Ackia: Battle in the Wilderness, 1736

Somewhere near the present city of Tupelo, Mississippi, lies the site of an Indian village called Ackia. There in the eighteenth century occurred a memorable battle between Chickasaw warriors and French chevaliers. Today the exact location is unidentified and the battle forgotten, but its effect is still with us.

Tentatively a case could be made for deeming Ackia a decisive battle in American history: a French victory might have meant restriction of the British to the Atlantic seaboard and have resulted in a threefold north-south division of the present United States area into an English east coast, a French central region, and a Spanish west coast.

But a Chickasaw victory under the British flag prevented such enclosure and allowed Anglo-American expansion westward to the Pacific. Such a theory, however superficial, is surely no more so than many an effort to dramatise other battles. It is, therefore, not amiss to turn back the pages of history and re-examine the incident.