ended in 1787, whenTennessee militiamen moved south and burned the village called Coldwater. A little upriver was an elegant plantation where a white man, John Melton, lived with his Cherokee wife. Atop the riverside cliff known as Melton’s Bluff, he built a sprawling farm worked by slaves and featuring a two-story house and a tavern.Local lore held that Melton was a river pirate, a legend that may have been overblown. Whatever Melton did to make his fortune, he was discreet enough that the Tennessee militia never came to burn his plantation. But he had hacked out a lucrative life in remote and beautiful country.
And it
was
beautiful, that land south of the Tennessee River. Above the bluffs stretched tableland—high ground sometimes many miles wide, in places framed by mountains and exceedingly rich in soil. Theland was covered in timber, and said to carry veins of iron ore. The river made it all accessible. Crops could be shipped downstream to the Ohio River, then the Mississippi, all the way to New Orleans. True, the Muscle Shoals were an obstacle to travel farther upriver—but for a land speculator, this obstacle created an opportunity. Muscle Shoals was the head of navigation for cargo boats traveling to or from New Orleans. Journeys must start or end there. Should the valley be opened to settlement, the lower end of the shoals would require riverside towns. Street grids. Civilization. The Donelsons had hardly completed their nightmare voyage when men of means began to see that the region had great potential.In 1783 a North Carolina land company began a long-running but ultimately fruitless effort to take control of hundreds of square miles in the region that later became northern Alabama. The Muscle Shoals Company, as it was called, included the exuberant speculator William Blount, who went on to become Tennessee’s territorial governor and Andrew Jackson’s early political mentor.
A second effort to capture land around Muscle Shoals, by an organization called the Tennessee Company, began shortly after Jackson’s arrival in Nashville in 1788. This too came to nothing, but the shoals were part of the frontier land conversation, and Jackson passed near them many times. The Natchez Trace crossed the Tennessee a few miles below the rapids.From 1789 onward Jackson traveled this road to and from Natchez frequently—herding slaves, leading troops, conducting his first marriage ceremony with Rachel in Natchez, and also famously quarreling with a federal Indian agent on the road. In 1816, General Jackson was assigned to build a new military road through the region, which would speed the journey to New Orleans. Though built for national security purposes, it would also open up previously inaccessible real estate. Jackson’s engineers laid out a route that would cross the Tennessee at the lower end of Muscle Shoals.
The prize was in view, but could not be claimed unless someone gained access to Indian land.
• • •
The north side of the river was largely Cherokee until treaties in 1805 and 1806, under which the nation sold a swath of modern-day northern Alabama and much of Middle Tennessee. These treaties, negotiated by President Thomas Jefferson’s administration, perfectly reflected his goal that Indians should trade land for American goods, exchanging “what they can spare and we want for what we can spare and they want.” Under one treaty the government paid for land with “three thousand dollars in valuable merchandise” plus another $11,000 in either cash or merchandise, followed by an annual subsidy of $3,000. The second treaty gave up at least five thousand square miles for even less compensation—$10,000 plus a gristmill and a cotton gin. That treaty was a curious document entirely aside from the nominal payment. While it sold Cherokee territory for less than half a cent per acre, it exempted certain parcels from the sale, including a strip of rich land along the north shore of Muscle Shoals.
And it
was
beautiful, that land south of the Tennessee River. Above the bluffs stretched tableland—high ground sometimes many miles wide, in places framed by mountains and exceedingly rich in soil. Theland was covered in timber, and said to carry veins of iron ore. The river made it all accessible. Crops could be shipped downstream to the Ohio River, then the Mississippi, all the way to New Orleans. True, the Muscle Shoals were an obstacle to travel farther upriver—but for a land speculator, this obstacle created an opportunity. Muscle Shoals was the head of navigation for cargo boats traveling to or from New Orleans. Journeys must start or end there. Should the valley be opened to settlement, the lower end of the shoals would require riverside towns. Street grids. Civilization. The Donelsons had hardly completed their nightmare voyage when men of means began to see that the region had great potential.In 1783 a North Carolina land company began a long-running but ultimately fruitless effort to take control of hundreds of square miles in the region that later became northern Alabama. The Muscle Shoals Company, as it was called, included the exuberant speculator William Blount, who went on to become Tennessee’s territorial governor and Andrew Jackson’s early political mentor.
A second effort to capture land around Muscle Shoals, by an organization called the Tennessee Company, began shortly after Jackson’s arrival in Nashville in 1788. This too came to nothing, but the shoals were part of the frontier land conversation, and Jackson passed near them many times. The Natchez Trace crossed the Tennessee a few miles below the rapids.From 1789 onward Jackson traveled this road to and from Natchez frequently—herding slaves, leading troops, conducting his first marriage ceremony with Rachel in Natchez, and also famously quarreling with a federal Indian agent on the road. In 1816, General Jackson was assigned to build a new military road through the region, which would speed the journey to New Orleans. Though built for national security purposes, it would also open up previously inaccessible real estate. Jackson’s engineers laid out a route that would cross the Tennessee at the lower end of Muscle Shoals.
The prize was in view, but could not be claimed unless someone gained access to Indian land.
• • •
The north side of the river was largely Cherokee until treaties in 1805 and 1806, under which the nation sold a swath of modern-day northern Alabama and much of Middle Tennessee. These treaties, negotiated by President Thomas Jefferson’s administration, perfectly reflected his goal that Indians should trade land for American goods, exchanging “what they can spare and we want for what we can spare and they want.” Under one treaty the government paid for land with “three thousand dollars in valuable merchandise” plus another $11,000 in either cash or merchandise, followed by an annual subsidy of $3,000. The second treaty gave up at least five thousand square miles for even less compensation—$10,000 plus a gristmill and a cotton gin. That treaty was a curious document entirely aside from the nominal payment. While it sold Cherokee territory for less than half a cent per acre, it exempted certain parcels from the sale, including a strip of rich land along the north shore of Muscle Shoals.
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