Mississippi - Day 28 - Emerald Mound and Natchez

Plantation RV Park, Natchez
Tuesday, 28 January 2020

today's route

On the road
I passed a historical marker labeled "Glass Mounds," and there wasn't really any place to stop to take a photo.  This link is the closest I could come.   https://www.hmdb.org  This whole side of MS seems plastered with mound sites from the early Mississippian culture.  The Glass Mounds marker says at this site there's only one mound left out of 4 and possibly 5 original structures - and it's remarkable there's that much left, when you think about it.  If the gardener in Holly Springs feels okay about leveling 4 mass grave mounds of local residents, then it's not surprising these ancient mounds belonging to nobody local would be leveled by people so single-minded about cotton farming they'd convince themselves it's okay to enslave actual boatloads of people.  In that context, what's a mound?

I crossed the Big Black River, and I think that's what I was driving alongside for a bit.  So much water in it I saw a whole string of those herfy metal power poles deep in the water.  Though I don't know whether the water level was that high or the poles were sunk in the river in the first place.

For maybe a half hour I was driving through fog so dense I could see nothing at all around me.  And I really mean nothing.  For a stretch of the road, I felt like I was alone on a 1-lane road going over a hill I couldn't see.  I not only couldn't see anything around the road, I couldn't see the actual road.  Fortunately, this was a divided road with a grass median, because if it had been the kind with just a yellow stripe down the middle, I'm not sure what I'd have done.  There was no shoulder at all so I couldn't pull over.  All I could do was slow down and keep going, hoping to run out of it.  It seemed to go on forever and was really very scary.

I really needed a grocery store and found two listed in Port Gibson, the next town south of Vicksburg on Route 61.  The first one was so small I couldn't even fit in the parking lot; the second one, a Piggly Wiggly, was slightly larger but still didn't have half of what I needed.  So I got to drive around Port Gibson a bit - old town with a few nice old houses but mostly a tired little town - and I'll try a store in Vicksburg.

Remember Red Goose Shoes?  At first, I didn't either, but then something about that red goose flipped a switch in my memory bank and I knew they were still around in my childhood.  That photo is from the internet, but it's much like a sign I saw in Port Gibson - though that one was much older and tireder.  The store it was attached to had gone out of business, as had many other shops in this town - probably a Walmart nearby running the little local folks into the ground.  But I still got a memory blast.

I heard MS's newly-sworn-in governor, Tate Reeves, say on the radio that Mississippians are proud of their small town way of life.  And I'd say that about sums up what I've been seeing in this state - a small town way of life.

I also heard this same governor's ordered that one of the worst units at notorious Parchman Prison be closed, due to wildly unsafe conditions.  The problem is - nobody knows where to put the 675 or so prisoners that are still there.  Parchman is MS's only maximum security prison and has 3,200+ prisoners; there are 19,000+ in prison statewide.  Hard to believe there's really that much crime in this underpopulated state.

I heard that MS has a personal income tax, though income from retirement accounts and social security for seniors is exempt.  I can tell you that they haven't got much of a gas tax here, because MS has the cheapest gas I've found anywhere so far.

Emerald Mound
This is another of MS's mounds, and I wanted to stop here because it's considered the 2nd largest mound in the US; the largest is in Illinois, and I missed that one.

This one is definitely off the beaten path, and I found myself on a road so out-of-repair that I would have turned back if it had been wide enough for me to turn in.  But I made it through, only to find another couple was already there, driving a Subaru with bicycles strapped on it.  Apparently the intrepid types.

this is only part of the very wide platform they built -
you can just see the tip of a secondary mound on top

to give a sense of how high this mound is

the path to the platform's top -
a separate mound above
was built atop the platform

very tired sign

The following exhibits describe the culture of the local Natchez Indians and their feat in building this mound.

traditions endure

It's peaceful at this site, though I suppose it was anything but peaceful back when it was being used.

But even though it's less than a mile from the Natchez Trace Parkway, and less than 2 miles from Route 61, it's still way out of anyone's way to anywhere.  There's no National Park Service ranger here - just the signs.  I guess that isolation is what's kept it from being vandalized.

Natchez
The mound is less than 10 miles north of Natchez.  I went first to a laundromat I'd found online; I was running out of clothes and towels.  Clean, normally priced, decently-functioning machines, easy parking.  No attendant but it turned out everything worked okay without one.

I found a grocery store that wasn't a lot bigger than the ones in Port Gibson, but it had most of what I hadn't found there.  As far as I can tell, western Mississippi either isn't interested in or can't attract large chain grocery stores.  Or even large local grocery stores.  All I found pretty much since Holly Springs were these small ones, something like I remember grocery stores being when I was a kid.  I guess time hasn't altogether moved on outside MS's large cities (of which there aren't many).

Forks of the Road
I drove from there to a place that was once called Forks of the Road, where one of the largest slave markets in the US used to function regularly.  There's nothing there now but a memorial, which I understand took a lot of effort for interested folks to get authorities to erect.  But now they've got lots of informational signs at this crossroads, which has a small parking area off two of the main streets of town.

some background

Enslaved Africans have been in the US since 1619.  They worked in the tobacco fields on the East Coast and the rice and cotton farms along the Gulf Coast.  As New Orleans became a shipping hub, it became a place where these enslaved folks were brought into the US and sold.  Owners in the eastern US often sent some of their slaves south to be resold - they were valuable property, after all.

In 1808, federal law banned the international slave trade, increasing the value of those already in the country.  Even more of them were brought south, where farm lands were opening up - brought here either by landowners expanding their farming enterprises or by those who wanted to resell them.

details about the local slave trade and about the forced migration

From 1831-1834, Louisiana banned the interstate slave trade, which moved across the Mississippi River to Natchez.  By 1833, Natchez residents had become worried about the large pens of those waiting to be sold, a worry that intensified with a cholera outbreak: Natchez banned what were called "negro traders."

These folks moved just outside of what were then the city limits (now it's in the middle of town) to an area called the Forks of the Road, and bought or leased land to continue their sale of slaves.  Thousands of enslaved people passed through this area in just a few years.

ads from the period

The market was seriously curtailed from 1837, when MS banned the sale of out-of-state slaves, to 1846, when the law was repealed (bad for business).  By 1856, the markets at the Forks had expanded to cover nearby areas as well.

The slave trade came to a screeching halt in 1863, partly because of the Emancipation Proclamation, but mostly because Union soldiers - including what were called United States Colored Troops - had gained control of the MS River, including the Natchez area.

This business of buying and selling human beings was a thriving concern in this area for a very long time.  None of the buildings have survived; these signs are all that's left as a reminder.  Before I started my trip I'd read a magazine article about the forced migration - the author was trying to trace ancestors who'd come along one of the routes.  That's why I knew to look for this site which, otherwise, I'd likely never have known was here.  It's not something Natchez promotes.

Natchez Historic District
"Natchez On The Mississippi, established 1716" proclaims the large sign as you drive into town.  And it does look very old.  I drove around the 10 blocks or so that have been designated a historic district and saw many old buildings of many different types of architecture.  Actually, it reminded me of New Orleans, probably because they were both governed by the same batches of people in the past.

In a large park on the edge of the bluff, I saw a historical marker about the period of Spanish rule.  For a different kind of history, I passed another marker not far from that one.

Dunleith

I passed Dunleith Historic Inn, built around 1855, and Wikipedia says it's Natchez's only surviving example of a plantation house with a fully encircling colonnade of Greek Revival columns.  Impressive, huh?

I saw 2 tulip magnolias on either side of a house, both taller than the house, just starting to bloom.  Really beautiful.

Leaving the historic district I came upon a different historic period: I stumbled on a place called Malt Shop, selling "Sundies, Shakes, Hamburgers."  It looked like it had been there since at least the '50s, maybe longer.

I thought Natchez felt like a pleasant town, though I got mixed reactions from residents.  One young woman said she liked it very much because of the history.  But another young man said there was nothing to do here except go out to eat, and yet another woman said there weren't any activities for kids to do - she said she used to live in Beaumont where there were lots of places to take her kids, but there's not much at all here. 

And I drove a little way south of town to the campground.