Rowing across the river and falling down with the current, we landed under Fort Pickering, having passed the Fourth Chickasaw Bluffs, which are two miles long, and sixty feet perpendicular height. They are cleared at the top to some little distance back, and the houses of the settlers are very pleasantly situated near the edge of the cliff.
An Indian was at the landing observing us. He was painted in such a manner as to leave us in doubt as to his sex until we noticed a bow and arrow in his hand. His natural colour was entirely concealed under the bright vermillion, the white, and the blue grey, with which he was covered, not frightfully, but in such a manner as to mark more strongly, a fine set of features on a fine countenance. He was drest very fantastically in an old fashioned, large figured, high coloured calico shirt—deer skin leggins and mockesons, ornamented with beads, and a plume of beautiful heron’s feathers nodding over his forehead from the back of his head.
We ascended to Fort Pickering[192] by a stair of one hundred and twenty square logs, similar to that at {268} Jeffersonville. There was a trace of fresh blood the whole way up the stair, and on arriving at the top, we saw seated or lazily reclining on a green in front of the entrance of the stoccado, about fifty Chickasaw warriours, drest each according to his notion of finery, and most of them painted in a grotesque but not a terrifick manner. Many of them had long feathers in the back part of their hair, and several wore breast plates formed of tin in the shape of a crescent, and had large tin rings in their ears.
On seeing so many Indians and the trace of blood before mentioned, an idea started in my imagination that they had massacred the garrison, but on advancing a little farther, I was agreeably undeceived by seeing a good looking young white centinel in the American uniform, with his musquet and fixed bayonet, parading before the gate of the fort. He stopped us until permission was obtained from the commanding officer for our entrance, and in the interim he informed me that he was a Frenchman, a native of Paris, that he had been a marine under Jerome Bonaparte, when the latter commanded a frigate, and that he had deserted from him on his arrival in the Chesapeak. We were ushered by a soldier to the officers’ quarters where we were received by lieut. Taylor the commandant, with civility not unmixed with a small degree of the pompous stiffness of office.[193] He however answered politely enough a few interrogatories we made respecting the Indians. He said they were friendly, and made frequent visits to the garrison, but except a few of the chiefs on business, none of them were ever admitted within the stoccado, and that this was a jubilee or gala day, on account of their having just received presents from the United States’ government. They have a large settlement about five miles directly inland from the river, but the most populous part of the Chickasaw nation is one hundred miles distant to the south eastward.
{269} When we were returning to the boat, one of the Indians offered to sell us for a mere trifle, a pair of very handsome beaded mockesons, which we were obliged to decline, from having neglected to bring any money with us.
Fort Pickering is a small stoccado, commanding from its elevated situation not only the river, but also the surrounding country, which however is not yet sufficiently cleared of wood to make it tenable against an active enemy. There are some small cannon mounted, and several pyramids of shot evince its being well supplied with that article.
FOOTNOTES:
[189] The first fort known to have been erected on the site of Memphis (Fourth Chickasaw Bluff) was that built by Bienville, governor of Louisiana, during his campaigns against the Chickasaws (1735-40) and called by him Fort Assumption. After the expedition of 1740, however, this was abandoned, the place not being fortified until the Spanish commandant Gayoso, in defiance of the authority of the United States, crossed (1794) to the Chickasaw territory and built Fort San Fernando. Two years later, after Pinckney’s treaty was signed, the Spaniards reluctantly surrendered this outpost, whereupon the American Fort Pike was built (1796).
Judge Benjamin Foy, of the Arkansas town of Foy’s Point, was a pioneer of German descent, whose settlement is said to have been the most healthful, moral, and intelligent community between the Ohio and Natchez—due to the influence of its first settler, and his magisterial powers. Volney, the French traveller, spent the winter of 1805 with Foy in his Arkansas home.—Ed.
[190] The Chickasaws maintained their right to the territory between the Mississippi and the Tennessee until 1818, when commissioners for the Federal Government bought the tract for $300,000. The town of Memphis was laid out in the same year.—Ed.