Natchitoches Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 37,515. The parish seat is Natchitoches. The parish was formed in 1805.
Natchitoches, officially the City of Natchitoches, is a small city and the parish seat of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, United States. At the 2020 United States Census, the city's population was 18,039. Established in 1714 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis as part of French Louisiana, the community was named after the indigenous Natchitoches people.
Established in 1994, the Cane River Creole National Historical Park serves to preserve the resources and cultural landscapes of the Cane River region in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Located along the Cane River Lake, the park is approximately 63 acres and includes two French Creole cotton plantations, Oakland and Magnolia. Both plantations are complete in their historic settings, including landscapes, outbuildings, structures, furnishings, and artifacts; and they are the most intact French Creole cotton plantations in the United States. In total, 65 historic structures and over a million artifacts enhance the National Park Service mission as it strives to tell the story of the evolution of plantation agriculture through the perspective of the land owners, enslaved workers, overseers, skilled workers, and tenant farmers who resided along the Cane River for over two hundred years. This park is included as a site on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
Cane River is a 30-mile-long (48 km) river formed from a portion of the Red River that is located in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. In the 19th and 20th centuries, it has been best known as the site of a historic Creole de couleur (multiracial) culture that has centers upon the National Historic Landmark Melrose Plantation and nearby St. Augustine Parish Church.
Marie Thérèse Coincoin, born as Coincoin, also known as Marie Thérèse dite Coincoin, and Marie Thérèse Métoyer, was a planter, slave owner, and businesswoman at the colonial Louisiana outpost of Natchitoches.
Clementine Hunter was a self-taught Black folk artist from the Cane River region of Louisiana, who lived and worked on Melrose Plantation.
Melrose is an unincorporated community in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, United States, including the Melrose Plantation and surrounding area, on Louisiana Highway 119. In addition to the historic plantation, the Cane River Creole National Historical Park and Heritage Area encompass the Melrose area.
Isle of Canes (ISBN 1-59331-306-3), a novel by Elizabeth Shown Mills, follows an African family from its importation and enslavement in 1735 through four generations of freedom in Creole Louisiana to its re-subjugation by Jim Crow at the close of the nineteenth century. Mills explores the family's "struggle to find a place in [a] tightly defined world of black and white" — a world made more complex by the larger struggle of Louisiana's native ancien regime to preserve its culture amid the Anglo-Protestant "invasion" that followed the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the resulting battle for political and social hegemony. Isle's central theme is the ambiguous lives of those who escaped colonial slavery only to find they could not survive as free without complicity in the slave regime.
Cloutierville is an unincorporated community in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, United States. It lies approximately 20 miles (32 km) south of the city of Natchitoches on the Cane River. The community is part of the Natchitoches Micropolitan Statistical Area, off exit 119 of Interstate 49.
The Kate Chopin House, also known as the Bayou Folk Museum or Alexis Cloutier House, was a house in Cloutierville, Louisiana. It was the home of Kate Chopin, author of The Awakening, after her marriage.
Oakland Plantation, originally known as the Jean Pierre Emmanuel Prud'homme Plantation, and also known as Bermuda, is a historic plantation in and unincorporated area of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Founded as a forced-labor farm worked by enslaved Black people for White owners, it is one of the nation's best and most intact examples of a French Creole cotton plantation complex. The Oakland Plantation is now owned by the National Park Service as part of the Cane River Creole National Historical Park.
Magnolia Plantation is a former cotton plantation in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2001, significant as one of the most intact 19th-century plantation complexes in the nation, as it is complete with a suite of slave cabins and numerous outbuildings and period technology. Included in the Cane River Creole National Historical Park, Magnolia Plantation is also a destination on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail. It is one of two plantations in the park; the other is Oakland Plantation.
Melrose Plantation, also known as Yucca Plantation, is a National Historic Landmark located in the unincorporated community of Melrose in Natchitoches Parish in north central Louisiana. This is one of the largest plantations in the United States built by and for free blacks. The land was granted to Louis Metoyer, who had the "Big House" built beginning about 1832. He was a son of Marie Thérèse Coincoin, a former slave who became a wealthy businesswoman in the area, and Claude Thomas Pierre Métoyer. The house was completed in 1833 after Louis' death by his son Jean Baptiste Louis Metoyer. The Metoyers were free people of color for four generations before the American Civil War.
The Alexis LaTour House also known as, Old Homeplace and Guillory Homeplace was an historic house in Ville Platte, Louisiana. The oldest portion of the house was built in 1835 by Alexis LaTour. The house was expanded in 1837. The original house was a 1+1⁄2-story Creole cottage of bousillage construction that was one room wide and two rooms deep and had a front gallery. The 1837 expansion added two rooms and a central hall. Details of the house, including an exterior staircase, bousillage construction, and beaded clapboarding, ceiling beams, and ceiling boards were common in traditional Creole architecture. Both the older and the newer part of the house had unusual mantels. The older mantel featured cove moldings, panels, and a large central lozenge. The other mantels in the house were more traditional but were still unusual.
Louisiana African American Heritage Trail is a cultural heritage trail with 38 sites designated by the state of Louisiana, from New Orleans along the Mississippi River to Baton Rouge and Shreveport, with sites in small towns and plantations also included. In New Orleans several sites are within a walking area. Auto travel is required to reach sites outside the city.
St. Augustine Catholic Church and Cemetery, or the Isle Brevelle Church, is a historic Catholic parish property founded in 1829 near Melrose, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. It is the cultural center of the Cane River area's historic French, Spanish, Native American and Black Creole community.
Pleasant View Plantation House is located in Oscar, Louisiana. It was built around 1820 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 5, 1984.
The LaBranche Plantation Dependency House is located in St. Rose, St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. From many accounts, LaBranche Plantation in St. Rose, Louisiana, was one of the grandest on the German Coast until it was destroyed during the American Civil War. All that remained was the dependency house, known as a garconnière.
The Boatner House, also known as the Record House, is a historic mansion located at the corner of Plank Road and Taylor Street in Clinton in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana.
Isle Brevelle is an ethnically and culturally diverse community, which began as a Native American and Louisiana Creole settlement and is located in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. For many years this area was known as Côte Joyeuse. It is considered the birthplace of Creole culture and remains the epicenter of Creole art and literature blending European, African, and Native American cultures. It is home to the Cane River Creole National Historical Park and part of the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
