"Tracing" History

"Now that's what I call a he-man," joked Andy, as we loaded Little Red in Vicksburg. Our motel neighbor, a good looking man in his thirties, stood outside his door, a cigarette in one hand and a Bud Lite in the other. "That's his second," said Andy. An empty bottle rested on the sill next to him. "But he's considerate. He doesn't smoke in the room."
"If that's a he-man," I told Andy, "I'm certainly glad you're not one!"
The Natchez Trace was already outdated by the time of the Civil War, but in the early 1800's, this road through the Mississippi wilderness opened the frontier for settlement.
Used by mail carriers, itinerant preachers and traders, as well, it started in Nashville and extended south to Natchez. We leisurely drove the 50 miles, relishing the gorgeous weather and stopping at all the pullouts.
Five plagues killed Rocky Springs, a thriving town of 2,616 people in 1860: erosion due to subsistence farming and cotton plantations; the Civil War, when slaves ran away and horses and mules were stolen; a yellow fever epidemic, that killed off more than 40 people; the Boll Weevil, that destroyed the cotton crop in the early 1930's; and finally, the dying of the natural spring.
Nothing is left except two safes, two dry cisterns and the Methodist church that ended services in 2010.

Owens Creek, nearly dry as well, showed green spring growth and a few hardy bugs on January 29.

Evidence in Magnum Mound, an ancient burial ground, suggested that prehistoric people took the lives of servants when a chief died and sacrificed the family members out of deference and respect when an elder passed away.

Grindstone Ford, where the Natchez Trace crossed a creek, was a cemetery with eight or ten tombstones from the 1800's. Although abandoned in the woods, the sites were identified by name. As I looked at Jane, who died in 1823, I thought of the 12,000 unidentified soldiers interred at Vicksburg. I guess it didn't matter either way, identified or not.

At Sunken Trace, the road had eroded ten or twelve feet below ground level. It must have been dangerous and scary to walk this section through Choctaw Indian territory.

We stopped for trail bars at Mud Island Creek picnic area and walked the Procession Forest Nature Trail at Bullen Creek. Clouds rolled in, forerunners of rain, and the 74 degree temperatures cooled.

Restored to the way it looked in 1820, Mount Locust, a plantation home with 1,200 acres of cotton, corn and hay, served as one of the inns along the Old Natchez Trace. A four-room, two-story annex called Sleepy Hollow, that was erected behind the plantation home of William Ferguson, his wife Paulina, and later her second husband James Chamberlain, housed foot travelers on the Trace from Natchez north for 25 cents a night. The fee included dinner, which usually consisted of corn meal mush.

Volunteer Guide Lynda showed us the modest farm house and explained that the inn often accommodated as many as 25 weary travelers, who floated their goods to Natchez on wooden rafts, sold the lumber for whatever they could get and walked back north on the Natchez Trace.

"This is really comfortable," said Andy. "I could live here."

"No, I don't think so," I told him. "The cook house is gone. You wouldn't get much to eat, even if there was only corn meal mush most of the time."

"Follow that path to the slave cemetery," said Guide Lynda, pointing from the back doorway, "and that one to the family plot, where most of the family members are buried." She told us that one traveler who died at the inn was included in the family graveyard. Only one small stone marker, barely visible above the fallen oak leaves, remained in the slave cemetery. Outside the family plot a patch of daffodils in full bloom nodded gracefully in the sunlight patchwork of oaks and locusts.
"Just think," I said, "short sleeves and daffodils in January!"
Our next stop, Emerald Mound, is the second largest ceremonial mound in the U.S. built in the Mississippian Period, 1730-1200 B.C., by the ancient ancestors of the Natchez Indians. The 35-foot high dirt mound covers eight acres, 770 feet x 435 feet, but two small mounds sit atop the primary mound for a total height of about 60 feet. Named for a plantation on the site in the 1850's, Emerald Mound was first seen by white men when explorer Hernando de Soto passed through North America. All the nearby villages and ceremonial centers were abandoned in the 1600's, perhaps partly because of diseases introduced by de Soto and his men, as well as the intrusion of Europeans and internal village strife. We climbed the mound, probably the setting for elaborate civic processions, ceremonial dances and solemn religious rituals. Andy topped the 50 steps first.

"Okay," I called out. "Do your thing, Emerald Mound King!"

Near the southern end of the Natchez Trace, we walked a short path to one brick wall in the woods, all that is left of Elizabeth Female Academy. Founded by Elizabeth Roach in 1819, the Mississippi school was the first college in America to confer degrees on women and the first female school of higher learning in the U.S. There certainly wasn't much left of it.

Scaffolding enveloped Melrose, considered by many to be the finest home in all the Natchez region. The Greek Revival-style plantation house offered tours for a fee, in spite of renovation work. We walked the grounds of the plantation instead: the dairy, carriage house and slave quarters, with displays about life in bondage. Melrose plantation master John McMurran owned 75 slaves between 1841 and 1861. They prepared the family's meals, served food, drove the cart, tended the gardens and yard, cared for livestock, worked the cotton fields and maintained the buildings and grounds of the 132-acre estate.

A display explained that researchers found it difficult to obtain honest feelings about slavery from former slaves. Even as late as 1930, people who had been slaves feared reprisal against their families if they said too much. I read the commentary. No one who lived as a slave could be alive today to be interviewed. Thank goodness things have changed and people have moved beyond such inane questions as How does it feel to be a slave?

We drove back over the Mississippi River Bridge and walked the Promenade along the river in Vidalia, Louisiana. Clouds moved in, tinged pink and blue from the setting sun, and suddenly the spring warmth disappeared.
"It's not going to be nice tomorrow, is it?" I asked.

"No," said Andy, "and I read that severe weather is on the way. It's not tornado season yet, but thunder storms are predicted."
Headed back across the bridge, we entered a brilliant pathway of light across the great black waters of Old Man River. The bridge rumbled as we rolled east.