Natchez---- History, Ante Bellum Elegance, and Roadside Kitsch on the Mississippi River
Written: Jul 28 '02 (Updated Apr 11 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Sights, history, photo ops, and food
Cons: Hot & Humid in the summer
The Bottom Line: Natchez is the best preserved "Old South" travel destination in the country
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| Howard_Creech's Full Review: Natchez, Mississippi |
The Natchez area has been continuously inhabited for more than a two thousand years, first by pre-historic Native American peoples and then by the moundbuilding Natchez Indians.
A Spaniard named Hernando De Soto was probably the first European to visit the Natchez area. De Soto was one of the conquistadors who conquered Peru, held the Inca ruler hostage until his followers filled a large room with gold and jewels, and then murdered the Inca King anyway. De Soto became a wealthy man with his share of the Inca loot. He returned to Spain and convinced the Spanish King to support his plan to conquer Florida. De Soto financed a huge expedition and set out from Cuba to conquer the North American continent.
His army landed in Florida (near present-day Tampa) in 1539 and headed north in search of riches and glory. De Soto was the first European to penetrate into the interior of North America, traveling as far north as present day Tennessee. His army covered more than 4,000 miles, about the same distance covered by Captains Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery. The Spaniards found no riches; instead the expedition was constantly at war with the most ferocious fighters the Spaniards had ever encountered. For more than three years the Spaniards wandered aimlessly through ten southern states, continuously at war with the Native Americans they encountered.
By the time the Spaniards reached the area of present day Memphis in 1541, more than half of De Soto’s force had been killed by disease or in clashes with Native American warriors. The Spaniards crossed the Mississippi River into present day Arkansas, wandering west and south in a long arc before returning to the Mississippi River near where it is joined by the Red River, just a few miles south of the chief village of the Natchez Indians. On the banks of the river he had discovered, De Soto contracted a fever and died. The stragglers from his once proud army dumped his body in the river and fled down the Mississippi in rude log boats with the local Indians in hot pursuit.
The first documented contact between the Natchez Indians and Europeans occurred in 1682 when La Salle stopped at the Natchez Village on his way south to find the mouth of the Mississippi River. The French established a fortified trading post called Fort Rosalie at the Natchez village in 1716. The little European colony grew quickly, but there were many disputes between the French and the Natchez and much trouble with English provocateurs. In 1729 the Natchez Indians, encouraged by English spies, rebelled against the French. The short deadly revolt was disastrous for the Natchez Indians who were forced to flee their homeland and join their Choctaw and Creek cousins. Natchez was seized by the British in 1763, after the French and Indian War, but fell into the hands of the Spanish in 1779. The area became a part of the young American republic in 1798.
After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 wealthy Natchez cotton planters were able to buy cheap land on the Louisiana side of the river. The rich alluvial soil was perfect for growing cotton but the flat humid fields were rife with malaria and during the 18th and 19th centuries, malaria killed thousands of people every year. The high bluffs on the Mississippi side of the river were cooler, healthier, and less susceptible to mosquitoes. The wealthy planters lived in elegant Natchez mansions cooled by breezes that never touched the slaves who worked the lowland fields across the river.
Natchez grew to be one of the major ports on the Mississippi River and by the middle of the 19th century; almost half of all U. S. millionaires lived in Natchez. Dozens of fine ante bellum homes were built and the economic boom fueled by "King Cotton" paid for all of them. Natchez had a darker side too, the area at the foot of the bluffs (called Natchez under the hill) where hundreds of flatboats and steamboats docked each year was known as the Barbary Coast of the Mississippi River. Gamblers, prostitutes, con men, thugs, and criminals of every stripe plied their nefarious trades without interference, while the planters, wealthy businessmen, and local merchants on the bluffs above ignored the riff raff who lived on the river below.
Unlike Vicksburg, to the north, Natchez survived the Civil War with very little damage because the city surrendered without putting up a serious fight. After the Civil War, wealthy plantation owners fell on hard times. Growing cotton without slave labor wasn't profitable, and many of those who had been very rich before the war lost everything. A few of the more industrious Natchez ladies converted their former mansions into large boarding houses to provide lodging for the armies of carpetbaggers who descended on the area.
Today, Natchez is the best-preserved ante bellum town in the country. Tours of the many famous homes pay for their upkeep, riverboat gambling adds millions to the city's coffers every year, and thousands of tourists keep the city’s shops, galleries, restaurants, and bed & breakfast’s thriving. Those who would like to experience what life was like in the "Old South" can stay in some of these ante bellum mansions, take long horse drawn carriage rides along quiet streets lined with Spanish Moss draped live oaks, or try a little gambling on the River Boat.
The Famous Natchez Pilgrimages
Every year during March and October Natchez sponsors a series of tours of ante bellum homes. Dozens of historic homes (many open to tourists only during the pilgrimages) can be seen and savored in all their glory. Ladies in crinolines and gentlemen dressed like Rhett Butler add to the “old south” ambience. 1-800-647-6742.
Ante Bellum Homes in Natchez
Dunleith (1856) is encircled on all four sides by white columns. This magnificent house sits on a gentle rise surrounded by forty acres of landscaped gardens and a wonderful collection of historic outbuildings. Overnight lodging is available. 84 Homochitto St.
The Civil War prevented the completion of Longwood (1860) the largest and most elaborate octagonal house in the United States. The house has been preserved in its incomplete state with tools and paint cans still laying exactly where workers left them more than 140 years ago. The family lived in the basement until 1897. Longwood is a truly striking house capped by a red, onion shaped dome and surrounded by lush Spanish moss draped trees. The Southern gothic family cemetery is not to be missed. 140 Lower Woodville Rd.
Stanton Hall (1857) this landmark house has four gigantic fluted Corinthian columns that support double porticos filigreed with artistic wrought iron work. 401 High Street. This is my wife’s favorite Natchez house.
Rosalie (1820) was headquarters for the Union Army in Natchez during the Civil War. 100 Orleans St
Magnolia Hall (1858) this lovely Greek Revival mansion was shelled during the Civil War by a Union Gunboat-- 215 So. Pearl St
Native American Natchez
When French colonists built Fort Rosalie in 1716 the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians was the site of the tribe’s main ceremonial mound. Archaeological evidence suggests the tribe moved from the Emerald Mound, just north of present day Natchez, and built a new ceremonial mound. Archaeological excavations over the last seventy five years combined with historical French documents from the colonial period (1716-1730) provide a pretty comprehensive picture of how the Natchez lived before the arrival of the Europeans. The park features a museum, replicas of Native American buildings, mounds, nature trails, and a picnic pavilion. The village is located just off U. S. Highway 61 on Jefferson Davis Blvd.
The village is open seven days a week and admission is free. Annual events include the Natchez Pow Wow and the Eleventh Moon Storytelling Festival.
Naughty Natchez
During the flatboat era, Under-the-Hill ranked as the rowdiest landing on the Mississippi River. The area was filled with saloons, gambling dens, and houses of ill repute. From around 1785 until about 1820 Natchez under the hill was the departure point for frontiersmen headed home to Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Western Pennsylvania, the last chance to “whoop it up” a little before the long hard dangerous trek home.
The invention of the steamboat curtailed traffic on the Natchez trace but it only increased the rowdiness and criminality of Natchez under the hill. Steamboats by the hundreds docked in Natchez from the early years of the nineteenth century through the years before World War Two in the twentieth century. During this period Natchez under the hill flourished. Tinhorn gamblers, thugs, murderers, conmen, swindlers, prostitutes, and traders in every illegal substance known to mankind called Natchez under the hill home. Organized prostitution in the area survived until 1992 (the last of New Orleans “Storeyville” houses were closed in 1917) when Nelly Jackson’s house of ill repute (located on the SW corner of Monroe & Franklin Streets) was firebombed, killing the octogenarian Madame.
Nothing remains of Natchez under the hill, the bars with peanut shells on the floor and the “Lady Luck” a 300 foot floating casino designed to look like an old time steamboat are strictly for tourists. The Delta Queen and the American Queen used to dock at the Natchez waterfront, providing at least a glimpse of what it must have been like when steamboats arrived, but the company that operated the boats is in bankruptcy and has ceased operations.
Eating in Natchez
Natchez is home to scores of restaurants; most of them designed to separate tourists from as much of their cash as possible. There are a few exceptions. Cock of the Walk, located in the magnificent old 19th century Natchez railroad depot is worth a visit if you like Southern food. Try the Cock of the Walk’s "Keelboat Special", catfish fillets, hush puppies, river fries and skillet bread and if you are especially adventurous you can add a pot of mustard greens and a dish of crunchy deep fried dill pickle slices.
The Cock of the Walk’s bill of fare is pretty heavily weighted toward fried foods (my Dad, a good ole Southern boy, always said, “If it ain’t fried, it ain’t cooked”) but you can always diet when you get back home. If you have room left after the catfish dinner, be sure to try the bread pudding with rum sauce or the scrumptious pecan pie. Even with dessert, it will be difficult to spend more than $20.00 to thoroughly feed two hungry adults-- 200 N. Broadway (601) 446-8920.
Strangely, the only evidence of the Spanish colonial presence in Natchez is the incredible popularity of Tamales in the Delta country. Almost every tourist who visits Natchez will, somehow, find his or her way to a humble log cabin at 500 S. Canal Street (601/442-4548). Fat Mama’s Tamales are delicious, cheap, and incredibly filling (a dozen costs less than $7.00). Fat Mama’s is immensely popular with tourists, but the food is good, portions are large, and prices are quite reasonable.
Every B&B in Natchez offers guests some version of the Plantation Breakfast (which could be more aptly called the field hands breakfast) so if your tastes don’t run to eggs, biscuits, bacon sausage, ham, and grits you may want to check out the Donut King, a single story cinderblock “sinker” shop right across from the Natchez Mall. The Donut King isn’t fancy, but then donuts are generally considered a proletarian breakfast choice. The Donut King's cop calmers are fresh, light and fluffy, and not too sweet.
On Highway 61, just south of Natchez, stands what is arguably the single most egregious example of politically incorrect roadside architecture in America, Mammy's Cupboard. Mammy’s is a tiny cafe housed in building built to look like a gigantic and genuinely kitschy Aunt Jemima. The thirty-foot tall Mammy figure has been a Natchez landmark since 1940 when she was built to lure hungry tourists off U. S. Highway 61 and to increase traffic for the attached gas station. Beneath her voluminous red hoop skirt is a tiny restaurant with three tables and a miniature gift shop selling homemade jams and jellies. Her equally generous bustle holds a small kitchen and a few additional tables. The dining room is built of brick supported by ancient cypress beams rescued from an old cotton gin.
“Mammy’s Cupboard” was a big hit with northern tourists who saw the restaurant as part of the myth of “old south” Natchez. Famous photographer Edward Weston (best known for his Point Lobos California landscapes, his sensuous B&W images of peppers and sliced cabbages, and his sinuous nudes) photographed Mammy’s in 1941. Weston’s rare color image (showing the still new building against a cobalt blue sky with multi colored old fashioned gas pumps out front) was used to highlight an American Heritage article that described the restaurant as a “monument” to the iconic black deep south earth mother dubbed “Mammy” by our culture. Mammy’s is best known for Red Beans and Rice, Chicken pot pies, luscious homemade bread, sinful Southern desserts, and really unique and super tart blueberry lemonade. Photographers won’t want to miss this attraction. 555 Highway 61 South (601) 445-8957. Mammy’s is open daily (Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.) for lunch.
Accommodations
Natchez is home to dozens of Bed & Breakfast Inns, many of them historic houses. Two centuries ago, Hope Farm (1775) was the residence of the Spanish governor of Natchez, now it's a temporary residence for visiting tourists. Travelers can also while away a night or two at white-columned ante bellum manor houses like Dunleith, or sample some Southern style Victorian luxury at Highpoint, an 1890 house with three large guestrooms, a "plantation" breakfast, and mint juleps every evening on the verandah.
Near-by Attractions
Just North of Natchez is the second largest Native American mound in the United States. When French explorers and traders first visited the area they described the Natchez as the most civilized tribe on the North American continent. Emerald Mound was built by the Mississippi Culture ancestors of the Natchez about 1300 as a religious center. The mound covers more than eight acres and required the labor of thousands (and many years) to build, one basket of earth at a time. Emerald mound is topped by two smaller mounds where rustic temples once stood. Emerald mound was still in use when the first European explorers arrived on the scene.
The Natchez were farmers, growing corn, beans, and squash. The tribe successfully exploited the surrounding area, hunting, fishing, and gathering seasonal wild plants, grains, and fruits. Their highly organized society was divided into the priestly nobility and commoners. Social rank was determined by matrilineal descent (through the female line). The hereditary chieftain of the tribe was called the Great Sun. The Natchez culture was more than 1000 years old when the French settled in the area early in the 18th century, less than a generation later (1730) the Natchez culture had ceased to exist, the tribe dispersed to the four winds after a disastrous rebellion against French domination. The Emerald Mound is managed by the USNPS. From Natchez, follow U. S. Highway 61 north to the entrance to the Natchez Trace Parkway. Follow the Natchez Trace Parkway north about two miles.
More than a thousand years before the arrival of Europeans in the Natchez area, Native American hunters and traders used an old buffalo migration path, called the Natchez Trace, for north-south travel. Today’s paved Parkway follows this original trail from Natchez to Nashville, Tennessee. Andrew Jackson, Thomas Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln’s father) and thousands of American pioneers, soldiers, and traders walked the trace. Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark fame) died under mysterious circumstances (he was killed by two gunshot wounds) on the "trace" about halfway between Natchez and Nashville.
During the closing years of the 18th century and the early years of the 19th century (before the invention of the steamboat) settlers on the frontier west of the Appalachians found it difficult to transport goods over the mountains. Commerce depended almost exclusively on river traffic on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Flatboats (large flat-bottomed wooden boats) were constructed in northern Kentucky and southern Indiana. These boats were launched on the Ohio River and filled to the brim with tobacco, hemp, Kentucky Whiskey, hides, and furs.
Flatboatmen like the legendary Mike Fink steered the boats with a single large oar, using the swift river currents to propel the boats down the Ohio River to the Mississippi and then on to Natchez or New Orleans, where the cargo and the boat were sold. Scarce goods like medicines, cloth, gunpowder, etc. were purchased and the intrepid river traders then walked back to Kentucky along the Natchez Trace. Travel on the trace was a dangerous proposition because thieves, cutthroats, and brigands regularly preyed on travelers. Frontiersmen returning home with valuable goods and cash were constantly at risk. The trip could take weeks and there were only a handful of Inns (called Stands) where travelers could spend a night in relative comfort.
The invention of the steamboat pushed the Natchez trace into obscurity, cargo and passengers could travel both down the river with the current and upstream against it. Steamboats landed and took on cargo and passengers at Pittsburgh, St. Louis, New Orleans, Natchez, and Louisville. The boats were faster, safer, and cheaper than flatboat travel down the river and foot travel up the river. By 1815 the era of flatboat travel on the inland waterways of America had changed and Frontiersmen no longer walked home from Natchez and New Orleans. Once the cargo and the boat had been sold, the backwoodsmen booked passage home on a steamboat. A trip that had once taken months could now be accomplished in weeks. Remnants of the trace and the Natchez Trace Parkway (a paved highway that runs along the course of the trace to Nashville) can be found just north of Natchez.
Twelve miles west of Natchez is Ferriday, LA. a dusty sun dried delta town of about 2500. Tiny little Ferriday is hometown to pioneer TV newsman Howard K. Smith, Claire Chennault the Commanding General of World War Two’s famous Flying Tigers, and Rock-a-Billy icon Jerry Lee Lewis. Country Music Star Mickey Gilley and Tele-evangelist Jimmy Swaggart (Jerry Lee Lewis’s cousins) are also Ferriday natives. Lewis was born in 1935 and twenty years later he would join Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash at tiny Sun Records in Memphis to help give birth to a whole new music genre, Rock and Roll. Lewis spent his youth working on his father’s small farm but the “Killer” always knew he was destined for greatness.
Little Jerry talked his folks into mortgaging the family farm to buy him a piano and he learned to play almost overnight, entirely self taught. He spent much of his youth hanging around Haney's Big House, a famous delta blues roadhouse in Ferriday, listening to the great bluesmen of the forties and early fifties. Lewis combined blues music and boogie-woogie piano learned from 78-RPM records by Moon Mullican, a white musician who mixed blues, jazz, and country styles. Jerry Lee added gospel singing learned in church with his family, and country music he heard on Louisiana Hayride and Grand Ole Opry radio broadcasts to create a unique piano/voice driven form of Rock-a-Billy. Lewis (with hits like “Great Balls of Fire”, “Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On”, and “Breathless”) was quickly recognized as one of the stars (along with Presley, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard) of the first generation of Rock and Rollers.
On December 4, 1956 during a recording session at Sun Records in Memphis Jerry Lee Lewis was playing piano for Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash was hanging out (joining in on a song from time to time) when Elvis Presley walked in. After a few minutes of good-natured teasing, the “boys” (nicknamed the Million Dollar Quartet by Sun Records Owner Sam Phillips) fell into an impromptu jam session, the very first super group in Rock and Roll. Jerry’s sister, Frankie Jean Lewis will personally guide you through the Lewis Family Museum at 712 Louisiana Avenue in Ferriday. Call (318) 757-2460 for tours, the museum (in Jerry Lee’s childhood home) is filled with pictures and “Killer” memorabilia.
Also worth a visit is the Delta Music Museum. Louisiana’s newest museum is located five minutes down the road from the Lewis Family Museum in the old U. S. Post Office at 218 Louisiana Avenue. Exhibits honor Louisiana delta musicians including Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Gilley, blues trombonist Pee Wee Whittaker, and others. There are also exhibits honoring Tele-Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, General Claire Chennault, and newsman Howard K. Smith. The new museum features interpretative and interactive exhibits about the history, music and culture of the Louisiana-Mississippi Delta region.
When my wife and I stopped at a Café/Truck Stop just east of Ferriday for a piece of pie and a cup of coffee we found the residents friendly and talkative. A lady in her sixties told us that she remembered Jerry Lee Lewis from elementary school. She said “He was mean, always teasing the girls, and he never came back after he got famous like his cousin Mickey Gilley ”.
A Personal Note
Thanks to tombarnes and diverpam for adding Natchez as a distinct Mississippi destination. This review marks my third anniversary at epinions. On July 20, 1999 I received an email from Tom Fallows, epinions first electronics category manager. He invited me to join and contribute camera/photographic equipment reviews to a soon to be launched (August 16, 1999) website called epinions. Epinions was a completely new and unique concept, a cyber site where consumers could share their experiences and opinions with other consumers. I jumped at the opportunity, and I am still writing reviews for the most exciting and entertaining site on the WWW. I would also like to thank Alexander Selkirk, epinions second (and last) electronics category manager, for his advice, patience, guidance, and encouragement during my early days at epinions. This review was originally posted under Mississippi destinations. I have deleted the original and posted this updated and substantially re-written version under the correct listing.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Couples
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
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Howard_Creech
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Member: Howard Creech
Location: Louisville, KY
Reviews written: 333
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About Me:
Photographer/Writer fascinated by Movies, Music, Books, American Diner Food, History, "Popular Culture", and Travel.
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