Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville

Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville (; ; February 23, 1680 – March 7, 1767), also known as Sieur de Bienville, was a French colonial administrator in New France. Born in Montreal, he was an early governor of French Louisiana, appointed four separate times during 1701–1743. He was the younger brother of explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville.

Early life

Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne was the son of Charles le Moyne, born in Longueil, near Dieppe, and Catherine Primot (also known as Catherine Thierry), born in Rouen, both cities in the Province of Normandy. Charles le Moyne established his family in the settlement of Ville-Marie (present day Montreal) at an early age and had fourteen children total.

Exploration in the New World

At the age of seventeen, Bienville joined his brother Iberville on an expedition to establish the colony of Louisiana. Bienville explored the Gulf of Mexico coastline, he discovered around approximately 1699 as far up as into Mobile Bay which was not deep enough to go any further, founded Belle Fontaine they had discovered an artesian spring bubbling and leaping from the beach. This spring is now 300–400 feet out into Mobile Bay. Bienville played a huge role in founding part of the coast line in Mobile, Alabama. He then went on to discovering the Chandeleur Islands off the coast of Louisiana as well as Cat Island and Ship Island off the coast of what is now the state of Mississippi before moving westward to sail up the mouth of the Mississippi River. Eventually, the expedition ventured all the way to what is now Baton Rouge and False River. Before heading back to France, Iberville established the first settlement of the Louisiana colony, in April 1699 as Fort Maurepas or Old Biloxi (at present-day Ocean Springs, Mississippi), and appointed Sauvolle de la Villantry as the governor with Bienville as Lieutenant.

Following Iberville's departure, Bienville took another expedition up the Mississippi River and encountered English ships at what is now known as English Turn. Upon hearing of this encounter on his return, Iberville ordered Bienville to establish a settlement along the Mississippi River at the first solid ground he could find. Fifty miles upriver, Bienville established Fort de la Boulaye.

Co-founder of Mobile

On the recommendations of his brother, Bienville moved the majority of the settlers to a new settlement in what is now Alabama on the west side of the Mobile River, called ''Fort Louis de la Mobile'' (or "Mobille"). He also established a deepwater port nearby on Dauphin Island for the colony, as Mobile Bay and the Mobile River were too shallow for seagoing vessels.

The population of the colony fluctuated over the next few years. In 1704, in part due to fear that fraternization of French soldiers with native females might lead to conflict, Bienville arranged for the arrival of twenty-four young French women. By tradition the young ladies were selected from convents, though most were likely from poor families. Because they traveled to the New World with their possessions in small trunks known as cassettes, they are known in local histories as the casquette girls in early accounts and by the English translation of casket girls in later tradition.

The young ladies were lodged in Bienville's home under the care of his housekeeper, a French-Canadian woman known as Madame Langlois. (By tradition she was a widowed cousin to Bienville and his brothers, but there is no confirmation of this.) Madame Langlois had learned from local native tribes the arts of cooking local produce and imparted this knowledge to her charges in what is generally heralded as the origin of Creole cuisine. The names and fates of most of the Casquette Girls is uncertain, but at least some remained in the colony and married French soldiers as intended, the first recorded birth of a white child occurring in 1705.

The population of the colony fluctuated over the next generation, growing to 281 by 1708, but diminishing to 178 two years later due to disease. In 1709, a great flood overflowed ''Fort Louis de la Mobile'': because of this and the outbreaks of disease, Bienville ordered the settlement to move downriver to the present site of Mobile, Alabama in 1711 where another wooden Fort Louis was built. By 1712, when Antoine Crozat took over administration of Louisiana by royal appointment, the colony boasted a population of 400 persons. In 1713, a new governor arrived from France, and Bienville moved west where, in 1716, he established Fort Rosalie on the present site of Natchez, Mississippi. The new governor, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, did not last long due to mismanagement and a lack of growth in the colony. He was recalled to France in 1716, and Bienville again took the helm as governor, serving the office for less than a year until the new governor, Jean-Michel de Lepinay, arrived from France. Lepinay's tenure was short lived, however, as Crozat had relinquished control of the colony and its administration to John Law and his Company of the Indies. In 1718, Bienville found himself once again governor of Louisiana, and it was during this term that Bienville established the city of New Orleans, Louisiana