1682
On February 26, while canoeing down the Mississippi from the north, French explorer Réne Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, with about fifty French and Indian companions, pull ashore in the future state of Tennessee. They meet five Chickasaw braves from a loess-bluff situated village soon to be known as Chickasaw Bluffs, and located in the general vicinity of the future Memphis, Tennessee. Farther downstream, the expedition visits the Natchez and closely related Taensa, both tribes of the loess zone, as well as the Koroa, whose village is near Emerald Mound near Natchez. At the Mississippi's mouth, on April 9, 1682, La Salle declares all land drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries, which includes the loess zone, as property of France. He calls the new territory Louisiana.

1699
In March, Pierre le Moyne, sieur d'Iberville, a French-Canadian naval officer and colonizer, with a small group including his younger brother Jean Baptiste le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, ascends the Mississippi from its mouth on a trip of exploration. In the general area of the Tunica Hills they come ashore a two hours walk from a Houma Indian village. Indians on the bank "sing a greeting" and take the explorers to their village, singing all the way, where the peace pipe, or calumet, is smoked. The Houma chief has a flattened head, as do a few other older men. The village is clustered around three major buildings on "high ground," and consists of about 140 houses occupied by about 350 men. Houses are built on the slope of a hill in two rows, in a circular formation, with a well-maintained circular village commons in the middle. There are many cornfields, and melons and tobacco also is grown. Hardwood and nut trees as well as canebrakes are noted as growing luxuriantly, which is to be expected of a loess-bluff-area forest.

1700
Early in the year, on a second trip upriver, Iberville finds the Houma village he earlier visited to be in the grips of a disease accompanied by chronic diarrhea. Quite possibly the disease had been introduced there by Iberville's group itself. Over half the Indians have died. The illness has spread as far as the Natchez villages to the north, where the Great Sun is sick. Iberville goes to visit the Great Sun. The chief's house stands atop a mound, across a plaza from the village's temple. The Great Sun's cabin furnished with a broad bed about three feet high, and with support columns painted different colors. Despite his illness, the Great Sun displays the bearing of an emperor. He has a deep tan complexion and an aquiline nose.

1715
In the fall, the newly appointed governor of Louisiana and former founder of Detroit, Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac, boats past the Natchez Indian villages but neglects to stop and smoke the calumet. The Natchez, interpreting this as a sign of hostility, assassinate four French traders and pillage merchandise from a local warehouse owned by the company of Antoine Crozat, who is in charge of Louisiana's trade and manufacturing.

1716
Responding to the above attack, Bienville, Iberville's younger brother, with forty-five men, lands fifty miles below the Natchez villages and begins construction of a trading post. Natchez chiefs arrive, Bienville takes them captive, and demands the heads of those responsible for the earlier killings. Only three heads are brought. When Bienville orders four hostages tomahawked to death, the Natchez yield to his demands. The Natchez are obliged to assist in building a fort near their villages, on the bluffs overlooking the river. The fort is named Fort Rosalie, in honor of the wife of Jerome Phelypeaux, Comte de Pontchartrain.

1718
Records show that in 1718 an individual named M. de La Houssaye, along with sixteen other colonists, settle on St. Catherine's Creek near the Natchez Indian's Grand Village.

1719
Three French military deserters are exiled to Natchez as "colonists," along with two dealers in contraband salt. In the same year, Fort St. Pierre is established on the Yazoo River in order to facilitate trade with tribes to the north of the Natchez.

1720
The first French-Chickasaw war begins when the Chickasaw refuse the French demand that they banish English traders from their villages. The Chickasaw are not defeated, and retain contact with the English.

1721
On February 8, at a council in Biloxi, the French agree to pay Choctaw warriors "one gun, one pound of powder and two pounds of bullets" for each Chickasaw scalp, and eighty libres of merchandise for each Chickasaw slave. Diseases continue to ravage the Natchez. Though the eternal fire continues burning inside the Natchez's Grand Temple, now the rich ornaments and relics earlier seen there earlier have disappeared, possibly having been hid from the French. French colonial settlement is closing in on the Natchez villages. Mostly because of diseases, the Natchez nation's population is half what it was earlier, and by the mid-1720s includes only five villages.

1722
The Natchez Indians, upset with French incursions into their land, attempt to drive the settlers away, but French troops suppress the uprising.

1723
Choctaws bring the French 400 Chickasaw scalps and 100 Chickasaw slaves.

1725
Unable to force the Chickasaws to expel English traders, the French, suffering from Chickasaw depredations of their shipping on the Mississippi, make peace with the Chickasaws, and a deceptive calm settles over the lower Mississippi Valley.

1729
Fort St. Pierre, established on the Yazoo River only ten years earlier, is destroyed and abandoned during the uprising of the Natchez Indians farther south. The uprising ends with the French extermination of the Natchez Indians.

1732
French officials renew their demands that the Chickasaw expel the growing number of English traders in their nation, but again the Chickasaw refuse. Again the French send Choctaw mercenaries against the Chickasaw, to little avail.

1734
In retaliation against continued French harassment, the Chickasaw virtually close the Mississippi to French shipping. In New Orleans, Governor Bienville declares with regard to the Chickasaws, "The entire destruction of this hostile nation ... becomes every day more necessary to our interest and I am going to exert all diligence to accomplish it."

1736
In May, Louisiana Governor Bienville sends a two-pronged attack against the Chickasaws. One column of 400 French and Indians lands at the base of the loess bluff near the future Memphis, and marches east through the loess zone to the Chickasaw settlements. A second column of 600 French regulars and 600 Choctaws, commanded by Bienville, approaches from the south. However, the column from the east is intercepted. The Chickasaws overwhelm the column and capture the baggage train, which carries 450 pounds of gunpowder and 12,000 bullets. The column's leader and several others are burned at the stake. Bienville's column is later ravaged by the well entrenched Chickasaws, and must retreat.

1739
Attempting for a third time to destroy the Chickasaws, by June Bienville has arrayed an awesome army of some 3,000 Europeans and Indian allies, mostly Choctaw. However, disease strikes the Europeans, and the attack must be delayed.

1740
By March, only 200 French are able to march north, heading inland from a loess-bluff landing near the future Memphis. However, the Chickasaws apparently believe the small column to be the advance party of a much larger army, and agree to refrain from war, though they do not accept defeat, and do not expel the English. The French withdraw, again defeated. Bienville, now old and sick, returns to France. Bienville's successor will attack the Chickasaws again in 1752, but he also will fail.

1754
Documents show that toward the end of this year French military presence in the loess zone is stretched thin, with only about fifty soldiers manning the Natchez post. Fort St. Pierre, abandoned in 1729, remains abandoned. Only ten soldiers man the fort at the Tunica settlement, near the border of present-day Mississippi and Louisiana. In contrast, the Chickasaw, encouraged and supported by the English, control the Mississippi River as far south as Natchez, and even make slave raids on Ofo Indians clustered around the Natchez fort for their protection.

This is the year designated as the beginning of the French and Indian War, which historians regard as the American theater of the European Seven Years War (beginning in 1756). These conflicts arise as major European powers, particularly France and England, contest world military and economic dominance. Despite France's apparent dominance in the lower Mississippi Valley, in Europe and elsewhere in North America she is not destined to triumph.

1758
As of December, still no white settlers have returned to the former Natchez Indian homeland. According to an official French report on the Indians occupying the loess bluffs in and near Louisiana's Tunica Hills, in the Tunica nation only about 60 warriors survive. A drastic decline in numbers of both the Tunicas and the Houmas are blamed on alcohol provided by European traders.

1763
North America's French and Indian War and Europe's Seven Years War ends with France losing much of her world holdings, as formalized in the Treaty of Paris of 1763. In North America, France cedes Louisiana, except for a small part east of the Mississippi, to Spain. She yields up Canada and practically all of its territories east of the Mississippi, including the loess zone, naturally, to England. As soon as the treaty is enacted, French soldiers abandon Fort Rosalie at Natchez. The southernmost part of England's new territory -- that part lying south of 31° latitude -- is incorporated into the new British colony of West Florida. This includes the Tunica Hills, but not Natchez. By this time, all the loess zone's Indian tribes except the Chickasaw have ceased to exist in any meaningful way. A few displaced Ofo Indians are left at Natchez, where they have been earning their living by farming and hunting for the French garrison.

1764
In February the British amend the treaty with France by moving West Florida's northern boundary north to 32° 28', so that it now includes the former Natchez territory.

1766
Asserting its claim to the lower Mississippi Valley, England sends a detachment of somewhat less than fifty Scots Fusiliers to set up camp at the abandoned Fort Rosalie. The fort is renamed Fort Panmure.

1768
The cost of the recent warring weighs heavily on the English, so Fort Panmure is closed to cut military costs. Nonetheless, during the next couple of years a handful of settlers establish themselves in the Natchez area.

1770
Choctaw Indians plunder Fort Panmure at Natchez.

1776
The United States of America comes into being, but the British continue to claim the loess zone.

1779
Spain declares war on England, causing the British-claimed loess zone, with Spanish Louisiana right across the river, to become an area of tension. Bernardo de Gálvez, the very capable Spanish governor of Louisiana based in New Orleans, aids the United States in its ongoing conflict with England. At the head of Spanish troops, he captures English Fort Panmure at Natchez. After the American Revolution, hundreds of settlers have been pouring into the Natchez region. Part of them side with the United States, and part with England. The Spanish rulers require an oath of Natchezeans that they support the Spanish crown.

1783
In a second treaty formulated in Paris, the Treaty of Paris of 1783, England formally acknowledges the independence of the United States, and the US's boundaries are fixed. All of the loess zone north of the 31st Parallel is ceded to the United States. The part below the 31st Parallel, that part presently in Louisiana (the Tunica Hills), remains in Spanish Hands, as part of West Florida. Spain insists that the northern boundary of West Florida is far enough north to include Natchez, and Natchez is not immediately abandoned by Spanish troops. Tension arises between Spain and the United States over this and other matters.

1791
At present-day Vicksburg, the Spanish build Fort Nogales on the loess bluffs near the mouth of the Yazoo River. In Spanish the word nogales means walnuts; the English have called this area Walnut Hills.

1840, May 7
The US's second-most deadly tornado hits Natchez, killing at least 317 people, though many slaves may not have been counted. Read about this at The Tornado Project site.

1861, Jan. 9
Mississippi secedes from the Union

1862, May 1 8
Lee's task force anchors below Vicksburg; he calls on city to surrender.

1862, June 4
Confederates evacuate Fort Pillow, on the Mississippi above Memphis, TN

1862, June 6
Memphis surrenders to Union forces.