Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun by Charles Hudson

Author:Charles Hudson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2018-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

Quizquiz

On April 30 they departed from the fort of Alibamo and began traveling toward the northwest, carrying their wounded with them.28 They were too short on food to wait for the wounded men to recover, and no doubt because of this, several of them died along the way.

Their path took them from the Black Belt into the red hills of northern Mississippi. At first the tree cover was much as they had seen before, namely southeastern pine forest, but gradually the pines decreased in number and they entered a southern spur of the oak-chestnut-yellow poplar forest that covered parts of Tennessee and Kentucky (see map 4). Their journey from Alibamo was difficult because they had to cross the numerous headwaters of several small westward flowing streams—the Little Tallahatchie, Tippah, and Coldwater Rivers. They marched the entire distance through very rough, wooded country that was laced with wet places, and they often found themselves wading in water. All of these creeks and swamps were fordable except a few swamps they had to cross by swimming.

On the ninth day of being constantly on the march, they came to a trail that paralleled Johnson Creek in present-day western De Soto County, Mississippi, and as they traversed this last stretch of wilderness, they entered one of the most distinctive and richest regions in the Southeast—the Mississippi Valley. They had seen small expanses of southern floodplain forest as they crossed rivers in Georgia and South Carolina, and at Mabila, and yet again at Apafalaya. But in the central Mississippi Valley the floodplain forest was vast, stretching all the way from about present-day Cape Girardeau, Missouri, down to New Orleans (see map 4). In places this forest was as much as a hundred miles wide. The dominant trees were bald cypress, tupelo, and several species of oak, as well as several subdominant species that are tolerant of water. Pine trees were notably absent from this forest. Today virtually all of this vast old-growth forest has been cut down for timber or simply cleared and burned for farming; hence, most of the forest that can be seen in the Mississippi Valley today is secondary growth.

The Mississippi Valley has been powerfully shaped by the magnificent river that runs through it. The Mississippi River, together with its tributaries—the Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, and Red—drains a vast area of the North American continent. It is one of the largest rivers in the world, and when it floods, particularly in spring and early summer, it can wreak havoc with the land in one place (fig. 57), eroding it away—virtually dissolving it—only to bless other areas as its muddy waters release their particles of soil. The Mississippi River acquired its meandering habits by about 4000 B.C., and it has frequently changed its course, sinuously, like a giant serpent, within a wide swath of the valley. It has left traces of itself everywhere in its meander zone.

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