Part 18

But if slavery produced decadence in one way, it produced growth in another. Adams county, and especially the suburbs of the city of Natchez, became the home of wealthy families, owning broad acres, not only in this but in many other counties, and in the neighboring State of Louisiana. The beautiful description by Mrs. Hemans, of "The Stately Homes of England," would have applied almost without change to the ancestral residences occupied in ante-bellum days, by veritable lords of the manor, surrounded by all the luxury and refinement which wealth and slavery could produce. Some of these relics of an unforgotten past, still remain, such as "Elmscourt," "Gloster," "Llangollin," "Longwood," "Auburn," "Inglewood," "Monmouth," "Melrose," "Arlington," "Somerset," "Oakland," "Manteigne," "Richmond," "Devereux," "Concord," "Sweet-Auburn," "Brandon-Hall," "Selma," "Green-field," "Coventry," "The Forest," and others. Many more have been destroyed by the fire-fiend, and only ruins now remain. "The Forest" the home of Sir William Dunbar, and "Selma," the original residence of the Brandon family, were indigo plantations, in the days before cotton was king. "Concord" is of special interest, as an old Spanish house, and the residence of Governor Gayoso.

However, with the rapid increase in the population of the other portions of Mississippi, the controlling influence at first exercised by Adams County gradually disappeared. This was further affected by the jealousy of our wealthy land owners which was felt by the inhabitants of the newer and poorer interior counties. Finally by Act of Nov. 28th, 1820, the General Assembly gave to the present city of Jackson its name in honor of our great Democratic warrior and statesman, and made it the future capital of our State.

Thus the sceptre departed from Adams County; and while she has ever maintained a position in the State of which her citizens are proud, yet from this time she has ceased to be the political centre of Mississippi, and the place where its history is made.

Yet hither must Mississippians ever come, as to the cradle in which the infant State was rocked. Hither will pilgrims journey to visit our historic shrines and to drink from the primal springs of a glorious past.

The immortal Prentiss won his first laurels here; and here his ashes rest (side by side with those of Governor Sargent); while in our city cemetery sleep Judge Joseph D. Shields, his pupil and biographer, and the historian Claiborne, his great political antagonist. Vidal, the last governor of despotic Spain in Louisiana, here sleeps his last sleep in the land of the free; as does also Alvarez Fisk, the benefactor of the schools and libraries of both Natchez and New Orleans.

Upon the rolls of our distinguished dead, besides those already mentioned, are the names of Thomas B. Reed, Edward Turner, Gerard C. Brandon, Christopher Rankin, Cowles Mead, Wm. B. Shields, S. S. Boyd, John A. Quitman, John T. McMurran, Robert J. Walker, Anthony Hutchins, George Poindexter, Lyman Harding, W. C. C. Claiborne, Adam L. Bingaman, Dr. Cartwright, Dr. Duncan, Dr. Jenkins, John I. Guion, Andrew Marschalk, and many others.

But it is not her public or professional men alone, who have made the Historic Adams County of the past. "Her merchants were princes," in the olden time, when ships from the ocean were moored at the wharves of Natchez, bringing and taking in exchange the treasures of the old world and the new. Here one of the first cotton compresses was established. The old Mississippi Railroad, built in 1836, but completed only as far as Hamburg, was the earliest in the South and one of the oldest in the Union. Its old road-bed and massive embankments still remain,--monuments of the enterprise of our forefathers.

Thus, even after her political supremacy had departed, Natchez still remained the financial and commercial centre of this State. But the great financial panic of 1836 and 1837 came, and like a cyclone swept our prosperity away. This was followed by the terrible tornado of May 7th, 1840, which laid our city in ruins, and numbered its victims by the hundred, and which is even yet recalled with dread upon each recurrence of its anniversary.

I have thus endeavored to present, in epitome, an outline of the history of Adams County, from its earliest settlement to within times too recent to require research by the historian. I have endeavored likewise to indicate a few of the most interesting spots which may be visited by the student of history coming into our midst.

THE HISTORICAL OPPORTUNITY OF MISSISSIPPI

BY R. W. JONES, LL. D.

A writer truly and forcibly says that Americans have been much readier to do great deeds than to record them--to make those signal achievements that are worthy of remembrance than to be troubled with the tediousness of writing them. If this is true anywhere, it has in the past been unquestionably true of Southern people and Mississippians.

In a recent number of the _American Historical Review_, Albert Bushnell Hart discussed the "Historical Opportunity of America;" and this led me to think of the Historical Opportunity of Mississippi.

If anything great and systematic in the line of historical research and production is to be done in Mississippi we must have organization. The State Historical Society must have local co-operation; this can be best effected by Auxiliary Historical Societies co-operating with the Central Organization.[152] The local Society is the natural centre of historical activity. We are highly gratified to report a decided revival of interest in history-writing since the organization of our State Society; at least there has been a revival as far as the production of monographs and brief biographies.

The following suggestions are presented with a hope that they will promote still further the historical work in the State:

1.--The educated young ladies of a locality can be interested in the finding, classifying, and development of historical material; the advanced pupils of High Schools and Colleges can be induced to prepare monographs as a part of their literary work, and all this material should be carefully calendared. We find as a general rule that the editors and proprietors of our newspapers are among the most public spirited of our citizens; they will gladly publish all local material of historical interest. In this way duplicate printed copies of all local material can be easily had and copies furnished for the archives and publications of the Mississippi Historical Society.

2.--An important auxiliary to history is picture-making. Experts with the Camera and amateur 'Kodakers' can facilitate greatly the work of the historian by making and cataloguing pictures of important objects and persons and depositing them in the archives of the local Society and of the State Society, so that the future historian who may not be able to visit the localities may yet have satisfactory knowledge of them. By these means and others we will cultivate a spirit that actively fosters history; we will cause search to be made for old Manuscripts, for files of old papers and every thing that will throw light on our past history. As the author, previously referred to, states, valuable manuscripts ought as naturally and as readily to find their way to the archives of history as the meteorite reaches the Mineralogical Museum.

3.--In the past history of Mississippi, a great many very valuable papers have been lost and destroyed because there was no known, safe depository for them. It need not be so any longer, as the State Historical Society has safe depositories. If we will all search for old historical material, write up facts and incidents of importance that have come under our observation, or otherwise to our knowledge, we will be doing a work creditable to our own names and we shall make possible the writing of a history that will represent in truthful aspect that noble race of Southerners to which we are proud to belong, and we shall show to the world the kindliness of those domestic institutions under which have grown up the fairest and most attractive women who ever graced human homes and the highest refinement and honor that have taken up abode among men.

4.--I have already referred to the public spirit of the press, to the important service it has rendered to our cause and the confidence with which we can continue to rely upon its co-operation. In addition, we _need_ a fund for printing the Society's transactions and those important articles which receive the Society's endorsement. The State Legislature would do well to make an annual appropriation of a few hundred dollars to cover the cost of such publications and thus encourage the interest and pride of its citizens in that history which so intimately concerns them and their ancestors. Other states have set us a worthy example in this important matter. We hope the next legislature will give this matter favorable consideration.

5.--The marking of historical sights and buildings with marble or bronze, bearing appropriate inscriptions is a matter of the liveliest importance. To some this may seem needless, but the more we study and observe it the more we are convinced of its educational and patriotic value.

One who goes to England and Scotland, and notes in their great cities such as London and Edinburgh the numerous monuments, mural tablets and other devices which commemorate events and characters and deeds will understand better than ever why the Englishman and Scotchman each is proud of his race, his government, his country.

In 1896, I visited the old town of Portsmouth, Va., and as I passed along the main street I saw a marble slab inserted flush with the pavement, and it told that on that spot the honored and loved Lafayette stood when he revisited the old Commonwealth and received the grateful greetings of a people for whom he had put his life into the perils of war.

The preservation of historical buildings and grounds and the devotion of them to public and patriotic uses is of the same character and importance.

The Ladies Association, aided by the eloquence of Edward Everett, purchased Mt. Vernon and donated it to the sacred purposes of patriotism. The preservation of the old church at Williamsburg, Va., of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, of Monticello as Jefferson left it--all these and other things of like character not only keep alive our interest in the great events of the past but sustain and justify our civic pride.

Is there nothing of this kind in Mississippi that is worthy of loving care and devotion to public use? Upon the extreme southern border of the State, where the Magnolia blooms in its native perfection, where the crested waves of the gulf work the sunbeams and the moon's silvery sheen into forms of laughing beauty that suggest the noble womanly character of the wife and the "daughter of the Confederacy," where the roaring sea, that cannot be hushed, tells of the unconquerable spirit of devotion to our people and their cause, that stood erect amid all the indignities and wrongs put upon it by a vindictive and cruel foe; here we have Beauvoir that is worthy of the care of all Mississippians, of all Southerners, nay of all American patriots. This property suitably marked, will furnish one of the grandest of object lessons, pointing to a man who bravely fought for his country on foreign soil, who stood as an embodiment of incorruptible principle and splendid ability on the floor of the United States Senate and who headed a great popular movement which produced the most philosophic, as well as the most thrilling period of the history of this country and who shows us how a great man can maintain his manliness and command respect and admiration even in defeat and direst disaster.

Let us cultivate the spirit of history. Every intelligent citizen of our State should take an interest in the Mississippi State Historical Society and actively promote its objects. Let local Societies be formed and enthusiasm in their work be engendered; let every item of historic interest be put in typewritten or printed form and let copies be sent to the Secretary of the Mississippi State Historical Society and other copies lodged with the local Society. Let us be careful to mark and preserve every object of historic interest and to emphasize its value. Thus we shall show that we are justly proud of our race, our State and the achievements of our ancestors.

FOOTNOTES:

[152] For the general plan of such organizations, see "Suggestions to Local Historians" in the _Publication of the Mississippi Historical Society for 1898_.--_Editor._

NANIH WAIYA, THE SACRED MOUND OF THE CHOCTAWS.

BY H. S. HALBERT.

As Nanih Waiya is so often referred to in the folklore and traditions of the Choctaws, the writer of this paper has deemed it not amiss to give some account of this noted mound and, in connection therewith, some of the legends with which it is inseparably associated.

Nanih Waiya is situated on the west side of Nanih Waiya Creek, about fifty yards from it, in the southern part of Winston County, and about four hundred yards from the Neshoba County line. The mound is oblong in shape, lying northwest and southeast, and about forty feet in height. Its base covers about an acre. Its summit, which is flat, has an area of one-fourth of an acre. The mound stands on the southeastern edge of a circular rampart, which is about a mile and a half in circumference. In using the word "circular," reference is made to the original form of the rampart, about one-half of which is utterly obliterated by the plow, leaving only a semi-circle. This rampart is not or rather was not, a continuous circle, so to speak, as it has along at intervals, a number of vacant places or gaps, ranging from twenty to fifty yards wide. According to Indian tradition, there were originally eighteen parts or sections of the rampart, with the same number of gaps. Ten of these sections still remain, ranging from fifty to one hundred and fifty yards in length. All the sections near the mound have long since been leveled by the plow, and in other places some of the sections have been much reduced. But on the north, where the rampart traverses a primeval forest it is still five feet high and twenty feet broad at the base. The process of obliteration has been very great since 1877, when the writer first saw Nanih Waiya. Some of the sections that could then be clearly traced in the field on the west have now utterly disappeared. About two hundred and fifty yards north of Nanih Waiya is a small mound, evidently a burial mound, as can be safely stated from the numerous fragments of human bones that have been exhumed from it by the plow and the hoe. The great number of stone relics, mostly broken, scattered for hundreds of yards around Nanih Waiya, shows that it was the site of pre-historic habitations. In addition to this, the bullets and other relics of European manufacture evidence the continuity of occupancy down within the historic period. The magnitude of these ancient works--the mound and the rampart--together with the legendary traditions connected with them, leads one irresistibly to the conviction that this locality was the great center of the Choctaw population during the pre-historic period. It should here be stated that the symmetry of the mound has been somewhat marred by a tunnel which was cut into it in the summer of 1896 by some _treasure-seekers_, who vainly hoped to unearth some wonderful bonanza from out the deep bosom of Nanih Waiya.

The name Nanih Waiya signifies Bending Hill. _Warrior_, the absurd spelling and pronunciation should be repudiated by the map and the history maker. The adjective _Waiya_ signifies "bending," "leaning over," but it is difficult to see the appropriateness of the term as applied to the mound. According to the conjecture of the writer, the term was originally applied to the circular rampart, which the Choctaws may have considered a kind of _bending hill_. And in process of time the name could have become so extended as to be applied to the mound and rampart conjointly, and ultimately restricted to the mound alone, as is now the case in popular usage.

According to the classification of the archæologists, Nanih Waiya is a pyramidal mound, which kind of mounds is found almost exclusively in the Gulf States. The chroniclers of De Soto's expedition speak constantly of the mounds, and of these writers, Garcilaso de la Vega tells us exactly how and why they were made. According to his statement, in building a town, the natives first erected a mound two or three pikes in height, the summit of which was made large enough for twelve, fifteen or twenty houses to lodge the cacique and his attendants. At the foot of the mound was laid off the public square, which was proportioned to the size of the town. Around the square the leading men had their houses, whilst the cabins of the common people stood around the other side of the mound. From the "lay" of the land, the writer is satisfied that the public square at Nanih Waiya was on the north, between the mound and the small burial mound. In regard to the rampart, it was, no doubt, surmounted by palisades, as De Soto's writers particularly describe the palisaded walls, which surrounded the Indian towns. As to the gaps in the rampart, the writer is convinced that these gaps were left designedly as places for the erection of wooden forts or towers, as additional protections to the town. The Knight of Elvas describes the town of Pachaha as being "very great, walled, and beset with towers, and many loop-holes were in the towers and the wall." La Vega mentions the towers made at intervals of fifty paces apart in the stockade wall of Maubila, each tower capable of holding eight men. Dupratz describing the circular stockade forts which he had seen among the Southern Indians, expressly states that "at every forty paces a circular tower juts out." Other statements from early writers could be given showing that wooden towers were built along at intervals in the stockade walls that surrounded the ancient towns of the Southern Indians. These statements, no doubt, give us the correct solution to the mystery of the gaps in the earthen rampart at Nanih Waiya.

While there can be no doubt but Nanih Waiya was the residence of the cacique and his attendants, in accordance with the statements of La Vega, other statements induce the belief that the summit of this mound was sometimes used as a place of sun-worship. Sun-worship, it should here be especially noted, was not performed as an isolated ceremony, so to speak, but came in as part of the programme in the transaction of all tribal business, both civil and military. The Choctaws were sun-worshippers, as were all the other branches of the Choctaw-Muscogee family. They regarded the sun as the type or essence of the Great Spirit. And as the Sun, or rather Sun-God, warms, animates and vivifies everything, he is the Master or Father of Life, or, to use the Choctaw expression, "_Aba Inki_," "the Father above." In like manner, according to their belief, as everything here below came originally from the earth, she is the mother of creation. Sun-worship, it may here be stated, prevailed to some extent, though in a much attenuated form, as late as seventy years ago among the Choctaws, as is evidenced by the actions of the Choctaws of that day during an eclipse of the sun. Even at the present day some faint traces of this sun-worship may be seen in the antics of a Choctaw prophet at a ball play. The chroniclers of De Soto's expedition give us frequent hints as to the prevalence of sun-worship among the Indian tribes of the countries which the Spanish army traversed. Two centuries later, William Bartram, in his description of the Creek rotunda, which was erected upon an artificial mound, gives an elaborate account of the ceremonies in the rotunda connected with partaking of the black drink. He states that the chief first puffed a few whiffs from the sacred pipe, blowing the whiffs ceremoniously upward towards the sun, or, as it was generally supposed, to the Great Spirit, and then puffing the smoke from the pipe towards the four cardinal points. The pipe was then carried to different persons and smoked by them in turn.

Imagination, perhaps, would not err, if going back a few centuries, we could depict scenes similar to this as often enacted upon the flat summit of Nanih Waiya. And, perhaps, the superstitious reverence which the Choctaws have ever manifested towards this mound may be a dim traditionary reminiscence of its once having been a great tribal center of solar worship. The aboriginal mind, in sun-worship, from viewing the sun as the Father of Life, as without the light and warmth of the sun nothing would spring into existence, no doubt instinctively turned to the earth as the Mother of Creation. If there was a father there must be a mother. In the course of time, what more natural that the pre-historic villagers living at the base of Nanih Waiya, with its tremendous pile ever looming up before their eyes, should finally come to regard it as the mother of their race. As far back as history and tradition run, Nanih Waiya has ever thus been regarded by the untutored Choctaws of Mississippi. During the various emigrations from the State, many Choctaws declared that they would never go west and abandon their mother; and that just as long as Nanih Waiya stood, they intended to stay and live in the land of their nativity.

There is another evidence that Nanih Waiya was a great national center during the pre-historic period. The ravages of civilization have still spared some traces of two broad, deeply worn roads or highways connected with the mound, in which now stand large oak trees. The remnant of one of these highways, several hundred yards long, can be seen on the east side of the creek, running toward the southeast. The other is on the west side of the creek, the traces nearest the mound being at the northeastern part of the rampart, thence running towards the north. Many years ago this latter road was traced by an old citizen of Winston county full twenty miles to the north until it was lost in Noxubee swamp, in the northeastern part of Winston County. These are the sole traces of the many highways, that no doubt, in pre-historic times, centered at Nanih Waiya.