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 totally 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.