This is the heart of the Cane River Louisiana Creole community, free people of color of mixed-race descent who settled here in the antebellum period.

The parishes of Caddo, Claiborne, Bossier, Webster, DeSoto, Bienville, Jackson, Sabine, Red River, Winn, and Grant were eventually formed from Natchitoches' enormous territory.

[citation needed] During the antebellum period, numerous large cotton plantations were developed in this area, worked by enslaved African Americans.

In May 1861 free men of color in the area known as Isle Brevelle began to organize two militia companies.

Many of the free people of color were related to longtime white families in the parish, who acknowledged them.

[4] After the war, during Reconstruction and after, there was white violence against freedmen and their sympathizers blacks in the aftermath of emancipation and establishing a free labor system.

Most planters continued to rely on cotton as a commodity crop, although the market declined, adding to area problems.

It also attracts people for fishing and other sports, including spring training on Cane River Lake by several university teams.

The primary groundwater resources of Natchitoches Parish, from near surface to deepest, include the Red River alluvial, upland terrace, Sparta, and Carrizo-Wilcox aquifers.

But the party affiliations have changed, and like most of the Deep South, have a distinct ethnic and demographic character.

Since African Americans achieved certain gains under civil rights legislation and have been enabled to vote again since the late 1960s, they have supported the Democratic Party.

These results reflect the demographic breakdown of the parish, where whites comprise a slight majority.