The Historic Cane River

Once a primary channel of the Red River, Cane River has shaped the region for centuries as home to Native Americans, French, Spanish, Africans from various tribes, and Americans, whose blended traditions created the distinctive heritage of the area. In 1713, the French established a trading post in the Natchitoches Indian Village at the head of navigation on the Red River, and in 1716 they built a military fort to protect French Louisiana from Spanish encroachment, followed by a second, more substantial fort in early 1720. Soldiers, settlers, and slaves farmed the fertile river bottoms and traded with Indian groups and Spanish settlers at nearby Los Adaes. French and Spanish settlers, Native American groups, and Africans brought to work in the fields made the Cane River area a cultural crossroads, and over time a population of gens de couleur libres, or free people of color, emerged, with descendants who eventually established the Creole community of Isle Brevelle downriver from Natchitoches. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Americans and their slaves moved into the area, adding their own traditions to this diverse cultural mix. Long before Louisiana became a state in 1812, lands along the Red River had been transformed into plantations; in the late 18th century planters mostly grew tobacco and indigo, but the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 shifted attention to cotton, and by the 1830s prosperous plantation homes such as Melrose, Cherokee, Oaklawn, Beau Fort, and Oakland lined the Red River. In 1832, steamboat captain Henry Shreve was appointed by the U.S. government to begin removing the Great Raft, a natural log jam north of Natchitoches that choked 160 miles of the Red River's main channel; after years of repeated efforts, navigation was opened by the 1870s. An unexpected result was that the Red River changed course to the eastern edge of the valley, draining a number of lakes and making Cane River Natchitoches' new riverfront. In 1915, Cane River was dammed at both ends to become the lake that exists today. Despite these changes, Cane River remains the focal point of the community, with a vibrant downtown historic district in Natchitoches along its banks, cultural festivals on its riverfront, and recreational opportunities that carry its history into the present.

Natchitoches, Louisiana · United States