Page "Quapaw" Paragraph 14

" A tribe now nearly extinct, but formerly one of the most important of the lower Mississippi region, occupying several villages about the mouth of the Arkansas, chiefly on the west ( Arkansas ) side, with one or two at various periods on the east ( Mississippi ) side of the Mississippi, and claiming the whole of the Arkansas River region up to the border of the territory held by the Osage in the north-western part of the state.

They are of Siouan linguistic stock, speaking the same language, spoken also with dialectic variants, by the Osage and Kansa ( Kaw ) in the south and by the Omaha and Ponca in Nebraska.

Their name properly is Ugakhpa, which signifies " down-stream people ", as distinguished from Umahan or Omaha, " up-stream people ".

To the Illinois and other Algonquian tribes, they were known as ' Akansea ', whence their French name of Akensas and Akansas.

According to concurrent tradition of the cognate tribes, the Quapaw and their kinsmen originally lived far east, possibly beyond the Alleghenies, and, pushing gradually westward, descended the Ohio River -- hence called by the Illinois the " river of the Akansea " – to its junction with the Mississippi, whence the Quapaw, then including the Osage and Kansa, descended to the mouth of the Arkansas, while the Omaha, with the Ponca, went up the Missouri.