Customer Reviews

Devil's Backbone, The: The Story of the Natchez Trace (Pelican Pouch Series)

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Be careful - though this is an entertaining read, several historical anecdotes in this book are based on folklore rather than actual documented facts. I would recommend "A Way Through the Wilderness" by William C. Davis for a factually accurate history of the Trace instead of this book, which at times reads like a dime novel.

For anyone who likes Southern history, particulary history of the Natchez Trace, this book is a must. The book is full of information about the use and /or settling of the land around the Natchez Trace. The book, however, is often hard to follow since it contains so much information and various names of settlers and infamous historical figures that used the Trace. Once you begin to read it, you become mesmerized and will find it hard to put down.

The best book on the Natchez Trace, where Meriwether Lewis died, is The Devil's Backbone by Jonathan Daniels (1962). Very evocative details and a good map too. It's difficult to imagine traveling under such difficult circumstances as faced by people in early America. The Trace was considered an improved road; tree stumps in the road were required to be cut off shorter than 16 inches. As well as being rough traveling, the Old Trace was a dark, heavily forested, and creepy place. Some years later, Audubon made special note of the vultures that flew low to the ground in this area, looking for food. There were human vultures as well.

One entire chapter of The Devil's Backbone is devoted to Lewis's death.

If you have ever wondered about the early history of the United States and how the all but forgotten town of Natchez, Mississippi came to be, then you will be delighted with this fine work by Jonathan Daniels. Originally founded by the Natchez Indians, this starting point of what came to be called the Natchez Trace, initiated a roadway that stretched 450 miles northeast to today's Nashville, Tennessee. Thought to be descendants of the Aztecs, the first Europeans the Natchez came into contact with were Hernando de Soto's expedition in the 1550's. A thriving metropolis at the time of Soto, Spain annihilated the Natchez people in war and the area subsequently reverted to a natural state.

As France, Spain and England traded claims to the area at the end of the French and Indian War, England established a post on the spot in 1763 and populated it with discharged soldiers by offering land concessions. With the regeneration of the town, the pathway itself was regenerated. For the next 50 or so years whites would increasingly utilize this buffalo path, enlarging and extending it, as a route for commerce, immigration and defense.

As first English colonists and then American frontiersmen crossed the Appalachian Mountains to settle Kentucky, Tennessee and the Ohio Valley, the natural river system's southern flow to New Orleans was the only way for this area's agricultural, forest and manufactured products to move to market. Until the invention of the steamboat, the Trace was a primary thoroughfare for river men, pioneers, armies and traders to return to Kentucky and Tennessee. To give an idea of the volume of travelers, once invented over 700 steamboats would make the homeward trek unnecessary. Volume on the Trace was huge!

In the earliest stages of its commercial development, it passed through ancestral homelands of the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes and was viewed by almost all travelers as true wilderness road. But over time as whites settled the region (by 1800 over 1 million Americans lived west of the Appalachian Mountains) the native population was increasingly squeezed until agricultural interests ultimately pushed Native Americans across the Mississippi River in the 1830s. Thanks to the Trace itself, so rapid was the growth of Natchez proper that in its heyday it contained more millionaires than any other spot in the United States.

The Devil's Backbone is the story of one of America's earliest wilderness thoroughfares. It is a story Jonathan Daniels tells well. It encompasses early French and Spanish exploration, the French and Indian war, the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Trail of Tears. Notables using the Trace include Soto, Carondelet, Tecumseh, Andrew Jackson, Aaron Burr and Meriwether Lewis. It provides an excellent slice of our early western history when our west was still east of the Mississippi River. Indians, soldiers, mail carriers, land speculators, slaves heading south for sale, vigilantes, pirates, travelers and quite blood thirsty outlaw bands all generated a story of amazing mystery and competing interests.

As noted by other reviewers, there is no bibliography but this deficiency is more than made up for by direct source references quoted in the text. Exceedingly well written, clear and concise, there is an amazing amount of very good history here told with an eye to significant analysis and detail.

Quite entertaining. Full of attention grabbing stories and a very entertaining quick read. A great prelude to traveling the Natchez Trace.