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 was originally used to define anyone born in the
state to French or Spanish colonists - famed in the nineteenth
century for their masked balls, family feuds and duels - as well
as native-born, French-speaking slaves, but has since come to
define anyone or anything native to Louisiana, and in particular
its black population.) 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. Oddly enough, north Louisiana
- Protestant Bible Belt country, where old plantation homes stand
decaying in vast cottonfields - feels more "Southern"
than the marshy bayous, shaded by ancient cypress trees and laced
with wispy trails of Spanish moss, of the Catholic south of the
state.
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. The Black Code , drawn up by the French in 1685 to govern
Saint-Domingue (today's Haiti) and established in Louisiana
in 1724, had given 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 ravaged, and its social structures
all but destroyed. The Reconstruction era, too, hit particularly
hard here, with the once great city of New Orleans suffering
a period of unprecedented lawlessness and racial violence. In
time the economy, at least, recovered, benefiting from the key
importance of the mighty Mississippi River and the discovery
of offshore oil, but over the last century Louisiana has come
to rely more and more heavily upon tourism , centered around
New Orleans and Cajun country. And it's not hard to see why:
whether canoeing along a moss-tangled bayou, dining in a crumbling
Creole cottage on spicy, buttery crawfish, or dancing on a steamy
starlit night to the best live music in the world, few visitors
fail to fall in love with Louisiana.
THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA