History of Natchez

ippi River enabled it to develop into a bustling port. At Natchez, many local plantation owners had their cotton loaded onto steamboats at the landing known as Natchez-Under-the-Hill to be transported downriver to New Orleans or, sometimes, upriver to St. Louis or Cincinnati. The cotton was sold and shipped to New England, New York, and European spinning and textile mills.

The Natchez District, along with the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, pioneered cotton agriculture in the United States. Until new hybridized breeds of cotton were created in the early nineteenth century, it was unprofitable to grow cotton in the United States anywhere other than those latter two areas. Although South Carolina had dominated the cotton plantation culture in the eighteenth century and early in the Antebellum South, the Natchez District that first experimented with hybridization, making the cotton boom possible. Historians attribute the major part of the expansion of cotton to the Deep South to Eli Whitney's development of the cotton gin; it lowered processing costs and could handle short-staple cotton, making this profitable for cultivation. It was the kind of cotton that could be grown on uplands and throughout the Black Belt of the Deep South. Development of cotton plantations expanded rapidly, increasing demand for slaves in the South.

The growth of the cotton industry attracted many new settlers to Mississippi, who competed with the Choctaw for their land. Despite land cessions, the settlers continued to encroach on Choctaw territory, leading to conflict. With the election of President Andrew Jackson in 1828, he pressed for Indian removal, gaining Congressional passage of an act authorizing that in 1830. Starting with the Choctaw, the government began removal of Southeast Indians in 1831 to lands west of the Mississippi River. Nearly 15,000 Choctaw left their traditional homeland over the next two years.

On May 7,