Mississippi

Early Inhabitants

The state of Mississippi was shaped culturally and geographically by the Mississippi River, which forms most of its western border and whose rich delta is partly located in the state's southwest corner. The name Mississippi comes from a Native American word loosely translated as "father of waters." (Measuring some 2,300 miles in length, the river, which originates in Minnesota and flows down to Louisiana, is the largest in the U.S.) Archaeological records indicate the Mississippi Valley was inhabited by 10,000 B.C., at the end of the most recent ice age, when generations of people moved across the land bridge joining Siberia and present-day Alaska. Between 10,000 B.C. and 2,500 B.C., the nomadic inhabitants of the region began to domesticate plants for farming. By about 900, thousands of people had settled in permanent, clan-based villages. They built temples and burial mounds, excelled in various crafts, hunted and fished and grew squash, corn and beans.
Spanish explorers led by Hernando do Soto (c. 1500-1542) landed on the Florida peninsula in search of riches in 1539 and entered the Mississippi Valley region in 1540. Sailing down the Mississippi River, they encountered Chickasaw, Choctaw and Natchez tribes. De Soto did not discover the gold he sought, so he left the region without establishing a settlement. However, the Europeans had brought infectious diseases with them against which the Native Americans had no defense, and their populations were sharply reduced as a result.

The first European settlers in the area were French colonists who arrived from Canada in about 1719, bringing with them the first African slaves to work the rice and tobacco plantations. During the French and Indian War (1754-63), the British helped the Native Americans take back their land from the French, and thus the British gained control of the area. After the American Revolutionary War (1775-83), the U.S. gained control of the region from the British.

Statehood and Civil War

On December 10, 1817, Mississippi became the 20th state to join the Union. By the 1830s, most Native Americans remaining in the state had been forcibly displaced to the Oklahoma Territory, and Euro-American settlers had moved in and established farms and plantations. Cotton became integral to Mississippi's economy, with cotton plantations relying heavily upon black slave labor. By the mid-1800s, Mississippi was America's leading cotton-producer and cotton was the nation's top export.

While pro-slavery sentiments predominated among plantation owners, there was at least one remarkable exception in Isaac Ross (1760-1836), who owned Prospect Hill Plantation. In "Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today" (2005), Alan Huffman documents how Ross freed his slaves and paid for their transportation back to Africa. While the repatriation of former slaves to Africa was a late-18th-century attempt to correct the wrongs of slavery, such well-intended efforts did not succeed, particularly, in improving the lives of people descended from Africans and did not forestall the Civil War.

Mississippi seceded from the Union in January 1861, the second state to do so. During the Civil War, a number of fierce battles between Confederate and Union forces took place across the state, including such locations as Corinth and Vicksburg. The war left much of the state in economic ruin. Mississippi was readmitted to the Union in February 1870.

The years between the Civil War and World War II (1939-45) marked a period of economic and social stagnation in Mississippi. Small farms replaced large plantations, and many residents lived an impoverished, rural lifestyle. However, World War II helped ignite industrial growth in the state, and by the latter decades of the 20th century, Mississippi's longtime agriculture-based economy had been balanced out with manufacturing and service jobs.