by Alana A. Carmon
De Soto Parish was created
in 1843 from territory formerly incorporated in Caddo and Natchitoches
parishes. The parish was named in honor og Don Joseph Marcelo DeSoto, who brought the first thirty white families to the area and established the village Ville du Bayou Pierre.
The earliest settlers, the
French and Spanish, occupied the region late in the eighteenth century.
By the 1830s, Americans from Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, the Carolinas,
Kentucky, Georgia, and Tennessee emigrated to the area and began to
outnumber the pioneers.
Mansfield, the seat of justice
in DeSoto Parish, is historically notable as the site of a major Confederate
victory during the Civil War. The Confederate triumph in April of 1864
spared Shreveport and Texas from Union invasion. The battle site can
be toured at Mansfield State Commemorative Park.
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