The Quapaw broke from the other Dhegiha tribes and migrated down the Mississippi River into present-day Arkansas many generations before European contact.

[6] As French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet encountered and interacted with the Illinois before they did the Quapaw, they adopted this exonym.

[8] English-speaking settlers who arrived later in the region adopted the name used by the French, adapting it to English spelling conventions.

The Quapaw are descended from a historical group of Dhegiha speaking people who lived in the lower Ohio River valley area.

The modern descendants of this language group include the Omaha, Ponca, Osage and Kaw, who are all independent tribal nations today.

All Dhegiha speaking tribes are believed to have migrated west and south from the Ohio River valley after 1200 CE.

Scholars are divided as to whether they think the Quapaw and other related groups left before or after the Beaver Wars of the 17th century, in which the Five Nations of the Iroquois (based south of the Great Lakes and to the east of this area), drove other tribes out of the Ohio Valley and retained the area for hunting grounds.

[14] It is also notable that there are carbon dated sites which are strongly correlated to the Dhegiha which demonstrate they were split and moved to the respective regions by 1500.

The timing of the Quapaw migration into their ancestral territory in the historical period has been the subject of considerable debate by scholars of various fields.

[18][19] In 1541, when the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto led an expedition that came across the town of Pacaha (also recorded by Garcilaso as Capaha), between the Mississippi River and a lake on the Arkansas side, apparently in present-day Phillips County.

Regardless, Dr. Rankin hypothesized that the Capaha may have been Tunica based on limited evidence of a single name found in a later Portuguese account, for which the original cursive is not recorded.

[16] Archeological sites around 1300 in the region have produced pipes, hides, and other items which are strongly associated with an influx of Dhegiha people that would be the Quapaw.

In 1673, the Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette accompanied the French commander Louis Jolliet in traveling down the Mississippi by canoe.

He reportedly went to the villages of the Akansea, who gave him warm welcome and listened with attention to his sermons, while he stayed with them a few days.

Zenobius Membré, a Recollect father who accompanied the LaSalle expedition, planted a cross and attempted to convert the Native Americans to Christianity.

During the early years of colonial rule, many of the ethnic French fur traders and voyageurs had an amicable relationship with the Quapaw, as they did with many other trading tribes.

Successive floods in the Caddo country near the Red River pushed many of the tribe toward starvation, and they wandered back to their old homes.

Sarrasin (alternate spelling Saracen), their last chief before the removal, was a Roman Catholic and friend of the Lazarist missionaries (Congregation of the Missions), who had arrived in 1818.

John M. Odin was the pioneer Lazarist missionary among the Quapaw; he later served as the Catholic Archbishop of New Orleans.

In 1824, the Jesuits of Maryland, under Father Charles Van Quickenborne, took up work among the native and migrant tribes of Indian Territory (present-day Kansas and Oklahoma).

The Catholic Encyclopedia noted the people had suffered from high fatalities due to epidemics, wars, removals, and social disruption.

They are of Siouan linguistic stock, speaking the same language, spoken also with dialectic variants, by the Osage and Kansa (Kaw) in the south and by the Omaha and Ponca in Nebraska.

According to concurrent tradition of the cognate tribes, the Quapaw and their kinsmen originally lived far east, possibly beyond the Alleghenies, and, pushing gradually westward, descended the Ohio River – hence called by the Illinois the "river of the Akansea" – to its junction with the Mississippi, whence the Quapaw, then including the Osage and Kansa, descended to the mouth of the Arkansas, while the Omaha, with the Ponca, went up the Missouri.

[32] The tribe owns two smoke shops and motor fuel outlets, known as the Quapaw C-Store and Downstream Q-Store.

[33] They also own and operate the Eagle Creek Golf Course and resort, located in Loma Linda, Missouri.

The Quapaw people's primary annual event is a dance which is held during the Fourth of July weekend.

This powwow was organized shortly after the American Civil War,[41] It began as an annual gathering of local tribes with the Quapaw who had finally received rations.

Ultimately the Quapaw Nation government would fund the gathering, and it is currently ran by an individual who is elected by the Quapaw people for their ability to organize the event, which includes traditional camping, gathering, and also features a large contest powwow which attracts participants from other tribes.

[48] In the early 20th century, an account noted that the Dhegiha language, a branch of Siouan including the "dialects" of the Omaha, Ponca, Osage, Kansa, and Quapaw, has received more extended study.

The Osage language program hosted and organized the gathering, held at the Quapaw tribe's Downstream Casino.