Rich in Spanish and French influences, Natchitoches offers a warm welcome and an array of historical sites, exciting festivals, and delicious foods. A walking tour map and colorful photos accent the many delicious recipes that help make Natchitoches unique and flavorful Louisiana Living is a culinary tour no one can resist Proceeds will be used for the educational, civic, historical, and cultural improvement of the city of Natchitoches and the community.

A New York Times bestseller and Oprah's Book Club Pick-the unique and deeply moving saga of four generations of African-American women whose journey from slavery to freedom begins on a Creole plantation in Louisiana. Beginning with her great-great-great-great grandmother, a slave owned by a Creole family, Lalita Tademy chronicles four generations of strong, determined black women as they battle injustice to unite their family and forge success on their own terms. They are women whose lives begin in slavery, who weather the Civil War, and who grapple with contradictions of emancipation, Jim Crow, and the pre-Civil Rights South. As she peels back layers of racial and cultural attitudes, Tademy paints a remarkable picture of rural Louisiana and the resilient spirit of one unforgettable family. There is Elisabeth, who bears both a proud legacy and the yoke of bondage... her youngest daughter, Suzette, who is the first to discover the promise-and heartbreak-of freedom... Suzette's strong-willed daughter Philomene, who uses a determination born of tragedy to reunite her family and gain unheard-of economic independence... and Emily, Philomene's spirited daughter, who fights to secure her children's just due and preserve their dignity and future. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Cane River presents a slice of American history never before seen in such piercing and personal detail.

The first from the Service League of Natchitoches, Cane River Cuisine offers over 800 recipes handed down through the Creole, Indian, French and Spanish generations with beautiful photography that set the trend for community cookbooks. This is a must for every Southern foodie.

A National Historic Landmark with a complex and remarkable two-hundred-year history, Melrose Plantation near Natchitoches, Louisiana, was home to many notable women, including freedwoman and entrepreneur Marie Thérèse Coincoin and artist Clementine Hunter. Among that influential group, Cammie Henry, the mistress of Melrose during the first half of the twentieth century, stands out as someone who influenced the plantation’s legacy in dramatic and memorable ways. In Cane River Bohemia, Patricia Austin Becker provides a vivid biography of this fascinating figure. Born on a sugar plantation in south Louisiana in 1871, Cammie Henry moved with her husband to Melrose in 1899 and immediately set to work restoring the property. She extended her impact on Melrose, the surrounding community, and the region when she began to host an artist colony in the 1920s and 1930s. Writers and painters visiting the bucolic setting could focus on their creative pursuits and find encouragement for their efforts. The most frequent visitors—considered by Cammie to be her circle of “congenial souls”—included writer/journalist Lyle Saxon, naturalist Caroline Dormon, author Ada Jack Carver, and painter Alberta Kinsey. Artists and artisans such as Harnett Kane, Roark Bradford, William Spratling, Doris Ulmann, and Sherwood Anderson also found their way to Melrose. In addition to hosting well-known guests, Henry began a collection of history books, nineteenth-century manuscripts, and scrapbooks of clippings and memorabilia that later brought her attention from the wider world. Researchers and writers contacted Henry frequently as the reputation of her library grew, and today the Cammie G. Henry Research Center at Northwestern State University houses this impressive collection that serves as a lasting tribute to Henry’s passion for the preservation of words as well as for the South’s material culture, including quilting, spinning, and gardening.

Out of colonial Natchitoches, in northwestern Louisiana, emerged a sophisticated and affluent community founded by a family of freed slaves. Their plantations eventually encompassed 18,000 fertile acres, which they tilled alongside hundreds of their own bondsmen. Furnishings of quality and taste graced their homes, and private tutors educated their children. Cultured, deeply religious, and highly capable, Cane River's Creoles of color enjoyed economic privileges but led politically constricted lives. Like their white neighbors, they publicly supported the Confederacy and suffered the same depredations of war and political and social uncertainties of Reconstruction. Unlike white Creoles, however, they did not recover amid cycles of Redeemer and Jim Crow politics. First published in 1977, The Forgotten People offers a socioeconomic history of this widely publicized but also highly romanticized community -- a minority group that fit no stereotypes, refused all outside labels, and still struggles to explain its identity in a world mystified by Creolism. Now revised and significantly expanded, this time-honored work revisits Cane River's "forgotten people" and incorporates new findings and insight gleaned across thirty-five years of further research. This new edition provides a nuanced portrayal of the lives of Creole slaves and the roles allowed to freed people of color, tackling issues of race, gender, and slave holding by former slaves. The Forgotten People corrects misassumptions about the origin of key properties in the Cane River National Heritage Area and demonstrates how historians reconstruct the lives of the enslaved, the impoverished, and the disenfranchised.

Nestled on the banks of the Cane River, Natchitoches (pronounced NAK-i-tush) is perhaps the most beautiful inland town in Louisiana. Founded in 1714 as a French colonial settlement, it boasts brick streets, venerable architecture, and a charming ambiance that draw visitors from around the world. Nearby, a magnificent plantation country and the multicultural Creole community of Isle Brevelle amplify the area's allure. This stunning gallery of photographs by Philip Gould, along with edifying articles, documents the varying cultures of the Cane River region, one of the state's oldest and most historically French areas. The book opens with a look at Natchitoches proper and its breathtaking architectural gems, including stately churches and elegant homes. Gould also captures the life pulsing behind these impressive facades. A blues band performs its monthly gig at Roque's Grocery. A child prepares to be baptized in the Cane River. A young couple celebrates their marriage in high style. Through Gould's lens and an enlightening history by Richard Seale, Natchitoches yesterday and today comes alive. The regal residences and faded communities that lie beyond Natchitoches are remnants of a once bustling plantation economy. Accompanied by revealing commentary from Robert DeBlieux, Gould trains his talented eye on the majestic estates of Oakland, Magnolia, Oaklawn, Cherokee, Beaufort, and Melrose plantations and on the tiny town of Cloutierville, once home to writer Kate Chopin. The book also spotlights the nearby Creole settlement of Isle Brevelle, which dates back to the area's colonial period. Gould celebrates the music, food, folklore, architecture, and landscape of this vibrant multiethnic community -- which originated with a French planter and a former slave. Harlan Mark Guidry, one of the many descendants of Isle Brevelle now living throughout the United States, narrates the story of this unique cultural treasure. Natchitoches and Louisiana's Timeless Cane River offers passage through an extraordinary world where people, heritage, and history are inseparably intertwined. Natives and tourists alike will relish the journey.