Maps often include historical information, like this French one from 1752. In this one, the French-Natchez war is documented by a places that were destroyed during the war that occurred in 1729.
The war started decades earlier, as the Natchez nation greatly opposed French settlement on their lands surrounding the east side of the Mississippi River. The city of Natchez, Mississippi now occupies their tribal lands, which sit above the confluence of the Red and Mississippi rivers (the confluence is in today's Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana).
After their defeats in 1729 (written on the map here) and at a fortification near Black River in 1731 , over 150 Natchez warriors came to Natchitoches in 1732 on the Red River to try to take over the fortification there. The French soldiers, reinforced by Natchitoches and Yattasee warriors and a few Spanish troops from Los Adaes, defeated the Natchez in two battles. In a 1920 article on the history of Natchitoches, Milton Dunn wrote that the remaining Natchez men "fled down the River and took refuge in a lake about three miles west of Cloutierville, where they were completely annihilated. Their bones could be seen there years afterwards. This lake was called Sang pour Sang — "Blood for Blood."
The town of Natchez in Natchitoches Parish, founded by the Texas and Pacific Railway, was named after the tribe, but the tribe itself no longer exists. The extermination war effectively destroyed this once-powerful nation.
Now dry, Sang-pour-Sang Lake was once located at the base of a three-hundred-foot tall hill, just east of Emmanuel Road, west of Bayou Pierre, south of Interstate 49, and southeast of Derry in Natchitoches Parish. By the 19th century, this area would be home to the displaced people of the Apalachee tribe (originally from Florida), who established three villages there. Many of their descendants still live in the area.
