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Indian Village and Lake Chicot.
Indian Village was a settlement on Bayou Plaquemine, occupied by troops under command of General Emory.
Calling in the aid of the gunboat Diana, making a reconnoissance from Berwick, it was found that all the routes from the village to Chicot were choked with drift for a distance of five miles. Not long did the gunboat Diana breast the waters of the Atchafalaya.
On March 28, 1863, Dick Taylor was watching her somewhere from the bank near Berwick bay.
He says: ‘I have the honor to report the capture of the Federal gunboat Diana at this point to-day.
She mounted five heavy guns.
Boat not severely injured, and will be immediately put in service.
Emory's loss in killed, wounded and prisoners, 150.’
On January 28th there had been a cavalry skirmish with the Confederates temporarily around Indian Village.
These Confederates were driven from their hastily raised fortifications on the west bank of the Grosse Tete.
The enemy, having thus occupied Indian Village, attempted, through Weitzel, unsuccessfully to utilize the water route to Lake Chicot.
High water was over the land.
That flood which in the early spring brings overflow, as it swells robs the low banks of logs and trees, great and small, and so piles up drift.
Drift, rising higher and choking deeper, prevented Weitzel's junction with Emory on the Plaquemine.
Assuredly the Mississippi, for once true to Louisiana, was busy largessing the bayous in her favor.
Meanwhile Butte-à--la-Rose was made a new objective under Banks' plan of campaign.
The Butte was a fortified mound rising high at the junction of the Atchafalaya and Cow bayou.
This post was advantageously situated for the Confederates, being near the terminus of the road from St. Martinsville.
Its garrison was estimated by the Federals at about 400 men, with four pieces of artillery.
Banks, in his effort to make easy his Red river route by the bayou, had hoped from Weitzel's zeal to hear of the
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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