Merchants, bankers, planters, soldiers, Kaintucks and gamblers, all were tied in one way or another to that enchanting, storied, and often mysterious highway of the American Frontier: the Natchez Trace.
Beginning life as a shadowy Indian trail, the road became the means by which almost everything made its way to the Old Southwest as European and American explorers arrived. From the pioneers journeying south after the Revolutionary War through to the 1830s, Davis uses the Natchez Trace to weave a history of life in the Old Southwest.
The danger and adversity faced on the Natchez Trace shaped the communities as much as the education, religion and enlightenment that radiated from it.