Natchez District

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 English-speaking settlers in the district came primarily from other parts of British America. The district was defined as the area east of the Mississippi River, from Bayou Sara in the south (presently St. Francisville, Louisiana) to Bayou Pierre in the north (presently Port Gibson, Mississippi).

It became a center of wealth in the antebellum years, serving as a major center of the domestic slave trade and cotton commerce and as the center of the cotton plantation economy 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 low-lying delta area on the west side of the river became considered part of the Natchez District. Several parishes were developed for large-scale cotton plantation agriculture 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.