William Colbert's Last Homesite

The homesite stands at Owl Creek Mounds, raised by Mississippian farmers between about 1000 and 1500, now a Forest Service site. William Colbert, called Chooshemataha, married twice. His first wife, Jessie Moniac, a Creek woman, went with him on the war trail; his second, Ishtanaha, outlived him, as did five adult children. In 1804 he agreed with John Gordon to run a Duck River stand and ferry on the Natchez Trace, and the 1816 treaty gave him a $100 annuity for life. He was described as impetuous and fond of drink. He died in Chickasaw County in 1824.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chickasaw Council House — 8.0 mi
  A roadside exhibit on the Natchez Trace Parkway marking the Chickasaw capital of the 1820s and the council house where the 1832 treaty of Pontotoc Creek ended Chickasaw title to Mississippi.
• Tupelo National Battlefield — 17 mi
  A one-acre park on Main Street marking the July 1864 battle of Tupelo, a Union victory that kept Nathan Bedford Forrest away from Sherman's supply line, with Black soldiers among the defenders.
• Chickasaw Village Site — 18 mi
  A Chickasaw village on a remnant of the Black Belt Prairie beside the Natchez Trace Parkway, with house outlines marked on the ground and signs that speak in Chickasaw voices.
• Elvis Presley Birthplace — 20 mi
  The two-room house in East Tupelo where Elvis Presley was born in 1935, with a museum and the church building the family attended, set near the vanished Black neighborhoods where he first heard the blues.

More markers nearby

• Okolona College — 10.0 mi
• Battle of Okolona — 10.0 mi
• Carnegie Library — 12 mi
• Bukka White — 12 mi