This town was once located at the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers in Arkansas. De Soto, Marquet and Joliet, and LaSalle visited this site during their travels. Marquet, we know, was there in 1673. Prentiss, Mississippi was located right across the river. The ferry crossing between these two towns was the only one between Memphis and Vicksburg.
In Mark Twain’s ‘Life on the Mississippi’, he tells of learning of $10,000 being hidden behind a brick in a certain building in Napoleon. But when he went to search for it, he found the whole town had been washed away.
The founders hoped that it might become a major city at the confluence of two mighty rivers like St. Louis. But it was taken by the mighty river within ten years after the Civil war.
In King Edward’s 1875 account, nearing the end of the town’s life, it was a rough and rowdy town. Murder daily was the rule, not the exception. Brawls always produced burials. The Mosquitoes were persistent. They still are. Buffalo gnats were said to be so bad, they kill horses and mules by bleeding them to death. Currently, they’re still very bad early in the Spring. I have seen deer, running from one low spot to another, wagging their tails fiercely, rolling in a low spot, then on to the next, all day long during these times in an effort to get away from buffalo gnats. But I did not witness any deaths by being bled dry. I suspect an exaggeration here.
During the Civil war, there was a sharp curve north of Napoleon that went deep into Mississippi, called Beulah Bend, now lake Beulah. The peninsula created was so narrow, only a few hundred yards, that Confederate cannon could shoot at a ship coming into the bend, then move the cannon and shoot at it coming out of it. General Sherman then burned the town in Mississippi, then cut a canal across the narrow peninsula. The sand was soft digging, and it only took one day. This was referred to as the Napoleon Channel. This soon aided river travel, cutting off ten miles and destroying the ambush spot. Unfortunately, the new channel was now pointed directly at Napoleon, and both towns were flooded completely within a few years. The courthouse was already completely gone, burned by the Union for firewood, during a blizzard. When Napoleon was completely gone, the county seat was moved to Watson, only a few miles away, as the crow flies. But when dealing with mighty rivers, nothing can be measured “as the crow flies.”
My father-in-law, Sport Dunnahoe, lived near Watson until his death a few years ago. He hunted in a “Conservation League,” on which Napoleon once stood. Good hunting spots are now rare in the Delta, and it cost hundreds of dollars yearly. Once, while hunting, he met the owner of that vast tract of land, who asked, “Do you know where Napoleon is?” when he assured the man he did, he asked, “Will you take me to it?” Sport did, though all they found at that time was the cemetery. Interestingly, no tombstone revealed a life span of more than twenty six years, at least none visible that day. I’m not sure the cause, could have been the “murder a day” habit, Malaria, the fact that it was so infested with mosquitoes that nobody wished to dwell for long, or a combination of all three. Anyway, when the property owner returned Sport to his hunting spot, the grateful man thanked him. The owner’s companion observed, “A ‘thank you’ won’t buy him nothin’. Give the man something he can use.” The land owner then wrote Sport out a hunting permit, good for as long as he lived. Sport used that permit as long as he was able to hunt.
Want to see part of Napoleon? During very dry years, remains can be seen on sandbars in the river. The large church bell used in Napoleon now hangs in the Catholic church in McGehee, Arkansas. I hear the cemetery, present in Sport’s time, has now been swallowed by the river. I have a brand new metal detector that I had intended to explore that cemetery with. Oh, well.
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