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Mississippi: From British West Florida to Statehood
The Semiquincentennial of the United States of America – 2026
This year we are celebrating our nation’s semiquincentennial (a new word for many, if not most, of us)—in other words, our nation’s 250th birthday. Those of us who are active in the Simpson County Historical and Genealogical Society feel it would be interesting and informative, as part of our Semiquincentennial celebrations, to consider what was going on in “Mississippi” 250 years ago. We all know about the Thirteen Colonies; however, there were also two other British colonies: British East Florida and British West Florida. Our Mississippi history is rooted in British West Florida.
During the 1700s there were several wars among the major European nations, wars which became global conflicts involving North America as well as several other areas around the globe. These wars included the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). As part of the Seven Years’ War, the French and Indian War (1754-1763) was a conflict in North America between Great Britain and France, along with their respective Native American allies.
Although Britain and France were officially at peace following the treaty that ended the War of the Austrian Succession, tensions and conflicts between the two continued in North America. In May 1754, this led to the Battle of Jumonville Glen, when British colonial Virginia militia and Native America allies led by twenty-two year old George Washington ambushed a French patrol, precipitating the French and Indian War.
At mid-century (1750) in North America, Great Britain held territory that included the thirteen colonies along the Atlantic seaboard as well as parts of Canada. France’s North American territories stretched from the Gulf of Mexico and into Canada, including lands on both sides of the Mississippi River, the Ohio Valley, and the Great Lakes. The territory claimed by France included what is now the state of Mississippi. Spain held territories that included what is now the state of Florida, as well as most of west Texas and the states of New Mexico and Arizona and stretching south into Mexico.
Following the Seven Years’ War, France lost all its possessions in North America. In 1775, Spain held the lands west of the Mississippi River. Great Britain held the lands east of the Mississippi River, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico into Canada. These lands included the Thirteen Colonies, East Florida (essentially, what is now the state of Florida), West Florida (essentially the lower half of the present states of Mississippi and Alabama), a large area north of that designated the Indian Reserve, and the Province of Quebec (the lands around the Great Lakes). In 1800, France did regain a huge area west of the Mississippi River (the Louisiana Territory) which came into the United States in 1803 as the Louisiana Purchase.
Great Britain had established West and East Florida in 1763 out of land acquired from France and Spain after the Seven Years’ War. Pensacola became West Florida’s capital. The colony included about two thirds of what is now the Florida panhandle, as well as parts of the modern states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Both West and East Florida remained loyal to the British crown during the American Revolution and served as havens for Tories, fleeing from the Thirteen Colonies. Spain (acting as an ally of France) invaded West Florida and captured Pensacola in 1781, and after the war Britain ceded both Floridas to Spain. Boundary disputes between Spain and the United States continued as American and English settlers moved into West Florida. After the American Revolution ended, Georgia claimed land extending to the Mississippi River, including the northern half of what would become the states of Mississippi and Alabama. Spain, by treaty with Great Britain, held the lands which would constitute the southern half of those states.
Of course, the original inhabitants of these lands were caught up in these struggles.* The primary Native American peoples involved in our history were the Chickasaw and the Choctaw. Around 1700, when continuous contact with whites began, the Chickasaw are estimated to have numbered about 7,000, compared with 17,500 neighboring Choctaw. Since 1670, both tribes had suffered large losses from warfare and especially foreign diseases, particularly smallpox. By 1775 their populations had declined to 2,300 Chickasaw and 13,400 Choctaw.
In 1699 the French established a settlement where the city of Biloxi is now located. Encouraged by the English, the Natchez attacked the French colony on 28 November 1729. With the help of Indian allies, the French retaliated early the following year. In the war that followed, the Natchez people abandoned their homeland for refuge with pro-English groups including the Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee.
The Choctaw established trade relations with the Europeans, acquiring guns and other goods and over time enlisting the French as allies against the Natchez and Chickasaw. Eventually, the Choctaw in the western division of the tribe began to trade with the British. The resulting factionalism created by this trade rivalry led to a situation tantamount to civil war; the Choctaw from the eastern division were allied with the French, while those in the western division were allied with the British.
Despite their efforts to support the United States in the Creek War and the War of 1812, the Choctaw ceded more than twenty-three million acres of their territory to the United States in a series of agreements signed between 1801 and 1830. In three treaties concluded between 1820 and 1833, the US government purchased the land of the Choctaw and the Chickasaw in exchange for land west of the Mississippi River: the Treaties of Doak’s Stand, Dancing Rabbit Creek and Pontotoc Creek. In 1830, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek outlined the terms of Choctaw removal to the West (the “Trail of Tears”), although a small number remained in Mississippi.
In 1805, Pushmataha, the famous Choctaw warrior and chief, was elected chief of one of the three geographical and political districts in the Choctaw Confederacy, the Southern District or Six Towns Division, which included lands that would eventually become Simpson County. The falls on the Strong River at D’Lo are said to be the site of an annual Choctaw ritual described as “an initiation to manhood for Choctaw boys of puberty age that involved unknown rituals but lasted for the four days leading up to the full moon of October.”
As to our inhabitants of African descent*, in 1817, when Mississippi earned statehood, its population of European and African descent was concentrated in the Natchez District, the core of colonial settlement in the 1700s. Almost the entire non-Indian population lived in the southern portion of the state. The five southwestern counties making up the heart of the old Natchez District (Adams, Amite, Franklin, Jefferson, and Wilkinson) were home to more than half the state’s non-Indian population in 1820. In 1840, Mississippi had 1,366 free blacks, most of whom lived in Natchez and other towns in southwestern counties along the Mississippi River.
In 1798, Congress prohibited foreign slave importation into the Mississippi Territory; and in 1808, all foreign slave importation into the United States was banned. However, with the Choctaw and Chickasaw cessions, millions of acres in central and northern Mississippi were opened to agricultural development, and the extent of slavery dramatically increased. One historian has estimated that 235,000 slaves were taken to Mississippi from other slave states between 1820 and 1860.
Between 1798 and 1812, the United States obtained all the territory that would constitute the present states of Mississippi and Alabama—the Mississippi Territory. On December 10, 1817, the western portion was admitted to the Union as Mississippi, the 20th state. In 1819, the remaining Territory became the state of Alabama.
*Source: Mississippi Encyclopedia The Simpson County Historical and Genealogical Society
Contents not otherwise credited are believed to be in the public domain. P. O. Box 154, Mendenhall, MS 39114
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