Editor’s note: In his column “Ask Rufus” in The Dispatch June 21, Rufus Ward wrote of an expedition by Chickasaw students to sites in the Golden Triangle area. Access it at cdispatch.com to learn of the group’s research and connection to Hernando de Soto. Read on here for more of the story.
The Chickasaw legend tells of two children who remained at camp while their parents went into the forest to hunt for food. A cataclysmic shaking of the earth occurred, accompanied by a great noise. The family rushed to camp, only to find it gone, replaced by a huge lake. The parents’ calls for the youngsters went unanswered, but for two giant water snakes swimming toward them. They fled, believing their children had been turned into these creatures.
So goes a legend surrounding the origins of Tibbee Lake, a private lake in Clay County. It is told by Dr. Brad Lieb of Jackson, a tribal archaeologist for the Chickasaw Nation. Lieb spent much of June leading an expedition of Chickasaw Native Explorers on a quest for ancestral roots and the lost village of Chicaza, believed to be within the Golden Triangle area of Mississippi.
On June 19, he stood in dappled sunlight at a landing, watching the explorers — Chickasaw college students — glide off in canoes to navigate the fabled home of the massive water beasts.
“That is a fragment of a more complicated story that is centuries old; it involved a supernatural creature called the horned serpent … ” Lieb explained.
The legend is one of several the students heard during travels in north Mississippi and Alabama, part of the traditional Chickasaw homelands. They each came from different cities, brought together by a common interest in heritage. They answered the invitation from the Chickasaw Nation Native Explorers Program in Oklahoma, which provides hands-on experiences to strengthen knowledge of science, medicine and native cultures.
“I’ve always known I was Chickasaw, but I was disconnected from that part of my family tree, so I didn’t know anything about the culture or heritage of the Chickasaw people,” said Sydni Jones, a rising junior from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. She was born in Oklahoma, in one of the 13 counties that make up the Chickasaw Nation. The kinesiology major was compelled to join the expedition, in large part, to learn more about her familial culture.
Collaboration
As students visited important sites, they worked with archaeologists from the University of South Carolina and the University of Florida, with assistance from archaeologists at Mississippi State University and the University of Alabama.
Along the way, many others played a role, including local historians Rufus Ward and Jack Elliott. Private landowners were crucial to the project, as were people like Steve Mitchener of West Point, who provided canoes, and the fishing and hunting club that granted access to Tibbee Lake.
The expedition took students to sites not only around Columbus, Starkville and West Point, but also to the Chissa’Talla Preserve near Tupelo; to Bear Creek in Tishomingo, where evidence of ancient rock fish weirs built by American Indians exists; and to Tuscumbia Landing, a Trail of Tears site in Alabama.
They went to Buzzard’s Roost on the Natchez Trace and Moundville Archaeological Park in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. They conducted archaeological testing in Monroe, Clay and Oktibbeha Counties, and stayed overnight in Columbus at Plymouth Bluff, a Chickasaw and Choctaw heritage site, noted Lieb.
Emotional impact
For Jones, a visit to Tom Hendrix’s Wichapi commemorative stone wall in Florence, Alabama, was poignant. For more than 30 years, Hendrix built a stone wall to honor the memory of his great-great-grandmother, Te-lah-nay. She was of the Yuchi tribe and was sent to the Indian Territory of Oklahoma during the removal of native peoples from the Southeast. Longing for her home, she walked all the way back.
Hendrix’s story touched a chord with several of the students.
“Some of us never had a grandmother or grandfather to tell us all our history … we’ve felt disconnected from that,” said Jones. When Hendrix gave some of them small native mementos to take home, Jones was almost overwhelmed.
“That means more than anything. I can’t have words to say how much that means … ”
Humidity aside
Explorer Jason McNally is a senior history major at Fresno State in southern California. For him, finding evidence of post holes and artifacts at a search site was an exciting experience. Depending on how much more is found, it could signify a village that had contact with the Spanish, he said.
The expedition helped McNally and his fellow travelers form a connection to those who came before them.
“The students come from different parts of the country. We don’t live in Chickasaw lands, don’t get to talk to Chickasaw people or experience that culture,” he said. “To get to go into the areas we did, picking up some of the language from our leaders, and some of the culture and traditional food and dance, it really sparked an interest in me.”
Not that explorers aren’t relieved to be home now, out of the Deep South’s punishing humidity.
“Here in California, we get 100- to 110-degree days, but nothing like the humidity there,” McNally laughed. “I think from the minute I got there, I was sweating.”
Expedition camera crew member Chad Hamilton, from the Oklahoma Cultural Center, said, “And you have different bugs — we have mosquitoes, but nothing like those!”
Humidity, insects and the random case of poison ivy aside, the explorers’ visit to the Southeast has been deemed successful.
“It was so positive for the students and everyone involved, we already have plans to do this again next year,” said Lieb. The group uncovered significant evidence offering clues in the search for Chicaza.
“We haven’t found the site, but we’ve found the trail,” Lieb summed up.
Assistance of landowners is critical. Lieb implored those with land that might hold answers to protect it from digging, leveling or major agricultural operations before it is checked. Digging especially is highly destructive to non-renewable archaeological resources that do not come back when destroyed.
Northeast Mississippi, and especially the blackland prairie area, is rich with Chickasaw and Native American history, Lieb emphasized. June’s expedition through it yielded not only useful archaeological information, but also something more personal.
“I saw college students come back in touch with their ancestral heritage, gaining an appreciation for their ancestors’ struggles and their spirit,” said Lieb. “They were taught the history of these sites and the Chickasaw legacy of perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds.”
Now, he added, they know why the Chickasaw motto is “Unconquered and Unconquerable.”
Learn more about the Chickasaw Nation and the Native Explorers Program at chickasaw.net.
Jan Swoope is the Lifestyles Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 43 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.