Catahoula Lake Chronicles: The View from Indian Bluff

By Jack Willis

CATAHOULA LAKE CHRONICLES: The View From Indian Bluff is the first book of its kind that describes in detail the history of Catahoula Lake along with some of its colorful legends and folklore. Catahoula Lake spans some 30,000 acres in the Louisiana parishes of LaSalle and Rapides, and is actually a gigantic basin, an open sump area, roughly sixteen to eighteen miles long and six to eight miles wide. The lake is the most important inland wetland for waterfowl and shorebirds in Louisiana, providing habitat for as many as 500,000 waterfowl and 20 species of shorebirds. Hunters and fishers come from all over the world to experience the wonders of Catahoula Lake. Jack Willis, a longtime storyteller from Jena, Louisiana, spins his yarns, weaving historical fact with legendary tales from the people who have lived off the lake and the land for hundreds of years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463435332

Jack Willis

Jack Willis was born in Good Pine, Louisiana, in a sawmill town near Jena, Louisiana, in 1936. Jena, roughly 20 miles from Catahoula Lake, was the home of one grandfather who had been a ‘market hunter’ earlier in life, killing waterfowl, packing them in brine, and shipping them to fancy restaurants in Baton Rouge. Later in life he was a stock tenderer for Good Pine Lumber Company. His other grandfather was a railroad track contractor who built one line to within a mile of Catahoula Lake. Mr. Willis attended Southwestern Louisiana University (currently called University of Louisiana, Lafayette) in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the early 1950s. He dropped out of college to work pipeline engineering crews, spending over twenty years as an Inspector/Surveyor for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. Mr. Willis went back to college at the age of 53 and acquired a B.S. Degree in Addictive Disease Counseling. After 15 years as a counselor, he was granted a judicious disability, retired, and began to compile stories, tales, yarns and true facts relating to that Grand Lady known as Catahoula Lake. Mr. Willis continues a weekly column in the Jena Times, a local newspaper, named Grass Roots and Cockleburs. He has plans for a sequel to Catahoula Lake Chronicles: A View From Indian Bluff.

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Catahoula Lake Chronicles

The View From Indian Bluff

JACK WILLIS

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2011 Jack Willis. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 8/26/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4634-3533-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-3534-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-3535-6 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011915253

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

PROLOGUE

The

Lake

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

The

Folklore

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

The

Legends

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

The

Living

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

EPILOGUE

Dedicated

To Samuel W. Graham, Eli W. Plummer, and James E. Yule: for their influence on the stories and tales recounted in these pages. To Eddie Thompson and the good folks at Alabaster Publishing: for all their help on this project. To Thomas Whittington: for believing in this project. To the Justiss family: for all their efforts towards preservation of the integrity of Catahoula Lake, a magnificent body of water.

PROLOGUE

Nestled twenty miles south of Jena in LaSalle Parish and about fifteen miles northeast of Alexandria in Rapides Parish, Central Louisiana boasts one of Mother Nature’s truly great phenomenons, Catahoula Lake. The term lake is actually a misnomer since this natural wonder is actually a gigantic basin, an open sump area, roughly sixteen to eighteen miles long and six to eight miles wide.

Nature lovers enjoyed one of the areas most renowned guilty pleasures by driving right up on Indian Bluff with its unmatched scenic vista before private interests put a barrier fence across the access road because loiterers and wastrels polluted the pristine view. Once, a visit to Indian Bluff afforded one an unfettered six to eight miles view across to the tree line on the southern edge of this magnificent, periodic body of water.

Several years ago, one visitor, upon viewing the vast expanse of this wondrous creation from the well-known headland, was heard to remark, I’ve seen the Grand Canyon and now I’ve seen Catahoula Lake, but I’m more impressed with this Louisiana attraction than that big ditch in Colorado and Arizona. This miniature inland sea, located in our backyard, almost defies definition and explanation; it offers its guests a more diverse and more complex act of creation than most people around the nation are privy to in a lifetime.

The watershed which furnishes the water supply for this huge backwater depository has its beginnings near Arcadia, Louisiana, with the principle drainage area encompassing over 2,550 square miles, while draining a corridor 80 miles long, and over 35 miles wide. Over 65 continually flowing creeks and streams feed into the lake through the Little River complex constituted principally from the merger near Rochelle, Louisiana, of Bayous Castor and Dugdamona.

Referred to as The Lake by peripheral residents of the sometimes rogue body of water, this natural treasure has two principle outflows: Old River and French Forks. These two streams merge just north of US Highway 84 at a juncture known for over three centuries as Lavaca, which is identical to a similar juncture of the Nueces and Pedernales Rivers that flow together to form the Lavaca River south of San Antonio. Lavaca was the eastern-most outpost of the San Antonio de Bexar land holdings of the Spanish Texas Empire. This reunion of outflow lake streams form a tributary called Little River—once called Catahoula River—which merges with the Tensas and Ouachita Rivers near Jonesville to form Black River, which eventually flows into Red River. Saline Bayou is a sluggish stream created from the overflow waters at the southwest end of Catahoula Lake that eventually flows into Red River as well.

The water level on this maverick lake can vary from zero (0) mean Sea Level to thirty (30) Mean Sea Level several times in a year dependent upon rainfall. The area of the lakebed covered by water can fluctuate from as few as 5,000 acres up to 40,000 in flood stage. Verifiably, an area with a 50 mile radius, using the lake as a hub, is affected from recreational usage of this magnificent body of water, with many people in this geographic confine utilizing it for boating, hunting or fishing.

In-depth studies of the remnants of ancient Native American artifacts found in mounds or tumuli point to the dependence and reverence the early inhabitants of the area had for the lake. Most studies lead to the accepted hypothesis that these early red men congregated around the lake, dependent upon season, because of the astronomical abundance of wild life, waterfowl, vegetation and other valuable food sources abounding there. Some of the original grasses, legumes and tuberous flora played a large role in the nutrition of the early Americans as well as local wildlife such as deer, waterfowl and feral swine. Numerous archaeological sites around the rim of the lake have proven to be invaluable storehouses of information concerning the lifestyle and diets of these early inhabitants. Scientifically oriented digs have unearthed relics such as weaponry, tools, and bones that reveal the importance of Catahoula Lake to its indigenous population. A complete skeleton of a Native American was unearthed totally intact and donated to the LSU Museum of Anthropology with very little, if any credit to the discoverer and meticulous declaimer James Ed Yule.

Traditional folklore relate tales of Indian Chiefs, accompanied by their shaman, or medicine man, traveling sometimes many miles to the promontory known as Indian Bluff at the occasion of the spring and fall solstice to pray and offer sacrifices to the Great Spirit. The Native American reverence for this unique body of water is summed up in one of their names for the lake, which translates sacred waters.

Arriving in the 1790’s, the first contingent of Caucasian settlers quickly gauged the pulsations of the lake regarding times of flood and times of drought with two seasons marked by the time periods when water was up in early fall until it would leave in early summer. Sometimes, due to the vast watershed of the lake, a sudden inundation on the floodplain could cause the lake to change from a meandering stream across the length of the central marsh area, to waters levels jumping 10-12 feet almost overnight. The months of June, July, August, September, October, and November were usually referred to as the dry months. December, January, February, March, April, and May were referred to as the wet season. The monthly categorizations were derived from Mean Sea Level records from decades past but subject to instant change according to the whims of Mother Nature.

During the wet season of olden days, boatmen with scaffolding erected upon wide flat boats poled their vessels among the many cypress plantations around the edge of the lake gathering Spanish moss, which hung profusely from the limbs of the trees, dotting the banks of the lake. The moss was taken to the camps on shore, distributed upon drying racks designed to rid the moss of its moisture content. The dried moss, which turned dark black during the drying process, was compacted into bales and shipped out via steamboat to furniture manufactures in Baton Rouge and New Orleans for use as stuffing in home furnishings. This pure entrepreneurship on the part of the resourceful settlers, who used every means at their disposal, helped compensate for their lack of a regular cash income.

The green moss was another valuable commodity because a tree sporting long, thick streamers could be cut down during wintertime for cattle feed. In the absence of downed moss trees, accounts describe some cattle, especially the Brahma breed, rearing up on their hind legs in desperation to feed off low-hanging moss tendrils. Again making use of Mother Nature’s provision, many of the locals turned to logging of various species of timber around the edge of the lake for more cash income. A vast longleaf pine forest stretched northward from the lake covering most of the nine surrounding parishes. Before the introduction of the crosscut saw around 1890, the huge trees had to be felled with a four and a half lb. Kelly perfect double bit axe. Since dragging the huge trees for long distances with oxen was difficult, most of the timber was harvested around the mouths of inflowing streams to Little River or around the northern edge of Catahoula Lake.

Some enterprising native sons turned entrepreneurs contacted sawmill owners and operators near New Orleans and made arrangement for delivery of the virgin pine logs. They also hewed and floated exotic log species such as cherry, oak, red and black gum, cedar, rosewood and mulberry down the waterways to furniture manufacturers, which made eventually, made its way to France and returned as magnificent pieces of fine furniture which graced the many river road mansions along the Mississippi River.

Navigating Catahoula Lake

De Bow’s Review (ca. 1850) records that the first steamboat to run up the Ouachita River was the James Monroe, commanded by a Captain Nancarrow in 1819. This accomplishment occurred only seven years after Nicholas Roosevelt landed in New Orleans in the first steamboat to attempt such a voyage. The steamboat became the chief transporter of freight and mode of travel between 1830 and 1855. By 1850 there were over 750 steam-powered craft operating on the Mississippi alone, not to mention dozens of others on its tributaries.

The Rock River, commandeered by a Doctor Keep in 1840, was the first craft to run up Catahoula or Little River from its confluence with the Ouachita and Tensas, and on into Catahoula Lake. He pushed through the upper Little River to La Croix’s Ferry, which is about two miles downriver from the present day Louisiana Highway 8 Bridge. His principle mission was to pick up a load of pine knots to take back down the Mississippi River to sell to other steamboats plying the Big Muddy. The very next year, 1841, Captain J.M. Phillips took the Hannibal into the lake to above Hanes’s Ferry; Hanes was probably one of several various operators of the ferry at Zenoria. A State Senator and Steamboat Captain named Samuel Glenn was probably the first to establish the trade known locally as pine knotting. Glenn, however, suffered a series of financial setbacks and natural disasters that plunged him into bankruptcy. He relinquished his role to Captain Frances Routh, who was also a gentleman planter. Routh, who owned a magnificent antebellum home and extensive landholdings near Natchez, MS. and into Louisiana, was always looking for new investments. Trafficking in pine knots was a promising opportunity, so his boat the Ellen, and like craft engaging in this new trade, becoming familiar sights on the lake, with a small creek, which flows into Catahoula Lake on the north bank, being named after him.

By 1850, people from the Troyville (Jonesville) and Sicily Island area migrated to join early Catahoula Lake settlers in the enterprise of gathering and selling the knots to the proprietors of the various landings springing up everywhere. Some built shanties near the landings on the north side of the lake, and up Little River near the mouths of numerous in-flowing creeks. In some areas of the intense yellow pine groves the plentiful knots literally covered the ground. The men chopped and split the knots, while women and children gathered and corded the wood convenient to the wagon drivers. Many of the wooded areas around landings looked like huge rambling wood yards, with a knotter required to cut and stack at least three cords a day, for which they averaged $1.00 per cord.

Stave bolts were another item the steamboats picked up that provided some income to the locals. They were fashioned into what was called a French clan out of white oak timber and were five feet long, and three inches by three inches square and had a multitude of uses, one of which was the manufacture of choice bourbon whiskey barrels.

The last steamboat to operate on Catahoula Lake was in 1937. Mr. Floyd Nichols was employed as a hostler on the Little River L&A railroad bridge and operated the lift mechanism in the house atop the center span at Archie to conclude the last lift of that span to allow passage of the boat.

Logging on Catahoula Lake

Furnishing fuel for the steamboats was an operation demonstrating the great American financial system of supply and demand. In order to operate a steamboat’s voracious fuel