Blues, haints and bayous: snippets from the Deep South: Kaintucks on the bison trail

We drove the most beautiful road down to Natchez called the Natchez Trace Parkway. There were no trucks on it for a start. Trucks are fast becoming our bete noir, as travellers. Spoiling the roads. There so many of them these days, in every country occupying the road space, and they rule, of course, as they are so huge. Even here, where there is so much space, as in Australia, roads are congested with never-ending massive intimidating trucks.

I think if this whole truck transport scenario continues to increase so exponentially throughout the world there must be a near future where some countries solve the problem by building dedicated truckways; where cars and trucks rarely have to come together. So much safer, too.

Trucks were banned on the Natchez Trace Parkway. Which made it such a delightful experience that we pulled off into a National Parks office to learn a bit of its tale.

It had been a bison track, this route. During their annual migration, bison roamed from north to south and back again, travelling the ground, hardening the surface, building a firm track between the trees.

Then, the track was used by boatsmen. Men from the Ohio Valley area would bring their home grown products down the Mississippi River in wooden boats to the markets in Natchez and New Orleans. They were called ‘kaintucks’, as many came from Kentucky. The river ran south so it was too arduous for these men, to paddle their boats back upstream home, so they would sell them at the markets, along with their cotton or corn, and walked home.

Following the bison trail. Some 500 miles north, some of them regularly walked.

And, enroute, enterprising men built ‘stands’ for the travellers to stay in. Like inns. Between 1785 and 1830 there were fifty such inns along this old bison trace. And for 25c travellers could get dinner and a comfy bed for the night.

Motor power, though, killed the trace traffic. Motors allowed the boatmen to build boats that could return north up the Mississippi by water.

Today, this beautiful Trace route is used only by those who wish to wander slowly. It would make a wonderful holiday, just driving the entire 500 miles, stopping at the many interesting little asides and pullouts that have survived enroute, that make such great travel pauses. And all so interesting.