Yazoo Lands

The Yazoo lands were the sparsely-populated central and western areas of the U.S. state of Georgia, when its western border stretched back to the Mississippi River. It was named for the Yazoo tribe of Native Americans. Several other places and things were named Yazoo, either for or along with the lands.

These lands later became the states of Alabama and Mississippi. The far western panhandle of Spanish territory Florida became the panhandles of the two states, and a small strip claimed by South Carolina (see Treaty of Beaufort), also going west to the river, became their border counties with Tennessee (itself a former part of North Carolina) in the Treaty of 1816.

In the 1790s, the Yazoo lands were the subject of a major political scandal in the state of Georgia, called the Yazoo land scandal. It led to Georgia's cession of the land to the U.S. government in the Compact of 1802.