Hatchie River Clean-Up Day was great!

Click on the photos to see them more closely!

Despite showers and overcast skies, our first Hatchie River Clean-Up day was a HUGE success.

Nine boats and eighteen volunteers took to the river. Three more volunteers worked on the shore.

Items collected on the river included a propane tank, tires, a toilet, and even a message in a bottle.
Volunteers filled a dumpster with around fifty trash bags, not including the big items. Over one thousand pounds of debris was removed from this short section of river. Contributing agencies included Keep Tipton County Beautiful, Tipton County Rescue Squad, Covington Department of Public Works and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

Our next event is scheduled for May 8th, 2010. However, we have opportunities to prevent litter from spreading every day.

Thanks Everybody!!

River Cleanup event scheduled

The first ever Hatchie River Cleanup event is scheduled for September 19, 2009.

Sponsored by the Tennessee Scenic River Association's Adopt-A-River program and funded by a grant from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, the first ever clean up is scheduled to begin at 7:00 am on Saturday September 19 at the TWRA river access at the Highway 54 bridge between Tipton and Haywood Counties.

Participants can bring their own boat or ride along with any of the participants. There will also be plenty of opportunities for land side clean up operations. The event will start at 7:00 Saturday September 19 at the Highway 54 bridge.

If you want to participate, it will be fine to just show up, but the handy thing to do would be to call me ahead of time at 901-603-0127.

The event will culminate at the TWRA river access at the Highway 51 bridge by mid afternoon. Lunch will be available at the Highway 51 ramp.

You can learn more about this event at the TSRA website http://www.paddletsra.org/index.html click on the Conservation link on the left. While there, you can read more about the TSRA and the Adopt-A-River program. You can join TSRA at this event if you care to but it will not be necessary. In fact, you can click on any of the convenient links to the right side of this screen.

Come back and check my blog often for event updates and specific information prior to the event.

What's in a name??

I have spent all my life hearing and reading that the word "HATCHIE" is a Native American word meaning “river”. This is aledgedly how the Hatchie River got its name. I always thought that was pretty cool.

A few years ago, a friend of mine gave me a bumper sticker. My friend lives in Brownsville Tennessee. The sticker is popular among the locals in Brownsville and was created by one of their own. The sticker is in the obvious shape of a snapping turtle. Scrawled creatively across its back are the words “LOVE HATCHIE RIVER”. I had a fit over the bumper sticker and just had to have one, so my friend Joe gave me one.

As my curiosity about the Hatchie River has grown over the years, I decided it would be cool to know how to express my new favorite bumper sticker in the Chickasaw language; the language of those first to love this river. Now that would be cool!

There seemed to be one small problem. The word "HATCHIE" is not a Native American word! I searched all the documents and internet sources I could find. I tore through genealogy departments of the public libraries in Tipton County, Haywood County and finally Madison County searching for documents that might lead me to understand this mystery; the mystery of the origin of the name of the Hatchie River.

It was in Madison Counties Public Library genealogy department that I found a breakthrough. It came in the form of a book called:

“A Chickasaw Dictionary compiled by Jesse Humes and Vinnie May (James) Humes ~ 1973 Chickasaw Nation”.

This volume became the Rosetta Stone for me. In pouring over web sites and map archives looking for a clue among different names given to the river by early explorers, a pattern emerged. Armed with these pieces of the puzzle, I have developed this theory.

1) Many places in our country and around the world use derivatives of original names assigned from earlier explorers of different nationalities; eg. Acadia was once the French Acadie for example.
2) The name of the river has changed through the years: In 1813, just prior to the Jackson Purchase of 1818, (when the Chickasaw Indians ceded the land of West Tennessee to the United States) the name appears on a map as "HATCHY River" (Cummingsmapsociety.org)

In 1823 the name of the river picks up an unexpected word in its title and changes its spelling as it appears on a map by B. T. Welch and published by Fielding Lucas, Jr. of Baltimore; "BIG HATCHEE River".

The three word name continues to be used until at least 1899 where it appears again with the same spelling in the eighteenth annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, in which the title remained "BIG HATCHEE River".

In the current day and time the title has dropped the adjective “BIG” and has undergone another revision in its spelling. The title is now simply, "HATCHIE River".

3) The Chickasaw word that is used to refer to a river, stream or creek is "BOKOSHI". That’s fine, but what is most interesting is the pronunciation of the word. It is pronounced BOHK – OSH – E. Here is where I have made the leap. Without using too much imagination one can see that this pronunciation sounds a lot like BIG HATCHEE.

My conclusion: the 21st Century name “HATCHIE” is a derivative of the 18th Century English “BIG HATCHIE” which in turn could be a derivative of the centuries old “BOKOSHI”.

Again, the word "HATCHIE" is not a Native American word meaning “river”. The word does not appear anywhere in the Muskoegean language group. However, the similar sounding word BOKOSHI, heard, imitated and mutilated by early trappers, explorers and settlers does, in fact, mean...RIVER!

Tennessee's Scenic Hatchie River backwater

On the Scenic Hatchie river, launching your boat can sometimes be an adventure in itself. This ramp is located on Highway 76 in Haywood County on the Hatchie River National Refuge. The main channel of the river is in the background. Only use submerged ramps after becoming extreamly familiar with the location in low water. Even then, do not use a submerged ramp if there is current across it. I know of many humbled sportsmen who have lost vehicles by taking unneccessary chances during such activities.


It is this flooding that has brought life in the form of nutrients to the soil of the floodplain, insuring that remains as fertile today as it has been for a thousand years, even before the days when Native Americans first began living off this land.


It is this same floodwater, however, that has led modern settlers to channelize all of the other rivers and streams in the Lower Mississippi River drainage area. Flooding and human settlement does not mix historically. Chanelization and drainage projects associated with them have greatly reduced property damage, agricultural damage and spared human suffering and loss of life.


The consequence of the march of civilization however, has been the elimination of entire ecosystems. Tennessee's Scenic Hatchie River (Scenic being a protected designation) is among the last of it's kind. It has escaped the fate of all other tributaries in the Lower Mississippi River valley. As such, Tennessee's Scenic Hatchie River and it's hardwood bottom lands remain much as they have been for thousands of years.

Upper Scenic Hatchie River sites

These are some photos I wanted to share. These were taken in the upper Hatchie water shed near the Mississippi state line in Southern Hardeman County. This portion of the watershed features rolling hills primarily in deciduous forests and grazing land. This terrain is very different from that of the lower watershed, where the land is dominantly in cultivation and typically has lower slopes.

I have also included a couple of pictures of the Scenic Hatchie River from Essary Springs in Hardeman County, the first ramp found on the river downstream of the Mississippi state line. The other picture of the river is from the bridge on Wolf Pen Road, also in Hardeman County.

The Scenic Hatchie River is also the site of several engagements between the Union Army and the Confederate Army. In the upper reaches of the Scenic Hatchie River, the most well documented site is the Battlefield of Davis Bridge. More on that later.

Lower Scenic Hatchie River

Pictured here is a historic vessel on the Hatchie river. The vessel has been tentatively identified as a Civil War era steam ship. Dr. Stephen James, a nautical Archeologist with PanAmerican Resources Inc. of Memphis has studied the site along with other State and Federal officials. The State of Tennessee has officially designated the vessel as a registered archeological site. It is protected by Federal Law.

This discovery was made at an unusually low river stage. As a result, the vessel is extreamly well preserved. Fragments of paint were found showing the ship to have been white with a red undercoat.

In March 2008, Dr. Stephen James wrote in a preleminary report :

"...the historic remains are the lower hull of what appears to be a sidewheel steamboat. The main deck and any upperworks (if any originally existed) are no longer extant. As illustrated in Figures 1 and 2, the stern of the vessel lies exposed downstream. The port side of the vessel and the upriver bow are buried under the riverbank, while the starboard side of the vessel is free of all overburden with the exception of the extreme bow area. Covered by approximately five feet of overburden, protruding wooden elements and probing the centerline of the bow area indicate the remains have an overall length of at least 204 feet from the stern to the last positive probe. The vessel has an approximate beam of 34 feet, the distance amidships from the center of the keelson to the chine measuring 17 feet."

Yes, the ship is 204 feet long! Those of us who know the Hatchie river can not imagine a vessel of this size navigating through the bends and curves. However, the development of the interrior of West Tennessee was done almost exclusively through rivers terminating in the Mississippi. The Hatchie is the ONLY Mississippi river tributary below Cario Illinois to remain much as it was when Native Americans first began to explore her waters. More on that later...