In the 1880s, newspapers all over the country carried a sensational story out of central Louisiana under the headline “The Wild Girl of Catahoula.” If we wanted to be more accurate today, we would call her the “Wild Girl of LaSalle,” because nearly all of the sightings of her happened in the area of Catahoula Parish that would later become LaSalle. This was the area around Bayou Funny Louis, near present day Summerville.

In 1887 the New Orleans Times-Picayne ran a story that had been originally printed by the Harrisonburg News. They reported that in December of the previous year, the teen-age daughter of Jack Francis was driving home the cows when she encountered a “wild girl, perfectly nude, with long black hair,” who ran away when she saw her. According to the paper, this girl had been “repeatedly seen,” sometimes by people on horseback who had chased her at full speed, but the girl had always escaped.

Mr. A. Dukes, who lived near White Sulphur Springs, claimed to have knowledge of a “wretched and degraded white woman named Duck, who used to tramp through the country with three children.” One child was a girl who had a club foot. For this reason, the mother often threatened to “throw the child away.” Since that time, Mr. Dukes had only seen two children, so concluded that the wild girl had been abandoned by this woman, and had learned to survive in the woods.

The next year, the Times-Picayne reported that the girl had been spotted in the Swilley neighborhood, about 15 miles west of Harrisonburg. A group of adults from the Swilley family said that they had come within 30 or 40 feet of the girl, and that on another occasion she had killed a goose and carried it away with her. The people in the neighborhood had gone out en masse a number of times, but had failed to capture her. Many of them said that they had seen her tracks, which showed a deformity in one of her feet. The story ended with the hope of the reporter that the girl could be “rescued from the state of a beast and restored to that condition in which she was born.”

About a month after that, another story came from two men who were traveling on foot from Alexandria and encountered the girl near Hemp’s Creek. They said that she “was one of the most ferocious looking beings that the human eye had ever cast upon.” They tried to talk to her, but couldn’t get close enough. They claimed that she was fleet as a deer, and that in one leap she cleared a root that was seven feet high.

The men described her as about 16 years old, weighing about 125-140 pounds, 4’6” in height, that her arms were long and muscular, she walked with a limp, and “was clothed with nothing but what nature gave her.” She had a knife, and the men said that they were afraid to sleep near where they had seen her, because they thought she could conquer any three men.

In September of 1888, the girl was seen again, this time by “two respected citizens, whose veracity cannot be doubted.” The men had gone fishing in Clear Creek in Grant Parish. The fishing party included Capt. J.M.Ball, a planter; John C. Goulden, a leading scenic artist; M.W. Calvitt, city marshal; and Charles Goldenburg, employee of a local lumber company.

The men were fishing when they heard some hogs close by making a noise as if something had caught one of their pigs. Capt. Ball and Mr. Goulden went to investigate and came upon a girl standing on a log with a pig in one hand and a knife in the other. They described her as being “covered with hair, varying in length on different parts of her.” The other two men claimed to have seen her tracks and the blood of the pig on the ground, and noted that their companions appeared to be extremely frightened.

In November, the Baton Rouge Advocate opined that “No decent, well-behaved young woman in the State has ever received so much attention from the press and from the people as the Wild Girl of Catahoula.” In this account, she was seen near Black Gum Springs. When chased, she jumped into a creek and swam across, losing her pursuers.

In June 1890, another sighting took place, this time by four of “Pineville’s most respected citizens.” One of these was Ernst J. Hardtner, father of Henry and Quinton Hardtner. He was riding with this 16-yearold daughter Alice in a buggy from Fishville to Pineville. Emmet Walker and Miss Jennie Hamilton were accompanying them in another buggy. About eight miles from Pineville, they saw a girl near the road. They described her as being about 5’ tall and weighing about 125 pounds. She was wearing a faded homespun dress and was barefooted. When the girl saw them, she ran away, “at a speed, all say, they never saw a human being run at.”

The last possible encounter with the Wild Girl occurred in July 1891, this time in Franklin Parish. The people who saw her reported her as being “very tall and powerful, covered with hair, and carrying a knife or a sword.” She was seen again near Lamar, and this time she assaulted a boy, but was driven away by some by-standers. This news article said that she had been seen at intervals during the last ten years, but had not been seen in several months. The people in Franklin supposed that she had traveled though the swamps from Catahoula to their parish.

Some people never believed the stories, while others originally thought that the tales were a hoax, but later became otherwise convinced, due to the testimony of reliable witnesses. We will never know the true story of the Wild Girl of Catahoula, but it is certainly an interesting one.