MSGHN

Welcome to MSGHN

The Mississippi Genealogy & History Network, provides free information to genealogists and historical researchers.

To share your Mississippi genealogy or history information, send it to msghn@outlook.com.

For our county specific websites please refer to this list of links.

About Mississippi...A Short History

    written by historian Bill White

The recorded history of Mississippi began with the coming of the Europeans. More specifically, with the expedition of Hernando De Soto, who is credited with the discovery of the Mississippi River. However, long before De Soto arrived in the area now known as Mississippi, perhaps as much as 10,000 years earlier, Native Americans inhabited, planted and hunted the land. They navigated the "Father of Waters", fished and built their villages along its shores, and raised countless new generations teaching them each in succession to respect the land and to live in harmony with it.

By the 16th century, there were three predominant Native American tribes living in the area. The Chickasaw occupied the lands in the northern and eastern portions of the state. The powerful Choctaw tribe lived in the central portion of the state ranging northward to the Chickasaw lands in the northwest and southward in the east. The Natchez occupied the lands in Southwestern Mississippi.

With the arrival of the Europeans, the record of Mississippi history began to change and grow rapidly as the new settlers interacted with the natives. The settlers traded with the Native Americans, learned from them about the wildlife and vegetation of this new country, and domesticated the land from which they pushed them. It was the continuation of an old story that......read more