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Women Steered The Boats While The Men Fought

(Excerpt from ALABAMA FOOTPRINTS – Settlement: Lost & Forgotten Stories (Volume 2)

CONTINUED BELOW…

There were many routes that early pioneers used to move to the newly created state of Alabama.

One route from the North Carolina/South Carolina area of the Pee Dee River. Immigrants frequently traveled with pack-horses over two hundred miles to the Holston River in northeastern Tennessee. Then they continued on to the Catawba Trail to the Wilderness Road Fort near Kingsport, Tennessee. Some may have settled along the way where these present towns are now located:

  • Cheraws, South Carolina
  • Wadesboro, North Carolina,
  • Lenoir, North Carolina,
  • Blowing Rock, North Carolina
  • Boone, North Carolina
  • Hampton, Tennessee
  • Johnson City, Tennessee
  • Kingsport, Tennessee

When they reached the Wilderness Road Fort, a flatboat was secured. The flatboats were sturdy with one end enclosed for protection from the elements. It had to be designed to allow for the women, children, food, bedding and household items.

They had to transport a milk cow, chickens, horses, hunting dogs, and farm implements. Once aboard the flatboats, they followed the Holston River to the Tennessee River which they entered near Knoxville, Tennessee.

They always had to be prepared for attacks by the Native Americans so women often steered the boats while the men fought.

The present-day towns and cities they passed were:

  • Surgoinsville, Tennessee
  • Chalk Level, Tennessee
  • Cherokee Lake, Tennessee
  • Buffalo Springs, Tennessee
  • Mascot, Tennessee

The flatboats would continue down the Tennessee River into Alabama and pass the present-day cities of

  • Dayton, Tennessee
  • Chattanooga, Tennessee,
  • Scottsboro, Alabama
  • Guntersville, Alabama
  • Decatur, Alabama
  • Florence, Alabama

Another route was the Natchez Trace from Nashville, Tennessee to Natchez, Mississippi.

“The Natchez Trace was one of the trails which the Native Americans allowed the settlers to use in accordance with a treaty with the United States government. It was the most traveled of the land routes into the Natchez country.”

In 1806, Congress provided for the construction of the Natchez Trace to connect Nashville, Tennessee with Natchez upon the Mississippi by crossing the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals.

1796 map showing Tennessee River and few trading posts on the bottom right by Abraham Bradley (Library of Congress)

One land route went from Knoxville to Natchez by way of the Tombigbee River. This went through the Cherokee Indian territory. The other land route to Natchez left the Oconne settlement in Georgia crossing the Alabama River to Fort Stevens and the Tombigbee River.”

“The Federal Road began in 1806 as a postal road. The Creeks by that time had given permission for the development of a horse path through their nation, its purpose being a more efficient mail delivery between Washington City and New Orleans. Migration into the Mississippi Territory was slow in part due to the presence of the powerful Creek and Cherokee tribes in western Georgia and the Choctaw and Chickasaw in Alabama and Mississippi.”

In 1811, when conflicts with the French had reached a point where it seemed necessary to be able to move troops and supplies quickly across the Mississippi Territory, the Federal Road was widened and improved for that purpose. This led to the Creek Indian War of 1813-14 and then to the removal of the Native Americans to the West.

1810 Map of the Federal road from Georgia through Alabama to Mississippi (Library of Congress)

“Many settlers made the tedious trip over the Federal Road. The major arteries of the East and North had connections that led to the newly acquired lands. Traders and light travelers from the North came down the Upper Road through the Piedmont into Georgia, then traveled over the postal horse path which had opened in 1806, through Athens, Watkinsville, and High Shoals, to meet the Federal Road at Columbus, Georgia.

Others used the somewhat easier Fall Line Road and then met the Federal Road, traveling through Augusta, Warrenton, Sparta, Milledgeville, and Macon before reaching Columbus. Crossing on through Alabama, the Federal Road ended at a crossroads known as St. Stephens” 1

Such were the slender bands of communication which tied the frontier settlements of the Mississippi Territory to the world from which they were separated by hundreds of miles of Native American wilderness.

1Many Maps and sketches of American migration routes can be found online at Early American Roads and Trails, Beverly Whitaker, Kansas City, Missouri, Copyright 2002 http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gentutor/trails.html

See a list of all books by Donna R Causey at amazon.com/author/donnarcausey

ALABAMA FOOTPRINTS – Settlement: Lost & Forgotten Stories (Volume 2)

Alabama Footprints: Settlement is a collection of lost and forgotten stories of the first surveyors, traders, and early settlements of what would become the future state of Alabama.

Read about:

  • A Russian princess settling in early Alabama
  • How the early settlers traveled to Alabama and the risks they took
  • A ruse that saved immigrants lives while traveling through Native American Territory
  • Alliances formed with the Native Americans
  • How an independent republic, separate from the United States was almost formed in Alabama
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