I am trying to understand your question, and have sent you a separate EM with historic map URL's, but in part your question is not easily answerable, being a bit like asking 'how high is up?' It all depends upon when, and under the jurisprudence of what nation? Ignoring for the moment the claims of Spain-Mexico based on the old Spanish explorations, and of the British based on their conquest of 'New France', There is the problem of the status of what we call Arkansas following the Louisiana Purchase, when the United States Government, especially under Jefferson, began presuming an Indian Removal from the 'Old Southwest' across the Mississippi to an undefined 'Indian Territory' which included Arkansas but without defined borders... Then there was the 'MIssouri Territory' divided off to allow the creation of a distinct State of Louisiana, from which Arkansas Territory, still with poorly defined orders, was in turn divided..Now turn to the map URL's I have sent you. Good luck, and don't bother your brain reaching for an answer to the question the Indians ask, "What treaty did the United States ever keep?" Duncan the Librarian. Yarmouth Port, MA