Yazoo

The Yazoo people lived along the lower Yazoo River in the lower Mississippi valley, where floodplains, channels and forests gave a varied supply of resources. Fields of maize, beans and squash lay on the higher ground, while fish, game and wild foods filled the rest of the year. Floods and changing water levels set the rhythm of planting and travel, and canoes linked the villages along the river.

French traders and missionaries reached the lower Mississippi in the late seventeenth century, and by the early eighteenth they had posts and alliances among the river peoples. Disease and war reduced many communities, and the Yazoo were caught up in the wider conflicts of the region. Their history before European contact rests in the older chiefly world of the river valley.

The later city of Jackson lies here.