Tensas Parish, Louisiana: History
=== Pre-history ===
Tensas Parish was the home to many successive indigenous groups in the thousands of years before European settlements began. Some village and mound sites once built by these various peoples are preserved today as archaeological sites.
One example is the Flowery Mound, a rectangular platform mound just east of St. Joseph. It measures 10 feet (3.0 m) in height and 165 by 130 feet (50 by 40 m) at its base; the summit measures 50 feet (15 m) square. Core samples taken during investigations at the site have revealed the mound was built in a single stage. Because the fill types can still be differentiated, the mound is thought to be relatively young. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal found in a midden under the mound reveals that the site was occupied from 996 to 1162 during the Coles Creek period. The mound was built over the midden between 1200 and 1541 during the Plaquemine/Mississippian culture period. The corners of the mound are oriented in the four cardinal directions. Related ancient sites include Balmoral Mounds, Ghost Site Mounds, and Sundown Mounds.
Historic tribes in this area were the Choctaw and Natchez, in addition to smaller groups such as the Taensa people.
Following Indian Removal by the United States government in the 1830s, the land was sold and this area was developed by European Americans for cotton plantations, the leading commodity crop before the Civil War. Planters moved into the area from the eastern and upper South, either bringing or purchasing numerous enslaved Africans as workers. They developed plantations along the river and Lake St. Joseph, as waterways were required for transportation routes and access to markets. In 1861, according to the United States Coast Survey map, 90.8% of the parish's inhabitants were slaves.
During and after the Reconstruction era, white Democrats acted to suppress black and Republican voting in the state and in this parish with its large black majority. They enforced Jim Crow laws and rules through intimidation and violence, including lynchings.
From 1877 to 1950, there were 30 lynchings of Black people in Tensas Parish, most in the decades around the turn of the 20th century; Tensas was among the four parishes in Louisiana with the highest number of lynchings in this period, and Louisiana was among the states with the highest number of such murders.
But from 1878 through 1920, the Mississippi Delta area of northern Louisiana legally executed more blacks than did any other part of the state, after they had been convicted by all-white juries. For instance, between 1880 and 1920, twelve persons were executed in Tensas Parish, at least seven of them black. …