Louisiana, also known as French Louisiana, was a district of New France. In 1682, the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle erected a cross near the mouth of the Mississippi River and claimed the whole of the drainage basin of the Mississippi River in the name of King Louis XIV, naming it "Louisiana". This land area stretched from near the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rocky Mountains. The area was under French control from 1682 to 1762 and in part from 1801 to 1803.
Louisiana included two regions, now known as Upper Louisiana (la Haute-Louisiane), which began north of the Arkansas River, and Lower Louisiana (la Basse-Louisiane). The U.S. state of Louisiana is named for the historical region, although it is only a small part of the vast lands claimed by France.
French exploration of the area began during the reign of Louis XIV, but the vast French Louisiana was not widely developed, due to a lack of human and financial resources. As a result of its defeat in the Seven Years' War, France was forced to cede the east part of the territory in 1763 to the victorious British, and the west part to Spain as compensation for Spain losing Florida. In the 1770s, France decided to aid revolution in Britain's North American colonies, east of the Mississippi, that became the United States. France regained sovereignty from Spain of the western territory in the secret Third Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1800. Napoleon Bonaparte made plans to further develop France's control but strained by operations in the Caribbean and Europe, he sold the territory to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, ending France's presence. Remnants of France's long tenure are still found, especially in New Orleans and along the Mississippi and its tributaries.
The United States ceded the part north of the 49th parallel to the United Kingdom in the Treaty of 1818. It is part of present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Boundaries, settlement and geography
In the 18th century, Louisiana included most of the Mississippi River basin (see drawing alongside) from what is now the Midwestern United States south to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Within this vast territory, only two areas saw substantial French settlement: Upper Louisiana (French: Haute-Louisiane), also known as the Illinois Country (French: Pays des Illinois), which consisted of settlements in what are now the states of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana; and Lower Louisiana, which comprised parts of the modern states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama. Both areas were dominated numerically by Native American tribes. At times, fewer than two hundred French soldiers were assigned to all of the colony, on both sides of the Mississippi. In the mid-1720s, Louisiana Indians numbered well over 35,000, forming a clear majority of the colony's population.
Generally speaking, the French colony of Louisiana bordered the Great Lakes, particularly Lake Michigan and Lake Erie towards the north; this region was the "Upper Country" of the French province of Canada. To the east was territory disputed with the thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard; the French claim extended to the Appalachian Mountains. The Rocky Mountains marked the western extent of the French claim, while Louisiana's southern border was the Gulf of Mexico.
The general flatness of the land aided movement through the territory; its average elevation is less than 1,000 metres (3,300 ft). The topography becomes more mountainous towards the west, with the notable exception of the Ozark Mountains, which are located in the mid-south.
Lower Louisiana (Basse-Louisiane)
Lower Louisiana consisted of lands in the Lower Mississippi River watershed, including settlements in what are now the U.S. states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The French first explored it in the 1660s, and a few trading posts were established in the following years; serious attempt at settlement began with the establishment of Arkansas Post at the confluence of the Arkansas River and Mississippi River in 1686. A more ambitious attempt was made at Fort Maurepas, near modern Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1699. A colonial government soon emerged, with its capital originally at Mobile, later at Biloxi and finally at New Orleans (in 1722, four years after the city's founding). The government was led by a governor-general, and Louisiana became an increasingly important colony in the early 18th century.
The earliest settlers of Upper Louisiana mostly came from French Canada, while Lower Louisiana was colonized by people from all over the French colonial empire, with various waves coming from Canada, France, and the French West Indies.
Upper Louisiana (Haute-Louisiane)
Upper Louisiana, also known as the Illinois Country, was the French territory in the upper Mississippi River Valley, including settlements and fortifications in what are now the states of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. French exploration of the area began with the 1673 expedition of Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette, which charted the upper Mississippi. As noted above, Upper Louisiana was primarily settled by colonists from French Canada. There was further substantial intermarriage and integration with the local Illinois peoples. French settlers were attracted by the availability of arable farmland as well as by the forests, abundant with animals suitable for hunting and trapping.
Between 1699 and 1760, six major settlements were established in Upper Louisiana: Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Fort de Chartres, Saint Philippe, and Prairie du Rocher, all on the east side of the Mississippi River in present-day Illinois; and Ste. Genevieve across the river in today's Missouri. The region was initially governed as part of Canada, but was declared to be part of Louisiana in 1712, with the grant of the Louisiana country to Antoine Crozat. By the 1720s a formal government infrastructure had formed; leaders of the towns reported to the commandant of Fort de Chartres, who in turn reported to the governor-general of Louisiana in New Orleans.
The geographical limits of Upper Louisiana were never precisely defined, but the term gradually came to describe the country southwest of the Great Lakes. A royal ordinance of 1722 may have featured the broadest definition of the region: all land claimed by France south of the Great Lakes and north of the mouth of the Ohio River, including both banks of the Mississippi as well as the lower Missouri Valley.
A generation later, trade conflicts between Canada and Louisiana led to a defined boundary between the French colonies; in 1745, Louisiana governor general Vaudreuil set the northeastern bounds of his domain as the Wabash valley up to the mouth of the Vermilion River (near present-day Danville, Illinois); from there, northwest to le Rocher on the Illinois River, and from there west to the mouth of the Rock River (at present-day Rock Island, Illinois). Thus, Vincennes and Peoria were the limit of Louisiana's reach. The outposts at Ouiatenon (on the upper Wabash near present-day Lafayette, Indiana), Fort Miamis (near present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana), and Prairie du Chien operated as dependencies of Canada.
This boundary remained in effect through the capitulation of French forces in Canada in 1760 until the Treaty of Paris in 1763, after which France surrendered its remaining territory east of the Mississippi to Great Britain. (Although British forces had occupied the "Canadian" posts in the Illinois and Wabash countries in 1761, they did not occupy Vincennes or the Mississippi River settlements at Cahokia and Kaskaskia until 1764, after the peace treaty was ratified.) As part of a general report on conditions in the newly conquered Province of Canada, Gen. Thomas Gage (then commandant at Montreal) explained in 1762 that, although the boundary between Louisiana and Canada was not exact, it was understood that the upper Mississippi (above the mouth of the Illinois) was in Canadian trading territory.
Following the transfer of power (at which time many of the French settlers on the east bank of the Mississippi crossed the river to what had become Spanish Louisiana) the eastern Illinois Country became part of the British Province of Quebec, and later the United States' Northwest Territory. French colonists who migrated after they lost control over New France founded outposts such as the important settlement of St. Louis (1764). This became a French fur-trading center, connected to trading posts on the Missouri and Upper Mississippi rivers, leading to later French settlement in that area.
In the 1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau, France ceded Louisiana west of the Mississippi River to Spain, its ally in the war, as compensation for the loss of Spanish Florida to Britain. Even after France had lost its claim to Louisiana, francophone settlement of Upper Louisiana continued for the next four decades. French explorers and frontiersmen, such as Pedro Vial, were often employed as guides and interpreters by the Spanish and later by the Americans. The Spanish lieutenant governors at St. Louis maintained the traditional "Illinois Country" nomenclature, using titles such as "commander in chief of the western part and districts of Illinois" and administrators commonly referred to their district capital St. Louis "of the Ylinuses".
In 1800 Spain returned its part of Louisiana to France in the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, but France sold it to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Through this time, but especially following the Louisiana Purchase, French Creoles, as they called themselves, began to move further into the Missouri Ozarks, where they formed mining communities such as Mine à Breton and La Vieille Mine (Old Mines).
A unique dialect, known as Missouri French, developed in Upper Louisiana. It is distinguished from both Louisiana French and the various forms of Canadian French, such as Acadian. The dialect continued to be spoken around the Midwest, particularly in Missouri, through the 20th century. It is nearly extinct today, with only a few elderly speakers still able to use it.
History
Exploration of Louisiana
17th-century explorers
In 1660, France started a policy of expansion into the interior of North America from what is now eastern Canada. The objectives were to locate a Northwest Passage to China; to exploit the territory's natural resources, such as fur and mineral ores; and to convert the native population to Catholicism. Fur traders began exploring the pays d'en haut (upper country around the Great Lakes) at the time. In 1659, Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers reached the western end of Lake Superior. Priests founded missions, such as the Mission of Sault Sainte Marie in 1668. On May 17, 1673, Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette began the exploration of the Mississippi River, which they called the Sioux Tongo (the large river) or Michissipi. They reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, and then returned upstream, having learned that the great river ran toward the Gulf of Mexico, not toward the Pacific Ocean as they had presumed. In 1675, Marquette founded a mission in the Native American village of Kaskaskias on the Illinois River. A permanent settlement was made by 1690.
In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle and the Italian Henri de Tonti descended to the Mississippi River Delta. They left Fort Crèvecoeur on the Illinois River, accompanied by 23 Frenchmen and 18 Indians. They built Fort Prud'homme (later the city of Memphis) and claimed French sovereignty on the whole of the valley, which they called Louisiane in honor of the French king, Louis XIV. They sealed alliances with the Quapaw Indians. In April 1682, they arrived at the mouth of the Mississippi. La Salle eventually returned to Versailles, where he convinced the Minister of the Marine to grant the command of Louisiana to him. He claimed that Louisiana was close to New Spain by drawing a map showing the Mississippi as much farther west than it really was, which seems to have been an honest mistake given that he would later search for the river further to the west of its actual location.
With four ships and 320 emigrants, La Salle set sail for Louisiana on 1 August 1684. La Salle did not find the river's mouth in the Mississippi River Delta and established a short-lived colony on the Texas coast. La Salle was assassinated in 1687 by members of his party, reportedly near what is now Navasota, Texas.
Summary chronology
1673: The Frenchmen Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette begin to explore the Mississippi River from the north and determine that it must run into the Gulf of Mexico on the south.
1675: Marquette founds a mission at the Grand Village of the Illinois.
1680: Fort Crevecoeur founded in the Illinois Country
1682: René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, descends the Mississippi to its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico.
1682: Fort St. Louis du Rocher on the Illinois River is founded
1685–88: La Salle attempts to establish a colony on the Gulf of Mexico to secure the entire river valley for France. He establishes a camp at Fort Saint Louis; but his mission fails, in part because he fails to rediscover the Mississippi's mouth.
1686: Henri de Tonti establishes Arkansas Post, a trading post at the site of a Quapaw Indian village, near where the Arkansas River meets the Mississippi.
1696: Cahokia village in Illinois Country is settled.
1699: Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville explores the Louisiana coast and founds Fort Maurepas at Old Biloxi (now in Mississippi) on the Gulf of Mexico.
1701: Antoine Laumet de La Mothe founds Detroit.
1702: In January, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville founds Mobile (now in Alabama) as the capital of Louisiana for his brother Iberville.
1703: Kaskaskia village in Illinois Country is settled
1713: Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont publishes the first report on explorations of the Missouri River.
1714: Louis Juchereau de St. Denis founds Natchitoches, the oldest permanent settlement in what is now the State of Louisiana.
1716: Fort Rosalie is established on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River; the settlement became the town of Natchez.
1717: Illinois Country is detached from Canada to be governed by Louisiana (Haute-Louisiane).
1718: New Orleans is founded, at a crescent in the river, for protection against flooding.
1719: The first ships bringing black slaves from Africa arrive at Mobile, Alabama.
1720: Biloxi (in the future state of Mississippi) becomes capital of French Louisiana.
1720: Fort de Chartres is established as the administrative center of the Illinois Country.
1720: Pawnees destroy the Spanish Villasur expedition near Columbus, Nebraska, effectively ending Spanish incursions into the territory until 1763.
1723: New Orleans becomes the official capital of French Louisiana.
1723: Fort Orleans is established near Brunswick, Missouri.
1732: Vincennes is established on the Wabash River in the Illinois Country (Upper Louisiana).
1735: Sainte-Geneviève in the Illinois Country (Upper Louisiana) is founded.
1755: British authorities begin expelling French settlers from the former colony of Acadia (now Nova Scotia); many migrate to the southernmost parts of Louisiana, where they become the Cajuns.
1762: France secretly cedes Louisiana to Spain in the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762).
1763: France cedes Canada and Louisiana east of the Mississippi to Great Britain in the Treaty of Paris. The rest of Louisiana, including New Orleans, is formally ceded to Spain and incorporated as Luisiana or Spanish Louisiana into the Spanish Empire.
1764: Pierre Laclède founds St. Louis, Missouri.
1764: The terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau are revealed.
1768: In the Rebellion of 1768, Creole and German settlers force the new Spanish governor to flee.
1769: Spain quells the rebellion, executes the leaders and officially takes possession, imposing Spanish law.