Old Choctaw Trail — Natchez Trace System

The Choctaw Nation wore a corridor through the piney woods between the Pearl River and Mississippi watersheds before France named the lake or the colony. The route ran along high ground on the ridge separating the two drainages. Tunica Hills Wildlife Management Area's South Tract preserves a segment of that trace. The Old Tunica Trace Road still follows the original ridge route. The logic holds. The ridge is still the ridge. Water still pools on either side. Lake Pontchartrain—which is actually an estuary, 630 square miles of brackish water fed by the Tangipahoa, Tchefuncte, Tickfaw, Amite, and Bogue Falaya rivers, plus Bayou Lacombe and Bayou Chinchuba—formed 4,000 to 2,600 years ago as the Mississippi Delta built its southern and eastern shorelines with alluvial deposits. Human habitation of the region began at least 3,500 years ago. One recorded Indigenous name for the lake is Okwata: wide water. The trace predates the estuary's French name by centuries, maybe millennia. Hike the WMA trails. The ridge walking is the fastest way to feel the route's logic. The high ground is still the high ground. That has not changed.