ABSTRACT
The expansion of cotton production in the Lower Mississippi Valley during the early nineteenth century drastically altered the landscape of economic relations among American Indians, European settlers, and African-American slaves. As a plantation economy based on cotton agriculture spread along the major rivers and even in the backcountry of the region, means of livelihood practised by generations of inhabitants underwent severe pressure. Newcomers who migrated into the Lower Mississippi Valley, meanwhile, found their habits and expectations changing in an unfamiliar environment undergoing rapid commercial development. Under the pressures of an expanding cotton agriculture, forms of production and exchange shared by many people across the boundary between slavery and freedom became more restricted. As more land and labour were committed to new commercial crops, exchange relations between African-American slaves and free people of various backgrounds slipped into a more marginalized position in the regional economy.
