The Freedmen's Bureau Online

Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Louisiana
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865 - 1869.
National Archives Microfilm Publication M1027 Roll 34
"Miscellaneous Reports and Lists Relating to Murders and Outrages Mar. 1867 - Nov. 1868"

Synopsis of Murder &c. Committed in Parishes of Caddo and Bossier September and October 1868

Parishes of Bossier and Caddo

Information has been received that Henry Jones, Freedman, one of the leaders on the intended riot in Bossier Parish on or about September 20^th was taken from his home and shot that he was then placed upon a brush pile which was fired and was then left by his intended murderers who supposed him to be dead after their departure he succeeded in crawling off but not before he was badly burnt.

Also under date of September 20^th that Freedmen in northern part of Parishes are constantly being taken from their homes by desperadoes and either being killed or forced to leave their homes, crops and everything they possess, that no laws of any kind are enforced, that on Sept. 29^th at Shady Grove plantation in Bossier Parish about 8 miles from Shreveport a riot occurred caused by the lawless acts of desperadoes in which (2) two white men were shot and mortally wounded. Thirteen (13) freedmen and one (1) freedwoman killed and (2) two freedmen wounded. Latter advices in regard to the Bossier troubles state that some 8 or 10 freedmen more than the above reported were killed by the Arkansas Desperadoes and that after their departure the citizens of Bossier and the friends of the two murdered white men have been in constant pursuit of all freedmen implicated in the murder of the two whites and have killed all whom they have caught, from all the information that can be gleaned the number of freedmen killed, of which there are various statements, will reach (100) one hundred at least. It would be a matter of impossibility to ascertain the names of the killed or for an investigation to be made. Anyone that would attempt the task would share the fate of the rioting negroes.

At Shreveport on October 16^th a colored man named Robert Gray was shot and killed by a white man named Charles Wasson in a store on Texas St. The body of a negro was also found floating in Red River the same day in a far advanced state of decomposition.

(unsigned)