Natchitoches Meat Pies

Natchitoches (pronounced NAK-a-dush), Louisiana, is the oldest permanent settlement in Louisiana, predating New Orleans by five years. It is the home of fried turnovers called Natchitoches Meat Pies. Although most of the pie promoters today are Cajun, Natchitoches is well to the north of the traditional Cajun area. It has been cut off from the Mississippi since the late 1830s when the channel shifted and the Cane River became Cane River Lake. The pies more likely reflect the unusual ethnic history of the early French settlement, in which freed creoles of color, now known as Cane River Creoles, were important plantation owners and even owned their own slaves. The filling of beef and pork is like French (and Acadian) Christmas pork pies. But the small half-moon pasty shape is like Latino empanadas, and nearby Sabine parish is an old Spanish settlement on the Red River trail from Texas. The Creole seasoning of the filling and the deep fat frying were markers for African American influence generations before the first Cajun reached Louisiana.