The Eureka Springs Story

by Otto Ernest Rayburn

A booklet on “The Eureka Springs”, published by the Matthews, Northup and Company of Buffalo, New York in 1886 says that the Basin Spring was so called because of a peculiar bowl-shaped cavity in the rock. Twelve feet farther down the hillside was originally another basin about five feet in diameter, which was used for bathing purposes. According to this account, this basin was destroyed by overhanging rocks falling upon it. The two basins in the rock, which were present when the town was first settled, are without doubt the ones referred to in the extract of the legend given above.

A slightly different version of the legend of Mor-i-na-ki is given in Allsopp’s “Folklore of Romantic Arkansas.” This version goes into detail regarding the habits and customs of the Osage Indians who inhabited the area at that time. In this version, the Sioux knew of the tradition of the healing spring before they left their northern homeland and made the trip specifically to bring the princess to it.[5]

III
“THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH”

Legend says that healing springs in a far-away land were known in Asia 2,000 years ago and that the tradition was later carried to Europe where it captured the imagination of certain gentlemen in Spain. L. J. Kalklosch gives a report from contemporary writers as follows:

“Before the Christian era, one Ferdinand Levendez, who was in the Roman service for a time, made the acquaintance with a barbarian prisoner by the name of Malikoroff, from whom, in the course of their chats, he learned the story of a fountain, the virtue of whose waters would restore old age to the vigor of youth and of which, if anyone drank continually, he would never die. He (Malikoroff) had it from a Tartar Chieftain under whom he once served.

“The chief told him the fountain was far off in the interior of a great island almost inaccessible on account of the snow and ice to be encountered in reaching its shore, but which, on being reached, it spread out into a vast world, most of which had a pleasant climate.

“Levendez told many of his friends this wonderful story upon his return to Spain and the tradition lived in the fancy of many an aspiring and ambitious Castillian, even to the time of Christoval Colon when it received a new impetus in the mind of Ponce de Leon when he heard the same story told to him by the Mobilian Indians, on his first visit of exploration in Florida. This Indian chief said that he had the story from a Shawnee prisoner taken in battle, and that the fountain was far to the northwest, and after crossing a great river. Says the credulous Mobilian:

“‘I have not seen the fountain myself; I only know that the Shawnee told me so, and he said that his father had drunk of the water, and that he was restored to perfect health and activity after being almost double with pains in his bones for six moons, and he proposed to guide me to the spot for his liberty, but the voice of the other chiefs was against me, and he was put to death. The story may have been true: I found all else true that he told me.’

“Ponce de Leon set out in search of this fountain but he did not even reach as far as the Great River the Shawnee said must first be crossed (its width four times as far as he could shoot with an arrow); being wounded by the natives, he died in the summer of 1512, the remnant of his forces returning to Cuba.

“Now, is there not corroborating evidence of these stories, though reaching back 2,000 years, to convince us that the same spot and the famous fountain lately discovered in Carroll County, Arkansas is the identical fountain of the ancient tradition? Though it may not do all the Tartan chief claimed for it, it does seem to do what the Shawnee asserted it would do, and even more, restoring hair to bald heads, and the gray hairs of age to the color they bore in youth.”[6].

IV
THE DISCOVERY OF THE INDIAN HEALING SPRING

The man largely responsible for the starting of a town at “the springs” in Carroll County, Arkansas was a pioneer doctor named Alvah Jackson. He was a man of many talents. He not only practiced medicine but was also a great hunter and trader. In 1834 he was shipping bear oil down the White River from Oil Trough in Independence County, Arkansas. The town of Jacksonville was named in his honor.

During his hunting trips and trading expeditions into the hills, the doctor contacted many Indians. They told him of a healing spring hidden deep in the mountains that was a sacred spot to the redmen. Jackson began searching for that spring. From the information secured the spring flowed through a basin carved in a table of rock and was located near the head of a small creek with two prongs which flowed into White River eight miles away.

Dr. Jackson spent twenty years looking for this spring. In 1854 he decided that he had found it in what is now known as Rock Spring in north central Carroll County near Kings River. He immediately moved his family there. But he was not satisfied that he had found the coveted spot.

One day in 1854 while hunting in the mountains with his twelve-year-old son, his dogs “treed” a panther in a rock cliff near the head of Little Leatherwood Creek. The boy was afflicted with sore eyelids and while helping dig for the panther, got dirt in his eyes. The doctor told him to go down the hillside to a spring, to rake the leaves away, and wash his eyes. The boy did as he was told and returned to tell his father that the spring flowed through a basin apparently carved by hand. The doctor hurried down to take a look. He recognized it as the Indian Healing Spring he had been searching for these twenty years. (This is the Basin Spring with its carved basin in the Basin Circle at Eureka Springs.)