A Compendium of Births,
Deaths, Publications, Awards, and Other Events in Mississippi’s
Literary History
Note: In most cases, timeline entries are added
as articles on individual authors are added to this web site. The hyperlinks
listed below connect to biographical and critical articles about that
author. Articles on individual writers will continue to be added in the
coming months. If an author’s name does not appear on this timeline
or if it appears but is not a hyperlink, the article for that author has
not yet been added to the database. Please try again later.
1800
April 23:
Congress establishes a post route between Nashville, Tennessee, and Natchez, Mississippi.
1801
Musée du Louvre, Paris
The Funeral of Atala, by Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson (1808)
Publication of Atala, a novel by French writer François René de Chateaubriand, about the doomed love between the beautiful Atala, a Christian convert, and the young Natchez warrior Chactas, whom she rescues.
Though Chateaubriand had journeyed to America ten years earlier, he never visited the lands formerly inhabited by the Natchez, and much of his description of flora, fauna, and Indian culture in the novel is pure speculation.
His title heroine will be adopted as the name of a Mississippi county in 1833.
October 24: In the Treaty of Chickasaw Bluffs, the Chickasaw granted
the United States the right of way to build a road through their lands along
the Natchez Trace.
December 12:
The capital of the Mississippi territory is moved from Natchez to Washington, Mississippi.
December 17:
The Treaty of Fort Adams officially opens Old Natchez District to settlement and the Choctaw agree that the United States may open a road, the Natchez Trace, through their lands.
1802
Alexander Gallatin McNutt, the eleventh governor of Mississippi, is born about this year (or possibly 1801) in Rockbridge County, Virginia.
1803
March 12:
The town of Port Gibson, Mississippi, is established.
December 1:
The Regiment of Tennessee Militia marches along the Natchez Trace to and from Natchez, Mississippi.