About twenty-five miles south of the County seat Osceola, is a most attractive stretch of country extending for about six miles, embracing several thousand acres highly cultivated with houses and buildings above general sections of the county.
The name Frenchman's Bayou presumably came from the fact that in 1628 LaSalle on February 24th threw up a Fort and built a cabin on the first Chickasaw Bluff (the present Fort Pillow). He named the place Prudhomme after Peter Prudhomme, one of his men who was lost on the West side of the Mississippi River for eleven days while hunting, and came up in a starved condition rejoining his comrades at the Fort.
LaSalle erected a great cross on the Bluff and also the arms of France, taking possession of the Country in the name of his king.
The Fort was known to the French inhabitants of Louisiana as late as 1825 as Fort Prudhomme. We assume Prudhomme was an unpronounceable name for our settlers thus became known as the Frenchman's Bayou.