Bvlbancha: Place and power in the early Mississippi Delta

This project examines the production of space through eighteenth-century Bvlbancha, “the place of many tongues,” a region birthed from the geologically and ecologically dynamic alluvial deposits where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. Indigenous groups carefully curated the landscape to suit their needs and developed a flexible system of spatial practices I identify as “Bvlbancha.” The overwhelming ecological productivity of the region allowed peoples to subsist without the need for permanent crop cultivation while the low, muddy, constantly flooded terrain combined with the might of the Mississippi River and the ever-present threat of hurricanes created an environment in which it was difficult for the colonial state to assert control over the land and its people. Indigenous communities leveraged their territorial expertise to maintain the political upper hand in their colonial dealings and spatial control over most of Bvlbancha despite living alongside expansionist settler regimes. French, Spanish, and British colonial enterprises attempted to impose their own spatial orders upon Bvlbancha, but the difficulty in containing the river and managing the liquid landscape led officials to rely heavily upon Bvlbanchan spatial and economic practices to survive. As a result, Euro-American colonizers could construct only tiny islands of colonial space within a Bvlbanchan spatial sea whose politics and territoriality remained defined by Indigenous actors. This further created avenues for poor settler colonists and enslaved Africans to engage in Bvlbanchan spatial practices in a way that allowed them to consistently challenge colonial authority and to construct their own sense of territory and belonging with varying results. The persistence of Indigenous spatial power throughout the eighteenth-century challenges us to reconsider the usefulness of settler colonial theory that presumes a linear progression between the beginnings of colonial settlement in a specific region and the inevitable dispossession of its Indigenous inhabitants. The relationships between Natives and newcomers were preconditioned by the physical and social spaces within which they interacted. In the case of Bvlbancha, those spaces continued to reinforce Indigenous power and territoriality for decades after the beginnings of the settler colonial state of Louisiana.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Toups, Eric J.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Morrissey, Robert M
• Burton, Antoinette
• Hogarth, Rana
• Hoganson, Kristin

• Indigenous
• Environmental
• Early America

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Eric Toups

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124351

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F124351