The Devil’s
Backbone - Jonathan Daniels
When we were researching
our Mississippi River bike trip one of our locations was Natchez Trace National
Park. This historic trail is now an
excellent drive and bike and one of the true swaths of beauty in the south. It is also very significant to the
Mississippi River. In Abraham Lincoln’s
youth, his father had to walk back up the Trace after taking a boat down to New
Orleans. Before steam and other
inventions allowed upstream travel boats were loaded and the sold – first the
goods and then the boat itself which was dismantled for lumber and
construction.
Over the years
the characters of the American West – the notorious General Wilkinson and the
strong minded Andrew Jackson were regulars on the Trace. It was where Lewis met his demise after his
success on the trail and then his appointment by Jefferson to a position at St
Louis. There were outright criminals that worked the trail and terrorized the
travelers and there were shady characters like Aaron Burr. The stories are about slaves and ex-slaves,
Indians, pioneers, road agents, and road houses. It is an intriguing combination that ties in
with the river itself and the business at Natchez which was the real crossroads
of the region.
I wanted to learn
the story of the Natchez Trace and this book which was first published in 1962
was recommended. It was a good choice,
but you do have to realize when it was written and then you can understand some
of the less than PC descriptions that occasionally appear in the text.
The author
wanders from the path to the river and even across the river with episodes of
Spanish, French, English, American intrigues and he covers a broad swath of the
history when this was the America West and across the river was another
country.
It was a good
choice and the quotes below will share some of the tales:
“this trail which
DeSoto crossed ran northward 600 miles from the loess bluffs above the
Mississippi where the Natchez tribe of Indians performed bloody rites at White
Apple Village. This was to be the site
of the town of Natchez. Through the
wilderness the path twisted across the lands of the Choctaws and the
Chickasaws. Its northern terminus was in
the game-rich hunting grounds of many tribes in Tennessee. There settlements on the Cumberland River were
to grow into the city of Nashville.”
"with the
French and Indian War in America, rule of the Mississippi River Valley passed,
in 1763 from Louis XV to George III"
"They came in a variety of boats. There were canoes after the Hiawatha
northern, birchbark fashion. There were
others, called pirogues, hollowed fromt he trunks of big trees and fastented
together with heavy planks. There were
bateaux, light, flat bottomed boats tapering towards the ends, and skiffs,
light enough to be rowed. More important
were the faltboats. They were called
arks, Kentucky boats, New Orleans boats, and most often, broadhorms. Their only means of porpulsion was human
muscle and the current of the river.
They varied greatly in size, from 20 - 60 feet in width. They cost about three or four dollars for
each foot in length and were generally sold for lumber at their downstream
destinations. Some of them had pens for
cattle, horses, and swine."
“Already there were some who, according to an early
Mississippi saying considered ‘a barrel of whiskey a week but a small allowance
for a large family without any cow.”
"Natchez-under-the-Hill, a mile-long flat below the
bluffs, was sternly described as 'a stale sordid sodden place.' Still, with a vividness which sometimes
reflected fascination through indignation, travelers reported its congregation
of 'whores, boatmen, gamblers, bruisers' frequenting 'barrooms and gambling
hells' and brothels reeking with the smell of dirty men and women, of garbage,
and river muck."
"Operating a
floating house of prostitution, [Annie Christmas] was reported to be 6 feet 8 inches
tall and able to handle in a fight or a bawdy frolic the toughest flatboatmen
on the river."
"In October,
1801, only a few American Soldiers at Chickasaw Bluff guarded the strategic
heights from the Spaniards across the wide river. It was still Chickasaw
country, though [Andrew] Jackson's partner, John Overton, had a trading post
there. Twenty years later Jackson and Overton, as real estate promoters, called
the site 'Memphis' 'on the American Nile.'"
"On October 12, 1802, 'the right of deposit of American
produce' was suspended by the Spanish government at New Orleans. That closed the port to American Mississippi
trade. Once more General Wilkinson was
at the center of explosion. That
suspension, supposedly at the inspiration of Napoleon, who had secured a treaty
for the return of Louisiana to France, clamped a cork back into the bottle of
the expanding West."
"Not without reason did the Spanish call the men who
came down from Mississippi, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky
'barbarians.' At the end of their
journeys they 'caroused, played practical jokes, swarmed into bordellos, gawked
in the churches, cluttered up the already filthy city with their rubbish,
blustered through crowds shouting lusty oaths, and in general disrupted life.'
" The Devil' Backbone - Jonathan Daniels
“Down the Trace General Wilkinson did very well, too. He was present at the peaceful transfer of
Louisiana to the United States at the Cabildo in New Orleans on December
20,1803. The departing French prefect,
Pierre Clement Laussat, reported to Paris about the pompous general, “already
known in a bad way, is a flighty and rattleheaded fellow, often drunk, who has
committed a hundred impertinent follies.” Describing General Wilkinson who
drove Jefferson crazy, was involved with the Trace, is suspected in history of
being a double agent for Spain, a friend of Aaron Burr and otherwise an all
around scoundrel who seemed to find a way to survive along the
Mississippi.
"In the character of a national hero, Lewis had huried
to Washington. There, as one reward,
Jefferson appointed him to succeed General Wilkinson, whose presence in St.
Louis ws no longer pleasing to so many, as governor of upper Louisiana. It was no plum that the President gave
Lewis."
“…the roughest among them began to talk with admiration of
how rugged the walking Jackson was. He
was tough as hickory, some said. And
Tennessee settlers knew which wood was toughest. Thereafter, his name in affection became then
and forever, “Old Hickory.”
