Today they ride aboard the steamboats Delta Queen, American Queen and Mississippi Queen, and they come to the same landing where some of the earliest visitors arrived at the beautiful Natchez region. Traveling aboard the 20th-century boats, visitors from all over the world come to Natchez, a city known widely for its unequaled collection of houses representing architecture of the old South. They come to see how the cotton planters lived in the days when cotton was king and money flowed freely.

They are not disappointed.

Tourists by the thousands visit Natchez on the Mississippi River each year, following in the footsteps of many generations of travelers to the historic city. Attractions were different when the first Europeans traveled down the river and past the high spot on the bluffs of the Mississippi, where Natchez now stands.

The river’s oldest settlement

The oldest settlement on the Mississippi, Natchez was 200 years ago the destination of flatboatmen and travelers who journeyed down the Natchez Trace.

In later years, travelers disembarked from steamboats at Natchez Under-the-Hill and climbed Silver Street to walk through tree-lined streets and admire buildings, houses and gardens. Steamboat travelers took carriage rides into the suburbs, where they visited homes such as Dunleith, Monmouth, D’Evereux and Lansdowne.

A visitor to Natchez in 1891 said this:

&uot;Not a city in the land can present finer attractions as a winter resort for Northerners than this. Street cars run in four directions, the mules making good time.&uot;

As for the furnishings of the houses, the visitor of nearly 100 years ago writes:

&uot;The privilege of going through some of these palatial relics of antebellum days was given us &045; immense dining rooms with their large central fans still suspended where they were waved by some slave in the days of American royalty.&uot;

The Indians and French clash

Natchez was first inhabited by the sun-worshiping, agricultural Natchez Indians, who built ceremonial mounds and lived peaceful lives. A small group of Frenchmen under the leadership of d’Iberville were the first Europeans to establish a settlement at Natchez. They did so in 1716, naming their Fort Rosalie.

Relationships between the Indians and the French soured as the years went by, as the French settlers began to encroach more and more upon lands prized by the Indians.

In 1729, the Indians attacked Fort Rosalie and surrounding French settlements and slaughtered many of the residents. Within two years, French soldiers sought and killed nearly the entire tribe of Natchez Indians, who had fled to nearby Louisiana following the massacre.

British rule begins

The area fell into British hands in 1763 following the French and Indian War, and settlement became more active then.

The British, in fact, promoted settlement of their new post on the river by offering land grants to veterans who fought with them in the recent war as well as the others interested in moving westward. Then as fires of the American Revolution began to burn, many residents of the eastern coastal areas began to migrate into the Natchez area. Most were Tories &045; British sympathizers in the Revolution. The British remained at Natchez for about 15 years. They laid out streets at Natchez Under-the-Hill, a settlement that was in years to come to gain the reputation of being the bawdiest place on the river.

Spanish rule and the territory

In 1779 Spaniards occupied Natchez. Despite the differences between the Roman Catholic Spanish and the Protestant population, the ear was generally a peaceful and productive one.

Spanish officials laid out the town on the bluffs into squares established a fair code of laws and saw the town grow and thrive as flatboats, loaded with goods from the North, stopped in greater numbers at the lowland known by then as Natchez Under-the-Hill.

By 1798, however, negotiations between the Spaniards and the Americans were completed, establishing the town and surrounding region as part of a U.S. territory.

Statehood and civil war

Mississippi became a state in 1817. The territorial Legislature met on the grounds of Historic Jefferson College, a few miles north of Natchez in Washington. From time of statehood until the Civil War in the early 1860s, Natchez grew as a center of wealth and culture. Handsome mansions were built. They were filled with the finest furnishings available.

These were days when cotton grew in the low riverlands, stretching as far as the eye could see &045; particularly in the lowlands of Louisiana across the river from Natchez.

Natchez lured men of culture and intellect in the territorial days and before. Many of these men, with their business and social connections with North, opposed secession and the formation of the Confederate States of America. Nevertheless, when the Civil War began, Natchez people supported their state and the South and sent many of their men into battle then.

Natchez as a city survived the Civil War with little loss to property. The town was quietly occupied in the summer of 1863. Federal troops set up headquarters at Rosalie. Economically depressed for a decade after the war, Natchez began to revive in the late 1870s. A new merchant class moved into the town, and river trade picked up. Cotton grew once again.

Around the turn of the century, the economy of the area fell again, as river traffic began to give way to railroads and as boll weevils destroyed cotton crops. The establishment of regular tours of Natchez mansions in 1932 by women of the city’s garden club, the discovery of oil in the early 1940s and the successful attraction of industries to the town in the 1930s and 1940s boosted the economy.

With all its changes, Natchez remains the same in many ways. The hospitable atmosphere and the people who demonstrate energy and entrepreneurship continue as traditional.

Visitors enjoy the part of Natchez preserved in its historic buildings and fine antiques. they enjoy equally the progressive air found among the people they meet on the streets and in the restaurants and shops.