Natchez, officially the City of Natchez, is the only city in and the county seat of Adams County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 14,520 at the 2020 census. Located on the Mississippi River across from Vidalia in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, Natchez was a prominent city in the antebellum years, a center of cotton planters and Mississippi River trade.
Bernardo Vicente de Gálvez y Madrid, 1st Count of Gálvez was a Spanish military leader and government official who served as colonial governor of Spanish Louisiana and Cuba, and later as Viceroy of New Spain.
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 Anglo settlers in the district came primarily from other parts of British America. The district was recognized to be the area east of the Mississippi River from Bayou Sara in the south and Bayou Pierre in the north.
The Natchez are a Native American people who originally lived in the Natchez Bluffs area in the Lower Mississippi Valley, near the present-day city of Natchez, Mississippi, in the United States. They spoke a language with no known close relatives, although it may be very distantly related to the Muskogean languages of the Creek Confederacy. An early American geographer noted in his 1797 gazetteer that they were also known as the "Sun Set Indians".
The Capture of Fort Bute signalled the opening of Spanish intervention in the American Revolutionary War on the side of France and the United States. Mustering an ad hoc army of Spanish regulars, Acadian militia, and native levies under Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent, Bernardo de Gálvez, the Governor of Spanish Louisiana stormed and captured the small British frontier post on Bayou Manchac on September 7, 1779.
The Battle of Baton Rouge was a brief siege during the Anglo-Spanish War that was decided on September 21, 1779. Fort New Richmond was the second British outpost to fall to Spanish arms during Bernardo de Gálvez's march into West Florida.
Étienne Perier or Étienne de Perier (1686–1766), also known as Perier the Elder, was a French naval officer and governor of French Louisiana from 1726 to 1733. His time as governor included some notable achievements, including the construction of the first levee along the Mississippi River in 1727. In response to the Natchez Revolt, he attempted to completely destroy the Natchez people, which increased Native American hostility toward the French in the territory. Because he failed to secure the safety of the colony, Perier was recalled as governor in March 1733. He later distinguished himself as a naval officer and privateer, including during the capture of HMS Northumberland in 1744.
The Gulf Coast campaign or the Spanish conquest of West Florida in the American Revolutionary War, was a series of military operations primarily directed by the governor of Spanish Louisiana, Bernardo de Gálvez, against the British province of West Florida. Begun with operations against British positions on the Mississippi River shortly after Britain and Spain went to war in 1779, Gálvez completed the conquest of West Florida in 1781 with the successful siege of Pensacola.
Oliver Pollock was a merchant and financier of the American Revolutionary War, of which he has long been considered a historically undervalued figure. He is often credited with inventing the U.S. Dollar sign in 1778.
Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent was a French merchant and military officer who played a major role in the development of French and Spanish Louisiana.
Feliciana Parish, or New Feliciana, French: Paroisse de Félicianne, was a parish of the Territory of Orleans and the state of Louisiana, formed in 1810 from West Florida territory. Given an increase in population, it was divided in 1824 into East Feliciana Parish and West Feliciana Parish.
The Pentagon Barracks, also known as the Old United States Barracks, is a complex of buildings located at the corner of State Capitol Drive and River Road in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the grounds of the state capitol. The site was used by the Spanish, French, British, Confederate States Army, and United States Army and was part of the short-lived Republic of West Florida. During its use as a military post the site has been visited by such notable figures as Zachary Taylor, Lafayette, Robert E. Lee, George Custer, Jefferson Davis, and Abraham Lincoln.
Fort New Richmond was built by the British in 1779 on the east bank of the Mississippi River in what was later to become Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The Spanish took control of the fort in 1779 and renamed it Fort San Carlos.
British West Florida was a colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain from 1763 until 1783, when it was ceded to Spain as part of the Peace of Paris.
The Natchez revolt, or the Natchez massacre, was an attack by the Natchez Native American people on French colonists near present-day Natchez, Mississippi, on November 29, 1729. The Natchez and French had lived alongside each other in the Louisiana colony for more than a decade prior to the incident, mostly conducting peaceful trade and occasionally intermarrying. After a period of deteriorating relations and warring, Natchez leaders were provoked to revolt when the French colonial commandant, Sieur de Chépart, demanded land from a Natchez village for his own plantation near Fort Rosalie. The Natchez plotted their attack over several days and managed to conceal their plans from most of the French; colonists who overheard and warned Chépart of an attack were considered untruthful and were punished. In a coordinated attack on the fort and the homesteads, the Natchez killed almost all of the Frenchmen, while sparing most of the women and enslaved Africans. Approximately 230 colonists were killed overall, and the fort and homes were burned to the ground.
Francisco Domingo Joseph Bouligny y Paret was a high-ranking Spanish military and political figure in Spanish Louisiana. As a francophone in Spanish service, he was a bridge between Creole and French Louisiana and Spain following the transfer of the territory from France to Spain. Bouligny served as lieutenant governor under Bernardo de Gálvez, founded the city of New Iberia in 1779, and served as acting military governor in 1799.
Fort Bute (1766–1779) was a colonial fort built by the British in 1766 to protect the confluence of Bayou Manchac with the Mississippi River and was named in honor of the Earl of Bute. Fort Bute was located on Bayou Manchac, about 115 miles (185 km) up the Mississippi River from New Orleans, on the far western border of British West Florida. It was one of the three outposts maintained by the British in the lower Mississippi along with Fort Panmure and the Baton Rouge outpost.
The Willing Expedition, also called Willing's Depredation, was a 1778 military expedition launched on behalf of the American Continental Congress by Captain James Willing during the American War of Independence.
James Willing (1750–1801) was a representative of the American Continental Congress who led a 1778 military expedition during the American Revolutionary War. Known as the Willing Expedition, the effort involved raiding British forts, plantations, and other properties of loyalists in the colonial British West Florida settlement of Natchez. Later that year, he sought protection from the British by hiding out in New Orleans, but was taken prisoner by them on his attempt to return to Philadelphia.
