Ouachita Parish, Louisiana

Ouachita Parish, Louisiana
Ouachita Parish Courthouse in Monroe was built by the contractor George A. Caldwell
Seal
Location in the U.S. state of Louisiana
Louisiana's location in the U.S.
Founded	March 31, 1807
Named for	Ouachita people
Seat	Monroe
Largest city	Monroe
Area
• Total	632 sq mi (1,637 km2)
• Land	610 sq mi (1,580 km2)
• Water	21 sq mi (54 km2), 3.4%
Population (est.)
• (2015)	156,761
• Density	252/sq mi (97/km²)
Congressional district	5th
Time zone	Central: UTC-6/-5
Website	Ouachita Parish Police Jury

Ouachita Parish (French: Paroisse d'Ouachita) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 153,720. The parish seat is Monroe. The parish was formed in 1807.

Ouachita Parish is part of the Monroe, LA Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Ouachita Parish was the home to many succeeding Native American groups in the thousands of years before European settlements began. Peoples of the Marksville culture, Troyville culture, Coles Creek culture and Plaquemine culture built villages and mound sites throughout the area. Notable examples include the Filhiol Mound Site, located on a natural levee of the Ouachita River.

The parish bears the same name as the Ouachita River, which flows through southern Arkansas and northeastern Louisiana. Beginning about 1720, French settlers arrived in modern Ouachita Parish, and they established a plantation on Bayou DeSiard that utilized African slave labor. Natchez Indians destroyed the Ouachita plantations during the Natchez Revolt of 1729-1731, and the French did not move back. Choctaw Indians began hunting in northern Louisiana, including the Ouachita country, beginning in the 1750s, with only a few French families moving north from the Opelousas Post.

In 1769, Alejandro O'Reilly, the first Spanish governor to rule successfully in West Louisiana, claimed Ouachita Parish for Spain. Following the Seven Years' War, France had ceded its territories in North America east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain in 1763, which had been victorious. Spain took over French territories west of the Mississippi, including nominally in Louisiana. 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 later 19th century, some mixed-race American slaves were able to win freedom suits by proving Indian ancestry in their maternal line; under slave law, children were born into the status of the mother. Thus a child of an Indian mother or grandmother, free people since 1769, even if partially ethnic African, was legally free from birth.