The Natchez District was one of two areas established in the Kingdom of Great Britain's West Florida colony during the 1770s – the other being the Tombigbee District. The first Anglo settlers in the district came primarily from other parts of British America. The district was recognized to be the area east of the Mississippi River from Bayou Sara in the south (presently St. Francisville, Louisiana) and Bayou Pierre in the north (presently Port Gibson, Mississippi).
It became a center of wealth in the antebellum years, as a trading center for slaves and cotton, and the center of cotton culture in the Old Southwest. Today, this area corresponds roughly with and includes most of the lands south of Interstate 20 and west of Interstate 55 in the state of Mississippi, in the southwest corner of the state.
After the United States made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 of large territories formerly controlled by France west of the Mississippi River, the lowlying delta area on the west side of the river became considered part of the 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 Louisiana Natchez District included the parishes of Carroll (split between East Carroll and West Carroll in 1877), Concordia, Madison and Tensas.[1]
- ^ John C. Rodrigue, Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1862--1880, LSU Press, 2001, p. 176