page_title: History of New Orleans
section_title: Colonial era
hierarchical_section_title: History of New Orleans / Colonial era
caption_attribution_description: "Veüe et Perspective de la Nouvelle Orleans" (View &amp; Perspective of New Orleans), 1726. Ink and watercolor by Jean-Pierre Lassus. View shows the young city of New Orleans from across the Mississippi River at Algiers Point. In the foreground, slaves labor on the West Bank (then a Company of the Indies plantation) downing trees. To right of center, a man spears an alligator. Small boats are on the Mississippi, with larger sailing ships across the River at the town. Trees are shown cleared only a short distance beyond the town limits. The road to Bayou St. John seen towards top center of view. This is said to be the only known contemporary view of the city from the first French Colonial era, before Louisiana was transfered to Spain in 1763.
context_page_description: The history of New Orleans, Louisiana, traces the city's development from its founding by the French, through its period under Spanish control, then briefly back to French rule before being acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. In the 19th century, New Orleans was the largest port in the South, exporting most of the nation's cotton output and other products to Western Europe and New England. It was the largest and most important city in the South; thus it was an early target for capture by the Union during the Civil War. With its rich and unique cultural and architectural heritage, it remains a major destination for tourism, conventions, and major sports events, even after the major destruction and loss of life resulting from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
context_section_description: The land mass that was to become the city of New Orleans was formed around 2200 BC when the Mississippi River deposited silt creating the delta region. Before Europeans founded the settlement, the area was inhabited by Native Americans for about 1300 years. The Mississippian culture peoples built mounds and earthworks in the area. Later Native Americans created a portage between the headwaters of Bayou St. John (known to the natives as Bayouk Choupique) and the Mississippi River. The bayou flowed into Lake Pontchartrain.  This became an important trade route. Archaeological evidence has shown settlement here dated back to at least 400 A.D.
  French explorers, fur trappers and traders arrived in the area by the 1690s, some making settlements amid the Native American village of thatched huts along the Bayou. By the end of the decade, the French made an encampment called "Port Bayou St. Jean" near the head of the bayou; this would later be known as the Faubourg St. John neighborhood. The French also built a small fort, "St. Jean" (known to later generations of New Orleanians as "Old Spanish Fort") at the mouth of the bayou in 1701, using as a base a large Native American shell midden dating back to the Marksville culture.  In 1708, land grants along the Bayou were given to French settlers from Mobile, but the majority left within the next two years due to the failure of attempts to grow wheat there.  These early European settlements are now within the limits of the city of New Orleans, though predating the city's official  founding.
  New Orleans was founded in early 1718 by the French as La Nouvelle-Orléans, under the direction of Louisiana governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville.  After considering several alternatives, Bienville selected the site for several strategic reasons and practical considerations, including: it was relatively high ground, along a sharp bend of the flood-prone Mississippi River, which thus created a natural levee (previously chosen as the site of an abandoned Quinipissa village); it was adjacent to the trading route and portage between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain via Bayou St. John, offering access to the Gulf of Mexico port of Biloxi without going downriver 100 miles; and it offered control of the entire Mississippi River Valley, at a safe distance from Spanish and English colonial settlements.
  From its founding, the French intended New Orleans to be an important colonial city. The city was named in honor of the then Regent of France, Philip II, Duke of Orléans. The regent allowed Scottish economist John Law to create a private bank and a financing scheme that succeeded in increasing the colonial population of New Orleans and other areas of Louisiana. The scheme, however, created an investment bubble that burst at the end of 1720. Law's Mississippi Company collapsed, stopping the flow of investment money to New Orleans. Nonetheless, in 1722, New Orleans was made the capital of French Louisiana, replacing Biloxi in that role.
  The priest-chronicler Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix described New Orleans in 1721 as a place of a hundred wretched hovels in a malarious wet thicket of willows and dwarf palmettos, infested by serpents and alligators; he seems to have been the first, however, to predict for it an imperial future.
  In September 1722, a hurricane struck the city, blowing most of the structures down. After this, the administrators enforced the grid pattern dictated by Bienville but hitherto previously mostly ignored by the colonists.  This grid plan is still seen today in the streets of the city's "French Quarter" (see map).
  Much of the colonial population in early days was of the wildest and, in part, of the most undesirable character: deported galley slaves, trappers, gold-hunters; the colonial governors' letters were full of complaints regarding the riffraff sent as soldiers as late as Kerlerec's administration (1753–1763).
  Two large lakes (in reality estuaries) in the vicinity, Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas, commemorate respectively Louis Phelypeaux, Count Pontchartr
caption: 1726 view of the young city of New Orleans from across the Mississippi River.
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