how did the war of 1812 affect the mississippi territory
Mississippi Territory The massacre had significant short- and long-range effects. It triggered a major Indian war that involved a substantial build-up of American military force in the area â€“ which probably prevented the British from occupying an undefended Gulf coast in 1814. More importantly, relations between Americans and the southern Indians changed drastically. The Creeks, who had been living peacefully and in close contact with the settlers of the Mississippi Territory, lost more than half their land, and within twenty years were forced to move west of the Mississippi River.
History of Mississippi The first European explorers to settle in the area of the present-day state were French colonists, and later some Spanish and English, particularly along the Gulf Coast. European Americans did not enter the territory in great number until the early nineteenth century, and then they brought many enslaved African Americans with them to serve as laborers to develop cotton plantations along major riverfronts. Through the 1830s, the federal government forced most of the native Choctaw and Chickasaw people west of the Mississippi River. White planters developed an economy based on the export of cotton produced by slave labor along the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. A small elite group of planters controlled most of the richest land, the wealth, and the politics of the state, which seceded from the Union in 1861. Its river cities particularly were sites of extended battles during the Civil War, and there was widespread destruction.