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 Murders Committed in Parish of St. Landry
September and October 1868

Parish of St. Landry

Under date of Sept. 16^th information has been received that several freedmen who had located land in parish under the Homestead Act had been driven from their homes and one of them William Johnson had been killed by the Arcadians. The others were compelled to take refuge with their neighbors.

Regarding the riot which originated at Opelousas on the 28^th of Sept. in which various and conflicting accounts of the casualties are reported,

The first reliable account of same states 2 white men and 20 or 30 Negroes were killed, more definite information afterwards received gave the following result, 2 whites killed, 19 blacks killed and wounded as follows, 2 whites and 2 Negroes seriously, and others slightly, that other Negroes are reported and may be killed in isolated places, but no positive evidence of the same----

Other estimates place these casualties at a much larger number and in some instances are reported as high as 2 or 3 hundred, but these highest figures are doubtless greatly exaggerated having their origin in the excited minds of personal imagination. From other parties residents of the parish is stated that 6 Indians had been killed by the people for refusing to join Democratic Clubs that Victor Dauphan, c, was killed in Washington on the night of October 1^st, that a man "Republican" was killed in Opelousas on night of Monday October 19^th, that a large number of Republicans have been killed in Grand Prairie since September 27^th and that men had to be detailed from Washington to bury them.

Still later advices from reliable authority state that a freedman was found murdered 3 miles from Opelousas on the 20 Oct. 20^th and reports are current of freedmen killed in various portions of the parish.

Unsigned