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Natchez is the county seat and only city〔(【引用サイトリンク】accessdate=2011-06-07 )〕 of Adams County, Mississippi, United States. Natchez has a total population of 15,792 (as of the 2010 census).〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Geographic Identifiers: 2010 Demographic Profile Data (G001): Natchez city, Mississippi )〕 Located on the Mississippi River across from Vidalia in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, Natchez is some southwest of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, and north of Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana. It is the 25th-largest city in the state.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Geographic Identifiers: 2010 Demographic Profile Data (G001): All places within Mississippi )〕 It is named for the Natchez tribe of Native Americans who inhabited much of the area through the French colonial period. ==Overview== Established by French colonists in 1716, Natchez is one of the oldest and most important European settlements in the lower Mississippi River Valley. After the French lost the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War), they ceded Natchez and near territory to Spain in the Treaty of Paris of 1763 (which later traded other territory east of the Mississippi River with Great Britain). After the United States acquired this area following the American Revolutionary War, the city served as the capital of the American Mississippi Territory and then of the state of Mississippi. It predates Jackson by more than a century; the latter replaced Natchez as the capital in 1822, as it was more centrally located in the developing state. The strategic location of Natchez, on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, ensured that it would be a pivotal center of trade, commerce, and the interchange of ethnic Native American, European, and African cultures in the region; it held this position for two centuries after its founding. In U.S. history, Natchez is recognized particularly for its role in the development of the Old Southwest during the first half of the nineteenth century. It was the southern terminus of the historic Natchez Trace, with the northern terminus being Nashville, Tennessee. After unloading their cargoes in Natchez or New Orleans, many pilots and crew of flatboats and keelboats traveled by the Trace overland to their homes in the Ohio River Valley . (It was not until steamships were developed in the 1820s that travel northward on the Mississippi River could be accomplished by boat.) The Natchez Trace also played an important role during the War of 1812. Today the modern Natchez Trace Parkway, which commemorates this route, still has its southern terminus in Natchez. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the city attracted wealthy Southern planters as residents, who built mansions to fit their ambitions. Their plantations were vast tracts of land in the surrounding lowlands along the riverfronts of Mississippi and Louisiana, where they grew large commodity crops of cotton and sugar cane using slave labor. Natchez became the principal port from which these crops were exported, both upriver to Northern cities and downriver to New Orleans, where much of the cargo was exported to Europe. Many of the mansions built by planters before 1860 survive and form a major part of the city's architecture and identity. Agriculture remained the primary economic base for the region until well into the twentieth century. During the twentieth century, the city's economy experienced a downturn, first due to the replacement of steamboat traffic on the Mississippi River by railroads in the early 1900s, some of which bypassed the river cities and drew away their commerce. Later in the 20th century, many local industries closed in a restructuring that sharply reduced the number of jobs in the area. Despite its status as a popular destination for heritage tourism because of well-preserved antebellum architecture, Natchez has had a general decline in population since 1960. It remains the principal city of the Natchez, MS–LA Micropolitan Statistical Area. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Natchez, Mississippi」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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