Between 1718 and 1731 the Compagnie des Indes brought tobacco and indigo production to the Lower Mississippi Valley. This was the first attempt at commercial agriculture,1 but the threat of the ten Chickasaw villages on the ridges between the Yazoo and Tombigbee Rivers kept Louisiana from turning to large plantations for economic subsistence, something that the mother country really wanted to happen. In the 1720's the major exportations were deerskins, Indigo, and Tobacco, but European economic policy still drove the colonial economy towards Tobacco and Indigo plantations by offering bounties to those who planted the crops2. 1 Usner. Frontier exchange, 13. 2 Ibid, 107-123.