Devil's Punchbowl (Natchez, Mississippi)

For other uses, see Devil's Punch Bowl (disambiguation).

The Devil's Punchbowl was a refugee camp created in Natchez, Mississippi after the American Civil War in an attempt to address a huge influx of self-emancipated enslaved persons. A number of compounding issues, such as poor administration and substandard sanitation, led to a large number of deaths. The exact number of deaths is unknown and often disputed; estimates range from 2,000 to 20,000.^[1]

Description

In order to house the large numbers of formerly-enslaved African Americans, the Union Army created a camp for them at a location known as the Devil's Punchbowl, a natural pit surrounded by bluffs. Many of the former enslaved there died of starvation, smallpox, and other diseases.^[2] It has been suggested by some that over 20,000 formerly enslaved people died here in one year.^[3][4] 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,^[5] 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.^[6]