Natchez Under-the-Hill

by Stan Applegate

  The next morning, they started out early. The young Chickasaw were still with them. The group crossed creeks and slogged through bogs.

  The braves finally disappeared when the patrol reached an army road-clearing crew. They were cutting down leaners and moving fallen trees off the road. In one area the army had placed logs crossways on the trail to try to make some of the wet lowlands passable.

  They crossed the Tennessee River on the Colbert Ferry. It cost Zeb fifty cents for each horse and fifty cents for his grampa and himself. He remembered when he had angrily called the Colbert brothers “typical half-breeds,” charging the poor travelers high prices. He hated thinking about how that comment hurt Hannah’s feelings. Now, he was glad to pay and keep moving toward home.

  Three days later, the convoy crossed the Duck River at the Gordon Ferry. Are the ferrymen still keeping their eyes open for “a shaggy-haired boy riding a big horse,” as Tate McPhee’s men had asked them to? Zeb wondered.

  It was dark when they set up camp near Joslin’s Stand. Zeb wished they could go on. Only two hours and we’re home, he thought. Grampa was still riding well, but he was obviously very tired. Sometimes he rode bent over, half asleep.

  The draft horses had become more and more strained. Captain Morrison had slowed the pace a bit and ordered more stops, but the horses were still having a hard time keeping up.

  As the dragoons, Zeb, and his grampa set up camp, they could hear a horse galloping in their direction. The soldier on guard stood in the middle of the Nashville Road with his rifle at the ready, but the guard relaxed when he saw that it was the post rider.

  The post rider rode up to Captain Morrison and saluted. “I borrowed a fresh horse from the clearing crew. They said you were just ahead. I had orders to reach you before you deliver your letter to Mr. Andrew Jackson.”

  Captain Morrison asked the rider to dismount. The man did so, then opened the saddlebag and took out several letters. He handed two of them to Captain Morrison and then leaned, exhausted, against the horse. “Your commanding officer asked me to tell you that he would like you to read the one addressed to you immediately.”

  While Captain Morrison was reading the letter, the post rider asked, “Is Cracker Ryan with you?”

  Captain Morrison pointed to where Zeb’s grampa was standing, then continued reading his letter. Cracker Ryan moved over to the post rider. “You looked exhausted, Bobby. Come and sit down. We’ll give you something to eat.”

  “I have a letter for you,” he said as Zeb’s grampa led him toward the campfire.

  Captain Morrison called the dragoons together near where Cracker Ryan, Zeb, and the post rider were sitting. “Let me share some news with you.” He began to read aloud from the letter. “We think the earthquake was centered near New Madrid. The damage at New Madrid reported to Fort Dearborn by flat-boat crews was catastrophic! Every building in New Madrid was flattened. Most of the inhabitants were killed.”

  “Grampa,” Zeb asked, his heart pounding, “isn’t that where Tate McPhee and his gang went?”

  The old man nodded.

  Captain Morrison continued. “The damage in Washington was minimal. A huge crevasse opened up and swallowed a house and barn, but no one was killed as far as we know.”

  “Thank God,” Zeb said.

  “Please take notice: Dancey Moore escaped from the stockade at Fort Dearborn with the help of ex-sergeant Michael Scruggs. They have either gone south to New Orleans or are headed north up the Nashville Road. We expect them to join an outlaw gang. I am alerting you to this problem since they may be coming your way.”

  That night, extra guards were put on sentry duty.

  As Zeb and his grampa walked away from the campfire that evening, Zeb looked up at the night sky.

  “Grampa,” he said, “the first night I came to Natchez looking for you, I saw the comet sitting up there in the sky like a ball of fire with two tails behind it.”

  “I saw it, too,” his grampa said. “It was something, wasn’t it?”

  Zeb thought for a moment. “Some people said it was a bad omen, that it was a sign we were coming into bad times. Do you think that’s true?”

  “No, Zeb. I think things are starting to look up for us. Just think, you got Hannah home, you found me, we got Andy and Christmas back, and now we’re almost home.” His grampa bent down to crawl inside the tent.

  “Wait, Grampa. Didn’t the post rider bring you a letter today? What did it say?”

  “It was for both of us. Here, you can read it.”

  Zeb crawled out of the tent and sat on one of the logs near the campfire. He opened the letter.

  Dear Cracker and Zeb:

  I hope that this finds you in good health and almost home. Cracker, I have been thinking about your idea regarding the training of culls. We have a number of people trying to breed racehorses here. Many of their foals will never do for racing and most of them are not much good for anything else. The temperament is all wrong. I have seen a few here that have possibilities, but it would take a lot of patience and skill to retrain them. Katie could probably do some of it, but it would take someone like Zeb to make it work. Let me know. If you like the idea, I have four horses in mind already.

  Best regards,

  John Culpepper

  Zeb crawled back into the tent, where his grampa was snoring softly. He smiled, thinking of home. He looked forward to working on the horse farm with his grampa again. He thought of his mama and how much pain he had caused her. Would she have baked one of those loaves of bread? His stomach growled. He could almost smell it. He closed his eyes. We’re almost home.

  The next morning Zeb checked the packs on each of the draft horses. The Choctaw food baskets were empty now. He tacked up Christmas and was ready to go before the patrol had finished breakfast. But it was still too dark to leave.

  Zeb’s grampa crawled out of the tent, smiled, and stood watching Zeb. “Getting a little anxious, Zeb?”

  “Yes, sir, I guess I am. The draft horses are ready to go. Once we get the horses tacked up and our tents and bedrolls tied up, we can leave any time.”

  They moved out of the camp with the first light. When they reached the upper meadow of the Ryan horse farm, the dragoons handed Zeb the leads for each of the four horses the army had borrowed. The army patrol left and hurried on to Nashville.

  Zeb and his grampa sat on their horses, the draft horses gathered around them on their leads, and looked down into the valley below. In the distance they could see the farmhouse, almost hidden by the pine trees Zeb’s grampa had planted thirty years earlier. A wisp of white smoke rose lazily from the cookstove chimney.

  They could see Josh loading up his arms with firewood. As he turned to go back into the house, he looked up and spotted them. He waved and then danced around in the dirt yard. He dropped the firewood and raced into the farmhouse.

  Zeb’s grampa started to zigzag down the steep grassy meadow, leading two of the draft horses. Zeb paused for a moment, staring down into the valley below. Then he urged Christmas forward, leading Kapucha and the other two draft horses behind him.

  Were there really an earthquake and a comet in the year

  Author’s Note

  1811?

  Yes, and more wonders. The people of the Mississippi Territory called 1811 “The Year of Wonders.” On March 25, 1811, Flaugergues Honoré discovered a comet, which appeared low in the western sky. It had two tails, which astronomers today have estimated to be 132 million miles long. The comet was visible off and on for about nine months, increasing in brightness during September and October 1811, the period when Zeb and Hannah were in Natchez. Many people thought that the comet was a bad omen, warning them that something terrible was about to happen.

  Something bad did happen, but the comet had nothing to do with this second wonder. On December 16, 1811, at two o’clock in the morning, the southeastern United States was hit with the worst earthquake ever recorded in America. It was centered in New Madrid, Missouri, and t
otally destroyed that small city. The quake was so powerful that it changed the course of the Mississippi River in many places and created Reelfoot Lake in western Tennessee. For a short while, the river ran backward—upstream—as the lake filled up. The earthquake was so strong that the shaking ground rang church bells in Virginia and even the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, about 800 miles away. It was felt across the nation, almost to the Rocky Mountains. Strong aftershocks continued through December 1811, and tremors were still being felt in early February 1812.

  The earthquake was actually three earthquakes occurring very close together. Geologists now believe that the three earthquakes were each of a magnitude of 8.0 or higher on the Richter scale, almost as strong as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 (magnitude of 8.25). The three New Madrid earthquakes are among the great quakes of recent history, changing the face of North America—with large areas sunk into the earth, new lakes formed, and forests destroyed—more than any earthquake ever on the continent.

  The third wonder of 1811 was the steamboat New Orleans. Built in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by Nicholas Roosevelt and Robert Fulton, it was launched on the Ohio River in Pittsburgh in September 1811. It stopped in St. Louis and, to the amazement of bystanders and possible investors, the steamboat demonstrated that it could steam upstream! The New Orleans was in the Mississippi River when the earthquake hit and, although the steamboat was not severely damaged, the captain had great difficulty navigating the river for many weeks, as known channels had disappeared and new, unknown channels had formed.

  The New Orleans demonstrated once again that it could steam upstream when it reached Natchez in late December 1811. Hannah and Zeb just missed seeing it. Shortly after its arrival in the city of New Orleans on January 10, 1812, the boat began regular service between New Orleans and Natchez. The steamboat New Orleans sank a few years later when it hit a log which pierced the hull.

  How did the steam paddleboat change life in the Mississippi Territory, in Natchez, and along the Natchez Trace? How did it affect the Choctaw?

  In 1814, two years after the steamboat New Orleans reached New Orleans, there were twenty-one steamboat arrivals in that city. The impact on the economy of Natchez was enormous. It was now possible to ship huge quantities of bailed cotton to New Orleans by steamboat, then ship them to the mills in Liverpool, England, and in Boston. Cotton became king.

  Many slave owners in the Mississippi Territory had manumitted their slaves, or set them free. But cotton was a laborintensive crop, and the demand for slaves increased sharply with the economic boom of cotton. Laws were passed in 1840 making the manumission of slaves illegal.

  The economic prosperity in Mississippi attracted many white settlers to the region. Their demand for land in the Mississippi Territory put pressure on the U. S. government, which eventually led to the infamous Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek and the removal of the Choctaw from Mississippi, forcing them to join other Indians already being driven out on the Trail of Tears.

  Regular upstream steamboat traffic to St. Louis and to Pittsburgh changed the nature of the Natchez Road. The rich merchants who owned the flatboats—used in the Mississippi and its tributaries through the late 1800s—returned north on steamboats, so the only victims left for outlaws on the Road were the flatboat men walking with little money. The outlaws disappeared from the forest.

  Why did the U. S. Army call the cavalry the Mounted Light Dragoons?

  During the late sixteenth century, the armies of Europe attacked on horseback. It was nearly impossible to fire a musket accurately while mounted, so a special flintlock musket with a short barrel and a pistol handle was invented. The musket evolved into a pistol, and the hammer of the flintlock mechanism on the new pistol was shaped like a dragon. Soon the pistol itself was called a dragoon (possibly a mispronunciation of “dragon”). Later the name was applied to the troops as well.

  The dragoons in Europe and in the United States were considered part of the infantry. They attacked on horseback but carried out defense on foot, as it would have been impossible to load and reload the one-shot muskets or the pistols while mounted.

  What was the strange sand that Zeb encountered in Natchez Under-the-Hill?

  The light, grainy sand is called “loess.” It is topsoil that had blown off the western grasslands thousands of years earlier, during the Ice Age, and deposited in a thick layer along the Mississippi River. It is a mixture of fine sand and organic material.