The Port Gibson reveille. [volume] (Port Gibson, Miss.) 1890-current, 1909-09-23
The Road Gen. Wilkinson Built.

/ uG (OtteAbAS DAoPaSu WAAbGo al
editorial in the advocacy of nat
ional aid In the rehabilitation OF
the military road of early days,
constructed by Gen. Wilkison from
Nashville, Tenn, to Natchez, Miss,
known as the e'Natchez Trace" I"
II we are not mistaken all this road
lis now existent and represented by
the best wagon routes In the state.
Aberdeen Examiner.
The old trail through the wilder
ness between the settlements on
lower Mississippi and those on the
Cumberland, known as the Natchez
or Nashville Trace-antedated
Gen. Wilkinson. When Natchez
district was Spanish province,
the fatboat trade from Kentucky
and Tennessee to New Orleans
was heavy. After disposing of
their cargoes the rule of the boat.
men was to return home, up the
river route as far as Natchez, and
then by way OF "the lonely route, :"
as Monette calls it, "of a solitary
Indian trace to the Cumberland
settlements.
Gen, Wilkinson was commander
In chief of the United States army,
when he arrived III the Natchez
country; shortly after its military
occupation by Maj. Guion, U. S.
A. He moved the troops from
Natchez and other posts to Lotus
heights, where he built Fort Adj
ans in 1898. Ouly six miles from
the spanish frontier, and the Red
river mouth, which was the high
ways to the already coveted and
claimed spanish state of Texas,
this way the then most important
fort and Stragic point on all the
frontier 1t was so looked upon
by the war department., and Gen.
Wilkinson, who made Fort Adams
army headquarters Previously the
fort at Memphis was known as
Fort Adams. 1t was changed by
Gen. Wilkinson and named after
Mr.. Pickering. the Secretary of
War under President John Adams.
AS to the building of wagon COM
munjcation and a mail route from
this remote and isolated Natchez
district Monette says:
"Gen. Wilkinson by treaty at the
Chicksaw bluffs 6Memphis) secpr-
ed from the Chicksaws the right
to wagon road to cross the Ten
nessee river below the Muscle
shoals, at Colbert's ford, and then
through the Chicksaw Nation to
the Grindstone ford on the Bayou
Pierre.
To be understood this must not
read literally. AS the Chicksaws
could not have ceded a road way
to the Grindstone ford, which was
more than a hundred miles from
their nearest boundary, no more
could have been meant than a
grant of the trace as far as 1t went
through the land of that tribe. The
road that Wilkinson built Is TINS
referred to by Monette:
"Gen. Wilkison next concluded a
treaty with the Choctaws for open
ing convenient wagon road from
the vicinity of Fort Adams to the
Chickasaw boundary near the
Yazoo river. The road connecting
with the Chickasaw trace. opened
the 6rst direct communication be-
tween the settlements on the lower
Mississippi. and those of the
Cumberland, near Nashville.
The road that climbs from the
plateau on which the little town of
Fort Adams is built to the top of
the lofty bluff that overhangs the
river at the old fort, Is still known as
Wilkinson road; or 1t was forty
years ago. TO intersect the Chik-
asaw trace It probably led to Match
ez, forty miles north OF the fort,
and thence by the old Grindstone
ford on Bayou Pierre, where In 1898
| 1t left the white settlements and
passed through the Choctaw and
Chickasaw Nations to the Ten
nessee. But It must have en-
tered the latter far to the north
east OF the Yazoo, only the upper
streams OF which traversed the
sx = 49, gAgxg~Sw~xa.m r. r.