Before he stepped into his carriage Andrew Jackson over looked the fledgling settlement he’d just divested himself of for what he thought might be the final time.

“What’s next, John?” He asked the short, bald man standing before him.

“Lots of paper work and planning,” John Overton said. “Figuring out logistics, planning docks, naming streets. You know, the sort of things that you hate to do.”

Jackson nodded back absentmindedly. “The Indians killed the first white man with a legal stake in these lands, John, don’t ever forget that.”

“How could I, Andrew? You bring it up whenever you get the chance. Which is why I forbade your involvement in procuring the land in the first place. Bullets aren’t legally binding.”

Andrew Jackson smiled down at him, “Yes, but they are mortally wounding.”

“Good bye, Andrew.”

As he turned to leave, Jackson called after him. “Oh and, John, one last thing?”

“Yes?”

“If this street needs a name, why not Poplar? Certainly are a lot of them. And I always did like them.”

John Overton smiled back at his friend and former business partner.

“Of course. Poplar it is. And Andrew – good luck with your damn fool run for President.”

Memphis Note
Andrew Jackson had to sell his interest in the Memphis settlement because of his impending run for President. It seemed that an Indian-killing general would draw unwanted attention if he was involved in the pseudo-legal found of a city that was based on an illegal sale of Indian land.

Hernando de Soto hated it here. It wasn’t the heat, the humidity, or even the incessant buzzing of the mosquitoes in his ears.

It was the embarrassment this place ceaselessly heaped upon him.

Against the Incas far to the south, he’d acquitted himself like a proper conquistador, earning the glory to launch this expedition into the northern continent.

But these wilds were nothing like the south. The vicious natives attacked his host at every turn, tearing into its sides, stripping away more with each successive raid.

After that last battle, that holocaust, had taken over a third of his men and left sixty score natives dead at their feet, he feared returning to his ships on the coast without the gold he’d set out to find.

Now the greatest embarrassment of all stretched out before him. A churning river more a mile wide, mocking de Soto with every eddy and piece of flotsam that floated past.

Each day, as his men worked to build rafts for the crossing, all he could do was watch the sun climb and fall, turning the sky purple before disappearing below.

Then wait for the vibration of the hostile drums that would last the night.

Memphis Note
The place where Hernando de Soto crossed the Mississippi River was the fourth bluff, where Memphis would later be founded. Sadly, de Soto never found his gold. He died of a fever on the opposite side of the Mississippi a just over a year after crossing, never making it out of Arkansas.

It had been storming hard for days. The inside of the stockade was the only part of Fort Assumption that wasn’t soaking wet, and to say it was dry would be a gross over exaggeration.

Through the door burst a group of green troops, freshly sent up from New Orleans to join in the war against the Chickasaw. The veterans inside barely even acknowledged their presence.

But, much to everyone’s surprise, a young rifleman walked up to a group of veterans playing cards in the corner and opened his mouth.

“What are you playing?” He asked the men.

“It’s like other card games, but with house rules.” Answered the man dealing out cards to the table.

“Could you teach me if I wanted to play?”

“You’ll pick it up, don’t worry.”

“Well, if it’s your game, how do I know you’re not going to cheat me?”

“Do you see the money on the table?”

“Yes…”

“This money is ours. Do you see anyone rolling on the ground in unbearable agony crying out for their mother, a knife shanked into their ribs?”

“No…”

“Then we are not cheating. Now ante up or go the hell away.”

And sure enough, he did.

Memphis Note
Fort Assumption was the main French outpost on the bluffs of the Mississippi, it was used for exploration and to wage war against the Indians. But, it was not what you’d expect of a military outpost. It had a reputation for being the most drunken, debauched outposts on the French frontier. Which makes since, when you realize that it was the place Memphis was founded on.

Pierre Prudhomme was lost.

It had been more than a week since he’d gotten separated from La Salle’s expedition. He knew because he had rations for five days, and those ran out five days prior.

“Should’ve know better, Pierre,” he hissed at himself. “Shouldn’t have wandered off, Pierre.”

He’d gotten turned while tracking a deer. When he realized there was a problem, it was already too late. He was trapped in a maze of impassible thickets and treacherous bogs, one of which had sucked a hobnailed boot right off his foot.

It didn’t help that he was deep in Indian territory, Indians that were sure to kill him if he was discovered.

“Watch out, Pierre, watch out. They could be everywhere, Pierre, anywhere.” He muttered, clawing out of the bramble into a clearing where a most bizarre sight greeted him.

It was a freshly built wooden stockade, butted up against an inlet of the river; orange fire dancing from within, the smell of cooking meats wafting in the air. And a man, standing at the gate, shouting something curious.

“Piiiieeeerrrreee Puuuudhooommmme!”

At first Pierre didn’t recognize the words. Then clarity came.

He was shouting his name.

Pierre Prudhomme was found.

Memphis Note
The stockade poor Pierre stumbled upon was built by his expedition after La Salle refused to leave the man behind. It was named in Pierre’s honor, and Fort Prudhomme would become the first European structure on the banks of the Mississippi.

Additional Note
Memphis is still having crazy weather, and power was out last night when I came home to write. Again, my apologies.

The farther they got from their home, the more color drained out of the world. First the sky went gray, then the woods, and now, as he glanced around the riverboat, he saw that his people were starting to lose their color as well.

He looked over them, past the churning of the paddle wheel and the icy expanse of the river to the shrinking pillars of smoke that marked the Memphis harbor. Closing his eyes, he looked even farther, to the hills of Mississippi where he was raised. Then to the great mound Nanih Waiya, the birthplace of his people, and the smaller mounds around it, that entomb their history. The sacred place fixed in his mind, he said his good-byes to the land, and to his ancestors.

Opening his eyes he thought of the thin white man with the bizarre accent that had stopped him while boarding the riverboat. The man asked why the Choctaw people were leaving. He had looked at the man for a moment, thinking of the million hateful and angry things he wanted to scream in his face.

“To be free,” was all he could ultimately say.

He hoped he had not lied.

Memphis Note
Memphis was the final point east of the Mississippi for the Choctaw Indians on the Trail of Tears. From here, they were loaded into riverboats and taken across to Arkansas. Alexis de Tocqueville was here to witness their departure, and those were the words on Choctaw told him. They were leaving “To be free”.