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Conquistadors came but couldn’t conquer, and a paradise not taken at gunpoint was snatched finally with the stroke of a pen… A cavalry leader won his reputation in a pair of bloody and dramatic battles that left more than 1,000 dead, their bodies at rest in the nation’s “Little Arlington.”  Yet that leader’s victories could do nothing to change the course of a losing cause…

And then, at last, in the midst of a crushing Depression, on a January morning in a tiny shotgun house, history was not merely made but changed forever in the birth of two babies:  one stillborn and the other destined to live on and on in the radical changes he brought to the culture.  On that cold morning the mother, Gladys, couldn’t know this.  She was shaken; the rest of the world will never be the same.

So, now it’s time head for that rich radius in the Mississippi hills where battlefields still blaze with gunfire, where burial grounds and sacred mounds open a majestic pathway to the past, and where a visit to a temple doesn’t mean you’re in the land of the pharaohs—no way, darlin’.  You’ve just arrived at the birthplace of the King.

While archeologists are still sifting through the evidence, it’s clear that DeSoto came through this area on his way to the Mississippi River. In fact, on Christmas day in 1540, the first Christian marriage ceremony in America was performed here, when Juan Ortiz, a member of DeSoto’s party, exchanged vows with Sa-Owana.  (It’s hard to determine the bride’s feeling about the marriage since she was an Indian captive of the Spaniards.)

Later, French trappers arrived, followed inevitably by the French government.  The Chickasaws did not relish their new role in New France; the French did not appreciate the Chickasaws’ lack of cooperation.  The founder of New Orleans and Colonial Governor of New France, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Beinville, determined that “some bold and remarkable blow be struck, to impress the Indians with a proper sense of respect and duty toward us.”  However, it was the French and their army who found themselves on the receiving end of a bold blow, with their defeat at the Battle of Ackia, when the Chickasaws easily repulsed the invaders at the a collection of villages called Long Town.

Ultimately, the Chickasaws would forfeit their six million acres east of the Mississippi with the stroke of a pen at the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek, and afterward, railroads arrived and rampant speculation created fortunes and towns for the new settlers.  Many of those fortunes were lost during the Civil War, as the area suffered through a number of skirmishes, large and small.  At the Battle of Okolona and the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, the Confederates won decisive and dramatic victories, which, while they did not affect the outcome of the war, cemented Nathan Bedford Forrest’s reputation as a peerless cavalry leader.

After the war, dairy farming took hold, and the area’s agrarian culture was gradually supplemented with industry, so that to the lowing of cattle and blast of the train whistle came the hum from garment factories.  And then in one horrible night in 1936, the awful roar of tornado swallowed everything and left the town with hundreds dead.

One whose tiny home survived, though others nearby were destroyed, was a garment worker named Gladys Presley and her husband Vernon, and their young son Elvis, barely over a year old.  After the stillbirth of Elvis’ twin brother, and now this tornado, Gladys Presley probably thought she had already experienced the most earth-shaking events in her life.

But there will be plenty of Elvis and his huge talent ahead for you.  Right now start your tour, further south, where you’ll hear—if your ears and your imagination are sharp enough—the strains of a fife and drum wafting over the grounds of “Little Arlington.”