Natchez Trace

The Natchez Trace was a 440-mile-long path extending from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee, linking the Cumberland, the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers. It was used extensively by Native Americans and early Caucasian explorers as both a trade and transit route in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Today, the trail has been commemorated with the 444-mile-long Natchez Trace Parkway which follows the trail's approximate path. (See TNGenWeb's picture http://users.ev1.net/~gpmoran/natchez.jpg.) The trail itself has a long and rich history, filled with brave explorers, dastardly outlaws and daring settlers. Parts of the original trail are still accessible.

Bushwhackers, Bibles and Boats

Despite its brief lifespan, the Trace served an essential function in the years it was in existence. It was the only reliable and most expedient link between the goods of the North and the trading ports of Louisiana. This brought all sorts of people down the Trace: itinerant preachers, highwaymen and traders were just a few.

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The circuit preachers were some of the most notable of the lot. Unlike its physical development, the "spiritual development" of the Trace started from the Natchez end up: several Methodist preachers began working a circuit along the Trace as early as 1800, and claimed a membership of 1,067 Caucasians and 267 African-Americans in 1812.

Related Topics:
Methodist - African-Americans

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The Methodists were soon joined in Natchez by other Protestant religions, including the Baptists and Presbyterians. The Presbyterians and their offshoot, the Cumberland Presbyterians, were more active than the Methodists or Baptists in procuring converts along the Trace itself, including the Native American population—the Presbyterians starting from the south, the Cumberland Presbyterians from the north.

Related Topics:
Baptists - Presbyterians - Cumberland Presbyterians

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As with much of the unsettled West, the Trace was also a hotbed for banditry. Much of it centered around Natchez Under-The-Hill, as compared with its more tame sister city at Natchez On-The-Hill. Under-the-Hill, where the port to the Mississippi was located, was a hotbed for gamblers, prostitutes and drunkenness. The rowdiest of them all were the Kaintucks, the wild frontiersmen from upriver who came in on the steamboats and flatboats loaded with goods, left them in Natchez in exchange for pockets full of cash, and summarily treated Natchez Under-the-Hill as what could be generously called an early 1800s Las Vegas, Nevada or Amsterdam.

Related Topics:
Natchez Under-The-Hill - Natchez On-The-Hill - Kaintucks - Las Vegas, Nevada - Amsterdam

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Still worse dangers lurked in the wilderness outside the city boundaries on the Trace itself. Highwaymen such as John Murrell and Samuel Mason terrorized travelers along the road, and operated large gangs of organized brigands in one of the first examples of land-based American organized crime.

Related Topics:
John Murrell - Samuel Mason - Organized crime

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