Book I: The American Egypt · Chapter 3
Memphis, Tennessee didn’t get its name by accident. Follow the paper.
The claim (1783–1794)
In 1783 a speculator, John Rice, filed a paper claim for 5,000 acres at the fourth Chickasaw Bluff, land the Chickasaw had never given up. In 1794 John Overton bought it and shared it with Andrew Jackson. (Record)
The treaty (1818)
On October 19, 1818, Jackson sat as one of two U.S. commissioners negotiating with the Chickasaw. The Chickasaw gave up their land between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, “near the Chickasaw Bluffs,” for $20,000 a year for 15 years. Written into the treaty: $150 cash to each named chief, $100 to each war leader, and private land tracts confirmed for the Colbert family. (Record)
The name (1819)
Months later, Jackson’s partners laid out a town on the bluff and named it Memphis. Goodspeed’s 1887 county history says only that they “laid out a town which they thus named.” The founders’ own history gives no reason for the name. (Record)
The lodge (1822–23)
Jackson was a Freemason and a Royal Arch Mason, and he served as Grand Master of Tennessee in 1822 and 1823. Overton was Master of Cumberland Lodge No. 8 and took the Royal Arch degrees in 1823. The Royal Arch’s central legend is about digging into a buried vault beneath Solomon’s Temple to recover a lost record. (Record)
The removal (1830)
As president, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. (Record)
The lens: paper first, cash to individual chiefs, then the name, then the lodge, then the removal. A paper war, not a conquest. (Pattern)
Still open: what the Chickasaw called the bluff. The Chickasaw Nation’s own A Chickasaw Historical Atlas is the source to check, because the people set the control.
Sources: Treaty with the Chickasaw, 1818 (Avalon Project) · List of Tennessee Freemasons · Goodspeed’s History of Shelby County · The Plan of Memphis, 1783–1827