REGIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGY 31 



tion is noticeably sparser in the warm and humid areas 

 of the Cotton Belt, but appears concentrated in the moun- 

 tainous areas of the Appalachians, Ouachita, and Ozark 

 Mountains where cotton is not cultivated. 



In 1910 the Census of the United States made a survey 

 of plantations in the South for selected areas using a 

 special schedule. For purposes of the survey the Census 

 Bureau adopted the following definition of the "tenant 

 plantation" : 



A tenant plantation is a continuous tract of land of con- 

 siderable area under the general control or supervision of a 

 single individual or firm, all or a part of such tract being 

 divided into at least five smaller tracts which are leased to 

 tenants. 56 



Plantations were found to occupy an important part 

 of the farming area of nine cotton states. A dot map of 

 the plantations 5T in the counties selected for the survey 

 shows in clear outline the Eastern Belt, the Mississippi- 

 Alabama Black Prairie, the Mississippi River Bottoms 

 and the Black Waxy of Texas. More plantations are 

 found in the eastern areas where slavery was well devel- 

 oped before the War and where the soil is fitted for inten- 

 sive cotton culture. 58 In the migration to the Alabama 

 and Mississippi regions planters carried their slaves, but 

 the slavery regime was not fully transplanted to Texas 

 before the outbreak of the Civil War. Consequently, 

 although the Black Waxy has a high percentage of ten- 

 ancy, it differs from all the other areas in being over- 

 whelmingly white tenancy. White tenants operate 55.7 

 per cent and Negro 9.5 per cent of farm lands in the 



56 "Plantations in the South," 1910 Census, V, 878. 



57 Cotton Atlas, Fig. 32, p. 11. B8 Baker, op. cit., p. 84. 



