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Updated: May 8, 2025
Jim Hendricks, deputy sheriff of Lewis and Clark county, Montana, is another, but to enumerate all the men of the old band who have held minor places would be wearisome. I left Missouri soon after Judy’s raid for Louisiana, spending three months with Capt. J. C. Lea on what was known as the Widow Amos’ farm on Fortune fork, Tensas parish.
The 16th corps, Major-General A. J. Smith commanding, moved from Fort Gaines by water to Fish River; the 13th corps, under Major-General Gordon Granger, moved from Fort Morgan and joined the 16th corps on Fish River, both moving thence on Spanish Fort and investing it on the 27th; while Major-General Steele's command moved from Pensacola, cut the railroad leading from Tensas to Montgomery, effected a junction with them, and partially invested Fort Blakely.
To go two hundred miles and more away from the proper theatre of action in search of an indefinite something was hard; but orders are orders. Time was so important that I determined to run the risk of moving Walker by river, though the enemy could bring gunboats into the lower Red and Washita, as well as into the Tensas, and had some troops in the region between this last and the Mississippi.
Steamers were held in readiness, and as soon as Walker arrived his command was embarked and taken up the Tensas. I went on in advance to give notice to the boats behind of danger; for, crowded with troops, these would have been helpless in the event of meeting an enemy. Without interference, a point on the Tensas opposite Vicksburg was reached and the troops disembarked.
It would be to the credit of the United States army if similar statements could be made of Generals Sherman and Sheridan. Released at length from the swamps of the Tensas, where it had suffered from sickness, Walker's division of Texas infantry joined me in the early autumn, and was posted to the north of Opelousas.
It is six miles long and has its outlet through Bayou Baxter, Bayou Macon, and the Tensas, Washita and Red Rivers. The last three are navigable streams at all seasons. Bayous Baxter and Macon are narrow and tortuous, and the banks are covered with dense forests overhanging the channel. They were also filled with fallen timber, the accumulation of years.
Taylor, quitting his headquarters at Alexandria, called in Polignac's brigade from the line of the Tensas and concentrated his force at Carroll Jones's plantation, on the road between Opelousas and Fort Jesup, distant forty-six miles in a south-southeasterly direction from Natchitoches, twelve miles south from Cotile, and twenty miles southwesterly from Alexandria.
This extended from Monroe on the Washita to a point opposite Vicksburg on the Mississippi; but the great flood of 1862 had broken the eastern half of the line. Finally, the lower Washita, at Trinity, where it receives the Tensas from the east and Little River from the west, takes the name of Black River.
Here on the left comes in Little River; just beyond that the Ouachita, and on the right the Tensas. These three rivers form the Black River. Troy, or a portion of it, is situated on and around three large Indian mounds, circular in shape, which rise above the present water about twelve feet. They are about one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, and are about two hundred yards apart.
The Red River, Washita and Tensas were, as has been said, all navigable streams, on which the enemy could throw small bodies of men to obstruct our passage and pick off our troops with their sharpshooters. I let the work go on, believing employment was better than idleness for the men. Then, too, it served as a cover for other efforts which gave a better prospect of success.
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