Zimagal Monthly Magazine - Volume One, Issue Nine

Early History of New Orleans

If it weren't for the Sea Wall, New Orleans would be nothing but swamps; homes floundering on the muck that is the terrain of Southern Louisiana. This dynamic city and port has risen above its climatic perils: annual hurricanes, constant floods, and until the beginning of this century, the thriving yellow-fever-bearing mosquito - the city's plague. If not for modern engineering techniques, the Mississippi (Indian word for "Father of Waters") would shift course, leaving the city stranded.

Before its founding in 1718, the only inhabitants were seminomadic Indians. Every time it flooded, they would gather their remaining possessions, and move deeper into the swamps. In 1682, French explorer Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, came down the Mississippi from Illinois to claim this land for Louis XIV, hence the name Louisiana.

In the early 1700s, the inhabitants of the area struggled, but nobody gave up; even a few Canadian families arrived by way of the river. The French government sent necessary staples: livestock, tools, and marriageable girls. Despite these attempts, the precarious situation of these new residents grew worse. Due to the war against England, and because of the excesses of Louis XIV, the royal treasury was depleted.

The French influence was insured not only by the existing French residents but by John Law, a Scottish gambler. His arrival in Paris, with his fortune won at the gambling tables, attracted the Duke of Orleans, with a plan of making the new nation solvent. His idea was to organize a banking company that would sell stock against the anticipated proceeds of the development of Louisiana. Due to false publicity extolling the ‘riches’ of the Louisiana shores, the French investors clamored to invest in his Company of the West (later called Company of the Indies.)

In order to populate this new colony of France, the King’s agents "cleaned house" - they emptied the jails, rounded up homeless people, children and unguarded girls. The passage was dangerous and they were greeted by knee high muck, mosquitoes and the all too common alligators and snakes.

The Company of the Indies, in 1718, instructed the sieur de Bienville, in charge since 1700, to select a site for the new city. The choice was made due to its center of a striking crescent-shaped bend in the river, a strategic point where river traffic could be monitored - if and when there was any. Unwilling work crews consisting of slaves, eighty convicted French smugglers, and a few trained carpenters set about creating the city. Once a city plan was devised, engineers laid out the streets in what was to become a neat sixty-six square grid. Today, the French Quarter, or Vieux Carre, has one of the oldest still-functioning street plans in North America. On the instruction of John Law, the city was named for the Duke of Orleans and the streets were given royal names. In addition to Bourbon, Royal, and St. Louis, there were Burgundy (for the Duke of Burgundy, father of Louis XV), Dumaine, and Toulouse, the titles of two of Louis XIV’s illegitimate sons.

It was felt that Louisiana needed more ambitious and strongly motivated settlers, so a few younger sons of established French families were encouraged to bring modest sums of capital to the colony to start plantations. Since the climate was considered to be too debilitating for the physical efforts for whites, slave-importing became vigorous. In addition, a group of young women were sent. They were guaranteed respectable, complete with trousseaux. They were known as "Filles de la cassette" because they carried their belongings in cassettes, or caskets. The Capuchins and the Jesuits each sent a chapter and the Ursuline sisters sent a shipload of nuns.

Eventually,the Company of the Indies gave up on New Orleans and the French government took over its administration. and gave what is nowadays known as emergency relief.

In 1763, at the end of the Seven Years War the Bourbon King of France, Louis XV, with his first cousin, the Bourbon Charles III of Spain, arranged by secret treaty to deed the colony of Louisiana to Spain. This rid France of a failing investment, while increasing Spain's access to Mexican and Floridian holdings, blocking it from England’s potential rule.

In March 1788, on Good Friday, a fire started due to candles left unattended on a private altar. The usual fire alarm was the ringing of the church bells, but, so the story goes, the priests were shocked at the idea of ringing bells on Good Friday and by the time they finally did so, the fire wiped out nearly 900 of the town's 1,100 buildings. Again, six years later, another fire decimated most of the town. All that remained was the Ursuline convent. In the 1790s the St. Louis Cathedral was financed by Don Andres Almonester y Roxas. In that same decade, Governor Carondelet oversaw the construction of a canal, which connected Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi via Bayou St. John.

In 1806, Congress outlawed the importation of slaves into the United States, but there remained a healthy piracy assisted by the boundless swamps. Native born slaves were more desirable than "fresh" Africans, who were not easy to train and manage. Virginia slaves, regarded as well trained and intelligent, brought the highest prices. New Orleans became the biggest slave market in the South.

By the end of the century, Americans began inhabiting New Orleans. Though the French traded with them, they were disgusted by the newcomers lack of refinement. The joy experienced by the French population when, in 1802, it became known that Spain was voluntarily handing over the colony to the Napoleonic regime in France turned into major shock only a few months later, in 1803 when the French emperor sold Louisiana to the Americans. The Louisiana Purchase would leave New Orleans an American city in geography, but a menagerie of human history, culture, cuisine, architecture and language.

Some Classic Scenes
in New Orleans.

Riverboat.

An example of one of many types of architecture.

Typical street scene

Above ground graves in New Orleans.

Yet more above ground burials.

Still more!

Bourbon Street, anyone?

Bourbon Street walking, anyone?