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The
history of Louisiana is
long and rich. From its earliest settlement to its
status as linchpin of an empire to its incorporation
as a U.S. state, it has been successively bathed in
the cultural influences of France,
Spain, the
Caribbean, and the
United States, and has subsequently become a
rich patchwork of unique cultures that stands apart
from much of mainstream U.S. History.
Early settlement
Louisiana
was inhabited by
Native
Americans when European explorers arrived in the 17th
century. Many current place names in the state, including
Atchafalaya, Natchitouches (now
spelled Natchitoches),
Caddo, Houma,
Tangipahoa, and
Avoyel (as
Avoyelles), are transliterations of those used in
various Native American dialects.
Many native
tribes inhabited the region (using current parish boundaries
to describe approximate locations):
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The
Atakapa in southwestern
Louisiana in Vermilion, Cameron, Lafayette, Acadia,
Jefferson Davis, and Calcasieu parishes. They were
allied with the
Opelousa in St. Landry parish.
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The
Acolapissa in St. Tammany
parish. They were allied with the
Tangipahoa in
Tangipahoa parish.
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The
Chitimacha in the
southeastern parishes of Iberia, Assumption, St. Mary,
lower St. Martin, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. James, St.
John the Baptist, St. Charles, Jefferson, Orleans, St.
Bernard, and Plaquemines. They were allied with the
Washa in Assumption
parish, the Chawasha
in Terrebonne parish, and the
Yagenechito
to the east.
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The
Bayougoula,
part of the Choctaw
nation, in areas directly north of the Chitimachas in
the parishes of St. Helena, Tangipahoa, Washington, East
Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge, Livingston, and St.
Tammany. They were allied with the
Quinipissa-Mougoulacha
in St. Tammany parish.
-
The
Houma, also part of the Choctaw
nation, in East and West Feliciana, and Pointe Coupee
parishes (about 100 miles (160 km) north of the town
named for them).
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The
Okelousa in
Pointe Coupee parish.
-
The
Avoyel, part of the
Natchez nation, in parts of
Avoyelles and Concordia parishes along the Mississippi
River.
-
The
Taensa, also part of the
Natchez nation, in northeastern Louisiana particularly
Tensas parish.
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The
Tunica in northeastern
parishes of Tensas, Madison, East Carroll and West
Carroll.
-
The
Koroa in East
Carroll parish.
-
The
remainder of central, west central, and northwest
Louisiana was home to a substantial portion of the
Caddo nation, the
Adai in Natchitoches parish, and
Natchitoches confederacy consisting of the
Natchitoches in Natchitoches parish,
Yatasi and
Nakasa in the
Caddo and Bossier parishes,
Doustioni in
Natchitoches parish, and
Quachita in the
Caldwell parish.
French exploration and
colonization (1528-1756)
The first
European explorers to visit Louisiana
came in 1528. The Spanish expedition
(led by Panfilo de Narváez)
located the mouth of the
Mississippi River. In 1541,
Hernando de Soto's
expedition crossed the region. Then Spanish interest in
Louisiana lay dormant. In the late 17th century,
French expeditions, which included
sovereign, religious and commercial aims, established a
foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. With its
first settlements, France lay claim to a vast region of
North America and set out to establish a commercial empire
and French nation stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to
Canada.
The French
explorer Robert
Cavelier de La Salle named the region Louisiana to honor
France's King Louis XIV
in 1682. The first permanent settlement, Fort Maurepas (at
what is now Ocean
Springs, Mississippi, near
Biloxi), was founded by
Pierre Le Moyne
d'Iberville, a French military officer from Canada, in
1699.
The
French colony of Louisiana
originally claimed all the land on both sides of the
Mississippi River and north
to French territory in Canada. The
following present day states were part of the then vast
tract of Louisiana: Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas,
Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois,
Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and
South Dakota.
The
settlement of Natchitoches
(along the Red River in present-day northwest Louisiana) was
established in 1714 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, making
it the oldest permanent settlement in the territory that
then composed the Louisiana colony. The French settlement
had two purposes: to establish trade with the Spanish in
Texas, and to deter Spanish advances
into Louisiana. Also, the northern terminus of the Old San
Antonio Road (sometimes called El Camino Real, or Kings
Highway) was at Nachitoches. The settlement soon became a
flourishing river port and crossroads, giving rise to vast
cotton kingdoms along the river. Over time, planters
developed large plantations and built fine homes in a
growing town, a pattern repeated in New Orleans and other
places.
Louisiana's
French settlements contributed to further exploration and
outposts, concentrated along the banks of the Mississippi
and its major tributaries, from Louisiana to as far north as
the region called the Illinois
Country, around Peoria,
Illinois and present-day
St. Louis, Missouri.
Initially
Mobile, Alabama and
Biloxi, Mississippi
functioned as the capital of the colony; in
1722, recognizing the importance of the Mississippi
River to trade and military interests, France made
New Orleans the seat of civilian
and military authority.
Settlement
in the Louisiana colony was not exclusively French; in the
1720s, German immigrants settled along the Mississippi River
in a region referred to as the
German Coast.
Spanish interregnum (1763-1800)
Most of the
territory to the east of the Mississippi was lost to the
Kingdom of Great Britain
in the French and Indian
War, except for the area around
New Orleans and the parishes around
Lake Pontchartrain. The
rest of Louisiana became a possession of
Spain after the Seven Years'
War by the Treaty of
Paris of 1763.
Despite the
fact that it was the Spanish government that now ruled
Louisiana, the pace of francophone immigration to the
territory increased swiftly, due to another significant
aftereffect of the French and Indian War. Several thousand
French-speaking refugees from the region of
Acadia (now
Nova Scotia, Canada) made their
way to Louisiana after being expelled from their home
territory by the newly ascendant British; settling largely
in the southwestern Louisiana region now called
Acadiana. The Acadian refugees were
welcomed by the Spanish, and descendants came to be called
Cajuns.
Some
Spanish-speaking immigrants did arrive as well. Canary
Islanders, called Isleños, migrated
to Louisiana between 1778 and 1783.
In 1800,
France's Napoleon Bonaparte
reacquired Louisiana from Spain in the
Treaty of San
Ildefonso, an arrangement kept secret for some two
years. Documents have revealed that he harbored secret
ambitions to reconstruct a large colonial empire in
the Americas. This notion
faltered, however, after the French attempt to reconquer
Haiti after its
revolution ended in
failure.
Annexation and incorporation into
the United States (1803-1850)
As a result
of his setbacks in Haiti, Bonaparte gave up his dreams of
American empire and sold the Louisiana to the United States,
which subsequently divided it into two territories: the
Orleans Territory (which
became the state of Louisiana in 1812) and the
District of Louisiana
(which consisted of all the land not included in Orleans
Territory). The Florida Parishes
were annexed from the short-lived and strategically
important West Florida Republic
by proclamation of President James
Madison in 1810.
The western
boundary of Louisiana with Spanish Texas remained in dispute
until the Adams-Onís Treaty
in 1819, with the Sabine Free
State serving as a neutral buffer zone as well as a
haven for criminals. Also called "No Man's Land," this part
of central and southwestern Louisiana was settled in part by
a mixed-race people known as
Redbones, whose origins are the subject of ongoing
debate.
Secession and the Civil War
(1850-1865)
In the wake
of its plantation economy, Louisiana was a slave state. It
also had one of the largest free black populations in the
United States. Among enfranchised whites, however, economic
interest in maintaining the slave system contributed to
Louisiana's decision to secede from the union, along with
many other Southern states, following the election of
Abraham Lincoln as
President of the
United States. Louisiana's secession was announced on
January 26, 1861,
and the state became part of the secessionary
Confederate States
of America.
The state
fell quickly in the resulting
Civil War, a result of Union strategy to cut the
Confederacy in two by seizing the Mississippi. New Orleans
was captured by Federal troops on April
25, 1862. Because a large part of
the population had Union sympathies (or compatible
commercial interests), the Federal government took the
unusual step of designating the areas of Louisiana under
federal control as a state within the Union, with its own
elected representatives to the U.S.
Congress.
Reconstruction and segregation
(1865-1929)
Following
the Civil War much of the South, including Louisiana, was
placed under the supervision of military governors under
northern command. Louisiana was grouped with
Texas in what was administered as the
Fifth Military District.
In this atmosphere of what came to be called
Reconstruction, political and
social equality for ex-slaves flourished as it would not for
their descendants for another century or so.
As
Reconstruction came to a close, however, forms of racial
discrimination became increasingly institutionalized. The
notable court case Plessy
v. Ferguson, which legitimated the mantra that
segregation could be legal so long as it did not
(purportedly) result in inequality, originated in Louisiana.
The Great Depression (1929-1941)
During the
Great Depression Louisiana
was presided over by Governor Huey Long
who, though popular for his public works projects, which
promised an improvement in Louisianans' social welfare, was
nonetheless criticized for his allegedly demogogic and even
autocratic style, having extended his control through every
branch of Louisiana's state government. Especially
controversial were his plans for wealth redistribution in
the state. Long's career ended in assassination in
1935.
The battle for Civil Rights
(1950-1970)
Patterns of
Jim Crow segregation against
African Americans were
still evident in Louisiana by the 1960s,
and this changed only in the course of the national
Civil Rights movement.
Katrina and its aftermath
(2005-present)
In
August, 2005
New Orleans and many other
low-lying parts of the state along the
Gulf of Mexico were hit by the
catastrophic Hurricane Katrina,
which caused widespread damage due to large scale flooding.
Warnings of the hurricane prompted the evacuation of New
Orleans and other areas, but many, either because they
ignored warnings willingly or lacked the means to escape,
were left behind, and largely stranded by the floodwaters.
Cut off in many cases from healthy food or medicine, or
assembled in public spaces without functioning emergency
services to attend to them, many succumbed to death or
disease, and the state soon faced a humanitarian crisis
stemming from conditions in many locations, especially the
city of New Orleans, and the large tide of refugees.
Subsequent reconstruction and repatriation has so far been
slow and limited to the state's wealthiest citizens.
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