making shooks for new orleans—the building of the flat-boats—davy goes to reelfoot lake—a feeling of awe comes over davy—the story of a strange and mysterious place—something about the night riders and their neighbors—where some of davy’s descendants now reside—the padre’s story of the reelfoot earthquake and the destruction of new madrid—the earth trembles beneath his listeners’ feet.
after the harvest was over in the fall of 1825, the year after davy’s term as representative had expired, he saw a prospect of making money by the shipment of staves to new orleans. there was an unlimited supply of white oak on the obion river and on the shores of a lake about twenty-five miles from his home in the woods. he took a couple of horses and an outfit, and started for the lake, which he reached the next day. it is not known just what davy meant by “the lake” referred to, but it was probably one of the widened[157] parts of the slow and tortuous river, not far above island number two, at the junction of the obion with the mississippi.
as soon as he arrived on the ground, davy hired men to build two flat-boats and get out the staves. the staves were split from the straight-grained oak logs cut in the woods and hauled to the water. they were often called shooks, and when ready for market were made up in bundles for shipment. when used, they had to be hewed and trimmed with draw-knives, then stood on end in a circle, when they were hooped with hickory bands into hogsheads and fitted with heads. the hogsheads were used for molasses and for the cane sugar produced in the south.
davy worked with the men he had hired, overseeing the plans for the boats, until everything was well under way, when he had a visit from a neighbor on reelfoot lake, who wanted him to take a trip to his part of the country, less than thirty miles distant. having heard something about this strange body of water, davy agreed to go, and was in sight of his neighbor’s clearing before sunset[158] of the day following. as he saw the lake for the first time, a feeling of awe came over him, as if he looked into a vista of some old dead or dying world. a fair expanse of shining water, with islands bright with the autumn glories of deciduous trees, and skirted by hills that were dark with pine and hemlock or thickly set with oak and maple groves, was dotted with black and decaying stumps that rose above the surface, high in air, like the masts of a sunken fleet. in places, only the tops of the sunken trees were seen, but everywhere, like the wreck that covers the sea after storm and battle have done their work, were floating logs and drifting limbs, charred and unsightly relics of the wilderness.
reelfoot lake is fifty miles long and several miles in width, and where it steams in the sun were once great forests and primeval hunting-grounds. in 1907, it was the scene of a murderous affair that brought the night riders of tennessee into ghastly prominence. on a dark night they killed two men, and a third escaped by hiding under one of the many logs near the[159] edge of the lake. he was wounded by the bullets of the murderers and thought to be drowned. so little is known of the lake, that a description of some of its features should be interesting. in 1909 richard a. paddock, in an article in sports afield, wrote:
“it is a strange, weird, mysterious place, filled with uncanny sights and sounds, haunted by the ghosts of former dusky inhabitants, whom it swallowed without warning and extinguished in a twinkling of an eye in the most diabolical manner, and whose tortured spirits even now cry out for relief and freedom from cruel bondage on every dark and stormy night. strange and uncanny are its surroundings, and strange and mysterious are its inhabitants; stealth and superstition lurk on its borders. danger and sudden and premature death are so common as to be held in contemptuous disregard. mysterious secrets are hidden in its almost impenetrable islands—secrets and mysteries that i hesitate to mention here, for i have had my warning, and know the danger of disregard.
“the lake is inhabited by a race of people who[160] are a class unto themselves; there are no others like them; they take their living and surplus from the waters of reelfoot lake. they have nothing else—no other means of livelihood. it is their sustenance, their farm, their business, their all. these fishermen make no idle threats. they are stern, determined, ignorant, superstitious physical giants, who make and execute their own laws, and recognize no others. they suffer from mosquitoes, malaria, and chills and fever, to such an extent that their livers are always out of order, and life has a bilious hue. they go hungry often enough to make them desperate. they do not take kindly to the visiting sportsman. they feel that he is a trespasser on their rights; he is making them and their children go hungry and naked; he ought to be made an example of, to the discouragement of other future unwelcome guests.”
the lake now has all and more than it can support in comfort. its inhabitants are very poor, always on the ragged edge, always in a hand-to-hand scramble with starvation. they have no other way of gaining a living; they cannot do manual labor; they[161] never have done it, nor have their fathers before them. it is fish, hunt, and trap, or starve, with them, and they usually do all four.
the people about reelfoot lake have among them some of davy’s descendants. his daughters and sons lived in that part of the state, and his relatives and neighbors from the mountains followed the trail he had made. it is not fair to say that his principles live in the code of the night riders, but human nature is always the same, and the hungry fishermen of reelfoot are as jealous of their preserves as was the red man of his hunting-grounds.
one night, when davy sat with his friend’s family before the flare of the blazing logs in the wide fireplace, there was with them a catholic father who for years had wandered from st. louis to new orleans and pensacola, and back again, even as brébeuf and the beardless garnier, and isaac le jogue, had dared the dangers of the wilderness, seeing visions of heaven while their stomachs were empty, and ever blazing the cross upon stately trees in the dark recesses of the forests.[162] davy asked the padre to tell him the story of the earthquake to which the lake owed its origin. he filled his pipe with tobacco cut from one of davy’s twists, and then for a long time looked into the heart of the fire, without speaking.
“hay catorce a?os, se?ores,” he finally began in the softest of spanish, and then, realizing that davy would not understand him, began again:
“it was fourteen years ago, almost, it being the night of the 16th of december, of the year 1811, that i went on shore at the little city of new madrid, leaving at the landing the boat in which i had come from st. louis with brother anselmo. when we had found a place in which to rest, and had refreshed ourselves with food for the first time in nearly two days, we walked about the place, being cramped and stiffened from our long sitting in the boat.
“the houses were far apart, built of logs, and set in the midst of mud and filth; but in a greater building than all the others, we heard the music of the dance, the sound of many voices, and all the echoes of thoughtless enjoyment. there were the french from new orleans and st. louis, boatmen[163] and traders upon the great river mississippi, and the spanish of the settlement, with the americans from the ohio and the northern lands. we knew that we should see many we had known, among the people there, and with brother anselmo i entered the room. it was a great hall, with floors of sawed timber, very smooth for dancing, and not like the floors of hewn logs that were in the houses of that time. there were many candles about the walls, and also torches of lightwood that flared and hissed and threw black shadows of the dancers across the floor. when they saw us, there was silence, and no one moved until we had been seated in a part of the hall where we could watch the others. never have i seen, se?ores, so gay and so thoughtless a gathering; there were beautiful women there, and the bravest of men, and they were young. i saw the soft light of love in the eyes of men who had dared the tomahawk of the indian as they had dared the soldiers of napoleon and the dangers of the deep, and the smiles that answered them were sweeter than those of fortune or of fame.
“as the night wore on, we looked from the[164] open door of the hall, across the swirling waters of the mississippi. the stars were dim with haze, and the air was still and soft and damp; it seemed hard to breathe it down deep in the lungs, and the boatmen looked for rain. it was eleven hours of the night, when wild sounds were heard without, and all the frolic ceased. the reports of many guns and the war-cries of indians were soon recognized, and they grew louder and came nearer. the people were saying to each other, ‘the war-party is returning from the chickasaw lands.’ it was not long before there came into the room many white men and as many as twenty chickasaws, daubed with paint and covered with mud. they had been in pursuit of some of little warrior’s braves, who had hidden in the swamps after the murder of the white families along their trail. the chief, big tree, held up for all to see the head of one of the creeks, a sight, se?ores, that chilled my blood, for i knew it to be the head of white corn, whose house was built on the coosa river, and whose hospitality was always to be counted upon.
[165]
“as i looked upon the wild rejoicing over the death of the misguided brave, the old spanish timepiece rang the midnight hour, so softly and so sweetly, so like the benediction of an angel choir, that in an instant all was still. then the floor seemed to rise and sway beneath our feet, the building rocked like a ship at sea, and as the torches and the candles fell one by one to the floor, the cries of terror and despair were like the shrieking of the bottomless pit. before all could reach the street, a dozen were trampled under foot.
“we were sick and faint with the swaying of the ground; the crash of the falling roofs of the cabins was mingled with the roar of the water, swelling in great wrathful waves about the banks. we held our breath as the earth rose suddenly under a cabin across the way, higher and higher, until with a leaping out of gas-like flame we saw what seemed an open grave, deep and wide and long, into which the fated house fell out of sight. there was no longer a crying aloud. dumb with despair, the hopeless people awaited the coming of the tardy sun. the earth still rocked and[166] trembled and yawned, and huge waves swept at times among the cabins lower down. it was like the day of judgment, and what we should see when day had come, no man could think.
“it is a long story, se?ores, longer than you have time to hear. when at last there was light once more, we looked across wide lakes where forests of pine and oak had stood the night before. in many a place the tops of the tallest trees were scarcely seen above the waves. where the bayous had been wide and deep, there was new, strange land, without tree or plant, fresh from the bowels of the earth. the lake upon whose shores we sit to-night had swallowed the hills and valleys of an ancient hunting-ground; the blackened trunks that have stood these many years will remain a hundred more to tell the story of the earthquake that lasted for weeks and months, and changed the face of the region about us; it destroyed the town of new madrid, now but half rebuilt in a safer spot, and it swept the wilderness with all the destructive force of a hurricane. from this there came the story of tecumseh’s wrathful[167] threat, to stamp upon the ground and destroy the cabins of the tookabatcha town.”
the padre ceased, for suddenly the cabin seemed to swing like a drifting ship. they all started to their feet, the children ran to their mother’s arms, and then the swaying stopped. it was one of the strange quakes that have never entirely ceased in the hundred years since the time of the padre’s story. as late as 1907 a rather disquieting shock took place in the region of samburg, but it did nothing notable in the way of damage. there is no doubt that the “harricane” so often mentioned by davy was the work of an earthquake.
