It used violence against officeholders, running some out of town and killing others, and acted near elections to suppress black and white Republican voter turnout.

One of Twitchell's several biographies is an unpublished 1969 dissertation at Mississippi State University in Starkville by the historian Jimmy G. Shoalmire, a Shreveport native and a specialist in Reconstruction studies.

[6] The events became known as the Coushatta Massacre and contributed to the Republican governor's requesting more Federal troops from U.S. President U.S. Grant to help control the state.

[7] With increased fraud, violence and intimidation, white Redeemer Democrats gained control of the state legislature in 1876 and established a new system of one-party rule.

They passed laws making elections more complicated and a new constitution with provisions that effectively disenfranchised most African Americans and many poorer whites.

After World War II, Dr. Lawrence Edward L'Herisson, Sr., a native of Bossier Parish, built a 23-bed regional rural hospital in Coushatta.

This climatic region is typified by relatively small seasonal temperature variations, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and mild winters.

Coushatta is the home of C Troop 2-108th Cavalry Squadron, a unit dating back to the Confederate Army during the Civil War under the nickname "the Wildbunch."