The Chickasaw Nation and Their Trace

The northern third of the Natchez Trace ran through the heart of Chickasaw territory, and for a very long time the Chickasaw ran it. Their towns at intervals along the corridor provided food, shelter, horses, and political passage for traders and travelers who needed to cross what is now northern Mississippi and southern Tennessee. The Chickasaw were not passive features of the landscape. They were its operators.

The Treaty of Pontotoc Creek, signed on October twentieth, eighteen thirty-two, ended Chickasaw presence in this landscape as an organized political entity. Unlike the Choctaw, who signed their removal treaty two years earlier under conditions of duress that were extensively documented, the Chickasaw negotiated from a position of relative cohesion. Their leaders understood what was coming and tried to extract the best terms they could. The treaty stipulated specific provisions for the sale of Chickasaw lands and the distribution of proceeds. Some of those provisions were honored. Many were not.

What the Chickasaw could not negotiate was staying. The removal that followed still meant the loss of a homeland their ancestors had occupied for thousands of years. The Trace, which had been their road, became for some the road west.

The Tishomingo State Park, near mile three hundred and two of the Trace, takes its name from the last great chief of the Chickasaw Nation, a man who lived through the treaty negotiations and the removal and died in Indian Territory in eighteen thirty-eight. The park's sandstone formations and Bear Creek canyon sit on land where Chickasaw villages once stood.

The Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma has built one of the most comprehensive tribal cultural archives in the southeastern United States. The history of this corridor is documented there, in Chickasaw voices.