Natchez District

Several parishes were developed for plantation cotton cultivation here in the antebellum era, unlike southern Louisiana, where sugar cane was the dominant commodity crop.

The French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville had passed through the area in 1699 and had christened both the Amité and the Tangipahoa rivers.

At the end of the American Revolutionary War, Great Britain ceded West Florida to Spain as part of the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

This forced migration broke up families and transplanted a large new African-descended population (with also European and Native American ancestry among many) to the area.

Many cotton planters became so wealthy that they acquired thousands of acres and hundreds of African American slaves to work the lands.

Stephen Duncan (1787–1867) of Mississippi was reported to have owned more than 1,000 slaves, making him the richest cotton planter in the world at the time.

The most noted cotton varieties (Belle Creole, Jethro, Parker, and Petit Gulf) were bred in Mississippi.

In 1803 the United States had made the Louisiana Purchase, acquiring vast territories west of the Mississippi River.

From Natchez, the cotton plantation system spread north into the Mississippi embayment region, and west along the rivers of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas.

[7] The U.S. government recognized the strategic importance of Natchez early on, and as the city developed as a primary cotton port, Congress financed the building and improvement of roads leading to it.

The U.S. Army widened the Natchez Trace, which connected the region to Nashville, Tennessee, in order to accommodate wagons.

"Sketch of the Inhabited Parts of the Mississippi Territory Adjoining to the Great River," November 9, 1802
Hand-drawn map
Settlements and landmarks along the Mississippi River in the Natchez District on a survey of the Natchez Trace consequent to the 1801 Treaty of Fort Adams , recorded as "the highway from the Grindstone Ford of Bayou Pierre to Nashville." Settlements listed include Walnut Hills (later Vicksburg ), Grand Gulf , Petit Gulf (later Rodney ), Bruinsburg , Grindstone Ford , Natchez , White Cliffs , Fort Adams , and Pinckneyville . Natchez and Port Gibson were the biggest towns in Mississippi at statehood in 1817; Vicksburg came into its own as a rival to Natchez in the 1830s. [ 3 ] (NAID 102279464)