THE DEVIL’S PUNCHBOWL
by Dale Ricardo Shields
“The Devil’s Punchbowl is a place located in Natchez, Mississippi where during the Civil War; authorities forced tens of thousands of freed slaves to live in concentration camps. Westbrook adds that “The Union army did not allow them to remove the bodies from the camp. They just gave ’em shovels and said bury ’em where they drop.”
According to researcher Paula Westbrook, she researched through Adams County Sheriff’s reports from the time.
“When the slaves were released from the plantations during the occupation they overran Natchez. And the population went from about 10,000 to 120,000 overnight,” Westbrook said.
“So they decided to build an encampment for ’em at Devil’s Punchbowl which they walled off and wouldn’t let ’em out,” Don Estes, former director of the Natchez City Cemetery, said.
Estes said that history research is his life. During his studies, he said he learned that Union troops ordered re-captured Black men to perform hard labor. Women and children were all but left to die in the three “punchbowls”.
“Disease broke out among ’em, smallpox being the main one. And thousands and thousands died. They were begging to get out. ‘Turn me loose and I’ll go home back to the plantation! Anywhere but there,” Estes said.
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THE DEVILS PUNCH BOWL, NATCHEZ MISSISSIPPI
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The Deadly History Of This Infamous Site In Mississippi Is Terrible But True
Of all the historic sites in Mississippi, few have a past as deadly as the Devil’s Punchbowl in Natchez. Local legend says that Mississippi River pirates once used the secluded area as both a hideout and a spot to bury their loot. In recent years, the story behind the Devil’s Punchbowl grew increasingly sinister when a mass grave was found in the area. As historians looked into the grisly discovery, they learned that the grave held the bodies of thousands of formerly enslaved African Americans. As the story unraveled, researchers were faced with an even more terrifying reality – the bodies belonged to slaves who were freed post-Civil War and then re-imprisoned in concentration camps located in the Devil’s Punchbowl.
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About The Book
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Penn Cage series comes an electrifying thriller that reveals a world of depravity, sex, violence, and the corruption of a Southern town.
As a prosecuting attorney in Houston, Penn Cage sent hardened killers to death row. But it is as mayor of his hometown—Natchez, Mississippi—that Penn will face his most dangerous threat. Urged by old friends to try to restore this fading jewel of the Old South, Penn has ridden into office on a tide of support for change. But in its quest for new jobs and fresh money, Natchez, like other Mississippi towns, has turned to casino gambling, and now five fantastical steamboats float on the river beside the old slave market at Natchez like props from Gone With the Wind.
But one boat isn’t like the others.
Rumor has it that the Magnolia Queen has found a way to pull the big players from Las Vegas to its Mississippi backwater. And with them—on sleek private jets that slip in and out of town like whispers in the night—come, pro football players, rap stars, and international gamblers, all sharing an unquenchable taste for one thing: blood sport—and the dark vices that go with it. When a childhood friend of Penn’s who brings him evidence of these crimes is brutally murdered, the full weight of Penn’s failure to protect his city hits home. So begins his quest to find the men responsible. But it’s a hunt he begins alone, for the local authorities have been corrupted by the money and power of his hidden enemy. With his family’s lives at stake, Penn realizes his only allies in his one-man war are those bound to him by blood or honor:
-Caitlin Masters, the lover Penn found in The Quiet Can Game and lost in Turning Angel
-Danny McDavitt, the heroic helicopter pilot from Third Degree
-Tom Cage, Penn’s father, and legendary local family physician
-Walt Garrity, a retired Texas Ranger who served with Penn’s father during the Korean War
Together they must defeat a sophisticated killer who has an almost preternatural ability to anticipate—and counter—their every move. Ultimately, victory will depend on a bold stroke that will leave one of Penn’s allies dead—and Natchez changed forever.
After appearing in two of Iles’s most popular novels, Penn Cage makes his triumphant return as a brilliant, honorable, and courageous hero. Rich with a Southern atmosphere and marked by one jaw-dropping plot turn after another, The Devil’s Punchbowl confirms that Greg Iles is America’s master of suspense.
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Devil’s Punchbowl — An American Concentration Camp So Horrific It was Erased from History
Say the words concentration camps, and most will surmise the topic surrounds World War II and the Nazis; but the hard labor, constant threat of death, and barbarism these microcosmic hells presented weren’t unique to Adolf Hitler — in just one year, around 20,000 freed slaves perished in the Devil’s Punchbowl — in Natchez, Mississippi, U.S.A.
After the Civil War, a massive exodus of former slaves from Southern plantations trekked northward in hopes of reaching a location of true freedom; but embittered soldiers, resentful the people considered property were now free, had other plans.
One tiny town’s population mushroomed twelvefold from the influx, as researcher Paula Westbrook, who has extensively studied Devil’s Punchbowl, noted,
“When the slaves were released from the plantations during the occupation they overran Natchez. And the population went from about 10,000 to 120,000 overnight.”
Unable to grapple with an instant population swell, the city turned to Union troops still lingering after the war to devise a merciless, impenitent solution.
“So they decided to build an encampment for ’em at Devil’s Punchbowl which they walled off and wouldn’t let ’em out,” former director of the Natchez City Cemetery, Don Estes, explained.
Devil’s Punchbowl is so named for a cavernous, bowl-shaped gulch walled off by tree-topped cliffs — an area unintentionally made perfect for a hellacious prison by nature, herself.
A tangle of lush green now tops bluffs near the Mississippi River in Natchez, hiding past atrocities that took place when Union Army soldiers corralled and captured those freed slaves — in worse conditions than they’d endured previously as slaves on sprawling plantations.
In the unrelenting heat and humidity of the deep South, African American men toiled at hard labor clearing thickets of brush, while women and children — not seen as a viable workforce for the task — languished without food or water behind the locked concrete walls of the camp to die of starvation.
Barbarous treatment didn’t even end when someone died.
“The Union Army did not allow them to remove the bodies from the camp,” Westbrook explained. “They just gave ’em shovels and said bury ’em where they drop.”
Bleak conditions of being cramped inside locked walls and forced to work until exhaustion or death also led to the spread of disease and illness — a little-discussed but insidious issue for former slaves, killing up to one million individuals following the ostensive emancipation.
“Disease broke out among ’em, smallpox being the main one,” Estes said of the concentration camp prisoners. “And thousands and thousands died. They were begging to get out. ‘Turn me loose and I’ll go home back to the plantation! Anywhere but there.’”
However, a dearth of information about these mostly postbellum camps indeed leaves significant leeway for conjecture, and a smattering of conclusions say those detained preferred the slightly greater freedom compared to brutality found on the plantations. Additional critics dispute Westbrook and Estes, and the number who died in the Natchez camps, saying the number is likely closer to just 1,000 — but without methodical record-keeping, the figure is impossible to verify with certainty. Either way, this black eye on American history is still one of the largest and most brutal acts of state-sanctioned death this country has ever seen.
As the Civil War drew to a close and during the nascent stages of emancipation, those who had been thrust into slavery and putatively freed held a precarious place outside the society of their enslavement. Thus, ‘legitimately’ freed individuals and ‘escapees,’ alike, were captured and held in ‘contraband camps’ — so named because, as commodities, they were considered contraband by Union troops who had no qualms about perpetuating slavery for their own benefit. Three such camps existed in the Devil’s Punchbowl area of Natchez.
Historians’ descriptions of Devil’s Punchbowl have been loosely anecdotally backed by locals, who describe human skeletons occasionally washing free from the location in times of heavy rains and flooding.
Wild peach trees now dot the basin where human beings, who believed they’d finally won freedom from slavery, sweated through work for different captors until death granted the ultimate reprieve — but Mississippians know better than to taste the bitter fruit fertilized with the blood of atrocity.
Like so much about the history of the United States, sadistic acts perpetrated by officials acting on behalf of the government have been criminally downplayed to lessen the shame and facilitate collective memory loss. But there can be no doubt — whether unintentionally or by design — thousands succumbed to inhumane conditions at these camps, under added duress of lacking the freedom so basic, it’s called the cornerstone of the nation.
Whatever the full truth about Devil’s Punchbowl, it’s a veritable guarantee no history book will be honest or thorough enough to shed light on the excruciating conditions akin to Nazi concentration camps — or even that forced, slave labor continued while America readjusted its crooked and tarnished halo after the Civil War.
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The Devils Punchbowl in Natchez Mississippi
20K Blacks Died In Concentration Camp Called The Devil’s Punchbowl In Natchez, Mississippi
South | Devil’s Punchbowl
Legend has it that the devil spent his time tormenting the god Thor by pelting him with enormous handfuls of earth, leaving the great bowl that visitors can see today. In reality, the large depression was created by erosion as water percolated down and hit an impervious layer of clay.
Focus on Mississippi: The Devil’s Punchbowl – YouTube
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The Devil’s Punchbowl was a concentration camp created in Natchez, Mississippi during the American Civil War to house freed slaves.
Description
In order to house the large numbers of African Americans, the Union Army created a concentration camp for newly freed enslaved Black persons at a location known as the Devil’s Punchbowl, a natural pit surrounded by bluffs. Many of the formerly enslaved there died of starvation, smallpox, and other diseases.[1] It has been suggested by some that over 20,000 formerly enslaved people died here in one year.[2][3] However, the scale of the tragedy has been disputed by multiple historians, with history professor Jim Wiggins arguing the 20,000 estimate is baseless and inflated tenfold,[4] and author and activist Ser Seshsh Ab Heter-Clifford M. Boxley referring to the story as “concocted Confederate propaganda” aiming to cast the Union Army in a negative light.[5]
References
- “The Devil’s Punchbowl (Mississippi), a story”.
- Taite, Tionna (April 11, 2022). “The Devil’s Punchbowl”. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
- Bernish, Claire (March 4, 2017). “The Devil’s Punchbowl”. Retrieved 20 May 2023.
- Francis, Marquise (2023-06-17). “The Devil’s Punchbowl: Debunking the social media myth of a Civil War massacre”. Yahoo News. Retrieved 2023-06-18.
- Griffey, Jan (2022-06-17). “Devil’s Punchbowl: ‘Concocted Confederate propaganda,’ Boxley says”. The Natchez Democrat. Retrieved 2023-06-18.
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How deep is the Devils Punch Bowl?
Devil’s Punchbowl, at Lake Crescent near Port Angeles, is reportedly about 1,000 feet deep. Thrill-seekers jump in from heights ranging from 15 to 50 feet. Aug 7, 2015.
What is the dark history of Natchez Mississippi?
Overview of Slavery and Civil Rights in Natchez
In the days before the Civil War, the city was the site of the Forks of the Road slave market, which became one of the largest in the country outside of New Orleans, with roughly more than 1,000 enslaved Black people per year bought and sold in the market.
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The Devil’s Punchbowl: Natchez, Mississippi – The Concentration Camp of the U.S. Civil War
Natchez, Mississippi is home to a grove that grows some of the most beautiful peaches in the U.S.A., but folks who know their history won’t eat them. Why? They know they were fertilized with the bodies of free Black people killed both during and after the Civil War.
➡️ Natchez was the site of a brutal concentration camp known as the Devil’s Punchbowl that resulted in the deaths of over 10,000 free Black men, women, and children. Their only crime? Having melanin.
One of the more shocking aspects of this untold tragedy is that the perpetrators weren’t who you think. It was the Union Army that oversaw this grave violation of human rights and dignity. These poor souls died of starvation, hanging, and diseases like smallpox.
➡️ They even refused to allow the surviving free men and women to remove the bodies of those whose lives were sadly snuffed out for daring to exist.
Never forget the sacrifices and horrors our ancestors endured so that you may live a free life. Don’t let their deaths be in vain. Know your history.
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BLACK THEN
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In the foothills of Mississippi, the trees grow heavy with uneaten peaches. Tales have haunted the grounds of the Devil’s Punchbowl for decades, from pirates to planes crashing. While the lands may not be filled with treasure, they are haunted by the history of genocide, terror, and a past filled with hatred for Black Americans that cannot be ignored.
The African American registry on December 13, 2020, asserts the Devil’s Punchbowl massacre took place in Natchez, Mississippi in the 1860s. The camp was located at the bottom of a cavernous pit with trees located on the bluffs above, in which 20,000 formerly enslaved Black Americans were placed in a concentration camp, and later killed. Unfortunately, this story, like so many, has been drowned beneath a ravine filled with pain and suffering. The United States has a deep-rooted history of racially motivated massacres that were frequently denied and went undocumented by authorities explains USA Today on June 21, 2021. We must understand America’s history of hiding Black massacres, starting with Mississippi.
We’ll uncover the Devil’s Punchbowl by examining its history, current understanding, and implications because as noted writer and activist James Baldwin said in 1963, “American history is longer, larger, more various, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.”
As formerly enslaved Black Americans made their way to freedom, the town of Natchez quickly went from a small town to an overpopulated metropolis. In order to deal with the population influx, a concentration camp was established by soldiers that essentially eradicated the formerly enslaved people. The Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture on February 17, 2021, explains the bleak conditions of being cramped inside locked walls and forced to work until exhaustion or death. After visiting the Devil’s Punchbowl, James E. Yeatman of the Western Sanitary Commission in November 1863 wrote an appeal to President Lincoln regarding the condition of formerly enslaved Black Americans. Yeatman stated, “Seventy-five died in a single day… some returned to their masters on account of their suffering.”
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in July 2019 explained the Devil’s Punchbowl was a camp in Natchez, Mississippi that held as many as 4,000 Black refugees in the summer of 1863, this number only growing as the years went on. The aforementioned African American Registry estimates that over 20,000 freedmen and freedwomen were killed in one year, inside of this American concentration camp. According to Natchez City Archives from 2009, Don Estes is a retired Natchez City Cemetery Director, who conducted extensive research into individuals buried at the cemetery. Estes said that during his studies he learned that women and children were all but left to die in the three “punch bowls.”
“Thousands and thousands died. They were begging to get out [to go] anywhere but there,” said Estes.
The Devil’s Punchbowl’s lesser-known history as a mass grave points to the city’s ghosting of certain demographics. The New York Times on April 5, 2019, asserts the city, Natchez, is even more riddled with history than it is with Old South manors and manners. Without the relatively recent recovery of the records of these bodies, their stories would not have been publicized in the modern age. Tours and guides by the Garden Club, the historical representative of the Devil’s Punchbowl focus on the period immediately preceding the Civil War and the long clash between North and South. Natchez, however, was established in 1716, meaning there are over 100 years of unaccounted history not represented by most of the Pilgrimage’s tours, erasing the Black lives that lived and died in the area.
The Mississippi Department of Archives and History in July 2013 documents Lizzy Brown, who in her diary, speaks of “flimsy structures built with her father’s lumber, which she could see from her plantation home.” This Under-the-Hill area of Natchez was where the camp was located, and Lizzy saw the horrors of a hastily constructed shack city. The Heritage Post on December 12, 2020, explains that today, the bluffs are known for the wild peach grooves, but the locals will not eat any of the fruit because of the bodies that fertilized the trees. One researcher noted that skeletal remains still wash up when the area becomes flooded by the Mississippi River at the Devil’s Punchbowl.
While some of the stories remain told, they’re relegated to legend, not history due to the lack of research in the area. The Devil’s Punchbowl in and of itself is a story to be told and worth the research to uncover what really happened.
It often takes years of extensive research for Black massacres to properly be brought to light.
The Equal Justice Initiative in 2020 asserts quantitative documentation of past racial violence remains imprecise and incomplete. It should not be difficult to find information about heinous acts such as the Devil’s Punchbowl in Mississippi. However, as was the case with the Tulsa Race Massacre it often takes years of research to even bring the stories to light and actually bring some form of justice to the victims.
The aforementioned Atlantic asserts the inevitable response of Americans to tragic stories of mass murder, of extreme destitution, dangerous injustice, of a raw attack on democracy within the very borders of the United States, is ‘this is not who we are.’ But for white America, the reality of history should not be ignored.
The Devil’s Punchbowl was not the only Black massacre swept under the rug The 1866 Memphis Massacre left 46 Black Americans killed, 285 injured, and 5 raped yet no arrests were made. A 2020 report by the aforementioned Equal Justice Initiative points out the 1866 Memphis Massacre did not receive a historical marker until May 2016. In a city with multiple Confederate monuments and a park named for Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Forrest, this effort marked the first publicly funded historical commemoration of the massacre. Now, as other Black massacres like Lake Lanier in Georgia gain traction, the time for the reckoning of the Black lives lost is long overdue, and continues without attention.
After uncovering the history of the Devil’s Punchbowl, with some crucial implications, we learned…America’s history of intentionally not documenting events highlights its racist history. Prominent journalist Ida B. Wells puts it plainly: “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” In short, by uncovering Black massacres and addressing America’s history of racial violence we can finally begin reconciling with the past.
https://1956magazine.ua.edu/the-devils-punchbowl-%EF%BF%BC/
The Devil’s Punchbowl: Debunking the social media myth of a Civil War massacre
Experts say the curious story of a concentration camp for African Americans along the Mississippi River isn’t just inaccurate — it’s built on lies.
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DEVIL’S PUNCH BOWL IN NATCHEZ: CONFEDERATE DISASTER AND PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN
The People Could Fly and Other Tales of Freedom
Diversity Newsletter: Remembering Black History
https://mblb.com/firm-news/diversity-newsletter-rembering-black-history/
