Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, p.50
"Quiet reigned over the battlefield throughout much of May 28. Banks had requested the truce to carry off the wounded and bury the dead. Yet, inexplicably, the Federals left untouched the area where the Native Guards had charged the previous day--in stark contrast to their actions elsewhere on the battlefield. The hot sun putrefied the bodies until the stench forced Confederate Colonel Shelby to ask Bank's permission to bury the dead in front of his lines. Banks refused, claiming that he had no dead in that area."
Lawrence Lee Hewett and Art Bergeron, Louisianians in the Civil War, p.146.