Natchitoches, LA news and local guide

After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, settlers from the United States, mostly Protestants of English and Scots-Irish descent, built more cotton plantations along the Red River, worked by many enslaved African Americans brought in through the domestic slave trade. The federal government ran a fur trade factory there from 1805 to 1818. In the 1820s and early 1830s Natchitoches was a transfer point for cotton hauled overland from east Texas and shipped down the Red River to New Orleans, until the river shifted course and bypassed the town, leaving the 33-mile oxbow now called Cane River Lake. During the Civil War, Union soldiers retreating through Natchitoches after their failed attempt to capture Shreveport set the town on fire. Sources Wikipedia: Natchitoches, Louisiana