New Madrid Earthquake

I’ve always thought the stories about the New Madrid earthquakes were interesting. It shook a great deal of the continent and according to some witnesses was felt as far away as Virginia. The big river running backwards for a time, the creation of Reelfoot lake, spouts of liquefied sand, flooding, the whole physical, geological gambit.
What is harder to find but to more interesting is how if affected the people where all of this happened. There were alot of people living in that area, relatively speaking of course, but more than you’d think. Lots of mining going there for lead (Galena lead was the#1 choice for a lot of the fur trappers I’ve read) and zinc, lots of agriculture and trade with indians as well. I’d imagine peoplewere scare out of their wits. Here’s where it gets interesting: its thought that some of the settlers there went ‘feral’ out of fear and trauma, ptsd is what we’d call it now. There is a lot of folklore about an Arkansas Wild Man during the exact period after the quakes (there were actually three bigguns). Its also been theorized that the Bigfoot myth came from sighting of displaced survivors of it. Who knows? its pretty easy to imagine how living in the borderlands of the day would make a person edgy to begin with, hell you were one broken bone or bad sip of water from death. Add an event where the earth acted crazy, the wildlife acted crazy, the rivers did crazy stuff and its not that big of a step to feral folk living in the woods acting just as crazy.
Anyways, its interesting to me.
Here’s a fair reference if you’re interested. https://press.uchicago.edu/books/exc...rthquakes.html

There’s also a FB group called Dark Arkansas that has some interesting stuff. can’tvouch for their veracity though.

BKB

I read a book on Tecumseh that said that he had promised a "great sign" to the tribes in the south that he was trying to unite together and shortly after he returned to Indiana, the earthquake happened. Many of the tribes in the region, the Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw took that for the sign he had promised.

I’m not familiar with what the other tribes did but I know the Choctaws eventually supported Jackson in the 1812 war. Which is irony to the fullest when you consider his role in removal.
BKb

Tecumseh had a large confederation of tribes that he was working on all through the Mississippi valley to unite and fight against the whites. His brother, known as the Prophet, went against Tecumseh’s plans when Tecumseh was in the South trying to get more support, and engaged William Henry Harrison and got beaten badly at the Battle of Tippecanoe in November of 1811. This lost Tecumseh a lot of support among the other tribes and he was forced to side with the British during the War of 1812. He ended up being killed near Toronto and Harrison won the Presidency by virtue of the victory on the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too”.


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Interesting story about a Cherokee prophet named Skaquaw who lived new Fort Francis gave this warning before the first quake.
“Watch for a sign, and the earth will soon shake, like a horse who shakes the dust from his back; but be sure to move away from St. Francis before the next sign manifests itself.”
Many people did move away because of his prophecy and Cherokee legend has it that it save many lives. https://osiyo.tv/new-madrid-earthquakes/