Freeman-Custis Expedition (aka Custis-Freeman Expedition)
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Description
A trail charting the approximate route of the Freeman-Custis Expedition (1806).
1. Parkway Information Cabin Natchez Trace Parkway
Formerly home to the Mississippi Crafts Center, this cabin now serves as one of four visitors centers staffed by National Park Service employees along the Natchez Trace Parkway. The second-longest parkway in the United States, the Natchez Trace Parkway is a recreational road that follows a historic route used by Native Americans and early settlers. The Parkway begins near Nashville, Tennessee and ends in Natchez, Mississippi, passing through Alabama along the way. A trail-head for the paved Ridgeland Multi-Use Path can be found behind the Visitors Center. The visitors center also offers maps along with a few small exhibits and information about explorers, settlers, and the Choctaw and other tribes that used the Natchez Trace.
2. Grand Village of Natchez Indians
The Grand Village of the Natchez Indians is a 128-acre site featuring three pre-historic Native American mounds. The complex includes a reconstructed Natchez Indian house, museum, and a gift shop. The vilage offers educational programs for school and adult groups and also hosts the annual Natchez Powwow that includes activities highlighting many different aspects of traditional Native American culture.
3. The Highland Plantation
The Highland plantation has been around for 220 years. It is an exemplary showcase of the traditional southern plantations in the West Feliciana parish in Louisiana. The plantation boasted high hospitality and comfort for those visiting. It was south of the mason Dixon line and was lush with economic benefits. The town was one of the most advanced, having regulated ferries, trains, and coach system which helped carry supplies throughout the south. Today you can still find the plantation. However, it has been remodeled to its previous opulence and holds a new name, the Greenwood plantation.
4. Marksville State Historic Site
The Marksville State Historic Site is a large, 42 acre prehistoric indian site located in Marksville, Louisiana. It consists of burial mounds surrounded by a 3,300 foot long semi-circle earthwork. A museum and trails are also at the site. The earthworks were built by the Marksville culture, which archaeologists consider to be one of the many cultures of the Hopewell tradition, sometime between 200 BCE to 500 CE. The site is a National Historic Landmark and is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
5. Tunica-Biloxi Cultural & Educational Resources Center
Located in Marksville, this expansive cultural complex is home to the Tunica-Biloxi Museum which contains a variety of exhibits drawn from artifacts dating back to the 18th century. The Tunica-Biloxi tribe is the successor to the historic Tunica, Biloxi, Ofo, and Avoyel tribes. These tribes were allied in the 18th century and became amalgamated in the 19th century through common interests and external non-Indian pressures. The traditional Powwows held by the tribe today express traditions that began over 20,000 years ago and have been passed down through generations.
6. Cane River Creole National Historical Park
Cane River Creole National Park is home to the former Magnolia Plantation House and all its outbuildings. The whole site encompasses 18 acres, which are open to the public to tour free of charge. The National Park includes a Blacksmith and plantation shops, cabins, a gin barn, and a former slave hospital. In the gin barn remains a wooden screw-type cotton press; it is the last of its kind remaining on its original grounds in the United States.
7. Oakland Plantation
A unit of Cane River Creole National Historical Park, Oakland Plantation was acquired by the National Park Service in 1997. The restored plantation offers a way to explore antebellum life and history from the perspective of the enslaved women and men who built and labored here and other workers as well as the owners and others who lived within the French-influenced region of the coastal South. The Plantation also depicts the life and times of founder Jean Pierre Emmanuel Prudhomme.
8. Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site
Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site is a replica fort of a French military and trading outpost in Natchitoches, Louisiana. The original site of the fort is located a few hundred yards away. The original fort was built in 1716 by Sieur Charles Claude Dutisné, who was sent to Natchitoches with a French garrison to build a fort to prevent Spanish troops from marching from Texas into Louisiana. The fort eventually became a key trading center for the Native Americans, Spanish, and French in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Today, the fort is open to visitors from Wednesday until Sunday.
9. Los Adaes Historic Site
Los Adaes was the capital of Spanish Texas from 1729-1770 and was established as a mission to convert the Caddo Adai American Indian Tribe. The site remained in use until it was abandoned in 1773. Los Adaes was a site of Spanish, French, and Indigenous trade and is now part of the Cane River National Heritage Area.
10. Museum of Regional History
Home of the Wilbur Smith Research Library, the Museum of Regional History is Texarkana’s first and oldest museum. The museum houses a variety of exhibits that chronicle history of the East Texas and West Arkansas from the time of the Caddo. A highlight of the museum offers a history of native son Scott Joplin, widely-known as the “Father of Ragtime.”
