The Natchez Trace

This talk examines three components of the role of the Natchez Trace in the development of the United States. In the 1790s, thousands of boatmen from Kentucky and Tennessee trekked northward along the Trace through the Chickasaw homeland. This transformed the Chickasaw economy, which rapidly shifted to supplying these travelers, helping to define their relationship with the United States. Meanwhile, missionaries, settlers, and coffles of enslaved people began travelling southward along the Trace, which terminated at the Forks of the Road, the south’s second largest slave market. Once little more than a footpath, the Natchez Trace became a key driver in the development of the antebellum United States.

Speakers Expertise:

Dr. Susan Gaunt Stearns is an associate professor of history at the University of Mississippi. She currently teaches courses on US history, the history of the colonial and Revolutionary era America, the history of Mississippi, as well as graduate courses on historical methods and teaching history. Her research focuses on western expansion and its relationship to the creation of the United States and the development of the American and global economies. Her book, Empire of Commerce: The Closing of the Mississippi and the Opening of Atlantic Trade, received Southern Methodist University’s Center for Presidential History’s book prize for 2024. She is currently working on a book examining the history of Memphis from pre-history to the American Revolution.