James F. Barnett Jr.'s Books

Beyond Control

The Mississippi River’s New Channel to the Gulf of Mexico

By: James F. Barnett Jr.

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Beyond Control

The Mississippi River’s New Channel to the Gulf of Mexico

By: James F. Barnett Jr.

Beyond Control reveals the Mississippi as a waterway of change, unnaturally confined by ever-larger levees and control structures. During the great flood of 1973, the current scoured a hole beneath the main structure near Baton Rouge and enlarged a pre-existing football-field-size crater. That night the Mississippi River nearly changed its course for a shorter and steeper path to the sea. Such a map-changing reconfiguration of the country’s largest river would bear national significance as well as disastrous consequences for New Orleans and towns like Morgan City, at the mouth of the Atchafalaya River. Since 1973, the US Army Corps of Engineers Control Complex at Old River has kept the Mississippi from jumping out of its historic channel and plunging through the Atchafalaya Basin to the Gulf of Mexico. Beyond Control traces the history of this phenomenon, beginning with a major channel shift around 3,000 years ago. By the time European colonists began to explore the Lower Mississippi Valley, a unique confluence of waterways had formed where the Red River joined the Mississippi, and the Atchafalaya River flowed out into the Atchafalaya Basin. A series of human alterations to this potentially volatile web of rivers, starting with a bend cutoff in 1831 by Captain Henry Miller Shreve, set the forces in motion for the Mississippi’s move into the Atchafalaya Basin. Told against the backdrop of the Lower Mississippi River’s impending diversion, the book’s chapters chronicle historic floods, rising flood crests, a changing strategy for flood protection, and competing interests in the management of the Old River outlet. Beyond Control is both a history and a close look at an inexorable, living process happening now in the twenty-first century.

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305

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

149681116X

ISBN 13

9781496811165

The Natchez Indians

A History to 1735

By: James F. Barnett Jr.

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The Natchez Indians

A History to 1735

By: James F. Barnett Jr.

The Natchez Indians: A History to 1735 is the story of the Natchez Indians as revealed through accounts of Spanish, English, and French explorers, missionaries, soldiers, and colonists, and in the archaeological record. Because of their strategic location on the Mississippi River, the Natchez Indians played a crucial part in the European struggle for control of the Lower Mississippi Valley. The book begins with the brief confrontation between the Hernando de Soto expedition and the powerful Quigualtam chiefdom, presumed ancestors of the Natchez. In the late seventeenth century, René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle's expedition met the Natchez and initiated sustained European encroachment, exposing the tribe to sickness and the dangers of the Indian slave trade. The Natchez Indians portrays the way that the Natchez coped with a rapidly changing world, became entangled with the political ambitions of two European superpowers, France and England, and eventually disappeared as a people. The author examines the shifting relationships among the tribe's settlement districts and the settlement districts' relationships with neighboring tribes and with the Europeans. The establishment of a French fort and burgeoning agricultural colony in their midst signaled the beginning of the end for the Natchez people. Barnett has written the most complete and detailed history of the Natchez to date.

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Page Count

204

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1604733098

ISBN 13

9781604733099

Mississippi's American Indians

By: James F. Barnett Jr.

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Mississippi's American Indians

By: James F. Barnett Jr.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, over twenty different American Indian tribal groups inhabited present-day Mississippi. Today, Mississippi is home to only one tribe, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. In Mississippi's American Indians, author James F. Barnett Jr. explores the historical forces and processes that led to this sweeping change in the diversity of the state's native peoples. The book begins with a chapter on Mississippi's approximately 12,000-year prehistory, from early hunter-gatherer societies through the powerful mound building civilizations encountered by the first European expeditions. With the coming of the Spanish, French, and English to the New World, native societies in the Mississippi region connected with the Atlantic market economy, a source for guns, blankets, and many other trade items. Europeans offered these trade materials in exchange for Indian slaves and deerskins, currencies that radically altered the relationships between tribal groups. Smallpox and other diseases followed along the trading paths. Colonial competition between the French and English helped to spark the Natchez rebellion, the Chickasaw-French wars, the Choctaw civil war, and a half-century of client warfare between the Choctaws and Chickasaws. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 forced Mississippi's pro-French tribes to move west of the Mississippi River. The Diaspora included the Tunicas, Houmas, Pascagoulas, Biloxis, and a portion of the Choctaw confederacy. In the early nineteenth century, Mississippi's remaining Choctaws and Chickasaws faced a series of treaties with the United States government that ended in destitution and removal. Despite the intense pressures of European invasion, the Mississippi tribes survived by adapting and contributing to their rapidly evolving world.

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504

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Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

162846982X

ISBN 13

9781628469820

The Natchez Indians

A History to 1735

By: James F. Barnett Jr.

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The Natchez Indians

A History to 1735

By: James F. Barnett Jr.

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N/A

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Page Count

204

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1604733098

ISBN 13

9781604733099

Mississippi's American Indians

By: James F. Barnett Jr.

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Mississippi's American Indians

By: James F. Barnett Jr.

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Page Count

504

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

162846982X

ISBN 13

9781628469820

Beyond Control

The Mississippi River’s New Channel to the Gulf of Mexico

By: James F. Barnett Jr.

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Beyond Control

The Mississippi River’s New Channel to the Gulf of Mexico

By: James F. Barnett Jr.

Average ratings

N/A

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

305

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

149681116X

ISBN 13

9781496811165

Book's by James F. Barnett Jr.

Beyond Control

Beyond Control

The Natchez Indians

The Natchez Indians

Mississippi's American Indians

Mississippi's American Indians

The Natchez Indians

The Natchez Indians

Mississippi's American Indians

Mississippi's American Indians

Beyond Control

Beyond Control

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