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The epilogue explores recent expressions of historical memory in Natchez. The efforts of the National Park Service, the Historic Natchez Foundation and the Natchez Courthouse Records Project have set in motion progressive changes hardly imaginable a few decades ago. These include a growing number of Pilgrimage home tours that acknowledge the contributions of enslaved laborers, funding to interpret the Forks of the Road slave market site, and the Natchez Trails project that depicts a more racially inclusive history throughout downtown streets and neighborhoods. But even as these developments signal important steps forward, some efforts falter amid contestation. For most of its lifespan, Natchez’s white victors wrote its history. Today that history is beginning to be re-imagined and rewritten by a small group of liberal whites and vocal black agents pushing for long overdue change. Hopefully, Natchez’s example will prompt other southern communities to examine, re-imagine and more accurately share their own local histories.

This chapter recounts the early years of the Natchez Pilgrimage, a heritage tourism enterprise created by the Natchez Garden Club at the height of the Great Depression. The Pilgrimage dramatized a mix of decades-old southern racial ideology and white historical memory that was repackaged for 1930s consumption. Pilgrimage founder Katherine Miller and other leading clubwomen defined their community’s cultural image, while also redefining the meaning of traditional southern womanhood. The Pilgrimage is also the story of how one southern community’s selective expression of historical memory captivated white tourists eager to immerse themselves in the world of the Old South so vividly portrayed by popular writers and entertainers of the 1930s. The widespread appeal of the Pilgrimage home tours and pageant suggests the power of popular culture to shape a tenacious historical memory that remained in force for much of the twentieth century and lingers even today.

This chapter details the courtroom battle that erupted in 1941 between the Natchez Garden Club and Pilgrimage Garden Club, dubbed by the media as “The Battle of the Hoopskirts.” The dispute began when the rival clubs clashed over overlapping home tour schedules. But much more was at stake than a heated court hearing to determine tour dates. The clubwomen of Natchez were battling for the control and spoils of their town’s cultural image. The issue was not so much a differing definition of the past as much as a conflict over who would control the presentation of that past and the marked differences in lifestyles and ideals that polarized the warring factions. The opposing clubs agreed on the end product—a highly romanticized, whitewashed image of the Old South mirrored by popular culture of the era but differed on the management of that past as a marketable commodity.

This essay argues for including an “indigenous perspective” in teaching all literature, but especially works by Eudora Welty. Welty’s knowledge of the indigenous history of Mississippi and especially the Natchez Trace suggests the need to provide this context for students. Teaching LeAnne Howe’s Shell Shaker along with Welty’s Natchez Trace stories and The Robber Bridegroom provides new ways to view complex cultural and historical issues associated with these works. In her fiction, Welty constructs her own “tribalography,” an alternative American narrative strongly influenced by her understanding of Native American history and culture.

This chapter addresses Latin American contexts for reading and teaching Welty's fiction. Beginning with traces of Spanish Natchez and territories of New Spain in Welty, this chapter moves to engage aspects of magical realism, carnival ethos, and consciousness ofla frontera (the border) in Welty's early work. Readers may come to see that Welty can be read well in alignment with several different Latina or Chicana writers.

The introduction provides historical background on Natchez, Mississippi, and the town’s most famous heritage tourism product, the Natchez Pilgrimage, founded in the early 1930s. Similar to earlier expressions of historical memory in Natchez, the Pilgrimage home tours and pageants represented the romanticized values of the Old South and its Lost Cause. The town’s public and private historical memory following the Civil War through the Great Depression in the form of letters, emancipation parades, associations, militia groups, photography and other popular amusements are discussed. The history of the town in the aftermath of the Civil War and its impact on the formerly enslaved, the white planter class, elite free blacks, and social conditions following the war through the Great Depression are noted. The idea that historical memories are constantly in flux and frequently contested is discussed.

This chapter focuses on Warner McCary's desire to escape his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, and his own painful past by reinventing himself. It explores the brickyards and barbershops of the Mississippi River port and sketches the city's complex cultural milieu—its reliance on chattel slavery, its briefly flourishing free black community, its connections to other ports, its rich indigenous life and history, and its varied cultural venues. McCary's decision to represent himself as an Indian following his manumission and departure from Natchez must be evaluated not only in the context of slavery, but also with an understanding of the influence of Native people and affairs on life in the South, including the context of Indian removal.

This chapter discusses the transformation of the Mississippi Territory from being a boorish community to a mature society. It describes the new Natchez District and Washington: Natchez as a commercial and agricultural center and Washington as the home of the territory's social center. These two towns were considered the most important in the territory, although a number of villages are also discussed in this chapter. It also looks at the different societal factors of the territory, including education, land ownership, and politics.

This chapter discusses the Mobile question. Mobile was an important port to the Bigbee settlers, and without it the Natchez District and the Bigbee District would be unable to prosper. The failure to address the question regarding the possible ruin of the Tombigbee Settlement was a steady source of irritation to the residents of Washington County.

In September 1816 a notice appeared in the National Aegis of Worcester, Massachusetts: . . . Great Natural Curiosity TO BE SEEN AT COL. SIKE’S HALL A FEMALE MUMMY . . . Supposed to be more than 1,000 years old. She was recently discovered in a Saltpetre Cave, in Kentucky. At the time, she was shrouded in cloth made from the bark of the willow, and ornamented with beads and feathers, having her instruments for working and musick lying by her; as was also a very curious wooden bowl, containing burnt bones, the relics of some of her friends, and the preserved skin of a Rattle Snake— all of which are preserved, and now presented to the view of the curious. She appears to have been about 5 feet 8 inches in height, and of the most delicate and elegant symmetry. The hair is still on her head; some of her teeth yet remain, and the nails on her fingers and toes are still perfect. It is presumed that she, together with the articles found with her, is one of the greatest curiosities ever exhibited to the American public. Great conjectures are formed as to the period of her existence; but we presume it is no exaggeration to say that, in all probability she is as ancient as the immense Mounds of the western Country, which have so astonished the philosophical world. The arrival of the Kentucky Mummy—on view for only two weeks, at a visitor’s price of 25 cents—was the culmination of a summer of antiquarian excitement along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Journalists, poets, and impresarios were moved by the sight. Scholars schemed to acquire the mummy for their cabinets and scrutinized the withered remains for clues as to her origins and associations. But it was the interest of the general audience that made her progress particularly noteworthy. “All you gentlemen and ladies,” announced a Philadelphia newspaper, “have the opportunity to gratify yourselves and behold this rare curiosity.” The history of Euro-American encounters with the indigenous antiquities of the Americas is remarkably incomplete.

Around 1850 an image of a mysterious cavern in the western country was painted on a vast stretch of canvas. It depicts an elaborate, subterranean realm with colorful stalactites, exotic mineral formations, and an enigmatic hieroglyphic inscription. The darkness is illumined by the flaming brands of a party of explorers, who move about in active curiosity. In the shadows beyond the torchlight a trio of mummies can be seen, propped up against the rocks. The Kentucky Mummy—and a few of her peers—patiently await the attention of Investigators. The description attached to the painting, however, suggests that its object is not Mammoth Cave, but another western grotto, located in a bluff alongside the Ohio known as Cave-in-Rock. In actuality there were no stalactites at this particular location, and no evidence for antiquities either. Early in the era of western exploration the cavern had been used as shelter by travelers: the walls were indeed inscribed, but—like the trees that had once risen atop the Grave Creek Mound—with the signatures of those passing through rather than with those of the ancient inhabitants. More infamously, the cave had been used by river pirates as a base for attacks on flatboat passengers. Eastern newspapers had carried accounts of the banditti of Cave-in-Rock. Thomas Ashe included the cave among his bone-filled catacombs, and a newspaper article of a few years later described the place as a “dark mansion of the murdered.” John Egan’s romanticized depiction of Cave-in-Rock—executed on behalf of Montroville Dickeson—illustrates the complex accretion of historicized landscapes in the American West in the era prior to the Civil War. For the mid-nineteenth-century audience such palimpests were relatively commonplace, representing the increasing time depth of settlement and the progressive integration of different types of historical experience. That the painter had apparently never seen the place itself was irrelevant: his canvas artfully joined the ancient dead with the casualties of more recent times, connecting past and present in equal degree, within a mythicized western setting. The nature of Egan’s work itself indicated that visual imagery was a potentially powerful strategy for engaging the material past in the antebellum United States.

This chapter explores the national media attention associated with this case. Because the case took place after the first pilgrimage of homes in Natchez, stark contrasts were made between the Old South and the gothic South represented by Dana, Dockery, and Glenwood. The press nicknamed Dana the “Wild Man,” Dockery as the “Goat Woman,” and Glenwood as “Goat Castle.” Descriptions of Goat Castle and photographs of the interior were shared nationwide, which caused journalists to make analogies with Edgar Allen Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher.” The scandal was that the Old South Grandeur represented by the pilgrimage was a distraction from the squalor of Goat Castle.

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the Mississippi Territory. It was formed during President John Adams' second year of office, and after the Revolution many immigrants traveled from the mountains and into the territories that are now known as the states of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. The chapter also looks at the Natchez District, which was handed over to the government of the United States. It was located in a remote southwestern corner of the country and was populated by former British Loyalists and wary Native Americans.

This chapter discusses the transition of the Natchez District from a Spanish province to a territory of the United States government. It describes the lives of the settlers while under the rule of the Spanish. It describes the aftermath of the Spanish rule as having left a legacy of bitterness and discord and being responsible for the separation of the ruling class of landholders into two hostile camps. When the Natchez District was turned over to the United States government, it was given its own local government system.

This chapter discusses the arrival of the first governor of the Natchez District, Winthrop Sargent, whom the settlers called “His Yankeeship”. He is described as being rather temperamental, and his efforts to organize the militia and the names of his appointees were met with mixed reviews. His other efforts were also considered controversial, such as his decision to create a probate court to administer estates, grant letters of administration, and a host of other functions. Until his impeachment as the governor of the Natchez District, most of Sargent's activities and efforts centered on the militia and upholding the law.

This chapter discusses the second governor of the Natchez District, William Charles Cole Claiborne. The challenges faced by this twenty-six-year-old governor were different from those of his predecessor, Winthrop Sargent. First, he needed to rally the Mississippians behind the policies of the newly elected and popular President Jefferson, as well as correct the mistakes of his despised predecessor. He was also faced with two immediate problems: an exposed territory that was surrounded by unfriendly Indians and uneasy Spaniards, and an unorganized militia. Compared to Sargent, Claiborne was an eager convert of the new Republican Party, and his reputation as a defender of democracy and as a disciple of Jefferson was appreciated by many.

This chapter discusses the tensions between the residents of the Natchez District and the residents of the “Bigbee” District during the acquisition of Louisiana into the Mississippi Territory. While those in Natchez were able to enjoy the cotton boom, those in Bigbee were unable to enjoy either long-term benefits or immediate relief. This discussion looks at the differences between these two districts and the problems encountered by the residents of the Bigbee District during the administration of Winthrop Sargent and William Claiborne.

This chapter discusses Robert Williams, another governor of the Natchez District. He is different from his predecessors because he held multiple offices, as the land commissioner of the western district and as the governor of the Natchez District. This special recognition also lay him open to a number of criticisms. Later on in the chapter the brief resurrection of the Federalists and the matters addressed by the General Assembly are discussed.