Editing Ouachita Parish, Louisiana (section)

===Historic era===
The parish was named after the [[Ouachita River]], which flows through southern [[Arkansas]] and northeastern Louisiana, and the [[Ouachita tribe]] who lived along it. Beginning about 1720, French settlers arrived in what became organized as modern Ouachita Parish. Colonists developed a plantation on Bayou DeSiard that used African slave labor. The [[Natchez people|Natchez]] Indians destroyed the Ouachita plantations during the [[Natchez Revolt]] of 1729–1731, and the French did not return.

Beginning in the 1750s, [[Choctaw]] Indians began hunting in northern Louisiana, including the Ouachita country, expanding from their traditional territory in what is now Mississippi. At the time, only a few French families moved north into this area from the [[Opelousas|Opelousas Post]] on the [[Red River of the South|Red River]].

Following its defeat in the [[Seven Years' War]], in 1763 France ceded its territories in North America east of the Mississippi River to the victor Great Britain. Spain took over French territories west of the Mississippi, including nominally in Louisiana. In 1769, [[Alejandro O'Reilly]], the first Spanish governor to rule successfully in West Louisiana, claimed Ouachita Parish for Spain. A census of the parish that year recorded 110 white people. In 1769 Spain abolished the Indian slave trade and Indian slavery in its colonies.

Even in the 19th century, after the United States acquired this territory in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, some [[mixed-race]] American slaves were able to win [[freedom suits]] by proving Indian ancestry in their maternal line; under most southern state slave laws, children were born into the status of the mother. Thus a mixed-race child of an Indian mother or grandmother was legally free in former Spanish territory west of the Mississippi River, such as Louisiana, Arkansas or Missouri, as the Indians had been free people since 1769.

In 1783, Don [[Jean-Baptiste Filhiol|Juan Filhiol]] was among Frenchmen who began to work for the Spanish colonial government in Louisiana.  (He was born Jean-Baptiste Filhiol (1740) in Eymet, France (near [[Bordeaux]]), to French Calvinists François Filhiol and Anne Marie Teyssonnière, cloth merchants.)<ref name="polston">[http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=3539 "Don Juan Filhiol (1740–1821)"], ''Encyclopedia of Arkansas Culture and History''; accessed April 29, 2018</ref> He was assigned that year to establish the first European outpost in the area of the Ouachita River Valley, called Poste d'Ouachita. With his wife, a few soldiers and slaves, his small party made the slow, arduous journey by [[keelboat]] up the Mississippi, Red, Black and Ouachita rivers to reach this area. In 1785 the European population of the entire Ouachita District (which extended into present-day Arkansas) was only 207.<ref name="filhiol"/>

Originally based in Arkansas, Filhiol surveyed his grant and settled in 1785 at Prairie des Canots (included within the present-day city of Monroe). He gradually organized settlers, including trying to train some in military skills. He built Fort Miro on his land to provide protection for settlers from the Indians. At the same time, he worked to establish trade with the [[Chickasaw people]] and other Native Americans of the area. He was tasked with organizing the settlers in the Ouachita River Valley, while keeping out Americans and establishing good relations for trade with the Native Americans. Filhio served as commandant of Poste d'Ouachita until 1800, when he retired. He continued to live on his plantation here.<ref name="filhiol">[http://www.knowla.org/entry/506/ Kelby Ouchley, "Don Juan Filhiol"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160828020608/http://www.knowla.org/entry/506/ |date=August 28, 2016 }}, KnowLA (''Encyclopedia of Louisiana'')</ref>