THE NATCHEZ TRACE - AN HISTORICAL PARKWAY
By Malcolm Gardner,
Acting Superintendent,
Natchez Trace Parkway Project,
Jackson, Mississippi.
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MAP OF THE NATCHEZ TRACE PARKWAY
(click on image for an enlargement in a new window)
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When the white man began his exploration of what is
now the southern United States, he found ready-made for his travels a
network of Indian paths linking village with village and tribe with
tribe. These trails showed a marked tendency to follow watershed divides
in an effort to avoid stream crossings and swamps, in spite of the
circuitous windings of such routes. Several of these trails, though
individually not of outstanding importance, when joined together led in
a northeasterly direction from the present city of Natchez, in
southwestern Mississippi, to the Middle Tennessee country. Thus the
component parts linked the important tribes of the Natchez, Choctaws,
and Chickasaws. Toward the north, the trail touched the western claims
of the Cherokees. This route gradually increasing in importance became
known to later history as the Natchez Trace. That a few of these
Southern trails became much more important than other paths through the
forest was due to the military, political and commercial activities of
white men pushing north from the Gulf of Mexico and west from the
Atlantic.
By about 1716 the French had a trading post and a
fort, Rosalie aux Natchez, high on the bluffs of the Mississippi and
dominating the Natchez Indians. Plantations and a settlement followed
closely. The massacre of the garrison and settlers at Fort Rosalie by
the Natchez in 1729 led to the dispersion and virtual destruction of
this tribe, whose complicated social structure and religious ceremonies
have been described in considerable detail by amazed French observers
and still constitute a fascinating story for historian, anthropologist,
and Sunday supplement reader alike.
Of greater importance than the Natchez in the story
of French colonial expansion in the Mississippi Valley were the
pro-French Choctaws and the pro-British Chickasaws. Here the world-wide
struggle of France and England for imperial dominion was fought out on a
small scale as colonial officials and Indian traders guided the war-like
predilections of their red allies. When a remnant of the hunted Natchez
fled through hostile Choctaw territory to take refuge with the
Chickasaws, Lemoyne de Bienville, Governor of Louisiana, set his
energies toward completing French revenge on the Natchez and crushing
the Chickasaws, and doing both with one blow at the center of the
Chickasaw power. Their villages were concentrated in a prairie section
still called the Chickasaw Old Fields in present-day northeastern
Mississippi. While Bienville gathered his French militia and Choctaw
tribesmen, Pierre d'Artaguette, commandant at the Illinois posts,
marched south with four hundred men, two-thirds of them Indians, to
effect a junction with Bienville. The two forces were never joined, but
defeated in detail within a week of each other in May 1736. Bienville
reported that English traders aided in repulsing him before the
fortified village of Ackia. The defeat was a blow to French prestige,
and France never attained to complete domination over the territory
between the Mississippi and the Appalachians.
In the latter half of the eighteenth century the
Spanish came into possession of much of France's territory in the
Mississippi valley. England held the Natchez district from 1763 until
ousted by the Spanish in 1779, while the young United States succeeded
to English claims along the Mississippi at the close of the American
Revolution. Two outposts of these conflicting forces were Natchez, a
northern center of Spanish power in the lower valley, and Nashville, the
western spearhead of settlement of the new American Republic. Five
hundred miles of wilderness separated these two settlements, but the
common economic interests of the Mississippi valley attracted them
toward each other. The link by land between the two points was the
Natchez Trace which traversed parts of the present States of
Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. It was used extensively by
frontiersmen returning home after having floated their produce down to
New Orleans. With American occupation in 1798 of the Natchez district,
long in dispute between Spain and the United States, Natchez assumed a
new importance in American eyes as a step toward the domination of the
Mississippi valley, and added importance was attached to the Natchez
Trace as a military and political line of communication with this
southwestern outpost of the republic.
A post road was established early in 1800, and--as
the Post master General complained--"at a great expense to the public on
account of the badness of the road which is said to be no other than an
Indian footpath very devious and narrow." He suggested to the Secretary
of War that United States troops stationed in the southwest might
advantageously be used "in clearing out a waggon-road and in bridging
the creeks and cause-waying the swamps between Nashville and Natchez."
Late in 1801 treaties were negotiated with the Chickasaws and Choctaws
by which they agreed to the improvement of the route.
General James Wilkinson, commanding the United States
army in the West and one of the commissioners for treating with the
Indians, immediately prepared a map of the Natchez Trace and closed his
description of the survey with the statement: "This road being completed
I shall consider our Southern extremity secured the Indians in that
quarter at our feet and the adjacent Province laid open to us." He made
one important change in the old trail by moving the crossing of the
Tennessee River from Bear Creek to Colbert's Creek, several miles up the
river.
Early in 1802 the troops were at work on the road
through the Indian country, the boundaries of which were the Duck River
Ridge, 30 miles south of Nashville, and Grindstone Ford on the Bayou
Pierre to the north of Natchez. The acquisition of Louisiana and the
establishment of New Orleans as the territorial seat of government
increased the need for better postal communication with that city. In
1806 a Congressional appropriation of $6,000 was made for the
improvement of this route under the direction of the Postmaster
General.
Francois André Michaux, scientist and western
traveler, wrote that the work of the army had shortened the route from
Nashville to Natchez by 100 miles. The Postmaster General estimated that
the survey to be followed in the new improvements would reduce the
distance by 50 miles more. Thus the less directional of the ridges were
abandoned, and the distance was shortened by bridges and causeways to
expedite communication and the passage of the mails. Like a stream with
an increased current, this road cut new channels for the volume of its
traffic, but still it remained the Natchez to Nashville road, the
Natchez Trace.
![section of Natchez Trace](vol2-4d2.jpg)
SECTION OF PARKWAY NEAR NATCHEZ
Along this road passed pack horses and Kentucky
boatmen; outlaws lay in wait for the unwary traveler; and a few early
tourists such as Francis Baily and Dr. Rush Nutt vividly described the
hardships of the journey. A few inns, or stands as they were usually
termed, were opened to care for travelers along the Trace. At Grinder's
Stand Meriwether Lewis met his death in 1809. Early in 1813 after his
Tennessee militia was ordered disbanded at Fort Dearborn, near Natchez
Andrew Jackson moved these troops north over the Trace and earned the
devotion of his men and the sobriquet of Old Hickory by his untiring
attention to their needs during the hardships of this winter march. In
1814 reenforcements for Jackson at New Orleans came south over the
Trace, and a considerable part of the victorious army returned to
Tennessee over the same route. In 1816 both the Choctaws and Chickasaws
relinquished lands in the Mississippi Territory. Settlers from the older
settled areas on the north and east poured into the newly opened lands,
and the pressure of these newcomers wrung additional territorial
concessions from the Indians. In 1820 by the Treaty of Doak's Stand, at
the old Choctaw Agency on the Natchez Trace, the Choctaws surrendered
more territory, and finally in 1830 at Dancing Rabbit Creek they
surrendered the remainder of their lands east of the Mississippi. Two
years later at Pontotoc Creek the Chickasaws agreed to cede their lands
and move west of the river.
As the population had grown and new settlements had
sprung up, additional roads were required and traffic was diverted into
new channels. Jackson's Military Road, Gaines' Trace, the Boliver Trail,
a southern route through Georgia, and a number of others were cut
through the forests and causewayed over swamps. The development and
improvement of the steamboat, however, gave the main blow to most land
travel for long distances. The Natchez Trace lost its importance as a
through route; sections of it were abandoned while other parts became
neighborhood roads and links between small settlements, as was the case
before the white man's coming. The cycle had swung a full turn.
The significance of the Natchez Trace lay in the
political, military and economic importance of the two towns of Natchez
and Nashville at the close of the eighteenth century and in the opening
years of the nineteenth. Perhaps the importance of these two places was
the accidental result of a temporary stalemate of conflicting forces in
the Mississippi Valley -- French and British, Spanish and American,
Indian and White -- but the Trace came nearest to a practicable
all-weather route without requiring the construction of large numbers of
expensive bridges and causeways. It served, therefore, as an avenue of
American expansion in the old Southwest. To date no evidence has been
revealed to show that it was not the first national road, the first of
internal improvements resulting from support with the material resources
of the central government and with direct appropriations by
Congress.
The above outline of the history of the Natchez Trace
and of some of the events occuring in its vicinity is a very brief
summary of the results of an extensive research project conducted on
this subject. The procedure in securing documentary materials followed
the conventional practices advocated in the academic seminar. Official
documents of the United States and of Tennessee, Alabama, and
Mississippi, manuscripts as well as publications, were examined, and
some of the most interesting material came from the unpublished records
of the War Department, the Office of Indian Affairs, and the Post Office
Department. In the Library of Congress the Manuscript Division, the Map
Division, the Rare Book Room and the Local History Section all offered
considerable material. Among several maps secured from the files of the
War Department was General Wilkinson's survey of the Natchez Trace. From
the General Land Office came the township plats of the early rectangular
surveys, scaled two inches to the mile and showing the Natchez to
Nashville road and adjacent sites through most of its three hundred mile
length in Mississippi. In many cases the field notes of the surveys
accompanied the plats. Two unpublished maps showing in detail the
location of certain Chickasaw villages were secured from the French
national archives. Such was the type of material from which was written
the story of the Trace and its associations.
The story of a place or an event is one thing; its
exact geographical location is still another matter. The problem of
locating on the ground the route of the old Natchez Trace and the sites
of adjacent points of historical interest involved to a considerable
extent certain technical skills. Map scales had to be translated from
leagues and toises to miles and rods and then applied to a conjectural
location on the actual ground. Map indications of streams, trails,
prairies, and hill contours required hypothetical identification with
the originals and the verification of other maps and then correlation
with any available written descriptions. The map makers of the
eighteenth century were not marked by that passion for accuracy which
characterizes the technical work of our present mechanical age. Even on
the large scale survey plats of the 1830's and 1840's the field
investigator would be forced occasionally to disregard the evidence of
the map as interpreted by its compass points. If the map indicated a
road running southeasterly while a study of the ground showed a usable
ridge running south by southeast with very rough and broken country
stretching out on either side, then the judgment of common sense
dictated the decision that the old road followed such a ridge. The
evidence of the map had perforce to be abandoned.
While the general route of the Natchez Trace was well
known, considerable uncertainty existed as to its exact location in a
number of places. In the work of field location consideration was given
therefore to all available evidence -- documentary materials, maps,
survey plats and notes, local tradition, and physical remains or road
scars in the ground. Certain places which could be easily located along
the old road as stream crossings, important sites, and intersections
with township lines, were used as control points and the work of
location carried on in detail between them. The township plats of the
Congressional or rectangular survey were basic data in most of
Mississippi and Alabama. In the Old Natchez District in southwestern
Mississippi and in Tennessee the random land grant system prevailed, and
a considerable amount of location was based on such local records as old
deeds and land surveys, which might mention the Natchez Trace or the
Road to Nashville or the Post Road as a property line for adjacent
lands. The minutes of a county court concerning repairs or relocations
sometimes gave information about the early location of the road. One
apparent contradiction in its location as shown on the maps was solved,
after field study, as being a route along a roundabout ridge for wet
weather, but with a short cut through the bottoms for dry weather. And
of course certain of these differences represented changes in its route
as time passed. As finally flagged on the ground, the location of the
Trace includes for the most part the revisions of 1806 and after, since
these improvements constitute the route appearing on later maps and
particularly on the survey plats.
Congress has authorized the construction of a parkway
along the general route of the old Natchez Trace, designed for tourist
and passenger car traffic. Presumably the Natchez Trace Parkway
eventually will be one section of a national parkway system of arterial
routes for passenger cars. A parkway is an elongated park containing a
road, and a parkway as a part of a comprehensive recreation and
conservation program would make available to the traveler certain areas
along its route of a scenic, scientific, and historical importance. On
the Natchez Trace Parkway historical features will be emphasized
although final plans for preservation and development are far from
complete.
In the first place this parkway itself is a
memorialization of the old Natchez Trace and bears its name although
technical standards required for modern traffic do not allow it to
follow closely all the crooks and turns and some of the narrow ridges of
the old road. Plans are now being made, however, for the preservation of
a 10-mile stretch of the old Trace. In the loess soil in south eastern
Mississippi the effect of considerable traffic combined with gradual
erosion had cut the old roadbed deep into the ridges on which it runs.
So slow has this process been that the steep banks on either side have
been stabilized to depths of 10 and 15 feet by the roots of small
vegetation. Overhead the tree branches form a high arch. So narrow are
some of these sections that vehicles could not pass each other. It may
be asked whether this is history or landscaping, and the question may be
answered by saying that the preservation of such a section of the Trace
is a charming re-creation of the old road and of its historical
atmosphere*.
Toward the Natchez end of the Parkway is the
Selsertown Mound of unique formation and probably constructed by
prehistoric occupants of that area, but showing evidence of later
Natchez occupation. Within three miles of Natchez are the Natchez
Indians. These areas seem worthy of inclusion within the parkway lands
and of preservation for archeological study at some future time --
perhaps 10 years, perhaps 100 -- when their artifacts may be displayed
and the history of their builders related with suitable museum
facilities, since much of the social and economic history of a people is
explained by the objects used in their daily lives. Two hundred and
fifty miles north of the Natchez lay the center of Chickasaw power.
Congress already has authorized the Ackia Battleground National
Monument. This is the proper place to present the history of that
nation, and there is much more to Chickasaw history than a recital of
tribal wars and white aggressions. The anthropologist and the
archeologist are also historians, and the present-day techniques of
museum display will allow a presentation of historical material with a
high degree of scientific as well as popular interest.
The white settlement of the old Southwest offers some
interesting possibilities in the presentation of historical material.
Fifteen miles east of Natchez stands an unpretentious farm house, known
as Mound Plantation. The earliest part of the building was constructed
about 1790 by a Scotsmen unknown to fame, who had obtained a Spanish
land grant of some 600 acres. The house served as an inn along the
Trace; gradually slave quarters, an overseer's house, and a guest house
were added to the plantation messuage. The house has no architectural
merit. It is as undistinguished as its builder. Yet it and its first
owner well represent the common people who came into this newly opened
country seeking to exploit the land, to acquire slaves and lands and
houses and still more slaves and more lands. This was the southwestern
agricultural frontier where cotton became king and gentry was created,
in one generation. Also in and around Natchez is another and later style
of architecture, graceful and delightful, highly ornamental, and
expensive to maintain in the social station to which it was accustomed.
This was mainly Greek Revival form, with occasional French and Spanish
influences, and in its parlors and drawing rooms presided a ruling
class. All this, too, is American history. The interpretations of the
architect may well rank him also as an historian.
The history of the Natchez Trace, of the sites along
its route, of the cultural and economic tides flowing through the
country it served, would seem a proper concern of the national
government and of its citizens. Such a story transcends the narrow
bounds of politics and warfare, and deals with a variety of man's
activities. With the disciplines of the anthropologist, archeologist,
and archeologist, and architect as an aid and with the skill of the
museum technician for the preparation of visual interpretations, history
has an interest and a message for all classes of people.
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