Annus mirabilis is Latin for “year of wonders.” It is most recognized as the title of a poem by John Dryden about the miraculous year of 1666.

However, it is a term that can also describe the year 1811 in the Mississippi Territory.

It was truly a year of wonders and a watershed year in our history. There were two natural events. One a natural disaster unlike any seen by Europeans in the United States and the other a brilliant comet that lit up the sky. There were also two epic journeys that shaped America. There was the first steamboat on the Mississippi River and the journeys and intrigues of Tecumseh.

On the night of Dec. 15, 1811, an earthquake occurred centered near New Madrid, Missouri, so devastating that for a while the Mississippi River turned red and flowed backward. Newspapers reported there was “great injury to the settlements on the Ohio and Mississippi, by throwing down houses, chimmies and in one or two instances, islands in the Mississippi, of considerable magnitude, had been sunk or destroyed.” The account told of the riverbanks caving in, including an example of “at one place about 300 acres of solid body falling into the river.”

The other natural event unfolded when the nighttime sky was illuminated by the great Comet of 1811. The comet was visible for 260 days and brightly lit the sky from September 1811 through January 1812.

It was also in 1811 that the first steamboat on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, the Orleans, made her maiden voyage down the river from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. She was caught in and survived the New Madrid Earthquake providing some of the first reports of the terrible devastation.

In 1811 the great Shawnee leader, Tecumseh, visited the Chickasaw, Choctaw and Creek Indian Nations in what is now Mississippi and Alabama.

The previous year at an 1810 council of the Shawnee Nation in what is now Indiana, Tecumseh objected to Indian lands being sold to intruding Anglo-American settlers. With his brother Ten-squat-a-way (Open Door), who was called “The Prophet,” at his side Tecumseh spoke to the assembly saying, “What sell a country; why not sell the air, the clouds, and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?”

Tecumseh’s plan was for a grand union of Native American peoples to counter the ever-increasing expansion of Euro-American settlers. It is with Tecumseh that local history merges into a story of national significance. Most accounts portray Tecumseh’s mission as an attempt to form a grand Indian alliance from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico to drive all intruders out of Indian territory. There are some accounts, though, that present Tecumseh’s goal as more of an attempt to convince the Indian nations to return to their traditional ways but his message was misunderstood. There were even some indications that Tecumseh was part of a British plan to foment trouble on the American frontier as a war between Great Britain and the United States became almost certain.

It was probably in the late spring of 1811 that the great Shawnee chief entered the Mississippi Territory. He met first with the Chickasaws. He sought the help of the influential Chickasaw George Colbert. Colbert, however, rejected Tecumseh’s overture and responded that the Chickasaws were at peace with the whites and wished to remain so.

Tecumseh then traveled south to the Choctaw Nation. Veering westerly off the road from the Chickasaws to the Choctaw Nation, he crossed Tibbee Creek a little west of where present-day Highway 45 Alternate crosses Tibbee below West Point. He did so to avoid passing close to John Pitchlynn’s residence at Plymouth Bluff. Pitchlyn was the U.S. interpreter for the Choctaw who had been appointed by George Washington.

Tradition says Tecumseh was met at his crossing by Choctaw Capt. Tisha Homa who was called “Red Pepper.” Red Pepper was known as a man of peace and lived about 10 miles southwest of present-day Columbus. The first night he was in the Choctaw Nation, Tecumseh and the 20 Shawnee warriors who accompanied him, camped in a grove of trees on a hill in the southwest corner of present day Lowndes County. The next day he arrived at the home of Mushulatubbee, the chief of the Northern District of the Choctaw Nation (present-day Mushulaville). The Choctaws held several councils in their nation with Tecumseh.

The last and largest council took place when Tecumseh returned to Mushulatubbee’s, reportedly to his other house at his prairie village which was about five miles northeast of present-day Brooksville. It was on the crest of a hill upon which stood a huge red oak tree. At the council, Tecumseh spoke first followed the next day by Choctaw Southern District Chief Pushmataha. In an impassioned response Pushmataha spoke of the Choctaw’s long friendship with the white people and stated that any Choctaw who joined with Tecumseh, if not killed in battle, would be put to death if he returned home. The council ended with Tecumseh being ordered to leave the Choctaw Nation and David Folsom was directed to escort him to the Tombigbee River.

Tecumseh departed and proceeded to the Creek Nation where he was more warmly received. The Creek Nation was divided as to whether to support Tecumseh’s proposal, and a Creek civil war ensued. In the summer of 1813 American settlers in the Tombigbee/Alabama River Valley got involved in the Civil War, which led to fighting between the settlers and the Red Stick Creeks. It was the start of the Creek War phase of the War of 1812.

In response to increasing hostilities during the summer of 1813 John Pitchlynn built a two-story log blockhouse surrounded by a palisade on Plymouth Bluff. It became a U.S. military meeting place, assembly point for Chickasaw and Choctaw warriors allied with Andrew Jackson’s U.S. forces and a supply depot called Fort Smith. It was protected first by Choctaw warriors and later by U.S. troops sent by Andrew Jackson.
Tecumseh returned to the northwest and the Shawnee Nation. He was killed in October 1813, fighting alongside the British against United States troops at the Battle of Thames in Canada. Whatever his actual intent, he became a figure of almost mythical stature in American history.

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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