So often when we think of the grand beauty of nature, we think of impressive sights such as Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon. While those are truly world-class wonders, the countryside around us is filled with wondrous beauty and fascinating sights on a lesser scale. Every spring, as the woods and prairies come alive with wildflowers and the banks of creeks and the river expose ancient ages, I am reminded that the wonders and beauty of nature don’t have to be overwhelming to be awe-inspiring.
We often overlook just how beautiful and fascinating the place where we live is. For more than 10,000 years, the Indian peoples and their ancient civilizations realized what a special place the Tombigbee-Alabama-Mobile River valley was. The early Euro-American explorers and settlers often commented on the beauty and wonders of our area.
In the spring of 1708, Capt. Thomas Nairne of Charles Town, Carolina, traveled to the Chickasaw villages in the Black Prairie at present day Tupelo. Nairne wrote that (when he)”…arrived within 20 miles of the Chickasaw, and we had done with sand, stones and pines, the country being pleasant open forest of oak, chestnuts and hickerey so intermixt with savannas (prairies) as if it was a made landscape.”
One thing that caught Nairne’s eye and fascinated him were the fossils that he found in the exposed outcroppings of chalk. “The curiosity which I observed most was to see oyster shells everywhere spread over the old fields and savannas, as plentifully as if on an island by the sea … and thus it is not only here, but all over the Choctaw Country (south of Tibbee Creek).”
French explorer Henri de Tonti in a March 14, 1702, letter to Iberville also mentioned the fossil shells in the prairie. He wrote, “We left (behind) a thing rather ancient; from the village of the Chicacha as far as here there … is a quantity of shells larger and thicker than oysters scattered in the prairies and hills.” “The Flood” was the explanation for the shells.
Nairne also commented on spring time in the prairies.
“It’s now the season of the year, when nature adorns the Earth with a livery of verdant green, and there is some pleasure in an evening to ride up and down the savannas. When among a tuft of oaks on a rising knowll, in the midst of a large grassy plain, I revolve a thousand things about the primitive life of men.”
Thickets of plums and peaches were found by Nairne in the Chickasaw villages and on the old fields he found “strawberries innumerable.” Traveling in 1771 through the prairie in what is now the West Point area, Bernard Romans also found “… the fragaria or strawberry is very common in them (the prairies).” Wild strawberries are still a common plant in local yards and fields. Interestingly, most people do not realize the strawberry is in the rose family.
Traveling across the South on a four-year trek beginning in 1773, naturalist William Bartram described 358 plants. In what is now south central Alabama he came across “… a very singular and beautiful shrub, which I suppose is a species of Hydrangia. It grows in coppices or clumps near or on the banks of rivers and creeks … (the leaves) very much resembling the leaves of some of our oaks.” He seemed especially interested in the Oak Leaf Hydrangea, which he both illustrated and described in detail. I remember as a child I would go into the woods near Columbus with my grandmother who would dig up and transplant wild oak leaf Hydrangeas. Bartram’s descriptions were included in poems by both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.
Of the old descriptions of northeast Mississippi and northwest Alabama I have read, my favorite remains William Goodell’s April 20, 1822, description of traveling from Columbus to the Choctaw Indian Mission at Mayhew. His route followed what is now known as Old West Point Road. Mayhew was founded as an Indian mission on a ridge overlooking Tibbee Creek between present day West Point and Starkville.
Goodell wrote: “The grass, which will soon be eight feet high, is now about eight inches, and has all the freshness of spring. … As you proceed, Mayhew … rises to view in still greater loveliness, half-encircled with oak, which, with the sycamore and mulberry, borders the prairie on all sides. Flowers of red, purple, yellow and indeed of every hue, are scattered, by a bountiful God, in rich profusion, and in all the beauty and innocence of Eden, on each side of the path; and their fragrance is as if the very incense of heaven were there offered. You can stand in almost any place and count flowers of 10 or 12 different hues.”
The prairies and woods of our region are filled with beauty and the wonders of nature. Two hundred years ago, people were writing of the beauty of our area. We need only to get out of built-up commercialized areas and open our eyes to see that the beauty is still there.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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