page_title: Wolf River (Tennessee)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Wolf River (Tennessee) / History
caption_attribution_description: The watershed of the Riviere a Margot (now called Wolf River) in 1740. Everything above the red dotted line (a Chickasaw trail) is part of the Wolf River. Detail from the map Carte particulière d'une partie de la Louisianne ou les fleuve et rivierres onts etés relevé a l'estime &amp; les routtes par terre relevé &amp; mesurées aux pas, par les Srs. Broutin, de Vergés, ingénieurs &amp; Saucier dessinateur. Drawn by a cartographer who only signed the name "Demarigny," the map concentrates on the surveys of Broutin, Vergés, and Saucier in Mississippi and Alabama. "Demarigny" was probably Antoine Phillipe, Sieur de Marigny, Chevalier de St. Louis (1722-1779), a New Orleans-based geographer and explorer. Whether or not the composite map was drawn by Antoine Phillipe, this specific map detail is based on surveys by his step-father, Ignace François Broutin, Capitaine Ingénieur du Roi [chief engineer of the Louisiana colony] during the Chickasaw Campaign of 1739-40. Broutin accompanied Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, governor of Louisiana, up the Mississippi River on this military expedition and was charged with building fortifications (Forte d e l'Assumption on the Fourth Chickasaw Bluff at the mouth of the Margot River) and finding a way to move heavy siege weapons from Fort Assumption to, Ackia, the Chickasaw stronghold near present-day Pontotoc, Mississippi. A cannon-less Bienville suffered a bloody defeat at Ackia in 1736. Existing trails proved unsuitable for heavy wagons, so Broutin explored a water-route via the Margot (now the Wolf River) after a small group of young Iroquois mercenaries reported for duty at Ft. Assumption via the Margot, claiming that one of the river's branches extended to within 8 leagues of the Chickasaw villages. Broutin's party of French grenadiers and African slaves attempted the survey during the Wolf River Watershed's low water season (February) and encountered too many fallen trees snagging the channel. Before spring rains could raise the water level, Bienville secured a peace settlement with the Chickasaw and returned to New Orleans. The other watersheds depicted on this map detail, moving north to south, include Nonconnah Creek and the intricate Coldwater River system. A branch of the Little Tallahatchie is seen at the lower right corner, although it is identified by Broutin as the Riviere des Yasoax (Yazoo). The Little Tallahatchie does, however, flow into the Yazoo much further south.
context_page_description: Wolf River is a 105-mile-long alluvial river in western Tennessee and northern Mississippi, whose confluence with the Mississippi River was the site of various Chickasaw, French, Spanish and American communities that eventually became Memphis, Tennessee. It is estimated to be about 12,000 years old, formed by Midwestern glacier runoff carving into the region's soft alluvial soil. It should not be confused with The Wolf River which flows primarily in Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky. The Wolf River rises in the Holly Springs National Forest at Baker's Pond in Benton County, Mississippi, and flows northwest into Tennessee, before entering the Mississippi River north of downtown Memphis.
  In 1985, the Wolf River Conservancy was formed in opposition to plans for additional channel dredging. In 1995 the "Ghost River" section of the Wolf was saved from timber auction by a coordinated effort of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, local conservation activists, and the Wolf River Conservancy.
context_section_description: Wolf River is a 105-mile-long (169 km) alluvial stream in western Tennessee and northern Mississippi, whose confluence with the Mississippi River was the site of various Chickasaw, French, Spanish and American communities and forts that eventually became Memphis, Tennessee. 
  The Wolf River is estimated to be about 12,000 years old, formed by Midwestern glacier runoff carving the region's soft alluvial soil. It is one of many rivers in West Tennessee and Mississippi that prompted the Chickasaw to call the region "the land that leaks."
  Circa 400 AD, a massive seismic event in the Ellendale Fault (part of the New Madrid Fault system) raised a low ridge across present-day east Memphis, diverting Nonconnah Creek away from the Wolf, causing it to flow directly into the Mississippi River several miles south of the Wolf's mouth. The lowermost section of the Nonconnah that continued to flow into the Wolf eventually became known as Cypress Creek.
  The Mississippian culture thrived in this area until about the 16th century, as evidenced by mound sites and accounts by Hernando de Soto. Shortly afterwards, the Chickasaw nation settled northern Mississippi, western Tennessee, and eastern Arkansas.
  In 1682, French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle claimed the region near the mouth of the Wolf River. The French alternately called the river Rivière de Mayot (or Margot), Blackbird River, and Rivière du Loup. The original Loup was rumored to be a Mahican Indian guide who disappeared along the river while guiding the French. The Mahicans were also known as Les Loups or "The Wolves." According to one account, both the English and Chickasaw afterwards called the river "Loup" in their respective languages: "Wolf" and "Nashoba."
  During a multi-river voyage from Chicago, Illinois, to Biloxi, Mississippi, Jesuit priest Jacques Gravier made the following journal entry for 26 October 1700, after reaching the mouth of the Wolf:
  We passed the Riviere a Mayot [Wolf] on the south, from the name of a savage of the Mahican nation who was of Mr. de la Salle's party. This river does not seem to be very large, but is said to be a good hunting ground, and that the Chickacha come to its mouth, from which they are only three days‚ journey, cutting south inland.
  Concerned about American activities in their territory along the east bank of the Mississippi River, the Spanish colonial government erected Fort San Fernando de las Barrancas in 1795 near the Chickasaw Bluffs at the mouth of the Wolf River. The fort was dismantled in 1797 in accordance with Pinckney's Treaty.
  Spanish documents referred to the river as Las Casas.
  In the early 19th century, the Wolf River was declared navigable, from Memphis to La Grange, by the Tennessee General Assembly, which appropriated funds to remove obstructions for keel boat travel. In 1888, Memphis stopped using the Wolf River as its principal source of drinking water, switching to artesian wells, which are still used and which are replenished by the Wolf's watershed.
  Because of its foul odor, the Wolf was dammed in 1960 near its mouth and diverted into the Mississippi north of Mud Island. The section of the Wolf downstream of this channel diversion became a slackwater harbor of the Mississippi known today as Wolf River Harbor, which separates Mud Island (actually a peninsula) from the Memphis "mainland." Completion of channelization of the Wolf from the Mississippi upstream to Gray's Creek, east of Germantown, Tennessee, resulted in a lowered riverbed and diminished wetland habitat. In 1970, surface drainage, sewage, and industrial pollution caused a group of scientists and environmentalists to pronounce the river  "dead" around Memphis.
  In 1977 Mary Winslow Chapman published I Remember Raleigh, which included vivid descriptions of a pre-channelized Wolf River.
  To form any picture of [the river's environs] we must forget what we now see and imagine the Wolf as it was then, a clear, spring-fed stream slipping silently along through the endless forest, where the unbroken shade shielded it from the fierce Southern sunshine and 
caption: The Wolf River's watershed (everything above the red dotted line), as surveyed in 1740 by Ignace Francois Broutin, chief engineer of French Louisiana. The French had named the Wolf "Riviere a Margot"
exif: {}