An examination of the settlement history of the alluvial
bottomlands of the lower Mississippi Valley from 1880 to 1930, this
study details how cotton-growers transformed the swamplands of
northwestern Mississippi, northeastern Louisiana, northeastern
Arkansas, and southern Missouri into cotton fields. Although these
alluvial bottomlands contained the richest cotton soils in the
American South, cotton-growers in the Southern bottomlands faced a
host of environmental problems, including dense forests, seasonal
floods, water-logged soils, poor transportation, malarial fevers
and insect pests. This interdisciplinary approach uses primary and
secondary sources from the fields of history, geography, sociology,
agronomy, and ecology to fill an important gap in our knowledge of
American environmental history.
Requiring laborers to clear and cultivate their lands,
cotton-growers recruited black and white workers from the upland
areas of the Southern states. Growers also supported the levee
districts which built imposing embankments to hold the floodwaters
in check. Canals and drainage ditches were constructed to drain the
lands, and local railways and graveled railways soon ended the
area's isolation. Finally, quinine and patent medicines would offer
some relief from the malarial fevers that afflicted bottomland
residents, and commercial poisons would combat the local pests that
attacked the cotton plants, including the boll weevils which
arrived in the early twentieth century.
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