Date of Visit: 20 February 2024
Halfway between Chidester and Camden off Hwy 24
72º sunny skies, small breezes
Poison Springs Battleground (park #17) and the two parks to follow — Marks’ Mills Battleground and Jenkins Ferry Battleground — took me back to my trip to northwest Arkansas last summer and my visit to Prairie Grove Battlefield. These sites focus on some of our most violent and vitriolic history. For this reason, I read up ahead of time and learned about the Red River Campaign and the Camden Expedition, the last major victory for the Confederacy in the Civil War. I also noted that none of these parks offer services beyond a scattering of picnic tables, some outdoor grills, and educational placards. Poison Springs does offer a small trail down toward a creek, perhaps the produce of the spring itself.
The hardest truth, among many: on this site, the First Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment fought in the battle the Union lost, and the Confederacy did not take prisoners from African American troops; they slaughtered them. And yet, the battle reminds me that no one survives a war blameless. The Union forces had been on a foraging venture, being half-starved in their Camden encampment, and by all reports, Union soldiers did not limit their theft to corn from area farms and plantations. Civilians reported the looting of household goods: silver, jewelry, and clothing, including that for women and children. This inspired the Confederates to engage the wagon train. In the end, Union forces numbered 1,134 (236 killed, 65 wounded, 125 captured) to the Confederate’s 3,335 (16 killed, 88 wounded, 10 missing). As always, I speculate about the language of the placards. 125 Union men “captured,” but 10 Confederate men “missing.” Only 16 Confederate soldier’s dead? Accurate or not, many lives ended here; none of them ended easily.
Interesting to me: I found no mention on site of the rumor about the place name. Many of my friends born and raised in Arkansas had told me the tale of Confederates putting something in the water to make Union soldiers ill. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, “The name Poison Spring was known to Camden area residents at the time of the engagement and was used in battle reports, but its origins are uncertain. Later legends suggested that Union soldiers became ill after drinking the cold spring water, but no contemporary accounts confirm this story.” Again, history proves an imprecise science. As I walked along the trail among the trees, I remembered what a friend had texted earlier that day in response to my preparations for such a grim visit. She wrote, “The civil war is full of sadness. But today they [the grounds] are nice habitats.” Indeed. Nature takes no sides; it suffers and thrives regardless.
Next up: Marks’ Mills
