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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 lie 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 laid
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 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 Louisiana Purchase territory. The
French settlement had two purposes; to establish trade with
the Spanish in Texas, and at the same time, 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 Natchitoches. 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 Saint Louis, Missouri.
Initially Mobile, Alabama and Biloxi, Mississippi functioned
as the capital of the colony; recognizing the importance of
the Mississippi River to trade and military interests, France
made New Orleans the seat of civilian and military authority
in 1722. From then until the Louisiana Purchase made the
region part of the United States on December 20, 1803, France
and Spain would trade control of the region's colonial empire.
Most of the territory to the east of the Mississippi was lost
to 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 colony of Spain
by the Treaty of Fontainebleau of 1762.
Although Spain presided over Louisiana for about the same
amount of time as France, Spain held the territory during its
later, more rapid development. Still, French immigration and
cultural influences had a lasting effect. During the period of
Spanish rule, several thousand French-speaking refugees from
the region of Acadia made their way to Louisiana following
British expulsion; settling largely in the southwestern
Louisiana, the Acadian refugees were welcomed by the Spanish,
and descendants came to be called Cajuns.
In 1800, France's Napoleon Bonaparte acquired Louisiana from
Spain in the Treaty of San Ildefonso, an arrangement kept
secret for some two years.
Then in 1803, Bonaparte sold the territory to the United
States, as the Louisiana Purchase, 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 Spanish West Florida 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.
From its time as a possession of France, Louisiana retains a
civil law legal system, based on the Louisiana Civil Code,
which is similar to the Napoleonic Code (like France, and
unlike the rest of the United States, which uses a common law
legal system derived from England). Also derived from French
governance is the use of the term "parishes" in place of
"counties" for the subdivisions of government.
In 1849 the state moved the capital from New Orleans to Baton
Rouge.
Louisiana was a slave state until the end of the Civil War.
In the American Civil War, Louisiana seceded from the Union on
January 26, 1861. 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. |
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