Named for a Chickasaw word meaning "tree root", Tockshish was a community of Indians and white men on the Natchez Trace to the northwest. John McIntosh, British agent to the Choctaws, first settled there before 1770. In 1801, McIntosh's was made the second post office between Nashville and Natchez and a relay station where post riders exchanged weary horses for fresh ones. The post office is gone - only the name recalls the time when hoof beats marked the arrival of mail bags that had left Nashville five days before and were due in Natchez seven days later.