Yazoo River

The Yazoo River is a river in the U.S. state of Mississippi. It is considered by some to mark the southern boundary of what is called the Mississippi Delta, a broad floodplain that was cultivated for cotton plantations before the American Civil War. It has continued to be devoted to large-scale agriculture.The Yazoo River was named by French explorer La Salle in 1682 as "Rivière des Yazous" in reference to the Yazoo tribe living near the river's mouth at its confluence with the Mississippi. The exact meaning of the term is unclear. One long held belief is that it means "river of death".The river is 188 miles (303 km) long and is formed by the confluence of the Tallahatchie and the Yalobusha rivers, where present-day Greenwood developed. The river parallels the Mississippi River in the latter's floodplain for some distance before joining it north of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Natural levees which flank the Mississippi prevent the Yazoo from joining it before Vicksburg. A "yazoo stream" is a hydrologic term that was coined to describe any river or major stream with similar characteristics. Potamologists believe the Yazoo River had its origins as the lower Ohio River.