Lately the ghost of Hernando de Soto has popped up on Facebook. I have seen several comments about where his expedition crossed the Tombigbee River, probably on December 16, 1540.
These discussions seem to have arisen from a postcard issued between 1905 and 1910. The card states it is a view of “Where DeSoto crossed the Tombigbee River near Columbus, Miss.”
We are still not sure where de Soto actually crossed the river. Over the years, historians have placed the route of his expedition all over the Southeast. A map showing all of the theories of de Soto’s travels looks like a map of the South on which someone dumped a plate of spaghetti. Since the 1980s, our knowledge of de Soto has vastly increased and a “de Soto” artifact from northeast of Columbus is a good example of what new research is showing.
Around 1900 a halberd (a weapon that looks like an ax with a lance mounted on a long pole) that was referred to as “an old Spanish battle-ax” was found in Lowndes County near Military Road between Black Creek and Howard Creek. Since halberds were commonly thought of as medieval weapons, it was considered a relic of the de Soto expedition, and in 1912, it was donated to the State Historical Museum and put on display. In the 1920s, the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a marble marker on the side of the Military Road near where it was found to mark “de Soto’s trail.”
However, the Luxapalila Halberd, as it became known, had its place in history rearranged by a button and a ghost story. It seems that this classic de Soto artifact probably had nothing more to do with de Soto than a hubcap off his 1953 namesake automobile (but the hubcap is another story).
Around 1810, uniform buttons of the U.S. Army’s 1st Regiment of Artillery contained an eagle on a cannon with several flags and a halberd that looks just like the Luxapalila Halberd. A little research on halberds reveals the weapons were carried by sergeants in the War of 1812 to show their rank. But what U.S. artillery unit was in Columbus around the time of the War of 1812? Therein lies the ghost story.
In 1851, Joseph Cobb wrote a book, “Mississippi Scenes or Sketches of Southern and Western Life.” One of his stories was “The Legend of Black Creek.” It is the story of the haunting of the Military Road’s Black Creek crossing. The Military Road was constructed under orders from Andrew Jackson to provide a direct route from Nashville to New Orleans. As the story goes, two U.S. soldiers drowned crossing a flooded Black Creek and the ghost of the soldiers thereafter haunted travelers along that stretch of Military Road.
Military Road was constructed between 1817 and 1820 by soldiers from the 1st and 8th Infantry Regiments and a detachment from the Corps of Artillery. There was a work camp on the hill at Howard’s Creek about three miles north of Black Creek. At that campsite, two soldiers died in 1819 and were buried there. It was about halfway between Black Creek and Howard’s Creek that the Luxapalila Halberd was found. Rather than a relic of de Soto, it is most likely a halberd that had been carried by an artillery sergeant attached to the troops building the Military Road.
What makes history fun is to take seemingly unrelated bits of information and put them together to tell a story. Then you have to wonder if the soldier who lost the halberd could have become one of the ghosts haunting Black Creek.
Current archaeological evidence of the presence of de Soto is centered between Starkville and West Point. It is in that area that artifacts have been found that appear to be related to de Soto.
De Soto crossed the Tombigbee on rafts on December 16, 1540, and arrived at the village of Chicaza that night. The river crossing point would have to have been within a day’s march of Chicaza. Here again, the history of the Military Road emerges. In 1817, U.S. Army surveyor Capt. Hugh Young reported he had been told by John Pitchlynn that near the mouth of Moore’s Creek was the Choctaw’s favored high water crossing of the Tombigbee during the 1700s and early 1800s. That was the reason for the ferry to be put where Columbus would later be established. And when de Soto reached the Tombigbee, it was high and out of its banks.
The strongest evidence is that the Tombigbee crossing would be within a day’s march of present day Starkville. Though a long day’s march, much of it would have been across an open grass-covered prairie. Depending on the exact location of Chicaza, the Tombigbee crossing point might have been as high as Barton’s Ferry or as low as Ten Mile Shoals. Given Pitchlynn’s statement, current archaeology and river conditions in 1540, the Tombigbee at present day downtown Columbus is the most likely place for the de Soto expedition to have crossed the river in 1540.
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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