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The Natchez Trace
The Natchez Trace, also known as the "Old Natchez Trace",
is a historical path that extends roughly 440 miles (710 km)
from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee, linking
the Cumberland, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers. It was
created and used for centuries by Native Americans, and was
later used by early European and American explorers,
traders, and emigrants in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries. Today, the trail is commemorated by the 444-mile
(715 km) Natchez Trace Parkway, which follows the
approximate path of the Trace as well as the related Natchez
Trace National Scenic Trail. Parts of the original trail are
still accessible and some segments are listed on the
National Register of Historic Places.
Largely following a geologic ridge line, prehistoric animals
followed the dry ground of the Trace to distant grazing
lands, the salt licks of today's central Tennessee, and to
the Mississippi River. Native Americans used many early
footpaths created by the foraging of bison, deer, and other
large game that could break paths through the dense
undergrowth. In the case of the Trace, bison traveled north
to find salt licks in the Nashville area. After Native
Americans began to settle the land, they blazed the trail
further, until it became a relatively well-established path.
Numerous prehistoric indigenous settlements in Mississippi
were established along the Natchez Trace. Among them were
the 2000-year-old Pharr Mounds of the Middle Woodland
period, located near present-day Tupelo, Mississippi.
The first recorded European explorer to travel the Trace in
its entirety was an unnamed Frenchman in 1742, who wrote of
the trail and its "miserable conditions". Early European
explorers depended on the assistance of Native American
guides—specifically, the Choctaw and Chickasaw. These tribes
and earlier peoples, collectively known as the Mississippian
culture, had long used the Trace for trade.
Even before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Thomas
Jefferson wanted to connect the distant Mississippi frontier
to other settled areas of the United States. To foster
communication with what was then called the southwest, he
designated a postal road to be built between Daniel Boone's
Wilderness Road (the southern branch of the road ended at
Nashville) and the Mississippi River. To emphasize American
sovereignty in the area, he named it the "Columbian
Highway."
The U.S. signed treaties with the Chickasaw and Choctaw
tribes to maintain peace, as European Americans entered the
area in greater numbers. In 1801 the United States Army
began the trail blazing along the Trace, performing major
work to prepare it as a thoroughfare. The work was first
done by soldiers reassigned from Tennessee and later by
civilian contractors. By 1809, the trail was fully navigable
by wagon. Critical to the success of the Trace as a trade
route was the development of inns and trading posts,
referred to at the time as "stands." For the most part, the
stands developed southbound from the head of the trail in
Nashville.
Many early United States settlements in Mississippi and
Tennessee developed along the Natchez Trace. Some of the
most prominent were Washington, Mississippi (the old capital
of Mississippi); "Old" Greenville, Mississippi (where Andrew
Jackson conducted slave trades); and Port Gibson,
Mississippi.[3] The Natchez Trace was utilized during the
War of 1812 and the ensuing Creek War, as soldiers under
Major General Andrew Jackson's command traveled southward to
subdue the Red Sticks and to defend the country against
invasion by the British.
By 1816, the continued development of Memphis (with its
access to the Mississippi River), and Jackson's Military
Road(heading south out of Nashville) created quicker, more
direct routes to New Orleans, Louisiana. This began a
shifting of trade to the east and west, away from the Trace.
As author William C. Davis writes in his book A Way Through
the Wilderness, it was "a victim of its own success" by
encouraging development in the frontier area.
With the rise of steamboat culture on the Mississippi River,
the Trace lost its importance as a national road, as goods
could be moved more quickly, cheaply, and in greater
quantity on the river. (Before the invention of steam power,
the Mississippi River's south-flowing current was so strong
that northbound return journeys generally had to be made
over land.) Although many authors have written that the
Trace disappeared back into the woods, much of it continued
to be used by people living in its vicinity. With large
sections of the Trace in Tennessee converted to county roads
for operation, it continues to be used.
Though the Natchez Trace was only used as a major United
States Route for a brief span, it served an essential
function for years. The Trace was the only reliable land
link between the eastern states and the trading ports of
Mississippi and Louisiana. This brought all sorts of people
down the Trace: itinerant preachers, highwaymen, traders,
and peddlers among them.
As part of the "Great Awakening" movement that swept the
country in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the
"spiritual development" along the Trace started from the
Natchez end and moved up. Several Methodist preachers began
working a circuit along the Trace as early as 1800. By 1812
they claimed a membership of 1,067 Caucasians and 267
African Americans.
The Methodists were soon joined in Natchez by other
Protestant denominations, including Baptist missionaries and
Presbyterians. The latter accompanied the migration of
Scots-Irish and Scots into the frontier areas. Both
Presbyterians and their frontier off shoot, the Cumberland
Presbyterians, were the most active of the three
denominations in this back country area. They claimed
converts among Native Americans. The Presbyterians started
working from the south; the Cumberland Presbyterians worked
from the north, as they had migrated into Tennessee from
Kentucky.
As with much of the unsettled west, banditry regularly
occurred along the Trace. Much of it centered around Natchez
Under-The-Hill, (as compared with the tame sister city of
Natchez, Mississippi) atop the river bluff. Under-the-Hill,
where barges and keelboats put in with goods from northern
ports, was a hotbed for gamblers, prostitutes and
drunkenness. Many of these men, referred to as the "Kaintucks,"
were crude frontiersmen from Kentucky who operated flatboats
down the river. They delivered goods to Natchez in exchange
for cash, and turned Natchez Under-the-Hill into an early
19th-century Las Vegas. Then they would walk up the Trace
the 450 miles back to Nashville. In 1810 an estimated 10,000
“Kaintucks” used the Trace to go north and start another
river journey.
Other dangers lurked on the Trace in the areas outside city
boundaries. Highwaymen (such as John Murrell and Samuel
Mason) terrorized travelers along the road. They operated
large gangs of organized brigands in one of the first
examples of land-based organized crime in the United States.
Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition fame,
met his death while traveling on the Trace. Then governor of
the Louisiana Territory, he was on his way to Washington,
D.C., from his base in St. Louis, Missouri. Lewis stopped at
Grinder's Stand (near current-day Hohenwald, Tennessee), for
overnight shelter in October 1809. He was distraught over
many issues, possibly affected by his use of opium, and was
believed by many to have committed suicide there with a gun.
Some uncertainty persists as to if it was suicide. His
mother believed he had been murdered, and rumors circulated
about possible killers. Thomas Jefferson and Lewis's former
partner, William Clark, accepted the report of suicide.
Lewis was buried near the inn along the Trace. In 1858, a
Tennessee state commission erected a monument at the site.
On the bicentennial of Lewis' death in 2009, the first
national public memorial service honoring his life was held
as the last event of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Bicentennial. A bronze bust was installed at his grave site.
Courtesy of Wikipedia
150 years ago today (Feb. 1, 2015), Mississippi's 436,000 slaves, including the approximately 40 enslaved persons who lived at Mount Locust, got one step closer to becoming forever free. On January 31st, 1865, the US House of Representatives passed the 13th Amendment, thereby sending it to the states for ratification. Slavery in the United States was coming to its end. NPS photo
Links
to stories from the Trace can be found at:
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ms-natcheztrace.html