Album: Cherokee Slave Cabin: Cherokee Plantation

National Center for Preservation Technology and Training

The Cherokee Plantation, owned by Charles Emile Sompayrac in 1839, sits in Natchitoches, Louisiana; the oldest permanent settlement established after the Louisiana Purchase. The plantation, which consisted of 1339 arpents of land, a few of its slaves, and a cistern, was gifted to Sompayrac by his father-in-law Narcisse Prudhomme. Before this acquisition, the Cane River lands were referred to as Cote Joyeuse, and land ownership dates back to 1795 from a Spanish patent. Though the date of the home’s initial construction was long believed to be around 1839, research of the structure shows that the home may very well date to at least the 1820s. The home is constructed in a French Colonial and Creole architectural style with bousillage walls. It has been suggested that the plantation received its name from the enslaved community due to the Cherokee Roses on the property. The plantation’s staple crop cultivated by the enslaved community was cotton, but indigo and sugarcane were also cultivated. Documents showing slave owners who paid taxes on ten or more slaves in Natchitoches in 1962 show Sompayrac as owning more than 60 enslaved people. On the 1870 U.S. Federal Census, his household includes a 44-year-old Black cook named Jane Quiller and 12-year-old Henry Quiller, possibly Jane’s son. These two individuals may have lived in the slave cabin that still resides on the property as it is believed to be an old slave cabin turned tenant farmer house.