Red River Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. Its seat is Coushatta. It was one of the newer parishes created in 1871 by the state legislature under Reconstruction. The plantation economy was based on cotton cultivation, highly dependent on enslaved labor before the American Civil War. In the late 19th century, the parish had a population with more than twice as many freedmen as whites.[1] Due to outmigration and changes in agriculture, by 2000, the parish population was 9,622 and the majority was white.