Red Dog Road

"We are making a journey along the Natchez Trace Parkway, traveling from Natchez, Mississippi on our way up to Nashville, Tennessee. The parkway follows the footsteps of the migrating buffalo and Indian hunters, of boatmen and farmers returning home after floating the produce of their farms down the Mississippi River to sell in Natchez.

"The Natchez Trace offers travelers a look at this country's frontier history in the context of the natural setting that shaped the people and cultures that interacted here. Like the rivers and streams that erode the land while changing course in the bottom lands, like the water tupelo, and cypress trees that reclaim land from the swamps and the hardwood trees and southern pines that battle each other to harvest the precious sunlight, man's footsteps diverge and rejoin as the path men take constantly changes.

"Another road that intersects the Natchez Trace about 40 miles north of Jackson, Mississippi is called RED DOG ROAD. It ran from Canton Mississippi and was named Red Dog after the Choctaw Indian Chief Ofahoma, which means Red Dog.

"Ofahoma was one of the Choctaw Chiefs that signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek where the Choctaws agreed to leave their tribal homeland and move to Oklahoma. That was in 1830. Red Dog road was opened 4 year later in 1834.

"Join us next time when we'll visit Myrick Creek. For Natchez Trace a road through the wilderness, I'm, Frank Thomas."

For more about Natchez Trace: A Road Through the Wilderness, visit eddieandfrank.com