Yazoo River, Alfred Dulaney/U.S. Army Corps of Engineersriver formed by the confluence of the Tallahatchie and Yalobusha rivers north of Greenwood, Mississippi, U.S. It meanders about 190 miles (306 km) generally south and southwest, much of the way paralleling the Mississippi River, which it joins at Vicksburg. The Yazoo flows with only a slight gradient. Prior to the completion of a system of levees in 1886, the river basin was subject to headwater flooding by the larger streams, but since then it has been a major cotton-growing region. The basin, or floodplain, between the Mississippi on the west and the Yazoo on the east is now protected from the Mississippi’s overflow by more than 200 miles (320 km) of levees extending from south of Memphis to the mouth of the Yazoo at Vicksburg. The basin is variously called the Mississippi Delta, the Yazoo Delta, and the Yazoo Basin and is renowned as one of the birthplaces of blues music. Chief cities along the Yazoo River are Greenwood and Yazoo City.
The name Yazoo (that of a Native American tribe) is also applied to a tributary that flows parallel to the main stream for some distance before their confluence farther downstream.