In September of 1698, Pierre le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville and his brother Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, sailed from La Rochelle, France to explore the lower Mississippi River and establish a colony for King Louis XIV.

On March 17th, 1699, as the brothers sailed on the Mississippi, they spotted a stick on a bluff that stood high above the river. The was dyed with animal blood, and the brothers believed that it was a marker that separated the hunting grounds of the Bayagoulas and Oumas Indians. Iberville named the region “Baton Rouge” (Red Stick).  Navigating farther north, they reached a point where the winding river cuts across the base of one of its bends on its way to the sea. This place they called “Pointe Coupée” (Cut-Off Point). Commandant Iberville led his the settlers to the east side of Biloxi Bay – opposite the site of the present day City of Biloxi, where they built Fort Maurepas.

Thus began France's second major venture in the colonization of North America.

While his brother returned to France for additional provisions and settlers, Sieur de Bienville continued to explore the Mississippi River. Facing great challenges, he strived to keep the venture alive. The settlers had come to North America lured by the prospect of becoming rich trading furs and mining and were not interested in farming. Besides, the soil was infertile, so they did not plant the crops that were needed to sustain life. Native Indian tribes were not always friendly and there were many diseases, including malaria and dysentery. The settlers were constantly quarrelling with each other – those that supported Bienville against those who opposed him. Therefore, it is not surprising that the French Crown was eager to turn over the responsibility of the colony to someone else, and in 1712, they gave Antoine Crozat, Marquis de Chatel, a monopoly of commercial privileges «dans tout le pays situé entre le Nouveau-Mexique et la Caroline et qu'arrosent le Mississipi et ses affluents» (in the entire territory located between New Mexico and the Carolinas and the territory on the banks of the Mississippi and its tributaries) and Louisiana became a proprietary colony. Crozat became the first proprietor of Louisiana

Great Britain posed a threat to Louisiana from the east and Spain from the west. The French decided to deal with the threat by opening trade with Spanish Mexico, and in 1714 so they sent Juchereau de St. Denis to establish a military and trading post in Louisiana. Juchereau created a settlement on the Red River and named it “Natchitoches” after the Natchitoches Indians who had welcomed the French. Natchitoches became the first settlement on the soil of present day Louisiana separating the French and Spanish territories. The Spanish were at “Robeline”, just 16 miles away.

Realizing that he had already invested a fortune with no prospect for a return on investment, Antoine Crozat resigned the rights to the colony that he had held from 1712 until 1717. The Crown turned proprietorship of the colony to John Law, a financier and adventurer from Scotland. At the time, the French economy was in serious trouble. Taxes were high and the government was deeply indebted. Law managed to convince the regent, Philippe d'Orléans, the Duc d'Orleans² that he could liquidate the government’s debt with a pioneering system of credit founded on paper money, and he established the Banque Royale (Royal bank) and, subsequently, the Mississippi Company, or Compagnie d'Occident (Company of the West) as a stock-trading company with exclusive commercial rights in the West Indies and North America. In exchange for exclusive commercial rights in Louisiana the Company was responsible for the defense of the colony (maintaining the forts and the troops and providing gifts for the native Indians.), and for the transport of 6,000 settlers and 3,000 Africans to the colony over a period of twenty five years.

In 1719, the Compagnie d'Occident annexed several other companies, such as the Compagnie de Sénégal, Compagnie des Indes Orientales, Compagnie de la Chine, and became the Compagnie des Indes. The original company, Compagnie d'Occident, had been set up with capital raised from the sale of 500-livre shares, payable only in government notes. The first shares were called “mothers. ” As a result of , but the over-issuing of bank notes weakened confidence and the system crashed. Ruined, Law fled to Belgium in 1721. The collapse of the Banke Royale plunged France and Europe into a severe economic crisis, so traumatic that since then French banks have avoided the term “banque” and used “Credit” instead, as in “Credit Lyonnais”, "Credit Agricole", "Credit Foncier". The failure of Law’s financial scheme would also play a role later in setting the stage for the French Revolution.

Overwhelmed by failed crops, Indian wars, slave insurrections, and financial disaster, the Company of the Indies was forced to return the colony to the Crown of France, who administered it until 1763, when it turned it over to Spain.

In 1718, the route from Baton Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico was found to be too long and out of the way. With the help of the Choctaw Indians who had used it for centuries, the brothers Bienville and Iberville had found a shorter route to the Gulf already in In 1699. Therefore, in 1718 they established a garrison town along that route and named it La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) in honor of the Duc d'Orleans. New Orleans was established on a crescent-shaped section of the river, 100 miles from the river’s mouth where the where the distance between the river and Lake Pontchartrain is the shortest. This location provided a backdoor route to the Gulf and made it possible to move troops more rapidly. The curve of the river forced the ships that approached from downriver to slow down and exposed them to gunfire, so it was easier to protect the river and the lower Mississippi Valley. Sieur de Bienville declared New Orleans the capital of Louisiana. Surrounded by the river, the lake and swamps, New Orleans almost seemed to be an island, which prompted the French to refer to it as the "Isle d'Orleans."

France controlled Louisiana until the end of the Seven Year’s War (known as the French and Indian War, in America) when France was defeated by Great Britain. In February of 1763, according to the Treaty of Paris signed by Great Britain, France and Spain, France ceded all its territories in North America to Great Britain, except for the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, and recovered Guadeloupe and Martinique in the West Indies, but had to give Grenada and the Grenadines to Great Britain in return. The British also gained Canada and all of Louisiana east of the Mississippi, except for the Isle of Orleans, which France ceded to Spain along with Louisiana, west of the Mississippi.
The treaty was signed in secrecy, and two years went by before Louisiana colonists learned that they were not French subjects. Voltaire expressed his regret over the loss of Louisiana. He could not understand how France could give up what he described as the most beautiful climate of the earth, from which one may have tobacco, silk, indigo, a thousand useful products.

Spain would not hold on to its possessions in Louisiana for very long. Under pressure from Napoleon Bonaparte, who envisioned Louisiana as the center of a great French-American empire, Spain returned Louisiana to France. However, when the troops he sent to Louisiana fell victim to tropical diseases and a slave revolt in Haiti, Napoleon became frustrated and abandoned his plans for North America. Earlier that same year, Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States had made a friendly proposal to the French. The United States wanted to purchase Nouvelle-Orléans and the territory to the north and east of the Mississippi. He offered France 2 million in compensation. France would retain the area west of the Mississippi, between Arkansas, the Mexican frontier and the sea and the Mississippi River would separate the territories of the U.S. and France. Jefferson’s envoy arrived in Paris on April 12th with this proposal, only to find out that Napoleon had a deal of his own: "Take it all or nothing."

Bonaparte was under pressure. He knew that if he refused Jefferson’s offer, he risked a conflict with the United States, who had been an ally, and risked losing the colony. If he accepted, he would be forced to protect an indefensible territory from a British fleet that was posed and ready to strike. Therefore, on April 10th, Bonaparte informed his ministers Barbé-Marbois, of the Treasury and Decrès of the Navy, that he intended to sell Louisiana to the United States. "Je connais tout le prix de la Louisiane et j'ai voulu réparer la faute du négociateur français qui l'a abandonnée. Quelques lignes d'un traité me l'ont rendue et à peine je l'ai recouvrée que je dois m'attendre à la perdre. Les Anglais n'auront pas le Mississipi qu'ils convoitent. Je songe à la céder aux Etats-Unis. Je considère la colonie comme perdue et il me semble que, dans les mains de cette puissance naissante, elle sera plus utile à la politique et même au commerce de la France que si je tentais de la garder ". (I am aware of real value of Louisiana, and have wanted to fix the mistake of the French negotiator who abandoned it. With a few lines of a treaty it has been returned it to me, but no sooner have I recovered it, than I must face losing it.The British will not get the Mississippi they covet. I am thinking about turning it over to the United States. I consider the colony as a loss, and it seems to me that it will be more useful to France politically and commercially in the hands of this growing power than if I tried to keep it.)

The U.S. gladly took it all. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the nation’s size, pushed back the frontier another 1,500 miles and secured the Mississippi as a commercial highway. For Napoleon, the sale of Louisiana permanently reaffirmed the power of the United States and created a formidable rival for his enemy Great Britain: "Cette accession de territoire affermit pour toujours la puissance des Etats Unis et je viens de donner à l'Angleterre une rivale maritime qui tôt ou tard abaissera son orgueil". (Access to this territory will make the United States forever powerful, and I have given England a maritime rival who sooner or later will defeat her pride.)

The Louisiana Creole Language

Contact among Louisiana's most numerous inhabitants - whites, Indians, and Africans - was a three-way exchange, without a dominant racial or ethnic group. In 1700, native Americans were the largest segment of the population. Africans were a powerful cultural force. During the French period, the proportion of African slaves to the European free population remained in equilibrium, with some regional differences. Unlike other French plantation colonies in the Americas, Louisiana plantations were relatively small and required less slave labor. Slaves worked alongside other social groups, such as the poorer whites, in plantations and artisan shops, so the lines of communication among communities remained relatively open. Also, since most Africans came to Louisiana from one region in West Africa, it was easier for them to relate to one another.

The Louisiana Creole Language originated in the late seventeenth century, when African slaves tried to communicate with Francophone settlers. It is classified as a contact language, i.e., a language that develops when communities that speak different languages attempt to communicate with each other. And, it is one of three French-based languages that co-exist with English in what is referred to as Acadiana or the Francophone Triangle, a region west and southwest of New Orleans that stretches to the Texas border.

The term creole comes from the Spanish criollo and the Portuguese crioulo, and both from the Latin criar– to bring up, nourish, or a servant born into one’s household. Originally, creole was used for the descendants of Europeans, who were born and raised in a European colony in America, such as the French colonies of Acadie, Louisiana, Nouvelle France (Canada). However, in Louisiana, only the descendants of the first French and Spanish settlers were considered Creoles. Today, the term Creole mainly applies to the mixed languages of these communities.

“According to conventional wisdom, as they tried to communicate with French speakers, the African slaves would be expected to retain French words, but use phonological and grammatical features from their languages. In fact, there is no overwhelming evidence of grammatical features transferred directly from African languages...This is not to say that LC bears no African influence, but that it does not manifest itself mainly as specific features but more broadly in speech rhythm and intonation, in ways of using language, such as extensive resorting to proverbs and verbal play.” (Source: Dictionary or Louisiana Creole).

Examples of Louisiana Creole (Source: Dictionary or Louisiana Creole)

A speaker of standard French would have some difficulty understanding Louisiana Creole. The words are similar, but the spelling, structure and grammar differ. For instance, unlike standard French, nouns have no gender, so articles and determiners do not need to change according to the gender of the noun they precede or qualify.

With twenty to thirty thousand speakers remaining and few of them monolingual, Louisiana Creole is one of the world's endangered languages. Louisiana Creole speakers may be found in the four areas highlighted in blue in the map below:

1. Bayou Teche region, particularly Saint Martinville, Breaux Bridge, Parks and Cecilia
2. New Roads in Pointe Coupee Parish, north of Baton Rouge
3. German Coast along the Mississippi (Saint James and Saint John parishes) between Baton Rouge and New Orleans
4. Bayou Lacombe and Bayou Liberty in Saint Tammany Parish north of New Orleans
    

"LC (Louisiana Creole) ranks with Louisiana French as an indigenous French-related form of speech still surviving in Louisiana. Unlike LF, in particular those varieties that share features with Acadian French from which it has inherited much of its grammar and vocabulary, LC has not benefited from language maintenance and revival efforts. As a result, it is much more endangered…Today; however, LC serves mainly as a symbol of identity for a community that has shifted to English." (Source: Dictionary of Louisiana Creole, Albert Valdman, Thomas A. Klinger, Margaret M. Marshall, Kevin J. Rottet - Indiana University Press

¹ The Spanish Hernando De Soto had discovered the Mississippi and crossed it 140 years earlier.

² The Duke of Orleans, was the nephew of King Louis XIV. He became Regent of France upon the monarch’s death, while Louis XV, heir to the throne, was still a minor.

References

Dictionary of Louisiana Creole, Albert Valdman, Thomas A. Klinger, Margaret M. Marshall, Kevin J. Rottet - Indiana University Press.
The American Past – A History of the United States form Concord to Hiroshima, 175-1945, by Roger Butterfield.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans%2C_LA
http://pointecoupee.creolewest.com/index.php?page=ehistory8
http://www.pctourism.org/
http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/history/hsty3080/3rdYr3080/Louisiana/lead-up_to_the_purchase.htm
http://flfa.free.fr/cession.htm
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/ildefens.htm
http://www.madere.com/history.html
http://gallica.bnf.fr/FranceAmerique/fr/D2/T2-2-3-b.htm
http://www.bartleby.com/65/pa/Paris-Tr.html
http://lsm.crt.state.la.us/cabildo/cab3.htm