When the Arkansas Territory was created out of the southern-most portion of the Missouri Territory in 1818, the two existing counties of Lawrence and Arkansas were re-divided into a total of five counties.
The land of present-day Fayetteville became part of one of them, the newly created Pulaski County.
The Arkansas Territorial Legislature set the county seat at Cadron.
The county was named for Count Casimir Pulaski, a Polish nobleman who died in 1779 at the Battle of Savannah during the Revolutionary War.
Pulaski County was itself split two years later in 1820, creating Crawford County to the west, including the land that would become Washington County and Fayetteville in 1828.