We woke to a warm cloudy morning and a burst of automatic gunfire in the distance. Since the park had No Weapons signs everywhere, we figured it was enough distance to risk eating breakfast outside. Then we went and paid a different, younger park attendant, who was so equally horrified at the thought of paying customers that she must have been a daughter or a niece, and then we headed west along the 98 towards Natchez, the Bluff city. Architectural pearl of the South.
We stopped at Dan’s Diner for pancakes and gas and we were served by a waitress who was close enough to Thelma to make it memorable. There was no sign of Louise though.
A couple of miles up the road we stopped to explore one of the many flea markets dotted around Mississippi. You can’t travel three miles in the state without coming across a big circus tent selling fireworks, or a flea market.
This one was indoors and covered at least an acre. The space had been carved out into little rooms all higgeldy-piggeldy high with stuff and inter-connected with a circular walkway around the market. There were rooms of ceramics; of glassware; of paintings and furniture; of books and records and tools and odd bits of old machinary. I even found a room full of old camera equipment.
I bought an old framed piece of cross-stitching. It was on a faded piece of cheesecloth, a landscape of some birch trees by a pond. I try to buy these when I find them, if there’s a hint of originality to them. Some other woman’s time and creativity went into them. This one was perfectly stitched, the colours chosen with care to replicate the shadows on the tree trunks and even in the petals of the little yellow flowers underneath them.
Himself thought it might be from up north somewhere because we haven’t seen any birches since we got to the South. I always wonder who made these pieces, and how they end up in my hands.
As we got deeper into Mississippi, the land became a little hilly. Wide green pasture, interspersed with stands of pine and cottonwoods curved away and up from the road. Mostly cattle pasture, but we passed some horse farms too. Big glossy brown horses, standing around piles of hay in the sunlight. Then, suddenly as always, the clouds poured in from seemingly nowhere and we were driving through torrential rain, so thick we couldn’t see past the edge of the road. We passed through McCoomb and on in this manner, and the rain didn’t ease up till we pulled into the outskirts of Natchez at around 4pm.
It was like any other town at the edge. Strip malls, car dealerships, Chick-O-Filas, Waffle Houses, we searched for a grocery store but as usual there was only Walmart. I hate shopping there, but this close to Arkansas, their dominance is absolute.
I offered to go in alone, seeing as Himself had driven through the rain and needed a nap. Three days before Christmas the trolleys were end to end in two lanes through every aisle. There was no option but to join the flow. Mississippians walk very slowly at the best of times. The woman in front of me picked up every item on the shelves and discussed it slowly with her elderly mother. They had two carts overflowing with food, toys, clothes, beer, wine, pop, and every kind of chip available. They kept piling stuff on. Every now and again we would pass bread or water and I would put something in my trolley.
After two hours I made it to the checkout. There were three open. I ended up behind the same two ladies. They discussed each item with the check out attendant. I went to my happy place and listened to the waves and the wind in the palm trees of some Caribbean beach. Eventually they were done. They ambled off and the check out lady rolled her eyes at me and rang my pitiful groceries through.
Because of that, it was almost dark when we crossed the high bridge over the Mississippi river and pulled into our RV park on the Louisiana side. It wasn’t a very nice park, but the view of the river was great and we went to sleep with the sound of the barges bumping up and down and blowing their fog horns all night.
The next morning came wreathed in a fog so thick we couldn’t see the riverbank fifteen feet away. Gradually it dispersed and the bridge came into view, then into focus and when we could see the other side we crossed back to Natchez and parked on the large bluff near the old city.
The view of the river is superb. No wonder the French chose it as a site in 1716. Of course, because it was a highly desirable site, the Natchez people were already living here in significant numbers. Their ceremonial and civic mounds are still visible here and there in the city. Early French settlers describe the society and events in great detail, including the ceremonies after the death of the war chief Great Serpent. In 1729, the Natchez had enough of the encroachment and launched a significant attack against the French. By 1731, it was all over and most of the warriors were captured and sent to the West Indies as slaves.
The Natchez as a people are gone now. Destroyed by disease, war, slavery, those few who survived the 1730s moved west and were absorbed into the confederation of the Cherokee. Lately though, the diaspora has reorganised into the Natchez Nation.
Despite their efforts to consolidate the position, after the Seven Years War, the French ceded Natchez to the Spanish. The United States won it from them in the Revolutionary War.
Natchez is the southernmost point of the Natchez Trace, which is an old road that goes to Memphis. Before steam power allowed for travel upstream on the Mississippi river, riverboat crews unloaded their cargoes in Natchez or New Orleans to the south, then walked home via the Trace. The Trace itself evolved from an ancient indigenous route following the buffalo migration east of the Mississippi Delta.
The nineteenth century was the pinnacle of Natchez’ influence. Plantation owners in the region built huge mansions in the town, far away from the heat and ugliness of their cotton and sugar cane empires.
After Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, the kind of cotton that was grown along the Mississippi increased substantially in value and Natchez became an important loading point for plantations all along the river banks. As more settlers arrived, they encroached on Choctaw lands more and more. When Andrew Jackson became President in 1828, he pressed for their removal west of the Mississippi and it is estimated that over 15,000 indigenous people were removed from their homelands in a couple of years.
As the cotton plantations grew, so did the enslaved workforce. Slave traders like John Armfield bought land outside the city and sold their fellow humans there under the sweltering heat of the Delta. Over a million African slaves were separated from their families and sold, then force marched south from the Carolinas and Virginia to the Forks of the Road outside Natchez, where they were auctioned off to the men whose graceful antebellum homes make it one of the prettiest cities in the USA.
Although the city’s history is drenched in blood, none of it was spilled during the Civil War. The city fell to the enemy without a gun fired, and the stately homes and civic buildings were preserved, like those of Savannah.
After the war, sharecroppers provided the labour to keep the cotton industry growing, and the lumber industry became an important element of the economy. The railroads did for Natchez and today it is a sleepy little town dependent on tourism for the bulk of its revenues.
We followed the ‘Natchez Trail’ around the historic downtown. It was very quiet. The houses are beautiful. Mostly from an early Georgian period, built in brick, with stucco over it that is painted subdued tones of grey or cream. Larger mansions are set back from the street and are visible in the gloom from the canopy of live oaks providing shade. Smaller houses, built by doctors, newspaper owners, lawyers and the like, are almost on the pavement, with just a small rose garden for cover. The smell of roses in the air was sublime.
We visited the Episcopal Church which had two stained glass windows created by Tiffany. Then we wandered down Commercial St, which was lined with antiques stores on both sides. We stopped for coffee at the Coffee Coop. At the table next to us, a cop and two detectives, all African American, were discussing a case over lunch, but I couldn’t get as many of the details as I wanted to.
Natchez was a hotbed of Klan activity up to and including the Civil Rights era, and there are several unsolved murders of NAACP activists who were working towards equality in local factories and large employers. In recent years, the FBI has managed to convict a couple of elderly men of murders they committed in the sixties.
After our coffee we felt we’d had enough of Natchez. On the way out of town we stopped at the Forks of the Road to pay our respects to the souls who passed through.
It was a triangle of grass at the intersection of three roads. There was a sign, and a plaque that detailed some of the history of the place. On two sides, it faced dilapidated auto shops. On the third you could see the walls marking the edge of the estate John Armfield built for himself with his money.
There were no rose bushes here.
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