Mississippi's American Indians
Mississippi's American Indians

Author: James F. Barnett Jr.

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2012-04-04

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1617032468

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At the beginning of the eighteenth century, over twenty different American Indian tribal groups inhabited present-day Mississippi. Today, Mississippi is home to only one tribe, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. In Mississippi's American Indians, author James F. Barnett Jr. explores the historical forces and processes that led to this sweeping change in the diversity of the state's native peoples. The book begins with a chapter on Mississippi's approximately 12,000-year prehistory, from early hunter-gatherer societies through the powerful mound building civilizations encountered by the first European expeditions. With the coming of the Spanish, French, and English to the New World, native societies in the Mississippi region connected with the Atlantic market economy, a source for guns, blankets, and many other trade items. Europeans offered these trade materials in exchange for Indian slaves and deerskins, currencies that radically altered the relationships between tribal groups. Smallpox and other diseases followed along the trading paths. Colonial competition between the French and English helped to spark the Natchez rebellion, the Chickasaw-French wars, the Choctaw civil war, and a half-century of client warfare between the Choctaws and Chickasaws. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 forced Mississippi's pro-French tribes to move west of the Mississippi River. The Diaspora included the Tunicas, Houmas, Pascagoulas, Biloxis, and a portion of the Choctaw confederacy. In the early nineteenth century, Mississippi's remaining Choctaws and Chickasaws faced a series of treaties with the United States government that ended in destitution and removal. Despite the intense pressures of European invasion, the Mississippi tribes survived by adapting and contributing to their rapidly evolving world.

Draining New Orleans
Draining New Orleans

Author: Richard Campanella

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2023-05-03

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 0807179426

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In Draining New Orleans, the first full-length book devoted to “the world’s toughest drainage problem,” renowned geographer Richard Campanella recounts the epic challenges and ingenious efforts to dewater the Crescent City. With forays into geography, public health, engineering, architecture, politics, sociology, race relations, and disaster response, he chronicles the herculean attempts to “reclaim” the city’s swamps and marshes and install subsurface drainage for massive urban expansion. The study begins with a vivid description of a festive event on Mardi Gras weekend 1915, which attracted an entourage of elite New Orleanians to the edge of Bayou Barataria to witness the christening of giant water pumps. President Woodrow Wilson, connected via phoneline from the White House, planned to activate the station with the push of a button, effectively draining the West Bank of New Orleans. What transpired in the years and decades that followed can only be understood by examining the large swath of history dating back two centuries earlier—to the geological formation and indigenous occupation of this delta—and extending through the colonial, antebellum, postbellum, and Progressive eras to modern times. The consequences of dewatering New Orleans proved both triumphant and tragic. The city’s engineering prowess transformed it into a world leader in drainage technology, yet the municipality also fell victim to its own success. Rather than a story about mud and machinery, this is a history of people, power, and the making of place. Campanella emphasizes the role of determined and sometimes unsavory individuals who spearheaded projects to separate water from dirt, creating lucrative opportunities in the process not only for the community but also for themselves.

Native Land
Native Land

Author: Mary Ann Wells

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 1994-01-01

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9781617034428

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From the Native American viewpoint a personal yet carefully documented chronicle about the lands that became the state of Mississippi. Virtually all written accounts of Native American history of the southeastern United States came from Europeans. Here, filtered through a Native American perspective, is a story of early Indian life in a region of the American South. This history for general readers has been assembled from many documentary resources to give the fascinating history of an enduring heritage. In pre-Columbian times the fertile and lushly forested lands that were destined to become the state of Mississippi had a flourishing population of many native tribes - Chickasaw, Taposa, Tunica, Yazoo, Chakchiuma, Koroa, Grigra, Natchez, Choctaw, Acolapissa, Biloxi, Pascagoula, and others. Few accounts have been written from their perspective. Until now, there has been no book-length investigation of their history as told from their viewpoint.

Mississippi Forests and Forestry
Mississippi Forests and Forestry

Author: James E. Fickle

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 9781578063086

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From prehistory to the present, people have harvested Mississippi's trees, cultivated and altered the woodlands, and hunted forest wildlife. Native Americans, the first foresters, periodically burned the undergrowth to improve hunting and to clear land for farming. Mississippi Forests and Forestry tells the story of human interaction with Mississippi's woodlands. With forty black-and-white images and extensive documentation, this history debunks long-held myths, such as the notion of the first settlers encountering "virgin" forests. Drawing on primary materials, government documents, newspapers, interviews, contemporary accounts, and secondary works, historian James E. Fickle describes an ongoing commerce between people and place, from Native American maintenance of the woods, to white exploration and settlement, to early economic activities in Mississippi's forests, to present-day conservation and responsible use. Viewed over time, issues of conservation are rarely one-sided. Mississippi Forests and Forestry describes how the rise of "scientific" forestry coincided with the efforts of some early lumber companies and industrial foresters to operate responsibly in harvesting trees and providing for reforestation. Surprisingly, the rise of the pulp and paper industry made reforestation possible in many parts of the state. Mississippi Forests and Forestry is a history of individuals as well as industries. The book looks closely at the ways the lumber industry operated in the woods and mills and at the living and working conditions of people in the industries. It argues that the early industrial foresters, some lumber companies, and pulp and paper manufacturers practiced utilitarian conservation. By the late 1950s, they accomplished what some considered a miracle. Mississippi's forests had been restored. With the rise of environmentalism in the 1960s, popular ideas concerning the proper management and use of forests changed. Practices such as clear-cutting, single-age management, and manufacturing by chip mills became highly controversial. Looking ahead, Mississippi Forests and Forestry examines the issues that remain heated topics of conservation and use.

The Natchez Indians
The Natchez Indians

Author: James F. Barnett Jr.

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2007-11-01

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1604733098

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The Natchez Indians: A History to 1735 is the story of the Natchez Indians as revealed through accounts of Spanish, English, and French explorers, missionaries, soldiers, and colonists, and in the archaeological record. Because of their strategic location on the Mississippi River, the Natchez Indians played a crucial part in the European struggle for control of the Lower Mississippi Valley. The book begins with the brief confrontation between the Hernando de Soto expedition and the powerful Quigualtam chiefdom, presumed ancestors of the Natchez. In the late seventeenth century, René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle's expedition met the Natchez and initiated sustained European encroachment, exposing the tribe to sickness and the dangers of the Indian slave trade. The Natchez Indians portrays the way that the Natchez coped with a rapidly changing world, became entangled with the political ambitions of two European superpowers, France and England, and eventually disappeared as a people. The author examines the shifting relationships among the tribe's settlement districts and the settlement districts' relationships with neighboring tribes and with the Europeans. The establishment of a French fort and burgeoning agricultural colony in their midst signaled the beginning of the end for the Natchez people. Barnett has written the most complete and detailed history of the Natchez to date.

Bourbon Street
Bourbon Street

Author: Richard Campanella

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2014-03-05

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0807155063

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New Orleans is a city of many storied streets, but only one conjures up as much unbridled passion as it does fervent hatred, simultaneously polarizing the public while drawing millions of visitors a year. A fascinating investigation into the mile-long urban space that is Bourbon Street, Richard Campanella’s comprehensive cultural history spans from the street’s inception during the colonial period through three tumultuous centuries, arriving at the world-famous entertainment strip of today. Clearly written and carefully researched, Campanella’s book interweaves world events—from the Louisiana Purchase to World War II to Hurricane Katrina—with local and national characters, ranging from presidents to showgirls, to explain how Bourbon Street became an intriguing and singular artifact, uniquely informative of both New Orleans’s history and American society. While offering a captivating historical-geographical panorama of Bourbon Street, Campanella also presents a contemporary microview of the area, describing the population, architecture, and local economy, and shows how Bourbon Street operates on a typical night. The fate of these few blocks in the French Quarter is played out on a larger stage, however, as the internationally recognized brands that Bourbon Street merchants and the city of New Orleans strive to promote both clash with and complement each other. An epic narrative detailing the influence of politics, money, race, sex, organized crime, and tourism, Bourbon Street: A History ultimately demonstrates that one of the most well-known addresses in North America is more than the epicenter of Mardi Gras; it serves as a battleground for a fundamental dispute over cultural authenticity and commodification.