Skabewis

By Phil Hearn
Hattiesburg, Mississippi (AP)

Long before tanks rumbled along dusty roads and field artillerists zeroed in on distant targets in the vast piney woods of Mississippi’s Camp Shelby military training site, the bow and arrow was the weapon of choice for the area’s ancient inhabitants.

Native American tribes, probably the ancestors of today’s Mississippi Band of Choctaws, hunted the forests and fished the creeks within the 136,000 acres that now encompass the nation’s largest reserve component training site about 12 miles south of Hattiesburg.

Carved out of the De Soto National Forest in portions of Perry and Forrest counties and activated as a World War I training camp in 1917, the site was named in honor of Issac Shelby – Indian fighter, Revolutionary War hero and the first governor of Kentucky. An estimated 100,000 military personnel train annually at the site today.

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