Sheila McCall

Sam Hector lived during vastly changing times in Mississippi County, Arkansas. As a child, he left an Indian village called Chilletecaux in Southeast Missouri and moved to Mississippi County, when it was a swampy wilderness.

In his lifetime, he witnessed the New Madrid earthquake-damaged land transform from barely habitable to a prosperous agricultural area. With beginnings in the disappearing environment of emigrant Indians, his life carried him through times of earthquakes, floods, war, and on to a new century. The land underwent many changes from swampy and heavily timbered to drained, cleared, and full of harvest. And before he died, Sam saw conservation changes that would bring some of the land back to a place where wildlife prospered again.

During a time when many would not proclaim their Native American heritage for fear, he was always proud to tell everyone he met that he was Indian.

Interwoven with Sam’s story is a history of a regional area in Southeast Missouri and Northeast Arkansas including mound builders, New Madrid earthquakes, floods, Civil War, reconstruction, timber clearing, agriculture and conservation in a new century.