Native Peoples

In the nineteenth century the Chahta (Choctaw) families of this shore had a steady market in New Orleans. Women carried cane baskets, sassafras, laurel leaves and gumbo filé to the French Market, riding the steamboat from Mandeville up to three times a week, while many men found wages on railroads and construction crews. Communities near Cane Bayou also held an annual death feast. Historians disagree about how early the Choctaw arrived here: Frederick Ellis argues they came only after European settlement had begun.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fontainebleau State Park — 1.0 mi
  Lakeshore park on the Northshore where Tchefuncte potters, Acolapissa and Choctaw lived, and where 153 people were enslaved at Marigny's sugar and brick plantation by 1840; the mill ruin still stands.

More markers nearby

• The Enslaved — 0.2 mi
• Fontainebleau Plantation Sugar Mill — 0.3 mi
• Pottery Hill — 1.2 mi
• Battle of Lake Pontchartrain — 1.4 mi