MISSISSIPPI PLANTATIONS
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MISSISSIPPI PLANTATION HISTORY
Early Plantation System: Planter - Slaves
The Natchez District was the first Mississippi region where plantations were established. African slaves were introduced into the the Natchez plantation system in the early 1700s by French colonists. The first major crop that thrived from African slave labor in Natchez was tobacco.
Late Plantation System: Planter - Overseers - Slaves
Upon the perfection of the cotton gin (circa 1800), the white planter's took advantage of Natchez's rich loess soil and multiplied their wealth significantly with cotton production. The planter's used their new wealth to establish a more complex plantation system where the planter lived in a large elegant home at some distance from the farm-land and overseers were hired to live at and manage the plantations in the country-side (much like the corporate hierarchy of today!). Hundreds of African slaves labored on the plantations of Natchez.The Piney Woods has sandy soils and vast pine forests, which made large-scale plantations were rare in this area, except immediately adjacent to rivers where the soil was amiable to crop cultivation. Although large plantations were rare, a significant amount African slave labor was utilized. After the Civil War, many newly "freed" American-born Africans worked in the pine forests cutting trees for lumber and manufacturing turpentine.
References:
--African-American Archaeology at The University of Southern Mississippi. Chambers,
C., Hargrove, J., Powell, K., Rutherford, S., Wright, C. http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~aloung/afram.html
Adams County
Natchez County