Subsequent to the Florida-to-Tennessee De Soto Expedition in the Sixteenth Century it has been estmated that Native populations of entire Southeast at the time of our own Frontier 200 years later were still only about 20% of what they had been when De Soto arrived. The Cherokees and the Creeks both assembled themselves as identifiable Tribal entities from the remnants of the first epidemics, neither being present as "tribes" at first contact.
If you read the accounts of DeSoto's expedition through what would later become Arkansas, it is clear that there were sizable indian villages every few miles. The rural population might not have been that much less than it is today. By the time the first traders and settlers started getting there in the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was practically a wasteland as far as human habitation went. There were very few indians and vast amounts of game.
