Chickasaw nation, who have not yet sold the territorial right.[190]
On the point immediately below Mr. Foy's (whose negro quarter gives his pleasantly situated settlement the appearance of a village or hamlet) was formerly a Spanish fort no vestige of which now remains.[191]
Rowing across the river and falling down with the current, we landed under Fort Pickering, having passed the Fourth Chickasaw Bluffs, which are two miles long, and sixty feet perpendicular height. They are cleared at the top to some little distance back, and the houses of the settlers are very pleasantly situated near the edge of the cliff.
An Indian was at the landing observing us. He was painted in such a manner as to leave us in doubt as to his sex until we noticed a bow and arrow in his hand. His natural colour was entirely concealed under the bright vermillion, the white, and the blue grey, with which he was covered, not frightfully, but in such a manner as to mark more strongly, a fine set of features on a fine countenance. He was drest very fantastically in an old fashioned, large figured, high coloured calico shirt—deer skin leggins and mockesons, ornamented with beads, and a plume of beautiful heron's feathers nodding over his forehead from the back of his head.
We ascended to Fort Pickering[192] by a stair of one hundred and twenty square logs, similar to that at {268} Jeffersonville. There was a trace of fresh blood the whole way up
