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103-558: They included several distinct bands. They spoke the Atakapa language , which was a linguistic isolate . After 1762, when Louisiana was transferred to Spain following French defeat in the Seven Years' War , little was written about the Atakapa as a people. Due to a high rate of deaths from infectious epidemics of the late 18th century, they ceased to function as a people. Survivors generally joined

206-656: A slave rebellion that started during the French Revolution of Saint-Domingue in 1791. Over the next decade, thousands of refugees landed in Louisiana from the island, including Europeans, Creoles, and Africans, some of the latter brought in by each free group. They greatly increased the French-speaking population in New Orleans and Louisiana, as well as the number of Africans, and the slaves reinforced African culture in

309-606: A Spanish expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez located the mouth of the Mississippi River. In 1542, Hernando de Soto 's expedition skirted to the north and west of the state (encountering Caddo and Tunica groups) and then followed the Mississippi River down to the Gulf of Mexico in 1543. Spanish interest in Louisiana faded away for a century and a half. In the late 17th century, French and French Canadian expeditions, which included sovereign, religious and commercial aims, established

412-478: A Tunican language family that would include Atakapa, Tunica , and Chitimacha . Mary Haas later expanded this into the Gulf language family with the addition of the Muskogean languages . As of 2001, linguists generally do not consider these proposed families as proven. Atakapa oral history says that they originated from the sea. An ancestral prophet laid out the rules of conduct. The first European contact with

515-616: A corrupted form of the local chief Nementou. "Plaquemine," as in Bayou Plaquemine Brûlée and Plaquemines Parish , is derived from the Atakapa word pikamin , meaning ' persimmon '. Bayou Nezpiqué was named for an Atakapan who had a tattooed nose. Bayou Queue de Tortue was believed to have been named for Chief Celestine La Tortue of the Atakapas nation. The name Calcasieu comes through French from an Atakapa name, Katkōsh Yōk ('Crying Eagle'). The city of Lafayette, Louisiana ,

618-402: A farm; consequently, we are very careful never to frighten them. When they stay on a prairie or in a forest, we camp near them in order to accustom them to seeing us, and we follow all their wanderings so that they cannot get away from us. We use their meat for food and their skins for clothing. I have been living with these people for about eleven years; I am happy and satisfied here, and have not

721-543: A foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. With its first settlements, France laid claim to a vast region of North America and set out to establish a commercial empire and French nation stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. In 1682, the French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle named the region Louisiana to honor King Louis XIV of France. The first permanent settlement, Fort Maurepas (now Ocean Springs, Mississippi ),

824-544: A growing town. This became a pattern repeated in New Orleans and other places, although the commodity crop in the south was primarily sugar cane. Louisiana's French settlements contributed to further exploration and outposts, concentrated along the banks of the Mississippi and its major tributaries, from Louisiana to as far north as the region called the Illinois Country , around present-day St. Louis, Missouri . The latter

927-434: A horse [for curing her]"). With occasional exceptions, adjectives follow the nouns they describe. Adverbs follow nouns and adjectives, but precede verbs. Atakapa marks only the locative case . The language has four locative suffixes, in addition to a series of locative postpositions. These suffixes and postpositions may be placed after nouns, adjectives, and demonstratives. Swanton (1919) asserts that noun incorporation

1030-514: A long time past we have heard of no such barbarity among them. Louis LeClerc Milfort, a Frenchman who spent 20 years living with and traveling among the Muscogee (Creek), came upon the Atakapa in 1781 during his travels. He wrote: The forest we were then in was thick enough so that none of my men could be seen. I formed them into three detachments, and arranged them in such a way as to surround these savages, and to leave them no way of retreat except by

1133-531: A rather specific order. Person marking is one of the only instances of fusion within the language, fusing both person and number. Nouns have only a handful of suffixes and usually take only one suffix at a time. The language is largely head-marking ; however, reduplication of an adjectival stem tends to show dependent-marking , as it often expresses the plurality of the noun it describes. Object pronouns are prefixed to verbs, while subject pronouns are suffixed. There are independent forms of each pronoun as well: in

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1236-505: A rich southern biota , including birds such as ibises and egrets , many species of tree frogs —such as the state-recognized American green tree frog —and fish such as sturgeon and paddlefish . More elevated areas, particularly in the north, contain a wide variety of ecosystems such as tallgrass prairie , longleaf pine forest and wet savannas ; these support an exceptionally large number of plant species, including many species of terrestrial orchids and carnivorous plants . Over half

1339-610: A small vocabulary from captive speakers in Galveston Bay . John Swanton argued that the Béranger vocabulary represented the Akokisa language, spoken by a people who lived somewhat inland from Galveston Bay. There is little evidence to support his assertion. Atakapa has five vowels as presented in Swadesh (1946). Vowel length is contrastive in Atakapa. According to Swadesh (1946), Atakapa has

1442-599: A special envoy to Napoleon, to assist in obtaining New Orleans for the United States. Jefferson also raised the authorized expenditure to $ 10   million. However, on April 11, 1803, French foreign minister Talleyrand surprised Livingston by asking how much the United States was prepared to pay for the entirety of Louisiana, not just New Orleans and the surrounding area (as Livingston's instructions covered). Monroe agreed with Livingston that Napoleon might withdraw this offer at any time (leaving them with no ability to obtain

1545-518: A war or the loss of a single American life, and set a precedent for the purchase of territory. It opened the way for the eventual expansion of the United States across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. Shortly after the United States took possession, the area was divided into two territories along the 33rd parallel north on March 26, 1804, thereby organizing the Territory of Orleans to the south and

1648-624: Is a Latin suffix that can refer to "information relating to a particular individual, subject, or place." Thus, roughly, Louis + ana carries the idea of "related to Louis." Once part of the French colonial empire , the Louisiana Territory stretched from present-day Mobile Bay to just north of the present-day Canada–United States border , including a small part of what are now the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan . The area of Louisiana

1751-400: Is a productive process in Atakapa. Atakapa exhibits strict subject-object-verb word order. While verbs are typically found in sentence-final position, it is common for adjuncts , or even subordinate clauses , to follow the verb of the principal clause . The suffixes -ne and -n are used to indicate the subordination of a clause to the main clause, as in tsanuk micat penene ("she gave

1854-403: Is believed that most Western Atakapa tribes or subdivisions were decimated by the 1850s, mainly from infectious disease and poverty. In 1908, nine known Atakapa descendants were identified. Armojean Reon (ca. 1873–1925) of Lake Charles, Louisiana , was noted as a fluent Atakapa speaker. In the 1920s, ethnologists Albert Gatshet and John Swanton studied the language and published A Dictionary of

1957-534: Is estimated to have had a population of more than 20,000. The Plaquemine culture is considered ancestral to the historic Natchez and Taensa peoples, whose descendants encountered Europeans in the colonial era. By 1000 in the northwestern part of the state, the Fourche Maline culture had evolved into the Caddoan Mississippian culture. The Caddoan Mississippians occupied a large territory, including what

2060-683: Is known from a French-Atakapa glossary with 287 entries, compiled in 1802 by Martin Duralde. The speakers interviewed by Duralde lived in the easternmost part of Atakapa territory, around Poste des Attakapas (now Saint Martinville ). Western Atakapa is the better-attested of the two varieties. In 1885, Albert Gatschet collected words, sentences, and texts from two native Atakapa speakers, Louison Huntington and Delilah Moss at Lake Charles, Louisiana . John R. Swanton worked with another two speakers near Lake Charles: Teet Verdine in 1907, and Armojean Reon in 1908. Additionally, in 1721, Jean Béranger collected

2163-967: Is now eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, northeast Texas , and northwest Louisiana. Archaeological evidence has demonstrated that the cultural continuity is unbroken from prehistory to the present. The Caddo and related Caddo-language speakers in prehistoric times and at first European contact were the direct ancestors of the modern Caddo Nation of Oklahoma of today. Significant Caddoan Mississippian archaeological sites in Louisiana include Belcher Mound Site in Caddo Parish and Gahagan Mounds Site in Red River Parish. Many current place names in Louisiana, including Atchafalaya , Natchitouches (now spelled Natchitoches ), Caddo, Houma , Tangipahoa , and Avoyel (as Avoyelles ), are transliterations of those used in various Native American languages. The first European explorers to visit Louisiana came in 1528 when

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2266-554: Is planning a series of trails, funded by the Federal Highway Administration , to be called the "Atakapa–Ishak Trail". It will consist of a bike trail connecting downtown areas along the bayous Vermilion and Teche, which are now accessible only by foot or boat. Atakapa language Atakapa ( / ə ˈ t æ k ə p ə , - p ɑː / , natively Yukhiti ) is an extinct language isolate native to southwestern Louisiana and nearby coastal eastern Texas . It

2369-595: Is present in Atakapa, but he provides no examples of this. Three demonstratives serve as deictics in Atakapa: Louisiana Louisiana (French: Louisiane [lwizjan] ; Spanish: Luisiana [lwiˈsjana] ; Louisiana Creole : Lwizyàn ) is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States . It borders Texas to the west, Arkansas to

2472-544: Is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political complexity. Many Coles Creek sites were erected over earlier Woodland period mortuary mounds. Scholars have speculated that emerging elites were symbolically and physically appropriating dead ancestors to emphasize and project their own authority. The Mississippian period in Louisiana was when the Plaquemine and the Caddoan Mississippian cultures developed, and

2575-455: Is the case, argues Swadesh, then words containing final /n/ must have arrived in a later period. Consonant clusters consisting of a stop followed by a sibilant — themselves arising from vowel epenthesis — are generally contracted to /c/. For example, kec-k ("liver") arose from * keks , which arose from epenthesis and final-vowel deletion processes in *kekesi , which itself is the reduplicated form of * kesi . However, there are words in which

2678-571: Is the place of origin of the Mound Builders culture during the Middle Archaic period , in the 4th millennium BC . The sites of Caney and Frenchman's Bend have been securely dated to 5600–5000 BP (about 3700–3100 BC), demonstrating that seasonal hunter-gatherers from around this time organized to build complex earthwork constructions in what is now northern Louisiana. The Watson Brake site near present-day Monroe has an eleven-mound complex; it

2781-516: Is the state's capital, and New Orleans , a French Louisiana region, is its largest city with a population of about 383,000 people. Louisiana has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the south; a large part of its eastern boundary is demarcated by the Mississippi River . Much of Louisiana's lands were formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh and swamp . These contain

2884-646: The Akokisa . Among the survivors was Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca who later wrote an account of several years living among the Indians of the Texas coast. In 1703, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne , the French governor of La Louisiane , sent three men to explore the Gulf Coast west of the Mississippi River . The seventh nation they encountered were the Atakapa, who captured, killed and cannibalized one member of their party. In 1714 this tribe

2987-647: The Atakapa Ishak Tribe of Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana , also called the Atakapa Ishak Nation, based in Lake Charles, Louisiana obtained nonprofit status in 2008 as an "ethnic awareness" organization. They also refer to themselves as the Atakapa-Ishak Nation and met en masse on October 28, 2006. The Atakapas Ishak Nation of Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana unsuccessfully petitioned

3090-648: The Caddo , Koasati , and other neighboring peoples, although they kept some traditions. Some culturally distinct Atakapan descendants survived into the early 20th century. The Atakapa called themselves the Ishak / iː ˈ ʃ æ k / , which translates as "the people." Their name was also spelled Atacapaze , Atalapa , Attakapa , Attakapas , or Attacapa . Atakapa is either a Choctaw or Mobilian term meaning "eater of human flesh". The Choctaw used this term due to their practice of ritual cannibalism . Europeans encountered

3193-658: The Du Maine and the Aurore , arrived in New Orleans carrying more than 500 black slaves coming from Africa. Previous slaves in Louisiana had been transported from French colonies in the West Indies. By the end of 1721, New Orleans counted 1,256 inhabitants, of whom about half were slaves. In 1724, the French government issued a law called the Code Noir ("Black Code" in English) which regulated

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3296-646: The Mississippian . Atakapa-speaking peoples are called Atakapan, while Atakapa refers to a specific tribe. Atakapa-speaking peoples were divided into bands which were represented by totems , such as snake, alligator, and other natural life. The Eastern Atakapa (Hiyekiti Ishak, "Sunrise People") groups lived in present-day Acadiana parishes in southwestern Louisiana and are organized as three major regional bands: The Western Atakapa (Hikike Ishak, "Sunset People") resided in southeastern Texas. They were organized as follows. Different groups claiming to be descendants of

3399-622: The Acadians, who became the ancestors of Louisiana's Cajuns . Spanish Canary Islanders, called Isleños , emigrated from the Canary Islands of Spain to Louisiana under the Spanish crown between 1778 and 1783. In 1800, France's Napoleon Bonaparte reacquired Louisiana from Spain in the Treaty of San Ildefonso , an arrangement kept secret for two years. Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville brought

3502-889: The Atakapa Language in 1932. The Atakapan ate shellfish and fish. The women gathered bird eggs, the American lotus ( Nelumbo lutea ) for its roots and seeds, as well as other wild plants. The men hunted deer , bear , and bison , which provided meat, fat , and hides . The women cultivated varieties of maize . They processed the meats, bones and skins to prepare food for storage, as well as to make clothing, tent covers, tools, sewing materials, arrow cases, bridles and rigging for horses, and other necessary items for their survival. The men made their tools for hunting and fishing: bows and arrows, fish spears with bone-tipped points, and flint -tipped spears. They used poisons to catch fish, caught flounder by torchlight, and speared alligators in

3605-459: The Atakapa from 1719 to 1721. He described Atakapa feasts including consumption of human flesh, which he observed firsthand. The practice of cannibalism likely had a religious, ritualistic basis. French Jesuit missionaries urged the Atakapa to end this practice. The French historian Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz lived in Louisiana from 1718 to 1734. He wrote: Along the west coast, not far from

3708-492: The Atakapa have created several organizations, and some have unsuccessfully petitioned Louisiana, Texas, and the United States for status as a recognized tribe. A member of the "Atakapa Indian de Creole Nation," claiming to be trustee, monarch, and deity, filed a number of lawsuits in federal court claiming, among other things, that the governments of Louisiana and the United States seek to "monopolize intergalactic foreign trade." The suits were dismissed as frivolous. Another group,

3811-605: The Atakapa may have been in 1528 by survivors of the Spanish Pánfilo de Narváez expedition. These men in Florida had made two barges, in an attempt to sail to Mexico, and these were blown ashore on the Gulf Coast. One group of survivors met the Karankawa , while the other probably landed on Galveston Island . The latter recorded meeting a group who called themselves the Han, who may have been

3914-760: The Atakapan as cannibals. He noted that they traditionally flattened their skulls frontally and not occipitally, a practice opposite to that of neighboring tribes, such as the Natchez Nation . The Atakapa traded with the Chitimacha tribe. In the early 18th century, some Atakapa married into the Houma tribe of Louisiana. Members of the Tunica-Biloxi tribe joined the Atakapa tribe in the late 18th century. John R. Swanton recorded that only 175 Atakapa lived in Louisiana in 1805. It

4017-611: The Atakapas Nation; the other half is farther on. We are in the habit of dividing ourselves into two or three groups in order to follow the buffalo , which in the spring go back into the west, and in autumn come down into these parts; there are herds of these buffalo, which go sometimes as far as the Missouri ; we kill them with arrows; our young hunters are very skilful at this hunting. You understand, moreover, that these animals are in very great numbers, and as tame as if they were raised on

4120-472: The Choctaw first during their exploration, and adopted their name for this people to the west. The peoples lived in river valleys, along lake shores, and coasts from present-day Vermilion Bay , Louisiana to Galveston Bay, Texas . The Atakapa language was a language isolate , once spoken along the Louisiana and East Texas coast and believed extinct since the mid-20th century. John R. Swanton in 1919 proposed

4223-636: The Crown's transfer of the Illinois Country 's governance from Canada to Louisiana—may have featured the broadest definition of Louisiana: all land claimed by France south of the Great Lakes between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghenies . A generation later, trade conflicts between Canada and Louisiana led to a more defined boundary between the French colonies; in 1745, Louisiana governor general Vaudreuil set

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4326-546: The Seven Years' War (generally referred to in North America as the French and Indian War ). This included the lands along the Gulf Coast and north of Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi River, which became known as British West Florida. The rest of Louisiana west of the Mississippi, as well as the "isle of New Orleans", had become a colony of Spain by the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762) . The transfer of power on either side of

4429-609: The Spanish "cimarron", meaning which means "fierce" or "unruly." In the late 18th century, the last Spanish governor of the Louisiana territory wrote: Truly, it is impossible for lower Louisiana to get along without slaves and with the use of slaves, the colony had been making great strides toward prosperity and wealth. When the United States purchased Louisiana in 1803, it was soon accepted that slaves could be brought to Louisiana as easily as they were brought to neighboring Mississippi , though it violated U.S. law to do so. Despite demands by United States Rep. James Hillhouse and by

4532-494: The US federal government for recognition on February 2, 2007. These organizations are not federally recognized or state-recognized as Native American tribes. The names of present-day towns in the region can be traced to the Ishak; they are derived both from their language and from French transliteration of the names of their prominent leaders and names of places. The town of Mermentau is

4635-532: The United States acquired the territory in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, France and Spain jockeyed for control of New Orleans and the lands west of the Mississippi. In the 1720s, German immigrants settled along the Mississippi River, in a region referred to as the German Coast . France ceded most of its territory east of the Mississippi to Great Britain in 1763, in the aftermath of Britain's victory in

4738-403: The United States, was disturbed by Napoleon's plans to re-establish French colonies in North America. With the possession of New Orleans, Napoleon could close the Mississippi to U.S. commerce at any time. Jefferson authorized Robert R. Livingston , U.S. minister to France, to negotiate for the purchase of the city of New Orleans, portions of the east bank of the Mississippi, and free navigation of

4841-564: The United States. The payment was made in United States bonds , which Napoleon sold at face value to the Dutch firm of Hope and Company , and the British banking house of Baring , at a discount of 87 + 1 ⁄ 2 per each $ 100 unit. As a result, France received only $ 8,831,250 in cash for Louisiana. English banker Alexander Baring conferred with Marbois in Paris, shuttled to the United States to pick up

4944-473: The United States. The closure of this vital port to the United States caused anger and consternation. Commerce in the west was virtually blockaded. Historians believe the revocation of the right of deposit was prompted by abuses by the Americans, particularly smuggling, and not by French intrigues as was believed at the time. President Jefferson ignored public pressure for war with France, and appointed James Monroe

5047-697: The Upper South or transported to New Orleans and other coastal markets by ship in the coastwise slave trade . After sales in New Orleans, steamboats operating on the Mississippi transported slaves upstream to markets or plantation destinations at Natchez and Memphis. Unusually for a slave-state, Louisiana harbored escaped Filipino slaves from the Manila Galleons . The members of the Filipino community were then commonly referred to as Manila men, or Manilamen, and later Tagalas , as they were free when they created

5150-462: The Upper South to the Deep South, two thirds of them in the slave trade. Others were transported by their owners as slaveholders moved west for new lands. With changing agriculture in the Upper South as planters shifted from tobacco to less labor-intensive mixed agriculture, planters had excess laborers. Many sold slaves to traders to take to the Deep South. Slaves were driven by traders overland from

5253-556: The West Indies, Germany, and Ireland. It experienced an agricultural boom, particularly in cotton and sugarcane, which were cultivated primarily by slaves from Africa. As a slave state, Louisiana was one of the original seven members of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War . Louisiana's unique French heritage is reflected in its toponyms, dialects, customs, demographics, and legal system. Relative to

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5356-577: The biggest slave market in the United States, which contributed greatly to the economy of the city and of the state. New Orleans had become one of the wealthiest cities, and the third largest city, in the nation. The ban on the African slave trade and importation of slaves had increased demand in the domestic market. During the decades after the American Revolutionary War, more than one million enslaved African Americans underwent forced migration from

5459-406: The bonds, took them to Britain, and returned to France with the money—which Napoleon used to wage war against Baring's own country. When news of the purchase reached the United States, Jefferson was surprised. He had authorized the expenditure of $ 10   million for a port city, and instead received treaties committing the government to spend $ 15   million on a land package which would double

5562-614: The city. Anglo-American officials initially made attempts to keep out the additional Creoles of color , but the Louisiana Creoles wanted to increase the Creole population: more than half of the refugees eventually settled in Louisiana, and the majority remained in New Orleans . Pierre Clément de Laussat ( Governor , 1803) said: "Saint-Domingue was, of all our colonies in the Antilles,

5665-507: The coda. Stress is "a purely mechanical function of phrase rhythm" in Atakapa; it is generally the final syllable of a phrase that receives stress. The Atakapa language is a mostly agglutinative , somewhat polysynthetic language of the templatic type. This meaning that the language stacks (primarily within the verbal complex) a number of affixes to express locatives , tense , aspect , modality , valency adjustment , and person/number (as both subject and object), which are assembled in

5768-418: The consonants presented in the following chart. Underlying /ŋ/ surfaces as [k] when it appears at the end of a syllable. Swadesh further notes that /m/ often surfaces as [n] or [ŋ] word-finally in some adjectives, but "irregular variations in [Gatschet's] writing" preclude him from settling on any further conditions for this. Additionally, it is unclear whether /n/ is indeed a distinct phoneme from /ŋ/; if this

5871-402: The culture, the Atchafalaya Basin Mounds in St. Mary Parish, the Fitzhugh Mounds in Madison Parish, the Scott Place Mounds in Union Parish, and the Sims site in St. Charles Parish. Plaquemine culture was contemporaneous with the Middle Mississippian culture that is represented by its largest settlement, the Cahokia site in Illinois east of St. Louis, Missouri . At its peak Cahokia

5974-436: The desired New Orleans area), and that approval from President Jefferson might take months, so Livingston and Monroe decided to open negotiations immediately. By April 30, they closed a deal for the purchase of the entire Louisiana territory of 828,000 square miles (2,100,000 km ) for sixty million Francs (approximately $ 15   million). Part of this sum, $ 3.5   million, was used to forgive debts owed by France to

6077-459: The existence of a reflexive prefix hat- and a reciprocal prefix hak-. However, the reflexive form may be a circumfix rather than a prefix: Kaufman cites the example of hat-yul-šo ("paint themselves"), in which both hat- and -šo indicate reflexivity. There are multiple ways to indicate a noun's plurality in Atakapa: According to Swanton (1919), a noun-forming affix -nen or -nan exists in Atakapa. The full order of morphemes within

6180-610: The eye. The people put alligator oil on exposed skin to repel mosquitoes . The Bidai snared game and trapped animals in cane pens. By 1719, the Atakapan had obtained horses and were hunting bison from horseback. They used dugout canoes to navigate the bayous and close to shore, but did not venture far into the ocean. In the summer, families moved to the coast. In winters, they moved inland and lived in villages of houses made of pole and thatch. The Bidai lived in bearskin tents. The homes of chiefs and medicine men were erected on earthwork mounds made by several previous cultures including

6283-497: The first platform mounds at ritual centers were constructed for the developing hereditary political and religious leadership. By 400 the Late Woodland period had begun with the Baytown culture , Troyville culture , and Coastal Troyville during the Baytown period and were succeeded by the Coles Creek cultures . Where the Baytown peoples built dispersed settlements, the Troyville people instead continued building major earthwork centers. Population increased dramatically and there

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6386-399: The first people in the area of Louisiana to make large amounts of pottery. These cultures lasted until 200 AD. The Middle Woodland period started in Louisiana with the Marksville culture in the southern and eastern part of the state, reaching across the Mississippi River to the east around Natchez, and the Fourche Maline culture in the northwestern part of the state. The Marksville culture

6489-420: The first person singular and plural, this form appears to be distinct from either affix, but in the second and third persons, the affixes seem to be related to the independent forms. Grammatical gender appears not to occur in Atakapa, though evidence for it in nearby languages (e.g. Chitimacha) has been found. The following table of pronominal forms is presented in Swanton (1919). In addition, Swanton notes

6592-480: The first two African slaves to Louisiana in 1708, transporting them from a French colony in the West Indies. In 1709, French financier Antoine Crozat obtained a monopoly of commerce in La Louisiane , which extended from the Gulf of Mexico to what is now Illinois . According to historian Hugh Thomas , "that concession allowed him to bring in a cargo of blacks from Africa every year". Starting in 1719, traders began to import slaves in higher numbers; two French ships,

6695-445: The forest, I saw one of these savages coming straight toward me: at first sight, I recognized that he did not belong to the Atakapas nation; he addressed me politely and in an easy manner, unusual among these savages. He offered food and drink for my warriors which I accepted, while expressing to him my gratitude. Meat was served to my entire detachment; and during the time of about six hours that I remained with this man, I learned that he

6798-474: The influence of New England Federalists in national affairs. President Jefferson was an enthusiastic supporter of westward expansion, and held firm in his support for the treaty. Despite Federalist objections, the U.S. Senate ratified the Louisiana treaty on October 20, 1803. By statute enacted on October 31, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson was authorized to take possession of the territories ceded by France and provide for initial governance. A transfer ceremony

6901-425: The interaction of whites (blancs) and blacks (noirs) in its colony of Louisiana (which was much larger than the current state of Louisiana). After the Sale of Louisiana , French Law survived in the Louisiana, such as the prohibition and outlaw of any cruel punishment. Fugitive slaves, called maroons , could easily hide in the backcountry of the bayous and survive in small settlements. The word "maroon" comes from

7004-460: The islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe to the French. Napoleon looked upon Louisiana as a depot for these sugar islands, and as a buffer to U.S. settlement. In October 1801 he sent a large military force to take back Saint-Domingue, then under control of Toussaint Louverture after the Haitian Revolution . When the army led by Napoleon's brother-in-law Leclerc was defeated, Napoleon decided to sell Louisiana. Thomas Jefferson , third president of

7107-426: The land between Vermilion River and Bayou Teche from the Eastern Atakapa Chief Kinemo. Shortly after that a rival Indian tribe, the Opelousa , coming from the area between the Atchafalaya and Sabine rivers, exterminated the Eastern Atakapa. They had occupied the area between Atchafalaya River and Bayou Nezpique (Attakapas Territory). William Byrd Powell (1799–1867), a medical doctor and physiologist , regarded

7210-432: The least desire to return to Europe. I have six children whom I love a great deal, and with whom I want to end my days." When my warriors were rested and refreshed, I took leave of Joseph and of the Atakapas, while assuring them of my desire to be able to make some returns for their friendly welcome, and I resumed my Journey. In 1760, the French Gabriel Fuselier de la Claire came into the Attakapas Territory, and bought all

7313-430: The modern state of Louisiana. The French settlement had two purposes: to establish trade with the Spanish in Texas via the Old San Antonio Road, and to deter Spanish advances into Louisiana. The settlement soon became a flourishing river port and crossroads, giving rise to vast cotton kingdoms along the river that were worked by imported African slaves. Over time, planters developed large plantations and built fine homes in

7416-438: The north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states , it ranks 20th in land area and the 25th in population , with roughly 4.6 million residents. Reflecting its French heritage , Louisiana is the only U.S. state with political subdivisions termed parishes , which are equivalent to counties , making it one of only two U.S. states not subdivided into counties (the other being Alaska and its boroughs ). Baton Rouge

7519-623: The northern and eastern bounds of his domain as the Wabash valley up to the mouth of the Vermilion River (near present-day Danville, Illinois ); from there, northwest to le Rocher on the Illinois River , and from there west to the mouth of the Rock River (at present day Rock Island, Illinois ). Thus, Vincennes and Peoria were the limit of Louisiana's reach; the outposts at Ouiatenon (on

7622-615: The oldest settlement of Asians in the United States in the village of Saint Malo, Louisiana , the inhabitants of which, even joined the United States in the War of 1812 against the British Empire while they were being led by the French-American Jean Lafitte . Spanish occupation of Louisiana lasted from 1769 to 1800. Beginning in the 1790s, waves of immigration took place from Saint-Domingue as refugees poured over following

7725-504: The one whose mentality and customs influenced Louisiana the most." When the United States won its independence from Great Britain in 1783, one of its major concerns was having a European power on its western boundary, and the need for unrestricted access to the Mississippi River. As American settlers pushed west, they found that the Appalachian Mountains provided a barrier to shipping goods eastward. The easiest way to ship produce

7828-559: The pamphleteer Thomas Paine to enforce existing federal law against slavery in the newly acquired territory, slavery prevailed because it was the source of great profits and the lowest-cost labor. At the start of the 19th century, Louisiana was a small producer of sugar with a relatively small number of slaves, compared to Saint-Domingue and the West Indies. It soon thereafter became a major sugar producer as new settlers arrived to develop plantations. William C. C. Claiborne , Louisiana's first United States governor, said African slave labor

7931-576: The peoples adopted extensive maize agriculture, cultivating different strains of the plant by saving seeds, selecting for certain characteristics, etc. The Plaquemine culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana began in 1200 and continued to about 1600. Examples in Louisiana include the Medora site , the archaeological type site for the culture in West Baton Rouge Parish whose characteristics helped define

8034-486: The pond. I then made them all move forward, and I sent ahead a subordinate chief to ascertain what nation these savages belonged to, and what would be their intentions toward us. We were soon assured that they were Atakapas, who, as soon as they saw us, far from seeking to defend themselves, made us signs of peace and friendship. There were one hundred and eighty [180] of them of both sexes, busy, as we suspected, smoke-drying meat. As soon as my three detachments had emerged from

8137-585: The pressure for Anglicization , and in 1921, English was shortly made the sole language of instruction in Louisiana schools before a policy of multilingualism was revived in 1974. Louisiana has never had an official language, and the state constitution enumerates "the right of the people to preserve, foster, and promote their respective historic, linguistic, and cultural origins." Based on national averages, Louisiana frequently ranks low among U.S. states in terms of health, education, and development, with high rates of poverty and homicide . In 2018, Louisiana

8240-460: The proposal by adding Natchez and the Muskogean languages , a hypothesis known as Gulf . These proposed families have not been proven. The similarities between Atakapa and Chitimacha, at least, may be attributable to periods of "intense contact [between speakers of the two languages] owing to their geographic proximity." According to Swanton (1929) and Goddard (1996), Atakapa could be classified into Eastern and Western varieties. Eastern Atakapa

8343-447: The rest of the southern U.S., Louisiana is multilingual and multicultural, reflecting an admixture of Louisiana French ( Cajun , Creole ), Spanish , French Canadian , Acadian , Saint-Domingue Creole , Native American , and West African cultures (generally the descendants of slaves stolen in the 18th century); more recent migrants include Filipinos and Vietnamese. In the post–Civil War environment , Anglo-Americans increased

8446-429: The river for U.S. commerce. Livingston was authorized to pay up to $ 2   million. An official transfer of Louisiana to French ownership had not yet taken place, and Napoleon's deal with the Spanish was a poorly kept secret on the frontier. On October 18, 1802, however, Juan Ventura Morales, acting intendant of Louisiana, made public the intention of Spain to revoke the right of deposit at New Orleans for all cargo from

8549-550: The river would be delayed until later in the decade. In 1765, during Spanish rule, several thousand Acadians from the French colony of Acadia (now Nova Scotia , New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island ) made their way to Louisiana after having been expelled from Acadia by the British government after the French and Indian War. They settled chiefly in the southwestern Louisiana region now called Acadiana . The governor Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga , eager to gain more settlers, welcomed

8652-569: The sea, inhabit the nation called Atacapas, that is, Man-Eaters, being so called by the other nations on account of their detestable custom of eating their enemies, or such as they believe to be their enemies. In the vast country there are no other cannibals to be met with besides the Atacapas; and since the French have gone among them, they have raised in them so great a horror of that abominable practice of devouring creatures of their own species, that they have promised to leave it off: and, accordingly, for

8755-549: The size of the country. Jefferson's political opponents in the Federalist Party argued the Louisiana purchase was a worthless desert, and that the U.S. constitution did not provide for the acquisition of new land or negotiating treaties without the consent of the federal legislature. What really worried the opposition was the new states which would inevitably be carved from the Louisiana territory, strengthening western and southern interests in U.S. Congress , and further reducing

8858-472: The state is forested. Louisiana is situated at the confluence of the Mississippi river system and the Gulf of Mexico. Its location and biodiversity attracted various indigenous groups thousands of years before Europeans arrived in the 17th century. Louisiana has eighteen Native American tribes—the most of any southern state—of which four are federally recognized and ten are state-recognized. The French claimed

8961-551: The state. The city of modern–day Epps developed near it. The Poverty Point culture may have reached its peak around 1500 BC, making it the first complex culture, and possibly the first tribal culture in North America. It lasted until approximately 700 BC. The Poverty Point culture was followed by the Tchefuncte and Lake Cormorant cultures of the Tchula period , local manifestations of Early Woodland period . The Tchefuncte culture were

9064-412: The suffix - kš appears, suggesting that this contraction rule ran its course in an earlier period. The typical Atakapa syllable is of the structure CVC. Swanton (1929) observes that clusters of more than two consonants are rare in the language. From his analysis of Gatschet's data, he concludes that consonant clusters of any size are not permitted in the syllable onset, but that they are permitted in

9167-477: The territory in 1682, and it became the political, commercial, and population center of the larger colony of New France . From 1762 to 1801 Louisiana was under Spanish rule, briefly returning to French rule before being sold by Napoleon to the U.S. in 1803. It was admitted to the Union in 1812 as the 18th state. Following statehood, Louisiana saw an influx of settlers from the eastern U.S. as well as immigrants from

9270-464: The torture that they made them endure when they had come to take possession of Mexico ; that if some Englishmen or Frenchmen happened to be lost in this bay region, the Atakapas welcomed them with kindness, would give them hospitality; and if they did not wish to remain with them they had them taken to the Akancas, from where they could easily go to New Orleans . He told me: "You see here about one-half of

9373-451: The upper Wabash near present-day Lafayette, Indiana ), Chicago, Fort Miamis (near present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana ), and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin , operated as dependencies of Canada. The settlement of Natchitoches (along the Red River in present-day northwest Louisiana) was established in 1714 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis , making it the oldest permanent European settlement in

9476-451: The verb complex is: It is unclear whether or not a distinct class of auxiliary verbs exists in Atakapa; the difference between a stem-plus-auxiliary construction and a two-verb-serialization construction is not well marked. Additionally, there is no mention of the assertive suffix -š in Swanton's work; Kaufman (2014) derives it by analogizing Atakapa and Chitimacha . Verb serialization

9579-591: Was a European; that he had been a Jesuit ; and that having gone into Mexico, these people had chosen him as their chief. He spoke French rather well. He told me that his name was Joseph; but I did not learn from what part of Europe he came. He informed me that the name Atakapas, which means eaters of men, had been given to this nation by the Spaniards because every time they caught one of them, they would roast him alive, but that they did not eat them; that they acted in this way toward this nation to avenge their ancestors for

9682-477: Was built about 5400 BP (3500 BC). These discoveries overturned previous assumptions in archaeology that such complex mounds were built only by cultures of more settled peoples who were dependent on maize cultivation. The Hedgepeth Site in Lincoln Parish is more recent, dated to 5200–4500 BP (3300–2600 BC). Nearly 2,000 years later, Poverty Point was built; it is the largest and best-known Late Archaic site in

9785-403: Was founded in 1699 by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville , a French military officer from New France . By then the French had also built a small fort at the mouth of the Mississippi at a settlement they named La Balise (or La Balize) , " seamark " in French. By 1721, they built a 62-foot (19 m) wooden lighthouse-type structure here to guide ships on the river. A royal ordinance of 1722—following

9888-422: Was held in New Orleans on November 29, 1803. Since the Louisiana territory had never officially been turned over to the French, the Spanish took down their flag, and the French raised theirs. The following day, General James Wilkinson accepted possession of New Orleans for the United States. The Louisiana Territory, purchased for less than three cents an acre, doubled the size of the United States overnight, without

9991-652: Was named after the Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site in Avoyelles Parish . These cultures were contemporaneous with the Hopewell cultures of present-day Ohio and Illinois , and participated in the Hopewell Exchange Network. Trade with peoples to the southwest brought the bow and arrow . The first burial mounds were built at this time. Political power began to be consolidated, as

10094-553: Was needed because white laborers "cannot be had in this unhealthy climate." Hugh Thomas wrote that Claiborne was unable to enforce the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, which the U.S. and Great Britain enacted in 1807. The United States continued to protect the domestic slave trade, including the coastwise trade—the transport of slaves by ship along the Atlantic Coast and to New Orleans and other Gulf ports. By 1840, New Orleans had

10197-693: Was one of 14 that were recorded as coming to Jean-Michel de Lepinay , who was acting French governor of Louisiana between 1717 and 1718, while he was fortifying Dauphin Island, Alabama . The Choctaw told the French settlers about the "People of the West," who represented subdivisions or tribes. The French referred to them as les sauvages . The Choctaw used the name Atakapa, meaning "people eater" ( hattak 'person', apa 'to eat'), for them. It referred to their practice of ritual cannibalism related to warfare. A French explorer, Francois Simars de Bellisle , lived among

10300-437: Was ranked as the least healthy state in the country, with high levels of drug-related deaths . It also has had the highest homicide rate in the United States since at least the 1990s. Louisiana was named after Louis XIV , King of France from 1643 to 1715. When René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed the territory drained by the Mississippi River for France, he named it La Louisiane . The suffix –ana (or –ane)

10403-457: Was settled by French colonists from Illinois. Initially, Mobile and then Biloxi served as the capital of La Louisiane. Recognizing the importance of the Mississippi River to trade and military interests, and wanting to protect the capital from severe coastal storms, France developed New Orleans from 1722 as the seat of civilian and military authority south of the Great Lakes. From then until

10506-558: Was spoken by the Atakapa people (also known as Ishak , after their word for "the people"). The language became extinct in the early 20th century. While considered an isolate, there have been attempts to connect Atakapa with other languages of the Southeast. In 1919 John R. Swanton proposed a Tunican language family that would include Atakapa, Tunica , and Chitimacha ; Morris Swadesh would later provide work focusing on connections between Atakapa and Chitimacha. Mary Haas later expanded

10609-549: Was to use a flatboat to float it down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the port of New Orleans, where goods could be put on ocean-going vessels. The problem with this route was that the Spanish owned both sides of the Mississippi below Natchez . Napoleon's ambitions in Louisiana involved the creation of a new empire centered on the Caribbean sugar trade . By the terms of the Treaty of Amiens of 1802, Great Britain returned control of

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