Choctaw Heritage

Choctaw heritage. Native
of the sacred land between the two
great rivers.

When I was small, my mother would tell me
of how that sacred land had become simply
“Choctaw County.”
And of those two rivers,
how they decided that the name of one was not
fit to keep.
The Father of Water, they said –
the Mississippi –
that is good.
But the other one will be called the Big Black River.

It should be called the Big Red River,
I think.
Because there at the bridge, the Confederate blood of Pemberton’s men was
spilt as they fled from
General McClernand.
They left their cannons on the bank, threw their rifles in the
air, and started to wade across. McClernand
had surprised them.
Their gray pants were wet; their gray coats were made
sodden. Black boots, good for trooping, are not good for swimming.
Many who were not shot, drowned.
Geography forces History to say, though, that the Union men
got wet too. It’s backwater country there. You can’t
bridge the swamps all around.
Pemberton had the bridge burned before the Northerners could
cross it. The steamboat Dot was anchored nearby, and could have served as a
bridge, but Pemberton burned it too.

That all happened in the West: Hinds County. It’s not so far away, but
you learn how to ignore that there are many things that happen in the
West, and just as many in the East, and all around the compass rose.
It’s only the things in the middle that matter. That
dot where all the lines meet: straight lines drawn by the commissioners, curved
lines drawn by the rivers, dark lines drawn by the Earth, and light lines drawn by the Sun.

When the sun looks upon Big Black River Bridge today, it sees nearby Interstate 20, coming out of Vicksburg, which the Union Army was able
to hold for good after Pemberton left.
The sun looks; it sees Interstate 20 connecting the River and the Ocean,
Vicksburg and Pascagoula, with Jackson in the middle. Jackson is our
capital. Jackson is our dot.

Jackson was also our president. Presidents are remembered by counties, it seems. There’s a Lincoln County, a Jefferson County, a Harrison County. There’s a Jackson County by the Sound, where I live now in Pascagoula.
Lincoln, Jefferson, Jackson – the presidents are parts of Mississippi, right
alongside Copiah, Pontotoc, and Chickasaw Counties. Even Lee and Union Counties
connect for a little more than 13 miles.


Pascagoula, there on the Sound. Mornings, I can be found in the Chevron plant.

15 Nov. 2003