Honors Humanities Students Explore a German's Wild West Arkansas

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On Saturday, Oct. 22, Honors College students from the third semester of the honors humanities program participated in an educational hike at Devil's Den State Park.

This semester, students have been reading excerpts from German Friedrich Gerstaecker's travel journals during his time exploring Arkansas in the 1840s, when the state was part of the Wild West. He encountered horse bandits, vigilantes, and Native Americans, whom he describes in his novel Die Regulatoren in Arkansas (The Regulators, i.e. vigilantes, in Arkansas).

During the three-mile hike, park interpreter Adam Leslie, who read the same mid 19th century German texts about Wild West Arkansas as had the students, discussed early settler life in Arkansas, features of the park that are similar to what the author describes, and even produced bear and raccoon skins for the students to examine, since Gerstaecker made his living as a hunter and trapper while in Arkansas.