Sartoris Plantation Molasses Mill in Flags in the Dust (Location)

Owned, apparently, or at least run by one of the black tenant farmers on the Sartoris land, "a sort of patriarch," the mill sits "beside a spring on the edge of the woods" (289). In use in the South from as early as the 18th century, this kind of mill works by crushing stalks of sugar cane into a pulp from which molasses is made as a sweetener. The "motive power" of this process was typically provided by a horse or, as at this mill, a mule, whose movement around and around in a circle drove the crusher.