Thursday, May 7, 2009
Happy 291st Birthday, New Orleans
Posted by Noah Bonaparte Pais on Thu, May 7, 2009 at 3:20 PM
Sazeracs and gumbo parties all around:
La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) was founded May 7, 1718, by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of France at the time. ... The site was selected because it was a rare bit of natural high ground along the flood-prone banks of the lower Mississippi, and was adjacent to the trading route and portage between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain via Bayou St. John. It was, from this founding, intended to be an important colonial city. The city was named in honor of the then Regent of France, Philip II, Duke of Orléans. The priest-chronicler Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix described it 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 1722 Nouvelle-Orléans was made the capital of French Louisiana, replacing Biloxi in that role.
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As far as historical descriptions go, most locals prefer this Lafcadio Hearn passage from 1879. Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.
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Posted by
jeffrey
on May 7, 2009 at 11:24 AM
