Opelousa

The Opelousa people lived in the prairies and wooded lowlands of south Louisiana, west of the Mississippi. Their name was later given to a French trading settlement in the region. The Opelousa and their neighbours the Attakapa occupied country where open grassland met swamps and bayous, in a landscape drained by streams leading toward the Gulf.

French trade brought newcomers to the area during the eighteenth century, and the post at Opelousas grew into a colonial settlement. Spanish authority followed the French in the latter part of the century. In 1806 the American agent John Sibley recorded an Opelousa village some fifteen miles from the church at Opelousas, showing that the people whose name the settlement bore continued to live in the surrounding country.