Arkansas River.Undoubtedly the earliest account of this river is
to be found in the narratives of the Coronado expedition,
1540-1541, in which the stream was given the name "St. Peter's
and St. Paul's river." Marquette names it on his map of 1673.
The Mexicans named it "Rio Napete," but the stream acquired the
name "Akansa" from the early French voyagers on account of a
tribe of the Dacotah or Osage stock which lived near its mouth.
The stream has its source in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, in
latitude 39 degrees 20 minutes north, longitude 106 degrees 15
minutes west. It flows in a southerly and easterly direction,
passing through the royal gorge to the city of Pueblo, from
which place it takes an eastward course, traversing what was
once a portion of the "Great American Desert," and entering
Kansas in Hamilton county, just south of the town of Coolidge,
thence flowing in a general easterly direction through the
counties of Hamilton, Kearny, Finney, Gray and Ford, at which
point the stream makes an abrupt