While aboard a flatboat heading down the Mississippi River close to noon on December 26, 1820, the town of Natchez, Mississippi, started coming into view for John James Audubon: “The Boats Landed at the Natchez Bluffs amongst about 100 More, several S.B.ts [steamboats] were also at this place == the Carrion Crows [Black vultures] first attracted my Attention, hundreds of them flying constantly low over the Shores and alighting on the Houses –.”
As with so many titles of geographic places in North America, they have a Native American reference. And as is too often the case, the title refers to a Native American people decimated by Anglo-European settlement. In 1729, indigenous people formed an alliance to keep French settlers from advancing into the western lands of North America. After an attack was carried out at Fort Rosalie on November 28 and 29, French traders retaliated by taking the lives of many indigenous people, most of whom were Natchez.
Living amongst the boats landed at the bluffs at Natchez was a “rascally and nondescript population.” Then between the riverbank and the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River stretched a grimy, crowded section of Natchez known as Under-the-Hill. Looking down on Under-the-Hill and the boats landed at the bluffs were stately homes, streets, and tidy shops that made up the proper and sophisticated part of Natchez.
Although no one could escape the “unhalhiness [sic] of the atmosphere” that blanketed the town of 2,000-3,000 and was undoubtedly attracting “The Numberless” Black vultures. The foul air was a combination of the stench that wafted from a part of the bluffs that had recently slipped away to become a dumping ground for dead livestock, offal, and other waste matter and the smell of decay that rose out of the abandoned Fort Rosalie. A ditch had been dug near the gallows in place in the center of the fort that served as an open grave for enslaved persons. Similar areas in other towns like Charleston, South Carolina, were also known to attract great numbers of vultures. The vultures that circled above and walked through the City Market of Charleston to peck at and consume the “castings of filth” of butchers and meat sellers became known as “Charleston Eagles.”