Swathed in the
romance of pirates, voodoo and Mardi Gras,
LOUISIANA is undeniably special. Its
history is barely on nodding terms with the
view that America was the creation of the
Pilgrim Fathers; its way of life is proudly
set apart. This is the land of the rural,
French-speaking Cajuns (descended from
the Acadians, eighteenth-century
French-Canadian refugees), who live in the
prairies and swamps in the southwest of the
state, and the Creoles of jazzy, sassy
New Orleans. (The term Creole covers
those born in the state to French and Spanish
colonists – famed in the nineteenth century
for their masked balls, family feuds and duels
– as well as native-born, French-speaking
slaves.) Southern Louisiana’s spicy
home-cooked food, regular festivals
and lilting French-based dialect – and above
all its music (jazz, R&B,
Cajun and its bluesy black counterpart,
zydeco) – draw from all these cultures.
North Louisiana – Protestant Bible Belt
country, where old plantation homes stand
decaying in vast cotton fields – feels more
“Southern” than the marshy bayous, shaded by
ancient cypress trees and laced with wispy
trails of Spanish moss, of the Catholic south.
The French first
settled Louisiana in 1682, braving swamps and plagues to
harvest the abundant cypress, but the state was sparsely
inhabited before its first permanent settlement, the trading
post of Natchitoches, was established in 1714. In 1760,
Louis XV secretly handed New Orleans, along with all French
territory west of the Mississippi, to his Spanish
cousin, Charles III, as a safeguard against the British.
Louisiana remained Spanish until it was ceded to Napoleon in
1801, under the proviso that it should never change hands
again. Just two years later, however, Napoleon, strapped for
cash to fund his battles with the British in Europe, struck a
bargain with president Thomas Jefferson known as the
Louisiana Purchase. This sneaky agreement handed over to
the US all French lands between Canada and Mexico, from the
Mississippi to the Rockies, for a total cost of $15 million.
The subsequent “Americanization” of Louisiana was one of the
most momentous periods in the state’s history, with the port
of New Orleans, in its key position near the mouth of the
Mississippi River growing to become one of the nation’s
wealthiest cities. Though the state seceded from the Union to
join the Confederacy in 1861, there were important differences
between Louisiana and the rest of the slave-driven South.
Here, slavery was more in the West Indian mold than the
Anglo-American. The Black Code, drawn up by the French
in 1685 to govern Saint-Domingue (today’s Haiti) and
established in Louisiana in 1724, gave slaves rights
unparalleled elsewhere, including permission to marry, meet
socially and take Sundays off. The black population of New
Orleans in particular was renowned as exceptionally literate
and cosmopolitan.
Though Louisiana was not
physically scarred by the Civil War, with few important
battles fought on its soil, its economy was given a death
blow. In time it recovered, benefiting from the rich
agricultural land, the mighty Mississippi River and offshore
oil. These days, though, the state has become dependent upon
tourism, centered around New Orleans and Cajun country.
Still, despite all its difficulties, and against all odds,
Louisiana remains a unique and intriguing place – upbeat,
laid-back, and never less than compelling.
Click here to go to Louisiana
State web site. |
