Hidden History of Natchez

Since prehistory, the bluffs of Natchez have called to the bold, the cruel and the quietly determined. The diverse opportunists who heeded that call have left behind more than three-hundred years of colorful and tragic stories. The Natchez Indians, who inhabited the bluffs at the time of European contact, made a calculated but ultimately catastrophic decision to massacre the French, who had settled nearby. William Johnson, a Black man, who occupied a tenuous position between two worlds, found wealth and status in antebellum Natchez. In the wake of Union occupation, thousands of the formerly enslaved became the city's protective garrison.