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Updated: May 31, 2025
Because he knew the waters and the woods of Reelfoot better than any other man there, he was valued as a guide by the city men who came every year to hunt or fish; but there were few such jobs that Fishhead would take. Mainly he kept to himself, tending his corn patch, netting the lake, trapping a little and in season pot hunting for the city markets.
They call them man-eaters and compare them, in certain of their habits, to sharks. Fishhead was of a piece with this setting. He fitted into it as an acorn fits its cup. All his life he had lived on Reelfoot, always in the one place, at the mouth of a certain slough.
The result was the largest lake south of the Ohio, lying mostly in Tennessee, but extending up across what is now the Kentucky line, and taking its name from a fancied resemblance in its outline to the splay, reeled foot of a cornfield negro. Niggerwool Swamp, not so far away, may have got its name from the same man who christened Reelfoot; at least so it sounds.
By April 5th, the Reelfoot Lake district, covering 150 square miles of Kentucky farm land, was an inland lake and the river at Cairo, Illinois, had risen to nearly fifty-four feet, the average depth from St. Louis to New Orleans being ordinarily but nine feet.
The mouth of Reelfoot Bayou then opened before me, a creek which conducts the waters from the weird recesses of one of the most interesting lakes in America, a lake which was the immediate result of a disastrous series of disturbances generally referred to as the New Madrid earthquakes, and which took place in 1811-13.
Milam felt justified in getting into communication with Judge Priest over the long-distance 'phone; and the Judge, cutting short his vacation and leaving uncaught vast numbers of bass and perch in Reelfoot Lake, came home, arriving late that night.
From this peninsula there was no communication with the interior except by a small flatboat which plied across Reelfoot Lake, more than a mile across, by a channel cut through the cypress-trees which cover the lake. Supplies and reinforcements could not, therefore, be brought to any considerable extent by the land side; nor could escape, except by small parties, be made in that direction.
Milam felt justified in getting into communication with Judge Priest over the long-distance phone; and the Judge, cutting short his vacation and leaving uncaught vast numbers of bass and perch in Reelfoot Lake, came home, arriving late that night.
The war had reduced him from affluence to poverty, and in order to support his family, he had built a scow and penetrated the weird waters of Reelfoot Lake, from which he was able, for several years, to supply the citizens of Hickman with excellent fish. The enterprise was a novelty at that time, and there being no competition, he made four thousand dollars the first year.
Immediately below Tiptonville the swamp for many miles extends entirely to the river. The peninsula is, therefore, substantially an island, having the Mississippi on three sides, and Reelfoot Lake, with its enveloping swamp, on the other. A good road led from the Tennessee shore, opposite Island No. Ten, along the west border of the swamp and the lake to Tiptonville.
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