Frontier survival: From forest to garden
by Stanley Nelson - posted Wednesday, February 6th, 2013 @ 9:09 am

At the frontier settlement of Natchitoches along the Red River, Dr. John Sibley found settlers who ate a lot of fish and fowl. First settled by the French almost a century earlier, Natchitoches was "a small irregular, and meanly built village, half a dozen houses excepted," Sibley wrote in a report prepared for President Thomas Jefferson.

About 40 families resided there in 1803, "twelve or fifteen are merchants or traders, nearly all French."

Nearby lakes, Sibley reported, contained an "incredible...quantity of fish and fowl (ducks, geese, brant, swan)...

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