Photo by C.C. Lockwood
“The rich deep black alluvial soil which would grow cotton taller than the head of a man on a horse, already one jungle one brake one impassable density of brier and cane and vine interlocking the soar of gum and cypress and hickory and pinoak and ash, printed now by the tracks of unalien shapes – bear and deer and panthers and bison and wolves and alligators and the myriad smaller beasts, and unalien men to name too perhaps…”
So it is that William Faulkner paints the pre-European Mississippi Delta, the flat, intensely fertile region east of the River from modern Memphis down to Vicksburg, and now more accurately described as the Yazoo River Floodplain. These words come from Faulkner’s prelude to Big Woods, a collection of short stories revolving around a deep woods black bear hunt, a dog named Lion of fabled strength and tenacity, and a young boy, Quentin Compson, coming into his own in pre-Civil War Mississippi.
In the end, Big Woods amounts to a lament of the loss of the region’s famed and powerful wilderness well before Faulkner’s own birth. The Delta, long a victim of its own fertility, is now over ninety-five percent farmland, and the region’s subspecies of black bear is Federally Threatened. Yet both ecologically and culturally, its history is as rich as its own soil and as any other region in the country.
It was to a part of the Delta I traveled recently in pursuit of Faulkner’s tale I’ve so long admired, but also the site of a real-life version of the story, led not by a young, inexperienced, fictional protagonist, but by a U.S. president. Teddy Roosevelt, widely known in both his day and ours as a lover of manly pursuits generally, and big game hunts, in particular, came to north Mississippi and Louisiana in 1902 to try his hand at tracking down the great beast of the storied southern bottomlands, most of which had disappeared to cotton already.
In Sharkey County, in deep, dark, wet forests along the Little Sunflower River, Roosevelt was led on horseback by a pack of first class Walker hounds and an ex-slave and ex-confederate (yes, a black confederate) soldier named Holt Collier, who had been tracking and killing black bears since childhood. Roosevelt, who had hunted across the nation, described Collier as the best guide and hunter he’d ever seen, with “…all the dignity of an African chief.” Collier also admired Roosevelt, and described him as “a pleasant man” with “a thousand questions to ask.” Also in the party, by chance, was LeRoy Percy, a powerful Delta senator and great-uncle of the brilliant Louisiana novelist Walker Percy.
The story goes, as both Collier and many others would attest, that the guide chased ahead of the main party with several dogs after a giant, old, graying bear which he eventually cornered into a lake, lassoed, and by himself dragged to a nearby willow, to which he tied and waited for the party to catch up. Many in the party urged Roosevelt to shoot the bear, but he refused, earning him (via a Washington Post cartoon) the name “Teddy Bear,” which would later be used to describe children’s toys made in honor of the President. Many say Collier was the inspiration for Faulkner’s Go Down Moses character Sam Fathers, the son of a Choctaw chief and a slave girl, though the author has never confirmed this.
Only a Highway 61 roadside marker at the tiny ‘town’ of Onward, Mississippi, notes the location of one of the party’s campsites. After much reading, map inspection, and heckling of locals, I was still unable to find the actual spot where Collier is said to have lassoed and tied up the beast more than a century ago. It lies now in the middle of the 60,000-acre Delta National Forest, a little known but fantastically beautiful, if somewhat buggy and muggy, floodplain forest situated just east of Hwy 61 north of Vicksburg. The forest, towering above a sea of corn, cotton, and soybeans, is managed principally now for its abundant wildlife. Yet Roosevelt was equally as impressed with the forest’s ‘myriad smaller beasts’ as he was with the bear.
Autumn is a fantastic time of year to visit as the mosquitoes have begun being knocked back by cooler weather, the enormous trees are shades of orange and yellow, and the low areas are relatively dry and accessible. The Delta region is also home to Panther Swamp National Wildlife Refuge and no less than eight state-run Wildlife Management Areas, offering thousands more acres of unique bottomland hardwood forest. In case you are wondering, the area does still host a small (and growing) population of black bears, but they generally do all they can to steer clear of people.
The National Forest boasts well over fifty miles of trails and eighty primitive campsites, but canoeing/kayaking on the Little Sunflower affords the most peaceful and enticing way to view the jungle-like place. The fall boater will be hard pressed NOT to see armadas of wood ducks and an array of birds of prey. Songbirds, migrating south toward the tropics, still abound. The region is truly full of life.
The Delta’s big woods are not for the faint of heart. The forest is dense. Insects abound. It is easy to get lost. This is precisely, though, what enticed men such as Collier and Faulkner. Though we may never be able to knowingly gaze on the site where Roosevelt affirmed his woodsman’s honor, it is fitting that, as you traverse this still-wild place, any spot on which you tread might have hosted two of America’s true legends.
Good hunting. May you go with the honor of Roosevelt and the courage of Collier.
William deGravelles is a Louisiana native and LSU Forestry grad, now living and working in western North Carolina, as well as a self-proclaimed history nerd, especially Louisiana and Southern history.
Details. Details. Details.
Delta Ranger District Headquarters
68 Frontage Road
Rolling Fork, Ms
(662) 873-6256
Office Hours:
8 am–4 pm, Monday—Friday
