Currently the Smithsonian’s “CROSSROADS Change in Rural America” traveling exhibit is at the Black Prairie Blues Museum in downtown West Point. The exhibit traces the changes in rural areas across America.

In doing so it tells the story of how people moved into lands formerly the homeland of Native Americans, creating farms and small towns that became commercial and cultural centers. The exhibit is free and open to the public Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. till 5 p.m. and closed Sunday. The exhibit ends March 2. Group tours can be scheduled through the West Point-Clay County Growth Alliance at (662) 494-5121. In addition to the Smithsonian exhibit this Monday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., there will be a coin, money and stamp display also at the museum.

In the Golden Triangle, the changes in rural spaces have been dramatic. Names preserve a place’s story and history. Many local roads and streams and place names actually have real stories to tell.

■ Mississippi — Mississippi is commonly said to be based on an Indian word for “Father of Waters.” However, there are two possible Choctaw names from which Mississippi is based. One is “Place of Foreign Languages.” The other is found in a letter from Peter Pitchlynn published in January 1861. Pitchlynn, who grew up on Plymouth Bluff and became principal chief of the Choctaw Nation in 1864, wrote that the word Mississippi is from a Choctaw word defined as “river beyond old or any age.”

■ Possum Town — According to Keeler’s 1848 history of Columbus, Spirus Roach (who had settled in Columbus about 1819) “occupied and kept entertainment” in the 1817 house built by Thomas Thomas. Because of the “peculiarities” of Roach’s long pointed nose, local Indians who traded at Roach’s establishment called Roach “Opossum” and referred to Columbus as Opossum Town. In the summer of 1819, the residents at the rapidly growing settlement decided a name was needed and Silas McBee suggested Columbus. On Dec. 6, 1819, the Alabama Legislature officially recognized the Town of Columbus. On Jan. 3, 1821 the governor of Mississippi announced that lands including Columbus were in Mississippi not Alabama.

■ Waverly — The story of Waverly begins with George H. Young, a Georgia lawyer and legislator. Young purchased a large block of Black Prairie land that had been part of the Chickasaw Nation, and he and his wife Lucy Watkins moved there around 1835. There was even a tradition that an old buffalo trail had passed nearby. The prairie where they settled was called the Colbert Prairie after Chickasaw Gen. William Colbert who had lived nearby during the Creek Indian. The name Waverly appeared by 1839 when a town was platted there. Though an industrial area with a woolen mill, tan yard, “hat factory” and flour and grist mill were constructed, the proposed town never developed. However, a full-blown community associated with Young’s plantation did arise. By 1850, Young was farming 800 acres of improved land with 117 slaves and 1,469 acres of unimproved or forested land. The Young’s first house was a two-story log house behind the site of the present-day home. Waverly, as we know it today, was not fully completed until late 1857 or early 1858. Today only the home Young built survives.

■ Tombigbee — The earliest recorded name of the Tombigbee River was “The River of the Chicasa (Chickasaw).” That name dates to 1540 and the narratives of Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. In 1805, Mississippi Territorial Judge Harry Toulmin wrote that the name “Tombigby” came from the Choctaw word “Elome-gabee” which meant “box maker.” Toulmin said the river was named for “a box maker who formerly lived on some of its headwaters.” Pontotoc Land Office draughtsman Edward Fontaine wrote in 1848 that the Choctaws began calling the river “Itta-ombee-aye ika-abee,” or wooden box-making river, about 1730. He explained the Choctaws named the river to commemorate the French teaching them to make wooden boxes in which to ship furs.

■ Military Road — Work on Andrew Jackson’s Military Road started in 1817, and it was completed in 1820. The road was constructed after the War of 1812 had ended, and there is no evidence Jackson ever set foot on the part of the road where Columbus was established. Jackson ordered the road to be built to provide a direct route between Nashville and New Orleans. Since Jackson was instrumental in getting congressional approval for the road and seeing to its construction it was named after him and was referred to as the Jackson Highway into the 1930s.

■ Coal Fire Creek — On the highway from Columbus to Aliceville, Alabama, the road crosses a creek named Coal Fire Creek. The original name was Cold Fire Creek. Early settlers crossing the creek during the winter of 1818 or 1819 described the water as being so cold that it burned them like fire when they crossed it. So, they named the creek Cold Fire Creek.

■ Wolfe Road — In northeastern Lowndes County there is an old road now called Wolfe Road. That name is another example of people not appreciating history. Wolf Road, as it was originally named, is one of the oldest roads in the area. In 1872 W.E. Gibbs told the story behind its name: “That part of our county … was then (around 1817 to 1820) a ‘veritably a howling wilderness,’ being made so by innumerable bands of predatory wolves, so numerous that the rearing of stock was an impossibility. The Wolf Road took its name from this fact.”

■ Magby Creek — In 1817, Silas McBee settled on a creek in what is now East Columbus. The creek soon took the name of McBee Creek. As more settlers arrived in 1818 and 1819, a community formed at the nearby Tombigbee Ferry on the Military Road. At a meeting of the settlers, McBee suggested the new town be named Columbus. McBee apparently pronounced his name as Magby and the creek’s name became corrupted to its present spelling of Magby Creek.

■ Magowah Creek — Magowah Creek flows eastward across southwestern Lowndes County to the Tombigbee River. Local tradition says that Magowah is taken from a Choctaw word for “impassable swamp or waters.” An 1817 survey shows the spelling as Macawa. Several large plantations were established on the fertile prairies around Magowah. By 1884 there was a Magowah School, and the families in the area referred to their residence as Magowah. To complicate the story, one of the 1820s settlers in Lowndes County was John McGowan who lived on the east side of the Tombigbee but not too far from the mouth of Magowah Creek, and an 1839 map refers to the creek as McCower’s Creek.

■ Luxapalila Creek — it is commonly translated as “floating turtle” but maybe “turtle crawls there.” In 1818 Gideon Lincecum camped on the creek, which he called “Lookse-ok-pullia,” and said it meant “a terrapin floating on the water.”

■ Buttahatchee — Probably means “sumac river” but some sources say, “river which comes from the hills.”

■ Tibbee Creek /Oktibbeha County — The name of the creek is shortened from Oktibbeha and based on the French version of the name “Oktibia” or “Octibea.” In 1772 English explorer Bernard Romans called the creek “Oka Teebehaw.” It is commonly translated as “Fighting Waters” but probably means icy waters.

So much history is reflected in the names we find around us and those names tell the story of who and where our communities had their beginnings. The exhibit at the Black Prairie Blues Museum tells a fascinating story. Don’t miss it.

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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