Yazoo

By John E. Ellzey

With a diverse past, from Native American tribes to the first European explorers and settlers to the present day, Yazoo has always been intriguing. French explorers first named the river that flows through the area the River of the Yazous after the Yazoo Indian tribe, and the county and city were later named for the river. Yazoo County, established in 1823, is the largest county in Mississippi, situated in the west-central part of the state in the fertile valley formed by the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. After its organization, Yazoo County was rapidly settled by pioneers from other parts of Mississippi and from the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Aug 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781439646519

John E. Ellzey

John E. Ellzey, the reference librarian for Ricks Memorial Library in Yazoo City for the past 40 years, specializes in local history and genealogy. He has been active in the Yazoo Historical Society and serves on the Yazoo City Preservation Commission. He was recognized by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 2009 for documenting Mississippi�s history and by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 2012 for preserving local history.

Book preview

Revolution.

INTRODUCTION

One might wonder just what Yazoo means. It is the name given to a Native American tribe that had more or less disappeared by the time European explorers came to this area. It is the name of a river that courses through the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, dividing the hills from the vast flatlands stretching for miles. The Yazoo River was to play an important part in the transportation of supplies from the outside world and raw materials to market. Yazoo is the name of the largest county in the state of Mississippi, so big when formed that several counties were eventually carved out of it. And it is the name of a town, once called the Queen City of the Delta, that has experienced and survived its share of disasters—from tornadoes, floods, and war to a great fire that almost wiped out the town. Nestled on the side of the hills and down to the bank of the river, Yazoo City, which was named Manchester at the time, was the first town in Yazoo County to be incorporated. Being partly in the hills and partly in the alluvial plain known as the Yazoo Delta, Yazoo City has a beautiful setting surrounded by rich farms, fine timberlands, and wonderful fishing streams and lakes. Except in winter, kudzu vine–covered roadsides between Yazoo City and Bentonia add to the unique scenic beauty. From its early days, Yazoo City could be reached by road and river and eventually by rail, and this would have a bearing on the future of the little town and the county. Yazoo’s geographic location has been a major factor in its history.

But Yazoo means much more than this. For many years, the region has produced its share of celebrities in the fields of writing, music, and other areas of the arts and entertainment. One person many people associate with Yazoo is Willie Morris. A child of the 1940s, Willie Morris, who went on to fame as the author of North Toward Home, Good Old Boy, My Dog Skip, and other books, always came back to the theme of a sense of place. To anyone from here, no matter how far they go, Yazoo is always home. It is the place in one’s mind that is comforting to go back to, whether in books like Morris’s or in actuality, and many have come back to Yazoo to live after having been away for years.

Yazoo is such a special place that merely hearing the word spoken makes people feel good, and hearing others mispronounce the word Yazoo can bring about a smile. One of the most distinctive things about Yazoo is the name itself. People find it fascinating to say, and it lingers in their memories. Few American cities or counties can claim a name as unique as Yazoo. Romantic legends say that the word yazoo means death and that the tribe of Native Americans living here were so brave and fierce and proud they accepted only victory in death. But the truth is that they were a very small and insignificant tribe living at the mouth of the Yazoo River, known for their ability to grow corn. In fact, no one knows for certain what the word meant.

Being proud to call oneself a Yazooan, no matter the place’s faults and shortcomings, is what Morris meant by a sense of place. Morris is quoted in the introduction to Yazoo: Its Legends and Legacies, as saying, And through all this, one loves this place as I have, the perceptions of the venerable continuities of time—the births and deaths, natural and violent, the forgotten tragedies and triumphs, the sadnesses and joys of man’s existence in one small stretch of the planet. Yazoo is home.

Being a lifelong Yazooan, I think for these reasons and countless others, a book about Yazoo would be a welcome addition. Photographs for this volume have been collected from families, private collections, the library, local newspapers, and the historical society. More than 200 pictures tell the story of Yazoo from its earliest beginnings through the end of the mid-20th century. This book offers many images of places, personalities, and events of a long-ago but not-forgotten era and is a time capsule of Yazoo’s origins.

One

PREHISTORY AND

NATIVE AMERICANS

This area was under water 45 million years ago. Ancient marine-life fossils from the Eocene Epoch are found in present-day Yazoo County, including two different ancient whales, Basilosaurus and Zygorhiza kochii. More like whales today Zygorhiza was about 20 feet in length. In this photograph, Sam Olden, longtime president of the Yazoo Historical Society, stands in front of a painting of Ziggy, the official state fossil of Mississippi, by Julia Deaton. (Courtesy of the Yazoo Herald.)

Excavation of Zygorhiza kochii by members of the Mississippi Gem and Mineral Society is shown in this photograph. An almost perfect skeleton of Zygorhiza, known as Ziggy, was found in Thompson Creek near Tinsley in Yazoo County in 1971 and is now on display in the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science in Jackson. It is probably the most complete of its kind in the world. (Courtesy of the Mississippi Gem and Mineral Society.)

This map originally appeared in Yazoo County Story (1958) and was adapted from an 1828 survey by Henry Washington, deputy surveyor for Mississippi and Louisiana at that time. The present county boundaries and town locations have been added to the original designations of Indian trails and villages and the location of the old county seat at Beatty’s Bluff. (Courtesy of Ricks Memorial Library.)

This drawing by Dee Turman shows an archaeological reconstruction of the huge mound complex at Lake George near Holly Bluff, Mississippi, and originally appeared in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Native American Mounds & Earthworks by Gregory L. Little. The village contained 25 mounds and several plaza areas, surrounded by a moat and earthen embankment eight feet high. The largest mound was 60 feet high.