Dickinson, "Indian Signs on the Land," Jefferson County Historical Quarterly, XV (No. 1, 1987), 6.           Contents  Words  Study Questions  Related Sites Next