![Louisiana welcome sign at Madison Parish visitor center IMG 7059](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Louisiana_welcome_sign_at_Madison_Parish_visitor_center_IMG_7059.JPG)
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a
state
State may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State
* ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States
* ''Our S ...
in the
Deep South
The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the war ...
and
South Central regions of the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. It is the
20th-smallest by area and the
25th most populous of the
50 U.S. states. Louisiana is bordered by the state of
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
to the west,
Arkansas
Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...
to the north,
Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
to the east, and the
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...
to the south. A large part of its eastern boundary is demarcated by the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
. Louisiana is the only U.S. state with political subdivisions termed
parishes
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...
, which are equivalent to
counties
A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...
, making it one of only two U.S. states not subdivided into counties (the other being
Alaska
Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...
and its
boroughs
A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely.
History
In the Middle Ag ...
). The state's capital is
Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-sma ...
, and its largest city is
, with a population of roughly 383,000 people.
Some Louisiana urban environments have a multicultural,
multilingual
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...
heritage, being so strongly influenced by a mixture of 18th century
Louisiana French
Louisiana French ( frc, français de la Louisiane; lou, françé la lwizyàn) is an umbrella term for the dialects and varieties of the French language spoken traditionally by French Louisianians in colonial Lower Louisiana. As of today Louisia ...
,
Dominican Creole Dominican Creole may refer to:
* Dominican Creoles, an ethnic group native to Saint-Domingue
* Dominican Creole French, a French-based creole languages, Creole language of Dominica
{{disambiguation, geo
Language and nationality disambiguation page ...
,
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
,
French Canadian
French Canadians (referred to as Canadiens mainly before the twentieth century; french: Canadiens français, ; feminine form: , ), or Franco-Canadians (french: Franco-Canadiens), refers to either an ethnic group who trace their ancestry to Fren ...
,
Acadian
The Acadians (french: Acadiens , ) are an ethnic group descended from the French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries. Most Acadians live in the region of Acadia, as it is the region where the de ...
,
Native American, and
West African
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Ma ...
cultures that they are considered to be exceptional in the U.S. before the American
purchase
Purchasing is the process a business or organization uses to acquire goods or services to accomplish its goals. Although there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary greatly between ...
of the territory in 1803, the present–day U.S. state of Louisiana had been both a
French colony and a
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
one. In addition, colonists imported various
West African
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Ma ...
peoples as slaves in the 18th century. Many came from peoples of the same region of West Africa, thus concentrating their culture;
Filipinos
Filipinos ( tl, Mga Pilipino) are the people who are citizens of or native to the Philippines. The majority of Filipinos today come from various Austronesian ethnolinguistic groups, all typically speaking either Filipino, English and/or othe ...
also arrived during colonial Louisiana. In the
post–Civil War environment,
Anglo Americans
Anglo-Americans are people who are English-speaking inhabitants of Anglo-America. It typically refers to the nations and ethnic groups in the Americas that speak English as a native language, making up the majority of people in the world who spe ...
increased the pressure for
Anglicization
Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by Culture of England, English culture or Culture of the United Kingdom, British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English ...
, and in 1921, English was for a time made the sole language of instruction in Louisiana schools before a policy of multilingualism was revived in 1974.
[Louisiana Official Site on Languages](_blank)
, accessed August 22, 2016 There has never been an official language in Louisiana, 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 the U.S. in terms of health, education, development, and high in measures of poverty. In 2018, Louisiana 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
The list of countries by UNODC homicide rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 100,000 individuals per year. A mortality rate of 30 (out of 100,000) in a population of 100,000 would mean 30 deaths per year in that entire population, or ...
in the United States since at least the 1990s.
[Murder Rates Nationally and By State]
. By Death Penalty Information Center
The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) is a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on disseminating studies and reports related to the death penalty. Founded in 1990, DPIC is primarily focused on the application of c ...
.
Much of the state's lands were formed from
sediment
Sediment is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of wind, water, or ice or by the force of gravity acting on the particles. For example, sand an ...
washed down the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of
coastal marsh
A tidal marsh (also known as a type of "tidal wetland") is a marsh found along rivers, coasts and estuaries which floods and drains by the tidal movement of the adjacent estuary, sea or ocean. Tidal marshes are commonly zoned into lower marshes ( ...
and
swamp
A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...
.
These contain a rich southern
biota; typical examples include birds such as
ibis
The ibises () (collective plural ibis; classical plurals ibides and ibes) are a group of long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae, that inhabit wetlands, forests and plains. "Ibis" derives from the Latin and Ancient Greek word f ...
es and
egret
Egrets ( ) are herons, generally long-legged wading birds, that have white or buff plumage, developing fine plumes (usually milky white) during the breeding season. Egrets are not a biologically distinct group from herons and have the same build ...
s. There are also many species of
tree frog
A tree frog (or treefrog) is any species of frog that spends a major portion of its lifespan in trees, known as an arboreal state. Several lineages of frogs among the Neobatrachia have given rise to treefrogs, although they are not closely relat ...
s such as the state recognized
American green tree frog
The American green tree frog (''Dryophytes cinereus'' or ''Hyla cinerea'') is a common arboreal species of New World tree frog belonging to the family Hylidae. This nocturnal insectivore is moderately sized and has a bright green to reddish-brow ...
and fish such as
sturgeon
Sturgeon is the common name for the 27 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. The earliest sturgeon fossils date to the Late Cretaceous
The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretace ...
and
paddlefish
Paddlefish (family Polyodontidae) are a family of ray-finned fish belonging to order Acipenseriformes, and one of two living groups of the order alongside sturgeons (Acipenseridae). They are distinguished from other fish by their titular elongla ...
. In more elevated areas, fire is a natural process in the landscape and has produced extensive areas of
longleaf pine
The longleaf pine (''Pinus palustris'') is a pine species native to the Southeastern United States, found along the coastal plain from East Texas to southern Virginia, extending into northern and central Florida. In this area it is also known as ...
forest and wet
savanna
A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...
s. These support an exceptionally large number of plant species, including many species of terrestrial
orchid
Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant.
Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering ...
s and
carnivorous plant
Carnivorous plants are plants that derive some or most of their nutrients from trapping and consuming animals or protozoans
Protozoa (singular: protozoan or protozoon; alternative plural: protozoans) are a group of single-celled eukaryot ...
s. Louisiana has more Native American tribes than any other southern state, including four that are federally recognized, ten that are state recognized, and four that have not received recognition.
Etymology
Louisiana was named after
Louis XIV
, house = Bourbon
, father = Louis XIII
, mother = Anne of Austria
, birth_date =
, birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
, death_date =
, death_place = Palace of Vers ...
, King of France from 1643 to 1715. When
René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle
René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (; November 22, 1643 – March 19, 1687), was a 17th-century French explorer and fur trader in North America. He explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, the Mississippi River, ...
claimed the territory drained by the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
for France, he named it . The suffix –ana (or –ane) 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 French colonial empire () comprised the overseas colonies, protectorates and mandate territories that came under French rule from the 16th century onward. A distinction is generally made between the "First French Colonial Empire", that exist ...
, the
Louisiana Territory
The Territory of Louisiana or Louisiana Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1805, until June 4, 1812, when it was renamed the Missouri Territory. The territory was formed out of the ...
stretched from present–day Mobile Bay to just north of the present–day
Canada–United States border
The border between Canada and the United States is the longest international border in the world. The terrestrial boundary (including boundaries in the Great Lakes, Atlantic, and Pacific coasts) is long. The land border has two sections: Can ...
, including a small part of what are now the Canadian
provinces
A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outsi ...
of
Alberta
Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...
and
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada, western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on t ...
.
History
Pre–colonial history
![Watson Brake Aerial Illustration HRoe 2014](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Watson_Brake_Aerial_Illustration_HRoe_2014.jpg)
The area of Louisiana is the place of origin of the
Mound Builders
A number of pre-Columbian cultures are collectively termed "Mound Builders". The term does not refer to a specific people or archaeological culture, but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks erected for an extended period of more than 5 ...
culture during the Middle
Archaic period, in the
4th millennium BC
The 4th millennium BC spanned the years 4000 BC to 3001 BC. Some of the major changes in human culture during this time included the beginning of the Bronze Age and the invention of writing, which played a major role in starting recorded history. ...
. 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 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).
![Poverty Point Aerial HRoe 2014](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Poverty_Point_Aerial_HRoe_2014.jpg)
Nearly 2,000 years later,
Poverty Point
Poverty Point State Historic Site/Poverty Point National Monument (french: Pointe de Pauvreté; 16 WC 5) is a prehistoric earthwork constructed by the Poverty Point culture, located in present-day northeastern Louisiana, though evidence of t ...
was built; it is the largest and best-known Late Archaic site in the state. The city of modern–day
Epps developed near it. The
Poverty Point culture
The Poverty Point culture is the archaeological culture of a prehistoric indigenous peoples who inhabited a portion of North America's lower Mississippi Valley and surrounding Gulf coast from about 1730 – 1350 BC.
Archeologists have identified ...
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 The Tchula period is an early period in an archaeological chronology, covering the early development of permanent settlements, agriculture, and large societies.
The Tchula period (800 BCE – 200 CE) encompasses the Tchefuncte and Lake Cormorant ...
, local manifestations of Early
Woodland period
In the classification of :category:Archaeological cultures of North America, archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 Common Era, BCE to European con ...
. The Tchefuncte culture were the first people in the area of Louisiana to make large amounts of pottery.
These cultures lasted until AD 200. The Middle Woodland period started in Louisiana with the
Marksville culture
The Marksville culture was an archaeological culture in the lower Lower Mississippi valley, Yazoo valley, and Tensas valley areas of present-day Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and extended eastward along the Gulf Coast to the Mobile Bay are ...
in the southern and eastern part of the state, reaching across the Mississippi River to the east around Natchez,
and the
Fourche Maline culture
Fourche ( ) is a town in Perry County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 59 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Little Rock–North Little Rock– Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Geography
Fourche is located at (34.993 ...
in the northwestern part of the state. The Marksville culture was named after the
Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site
Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site, also known as the Marksville site, (Smithsonian trinomial, 16 AV 1) is a Marksville culture archaeological site located southeast of Marksville, Louisiana, Marksville in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. The site f ...
in
Avoyelles Parish
Avoyelles (french: Paroisse des Avoyelles) is a parish located in central eastern Louisiana on the
Red River where it effectively becomes the Atchafalaya River and meets the Mississippi River. As of the 2010 census, the population was 42,07 ...
.
![Troyville Earthworks HRoe 2017sm](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Troyville_Earthworks_HRoe_2017sm.jpg)
These cultures were contemporaneous with the
Hopewell cultures of present-day
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
and
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
, and participated in the Hopewell Exchange Network. Trade with peoples to the southwest brought the
bow and
arrow
An arrow is a fin-stabilized projectile launched by a bow. A typical arrow usually consists of a long, stiff, straight shaft with a weighty (and usually sharp and pointed) arrowhead attached to the front end, multiple fin-like stabilizers c ...
.
The first
burial mound
Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...
s were built at this time.
Political power began to be consolidated, as the first
platform mound
Platform may refer to:
Technology
* Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run
* Platform game, a genre of video games
* Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models
* Weapons platform, a system or ...
s at ritual centers were constructed for the developing hereditary political and religious leadership.
By 400 the
Late Woodland period
In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeologi ...
had begun with the
Baytown culture
The Baytown culture was a Pre-Columbian Native American culture that existed from 300 to 700 CE in the lower Mississippi River Valley, consisting of sites in eastern Arkansas, western Tennessee, Louisiana, and western Mississippi. The Baytown Sit ...
,
Troyville culture
The Troyville culture is an archaeological culture in areas of Louisiana and Arkansas in the Lower Mississippi valley in the Southeastern Woodlands. It was a Baytown Period culture and lasted from 400 to 700 CE during the Late Woodland period. It ...
, and Coastal Troyville during the Baytown period and were succeeded by the
Coles Creek culture
Coles Creek culture is a Late Woodland archaeological culture in the Lower Mississippi valley in the Southeastern Woodlands. It followed the Troyville culture. The period marks a significant change in the cultural history of the area. Population i ...
s. Where the Baytown peoples built dispersed settlements, the Troyville people instead continued building major earthwork centers.
Population increased dramatically and there is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political complexity. Many Coles Creek sites were erected over earlier Woodland period
mortuary
A morgue or mortuary (in a hospital or elsewhere) is a place used for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification (ID), removal for autopsy, respectful burial, cremation or other methods of disposal. In modern times, corpses have cus ...
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
Plaquemine is a city in and the parish seat of Iberville Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is part of the Baton Rouge metropolitan statistical area. At the 2010 United States census, the population was 7,119; the 2020 census determined i ...
and the
Caddoan Mississippian culture
The Caddoan Mississippian culture was a prehistoric Native American culture considered by archaeologists as a variant of the Mississippian culture. The Caddoan Mississippians covered a large territory, including what is now Eastern Oklahoma, Wes ...
s developed, and 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
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana began in 1200 and continued to about 1600. Examples in Louisiana include the
Medora site
The Medora site ( 16WBR1) is an archaeological site that is a type site for the prehistoric Plaquemine culture period. The name for the culture is taken from the proximity of Medora to the town of Plaquemine, Louisiana. The site is in West Baton ...
, the archaeological
type site
In archaeology, a type site is the site used to define a particular archaeological culture or other typological unit, which is often named after it. For example, discoveries at La Tène and Hallstatt led scholars to divide the European Iron Age ...
for the culture in West Baton Rouge Parish whose characteristics helped define the culture, the
Atchafalaya Basin Mounds
The Atchafalaya Basin Mounds ( 16 SMY 10) (variously known as the Patterson Mounds, Patterson site, Moro Plantation Mounds and as the protohistoric village of Qiteet Kuti´ngi Na´mu by the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana) is an archaeological sit ...
in St. Mary Parish,
the
Fitzhugh Mounds
Fitzhugh Mounds is an archaeological site in Madison Parish, Louisiana from the Plaquemine culture, Plaquemine\Mississippian culture, Mississippian period dating to approximately 1200–1541 CE. It is the type site for the ''Fitzhugh Phase(1350-150 ...
in Madison Parish,
the
Scott Place Mounds
Scott Place Mounds is an archaeological site in Union Parish, Louisiana from the Late Coles Creek- Early Plaquemine period, dating to approximately 1200 CE. The site is one of the few such sites in north-central Louisiana.
Description
The site a ...
in Union Parish,
and the
Sims site
The Sims site ( 16SC2), also known as Sims Place site, is an archaeological site located in Saint Charles Parish, Louisiana, near the town of Paradis. The location is a multi-component mound and village complex with platform mounds and extensiv ...
in St. Charles Parish.
Plaquemine culture was contemporaneous with the Middle Mississippian culture that is represented by its largest settlement, the
Cahokia
The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site ( 11 MS 2) is the site of a pre-Columbian Native American city (which existed 1050–1350 CE) directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies in south-w ...
site in Illinois east of
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...
. At its peak Cahokia is estimated to have had a population of more than 20,000. The Plaquemine culture is considered ancestral to the historic
Natchez Natchez may refer to:
Places
* Natchez, Alabama, United States
* Natchez, Indiana, United States
* Natchez, Louisiana, United States
* Natchez, Mississippi, a city in southwestern Mississippi, United States
* Grand Village of the Natchez, a site o ...
and
Taensa
The Taensa (also Taënsas, Tensas, Tensaw, and ''Grands Taensas'' in French) were a Native American people whose settlements at the time of European contact in the late 17th century were located in present-day Tensas Parish, Louisiana. The mean ...
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 is now eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, northeast
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
, and northwest Louisiana. Archaeological evidence has demonstrated that the cultural continuity is unbroken from prehistory to the present. The
Caddo
The Caddo people comprise the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe headquartered in Binger, Oklahoma. They speak the Caddo language.
The Caddo Confederacy was a network of Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands, wh ...
and related
Caddo-language speakers in prehistoric times and at first European contact were the direct ancestors of the modern
Caddo Nation of Oklahoma
The Caddo people comprise the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe headquartered in Binger, Oklahoma. They speak the Caddo language.
The Caddo Confederacy was a network of Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands, wh ...
of today.
Significant Caddoan Mississippian archaeological sites in Louisiana include
Belcher Mound Site
The Belcher Mound Site (16CD13) is an archaeological site in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. It is located in the Red River Valley 20 miles north of Shreveport and about one-half mile east of the town of Belcher, Louisiana. It was excavated by Claren ...
in
Caddo Parish
Caddo Parish ( French: ''Paroisse de Caddo'') is a parish located in the northwest corner of the U.S. state of Louisiana. According to the 2020 U.S. census, the parish had a population of 237,848. The parish seat is Shreveport, which developed a ...
and
Gahagan Mounds Site in Red River Parish.
Many current place names in Louisiana, including
Atchafalaya, Natchitouches (now spelled
Natchitoches), Caddo,
Houma,
Tangipahoa
The Tangipahoa were a Native American tribe that lived just north of Lake Pontchartrain and between the Pearl River and the Mississippi River.
Etymology
The name Tangipahoa is derived from the Muskogean words ''(tonche pahoha)'' which translates ...
, and
Avoyel
The Avoyel or Avoyelles were a small Native American tribe who at the time of European contact inhabited land near the mouth of the Red River at its confluence with the Atchafalaya River near present-day Marksville, Louisiana. Also called variou ...
(as
Avoyelles
Avoyelles (french: Paroisse des Avoyelles) is a parish (administrative division), parish located in central eastern Louisiana on the Red River of the South,
Red River where it effectively becomes the Atchafalaya River and meets the Mississippi ...
), are transliterations of those used in various Native American languages.
Exploration and colonization by Europeans
The first European explorers to visit Louisiana came in 1528 when a Spanish expedition led by
Pánfilo de Narváez
Pánfilo de Narváez (; 147?–1528) was a Spanish ''conquistador'' and soldier in the Americas. Born in Spain, he first embarked to Jamaica in 1510 as a soldier. He came to participate in the conquest of Cuba and led an expedition to Camagüey ...
located the mouth of the Mississippi River. In 1542,
Hernando de Soto
Hernando de Soto (; ; 1500 – 21 May, 1542) was a Spanish explorer and '' conquistador'' who was involved in expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula. He played an important role in Francisco Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire ...
'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
The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...
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 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
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...
named the region Louisiana to honor
King Louis XIV
Louis XIV (Louis Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was List of French monarchs, King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the Li ...
of France. The first permanent settlement, Fort Maurepas (at what is now
Ocean Springs, Mississippi
Ocean Springs is a city in Jackson County, Mississippi, United States, approximately east of Biloxi and west of Gautier. It is part of the Pascagoula, Mississippi Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 17,225 at the 2000 U.S. Census. ...
, near
Biloxi
Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in and one of two county seats of Harrison County, Mississippi, United States (the other being the adjacent city of Gulfport). The 2010 United States Census recorded the population as 44,054 and in 2019 the estimated popu ...
), was founded in 1699 by
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville (16 July 1661 – 9 July 1706) or Sieur d'Iberville was a French soldier, explorer, colonial administrator, and trader. He is noted for founding the colony of Louisiana in New France. He was born in Montreal to French ...
, a French military officer from Canada. 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 wooden lighthouse-type structure here to guide ships on the river.
A royal ordinance of 1722—following the Crown's transfer of the
Illinois Country
The Illinois Country (french: Pays des Illinois ; , i.e. the Illinois people)—sometimes referred to as Upper Louisiana (french: Haute-Louisiane ; es, Alta Luisiana)—was a vast region of New France claimed in the 1600s in what is n ...
's governance from Canada to Louisiana—may have featured the broadest definition of Louisiana: all land claimed by France south of the
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...
between the
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...
and the Allegheny Mountains, 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 Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnial, Vaudreuil set the northern and eastern bounds of his domain as the Wabash River, Wabash valley up to the mouth of the Vermilion River (Wabash River tributary), Vermilion River (near present-day Danville, Illinois); from there, northwest to Starved Rock State Park, ''le Rocher'' on the Illinois River, and from there west to the mouth of the Rock River (Mississippi River), Rock River (at present day Rock Island, Illinois).
Thus, Vincennes, Indiana, Vincennes and Peoria, Illinois, Peoria were the limit of Louisiana's reach; the outposts at Ouiatenon (on the upper Wabash near present-day Lafayette, Indiana), Chicago, Fort Miami (Indiana), 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 the modern state of Louisiana. The French settlement had two purposes: to establish trade with the Spanish in
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
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 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.
![Atchafalaya Basin](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Atchafalaya_Basin.jpg)
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
The Illinois Country (french: Pays des Illinois ; , i.e. the Illinois people)—sometimes referred to as Upper Louisiana (french: Haute-Louisiane ; es, Alta Luisiana)—was a vast region of New France claimed in the 1600s in what is n ...
, around present-day
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...
. The latter was settled by French colonists from Illinois.
Initially, Mobile, Alabama, Mobile and then
Biloxi
Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in and one of two county seats of Harrison County, Mississippi, United States (the other being the adjacent city of Gulfport). The 2010 United States Census recorded the population as 44,054 and in 2019 the estimated popu ...
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 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 Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain in 1763, in the aftermath of Great Britain in the Seven Years War, Britain's victory in 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 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 Expulsion of the Acadians, 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 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 I of France, Napoleon Bonaparte reacquired Louisiana from Spain in the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, Treaty of San Ildefonso, an arrangement kept secret for two years.
Expansion of slavery
![Nouvelle-France map-en](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Nouvelle-France_map-en.svg)
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville brought 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
The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...
to what is now
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
. According to historian Hugh Thomas (writer), Hugh Thomas, "that concession allowed him to bring in a cargo of blacks from Africa every year". Physical conditions, including disease, were so harsh there was high mortality among both the colonists and the slaves, resulting in continuing demand and importation of slaves.
Starting in 1719, traders began to import slaves in higher numbers; two French ships, 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 the interaction of whites (blancs) and blacks (noirs) in its colony of Louisiana (which was much larger than the current state of Louisiana). The law consisted of 57 articles, which regulated religion in the colony, outlawed "interracial" marriages (those between people of different skin color, the varying shades of which were also defined by law), restricted manumission, outlined legal punishment of slaves for various offenses, and defined some obligations of owners to their slaves. The main intent of the French government was to assert control over the slave system of agriculture in Louisiana and to impose restrictions on slaveowners there. In practice, the Code Noir was exceedingly difficult to enforce from afar. Some priests continued to perform interracial marriage ceremonies, for example, and some slaveholders continued to manumit slaves without permission while others punished slaves brutally.
Article II of the Code Noir of 1724 required owners to provide their slaves with religious education in the state religion, Catholic Church, Roman Catholicism. Sunday was to be a day of rest for slaves. On days off, slaves were expected to feed and take care of themselves. During the 1740s economic crisis in the colony, owners had trouble feeding their slaves and themselves. Giving them time off also effectively gave more power to slaves, who started cultivating their own gardens and crafting items for sale as their own property. They began to participate in the economic development of the colony while at the same time increasing independence and self-subsistence.
Article VI of the Code Noir forbade mixed marriages, forbade but did little to protect slave women from rape by their owners, overseers or other slaves. On balance, the code benefitted the owners but had more protections and flexibility than did the institution of slavery in the southern Thirteen Colonies.
The Louisiana Black Code of 1806 made the cruel punishment of slaves a crime, but owners and overseers were seldom prosecuted for such acts.
Fugitive slaves, called maroons, could easily hide in the backcountry of the bayous and survive in small settlements. The word "maroon" comes from the Spanish "cimarron", meaning "fugitive cattle."
In the late 18th century, the last Spanish governor of the Louisiana territory wrote:
![Free Woman of Color with daughter NOLA Collage](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Free_Woman_of_Color_with_daughter_NOLA_Collage.jpg)
When the United States Louisiana Purchase, purchased Louisiana in 1803, it was soon accepted that enslaved Africans could be brought to Louisiana as easily as they were brought to neighboring
Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
, though it violated U.S. law to do so.
[Hugh Thomas, ''The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870'', Simon and Schuster, 1997, p. 548.] Despite demands by United States Rep. James Hillhouse and by 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 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 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 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 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.
Interestingly, 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 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.
Dominican Creole asylum and influence
![Agostino_Brunias_-_The_linen_market_at_Saint-Domingue,_1804](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Agostino_Brunias_-_The_linen_market_at_Saint-Domingue%2C_1804.png)
Spanish occupation of Louisiana lasted from 1769 to 1800. Beginning in the 1790s, waves of immigration took place from Saint Dominicans, St. Dominican refugees, following a Haitian Revolution, 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, Saint Dominicans, Dominican 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 the city.
Anglo-Americans, Anglo-American officials initially made attempts to keep out the additional gens de couleur libres, Creoles of color, but the Louisiana Creole people, Louisiana Creoles wanted to increase the Creole population: more than half of the Saint Dominicans, St. Dominican refugees eventually settled in Louisiana, and the majority remained in
.
Pierre Clément de Laussat (List of colonial governors of Louisiana, Governor, 1803) said: "Saint-Domingue was, of all our colonies in the Antilles, the one whose mentality and customs influenced Louisiana the most."
Purchase by the United States
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 was to use a flatboat to float it down the Ohio River, 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, Mississippi, 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 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.
![Louisiane 1800](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Louisiane_1800.png)
Thomas Jefferson, third president of 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 Livingston (1746–1813), 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 the river for U.S. commerce. Livingston was authorized to pay up to $2million.
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 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 a special envoy to Napoleon, to assist in obtaining New Orleans for the United States. Jefferson also raised the authorized expenditure to $10million.
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 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 for sixty million French franc, Francs (approximately $15million).
Part of this sum, $3.5million, was used to forgive debts owed by France to the United States. The payment was made in United States Government bond, bonds, which Napoleon sold at face value to the Dutch firm of Hope & Co., Hope and Company, and the Barings Bank, British banking house of Baring, at a discount of per each $100 unit. As a result, France received only $8,831,250 in cash for Louisiana. English banker Alexander Baring, 1st Baron Ashburton, Alexander Baring conferred with Marbois in Paris, shuttled to the United States to pick up the bonds, took them to Britain, and returned to France with the money—which Napoleon used to wage war against Baring's own country.
![Flickr - USCapitol - Louisiana Purchase, 1803](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Flickr_-_USCapitol_-_Louisiana_Purchase%2C_1803.jpg)
When news of the purchase reached the United States, Jefferson was surprised. He had authorized the expenditure of $10million for a port city, and instead received treaties committing the government to spend $15million on a land package which would double the size of the country. Jefferson's political opponents in the Federalist Party (United States), 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 United States Congress, U.S. Congress, and further reducing 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 United States Senate, 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 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. A similar ceremony was held in St. Louis, Missouri, St. Louis on March 9, 1804, when a French tricolor was raised near the river, replacing the Spanish national flag. The following day, Captain (U.S. Army), Captain Amos Stoddard of the First U.S. Artillery marched his troops into town and had the American flag run up the fort's flagpole. The Louisiana territory was officially transferred to the United States government, represented by Meriwether Lewis.
The Louisiana Territory, purchased for less than three cents an acre, doubled the size of the United States overnight, without 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 the District of Louisiana (subsequently formed as the
Louisiana Territory
The Territory of Louisiana or Louisiana Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1805, until June 4, 1812, when it was renamed the Missouri Territory. The territory was formed out of the ...
) to the north.
Statehood
Louisiana became the eighteenth U.S. state on April 30, 1812; the Territory of Orleans became the State of Louisiana and the Louisiana Territory was simultaneously renamed the Missouri Territory.
At its creation, the state of Louisiana did not include the area north and east of the Mississippi River known as the Florida Parishes. On April 14, 1812, Congress had authorized Louisiana to expand its borders to include the Florida Parishes, but the border change required approval of the state legislature, which it did not give until August 4. For the roughly three months in between, the northern border of eastern Louisiana was the course of Bayou Manchac and the middle of Lake Maurepas and Lake Pontchartrain.
From 1824 to 1861, Louisiana moved from a political system based on personality and ethnicity to a distinct two-party system, with Democrats competing first against Whig Party (United States), Whigs, then Know Nothings, and finally only other Democratic Party (United States), Democrats.
Secession and the Civil War
![New Orleans h76369k](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/New_Orleans_h76369k.jpg)
According to the 1860 census, 331,726 people were enslaved, nearly 47% of the state's total population of 708,002. The strong economic interest of elite whites in maintaining the slave society contributed to Louisiana's decision to secede from the Union on January 26, 1861. It followed other U.S. states in seceding after the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States. Louisiana's secession was announced on January 26, 1861, and it became part of the Confederate States of America.
The state was quickly defeated in the American Civil War, Civil War, a result of Union strategy to cut the Confederacy in two by controlling the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
. Federal troops captured New Orleans on April 25, 1862. Because a large part of the population had Union sympathies (or compatible commercial interests), the federal government took the unusual step of designating the areas of Louisiana under federal control as a state within the Union, with its own elected representatives to the U.S. Congress.
Post–Civil War to mid–20th century
Following the American Civil War and emancipation of slaves, violence rose in the southern U.S. as the war was carried on by insurgent private and paramilitary groups. During the initial period after the war, there was a massive rise in black participation in terms of voting and African-American officeholders during and following the Reconstruction era, holding political office. Louisiana saw the United States' first and second black governors with Oscar Dunn and P. B. S. Pinchback, P.B.S. Pinchback, both taking the office after serving as Lieutenant Governors (Dunn having been elected to the post of Lieutenant Governor while Pinchback was appointed after being elected as a member of the state Senate and President Pro Tempore of that body), with 125 black members of the state legislature being elected during this time, while Charles E. Nash was elected to represent the state's Louisiana's 6th congressional district, 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Eventually former Confederates came to dominate the state legislature after the end of Reconstruction era, Reconstruction and federal occupation in the late 1870s, and black codes were implemented to regulate freedmen and increasingly restricted the right to vote. They refused to extend voting rights to African Americans who had been free before the war and had sometimes obtained education and property (as in New Orleans).
Following the Memphis riots of 1866 and the New Orleans riot the same year, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed that provided suffrage and full citizenship for freedmen. Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, Reconstruction Act, establishing military districts for those states where conditions were considered the worst, including Louisiana. It was grouped with
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
in what was administered as the Fifth Military District.
African Americans began to live as citizens with some measure of equality before the law. Both freedmen and people of color who had been free before the war began to make more advances in education, family stability and jobs. At the same time, there was tremendous social volatility in the aftermath of war, with many whites actively resisting defeat and the free labor market. White insurgents mobilized to enforce white supremacy, first in Ku Klux Klan chapters.
By 1877, when federal forces were withdrawn, white Democrats in Louisiana and other states had regained control of state legislatures, often by paramilitary groups such as the White League, which suppressed black voting through intimidation and violence. Following Mississippi's example in 1890, in 1898, the white Democratic, planter-dominated legislature passed a new constitution that effectively Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era, disfranchised people of color by raising barriers to voter registration, such as poll tax (United States), poll taxes, residency requirements and literacy tests. The effect was immediate and long lasting. In 1896, there were 130,334 black voters on the rolls and about the same number of white voters, in proportion to the state population, which was evenly divided.
![Negro boy sitting on sugarcane truck, Morganza, Louisiana](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Negro_boy_sitting_on_sugarcane_truck%2C_Morganza%2C_Louisiana.jpg)
The state population in 1900 was 47% African American: a total of 652,013 citizens. Many in New Orleans were descendants of Creoles of color, the sizeable population of free people of color before the Civil War. By 1900, two years after the new constitution, only 5,320 black voters were registered in the state. Because of disfranchisement, by 1910 there were only 730 black voters (less than 0.5 percent of eligible African-American men), despite advances in education and literacy among blacks and people of color. Blacks were excluded from the political system and also unable to serve on juries. White Democrats had established one-party Democratic rule, which they maintained in the state for decades deep into the 20th century until after congressional passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act provided federal oversight and enforcement of the constitutional right to vote.
![CrowleyConcertBand1938RussellLee](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/CrowleyConcertBand1938RussellLee.jpg)
In the early decades of the 20th century, thousands of African Americans left Louisiana in the Great Migration (African American), Great Migration north to industrial cities for jobs and education, and to escape Jim Crow society and lynchings. The boll weevil infestation and agricultural problems cost many sharecroppers and farmers their jobs. The mechanization of agriculture also reduced the need for laborers. Beginning in the 1940s, blacks went west to California for jobs in its expanding defense industries.
During some of the Great Depression, Louisiana was led by Governor Huey Long. He was elected to office on populist appeal. His public works projects provided thousands of jobs to people in need, and he supported education and increased suffrage for poor whites, but Long was criticized for his allegedly demagogic and autocratic style. He extended patronage control through every branch of Louisiana's state government. Especially controversial were his plans for wealth redistribution in the state. Long's rule ended abruptly when he was Assassination of Huey Long, assassinated in the state capitol in 1935.
Mid–20th century to present
Mobilization for World War II created jobs in the state. But thousands of other workers, black and white alike, migrated to California for better jobs in its burgeoning defense industry. Many African Americans left the state in the Second Great Migration (African American), Second Great Migration, from the 1940s through the 1960s to escape social oppression and seek better jobs. The mechanization of agriculture in the 1930s had sharply cut the need for laborers. They sought skilled jobs in the defense industry in California, better education for their children, and living in communities where they could vote.
On November 26, 1958, at Chennault Air Force Base, a USAF B-47 bomber with a nuclear weapon on board developed a fire while on the ground. The aircraft wreckage and the site of the accident were contaminated after a limited explosion of non-nuclear material.
In the 1950s the state created new requirements for a citizenship test for voter registration. Despite opposition by the Dixiecrats, States' Rights Party (Dixiecrats), downstate black voters had begun to increase their rate of registration, which also reflected the growth of their middle classes. In 1960 the state established the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission, to investigate civil rights activists and maintain segregation.
Despite this, gradually black voter registration and turnout increased to 20% and more, and it was 32% by 1964, when the first national civil rights legislation of the era was passed. The percentage of black voters ranged widely in the state during these years, from 93.8% in Evangeline Parish to 1.7% in Tensas Parish, for instance, where there were intense white efforts to suppress the vote in the black-majority parish.
[Edward Blum and Abigail Thernstrom, "Executive Summary"](_blank)
, ''Bullock-Gaddie Expert Report on Louisiana'', February 10, 2006, p.1, American Enterprise Institute, accessed March 19, 2008
Violent attacks on civil rights activists in two mill towns were catalysts to the founding of the first two chapters of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in late 1964 and early 1965, in Jonesboro, Louisiana, Jonesboro and Bogalusa, Louisiana, Bogalusa, respectively. Made up of veterans of World War II and the Korean War, they were armed self-defense groups established to protect activists and their families. Continued violent white resistance in Bogalusa to blacks trying to use public facilities in 1965, following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, caused the federal government to order local police to protect the activists.
Other chapters were formed in Mississippi and Alabama.
By 1960 the proportion of African Americans in Louisiana had dropped to 32%. The 1,039,207 black citizens were still suppressed by segregation and disfranchisement. African Americans continued to suffer disproportionate discriminatory application of the state's voter registration rules. Because of better opportunities elsewhere, from 1965 to 1970, blacks continued to migrate out of Louisiana, for a net loss of more than 37,000 people. Based on official census figures, the African American population in 1970 stood at 1,085,109, a net gain of more than 46,000 people compared to 1960. During the latter period, some people began to migrate to cities of the New South for opportunities. Since that period, blacks entered the political system and began to be elected to office, as well as having other opportunities.
On May 21, 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving women full rights to vote, was passed at a national level, and was made the law throughout the United States on August 18, 1920. Louisiana finally ratified the amendment on June 11, 1970.
![Katrina-new-orleans-flooding3-2005](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Katrina-new-orleans-flooding3-2005.jpg)
Due to its location on the Gulf Coast, Louisiana has regularly suffered the effects of tropical storms and damaging hurricanes. On August 29, 2005, New Orleans and many other low-lying parts of the state along the
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...
were hit by the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina. It caused widespread damage due to breaching of levees and large-scale flooding of more than 80% of the city. Officials had issued warnings to evacuate the city and nearby areas, but tens of thousands of people, mostly African Americans, stayed behind, many of them stranded. Many people died and survivors suffered through the damage of the widespread floodwaters.
In July 2016 the shooting of Alton Sterling sparked protests throughout the state capital of Baton Rouge. In August 2016, 2016 Louisiana floods, an unnamed storm dumped trillions of gallons of rain on southern Louisiana, including the cities of Denham Springs, Louisiana, Denham Springs,
Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-sma ...
, Gonzales, St. Amant and Lafayette, Louisiana, Lafayette, causing catastrophic flooding. An estimated 110,000 homes were damaged and thousands of residents were displaced.
In 2019, three Louisiana black church fires, Louisiana black churches were set on fire. The suspect used gasoline, destroying each church completely. Holden Matthews, 21 years old, was charged with the destruction of the churches.
The first case of COVID-19 pandemic in Louisiana, COVID-19 in Louisiana was announced on March 9, 2020. Since the first confirmed case as of October 27, 2020, there had been 180,069 confirmed cases; 5,854 people have died of COVID-19. Louisiana entered phase one of re-opening the state on May 15. On June 4, Governor John Bel Edwards signed an order moving to phase two. Gov. Edwards extended phase two until September 11, and phase three began with speculation on October 9.
Geography
![Louisiana geographic map-en](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Louisiana_geographic_map-en.svg)
Louisiana is bordered to the west by
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
; to the north by
Arkansas
Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...
; to the east by
Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
; and to the south by the
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...
. The state may properly be divided into two parts, the uplands of the north (the region of North Louisiana), and the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, alluvial along the coast (the Central Louisiana, Acadiana, Florida Parishes, and New Orleans metropolitan area, Greater New Orleans regions). The alluvial region includes low swamp lands, coastal marshlands and beaches, and barrier islands that cover about . This area lies principally along the Gulf of Mexico and the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
, which traverses the state from north to south for a distance of about and empties into the Gulf of Mexico; also in the state are the Red River of the South, Red River; the Ouachita River and its branches; and other minor streams (some of which are called bayous).
The breadth of the alluvial region along the Mississippi is 10–60 miles (15–100 km), and along the other rivers, the alluvial region averages about 10 miles (15 km) across. The Mississippi River flows along a ridge formed by its natural deposits (known as a levee), from which the lands decline toward a river beyond at an average fall of six feet per mile (3m/km). The alluvial lands along other streams present similar features.
The higher and contiguous hill lands of the north and northwestern part of the state have an area of more than . They consist of prairie and woodlands. The elevations above sea level range from 10 feet (3m) at the coast and swamp lands to 50–60 feet (15–18m) at the prairie and alluvial lands. In the uplands and hills, the elevations rise to Driskill Mountain, the highest point in the state only 535 feet (163m) above sea level. From 1932 to 2010 the state lost 1,800 square miles due to rises in sea level and erosion. The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) spends around $1billion per year to help shore up and protect Louisiana shoreline and land in both federal and state funding.
Besides the waterways named, there are the Sabine River (Texas-Louisiana), Sabine, forming the western boundary; and the Pearl River (Mississippi-Louisiana), Pearl, the eastern boundary; the Calcasieu River, Calcasieu, the Mermentau River, Mermentau, the Vermilion River (Louisiana), Vermilion, Bayou Teche, the
Atchafalaya, the Boeuf River, Boeuf, Bayou Lafourche, the Courtableau River, Bayou D'Arbonne, the Macon River, the Tensas River, Tensas, Amite River, the Tchefuncte River, Tchefuncte, the Tickfaw River, Tickfaw, the Natalbany River, and a number of other smaller streams, constituting a natural system of navigable waterways, aggregating over long.
The state also has political jurisdiction over the approximately -wide portion of subsea land of the Outer continental shelf, inner continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico. Through a peculiarity of the political geography of the United States, this is substantially less than the -wide jurisdiction of nearby states Texas and Florida, which, like Louisiana, have extensive Gulf coastlines.
The southern coast of Louisiana in the United States is among the fastest-disappearing areas in the world. This has largely resulted from human mismanagement of the coast (see Wetlands of Louisiana). At one time, the land was added to when spring floods from the Mississippi River added sediment and stimulated marsh growth; the land is now shrinking. There are multiple causes.
Artificial levees block spring flood water that would bring fresh water and sediment to marshes. Swamps have been extensively logged, leaving canals and ditches that allow salt water to move inland. Canals dug for the oil and gas industry also allow storms to move sea water inland, where it damages swamps and marshes. Rising sea waters have exacerbated the problem. Some researchers estimate that the state is losing a landmass equivalent to 30 football fields every day. There are many proposals to save coastal areas by reducing human damage, including restoring natural floods from the Mississippi. Without such restoration, coastal communities will continue to disappear. And as the communities disappear, more and more people are leaving the region.
[Tidwell, Michael. ''Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast''. Vintage Departures: New York, 2003 .] Since the coastal wetlands support an economically important coastal fishery, the loss of wetlands is adversely affecting this industry.
The Gulf of Mexico dead zone, Gulf of Mexico 'dead zone' off the coast of Louisiana is the largest recurring Hypoxia (environmental), hypoxic zone in the United States. It was in 2017, the largest ever recorded.
Geology
The Gulf of Mexico did not exist 250 million years ago when there was but one supercontinent, Pangea. As Pangea split apart, the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico opened. Louisiana slowly developed, over millions of years, from water into land, and from north to south.
The oldest rocks are exposed in the north, in areas such as the Kisatchie National Forest. The oldest rocks date back to the early Cenozoic Era, some 60 million years ago. The history of the formation of these rocks can be found in D. Spearing's ''Roadside Geology of Louisiana''.
The youngest parts of the state were formed during the last 12,000 years as successive deltas of the Mississippi River: the Maringouin, Louisiana, Maringouin, Bayou Teche, Teche, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, St. Bernard, Bayou Lafourche, Lafourche, the modern Mississippi, and now the
Atchafalaya. The sediments were carried from north to south by the Mississippi River.
In between the tertiary rocks of the north, and the relatively new sediments along the coast, is a vast belt known as the Pleistocene Terraces. Their age and distribution can be largely related to the rise and fall of sea levels during past ice ages. In general, the northern terraces have had sufficient time for rivers to cut deep channels, while the newer terraces tend to be much flatter.
Salt domes are also found in Louisiana. Their origin can be traced back to the early
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...
when the shallow ocean had high rates of evaporation. There are several hundred salt domes in the state; one of the most familiar is Avery Island, Louisiana. Salt domes are important not only as a source of salt; they also serve as underground traps for oil and gas.
Climate
Louisiana has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification ''Cfa''), with long, hot, humid summers and short, mild winters. The subtropical characteristics of the state are due to its low latitude, low lying topography, and the influence of the Gulf of Mexico, which at its farthest point is no more than away.
Rain is frequent throughout the year, although from April to September is slightly wetter than the rest of the year, which is the state's wet season. There is a dip in precipitation in October. In summer, thunderstorms build during the heat of the day and bring intense but brief, tropical downpours. In winter, rainfall is more frontal and less intense.
Summers in southern Louisiana have high temperatures from June through September averaging or more, and overnight lows averaging above . At times, temperatures in the 90s°F(), combined with dew points in the upper 70s°F(), create sensible temperatures over . The humid, thick, jungle-like heat in southern Louisiana is a famous subject of countless stories and movies.
Temperatures are generally warm in the winter in the southern part of the state, with highs around New Orleans, Baton Rouge, the rest of southern Louisiana, and the Gulf of Mexico averaging . The northern part of the state is mildly cool in the winter, with highs averaging . The overnight lows in the winter average well above freezing throughout the state, with the average near the Gulf and an average low of in the winter in the northern part of the state.
On occasion, cold fronts from low-pressure centers to the north, reach Louisiana in winter. Low temperatures near occur on occasion in the northern part of the state but rarely do so in the southern part of the state. Snow in Louisiana, Snow is rare near the Gulf of Mexico, although residents in the northern parts of the state might receive a dusting of snow a few times each decade. Louisiana's highest recorded temperature is in Plain Dealing, Louisiana, Plain Dealing on August 10, 1936, while the coldest recorded temperature is at Minden, Louisiana, Minden on February 13, 1899.
Louisiana is often affected by tropical cyclones and is very vulnerable to strikes by major Atlantic hurricane, hurricanes, particularly the Upland and lowland, lowlands around and in the New Orleans area. The unique geography of the region, with the many bayous, marshes and inlets, can result in water damage across a wide area from major hurricanes. The area is also prone to frequent thunderstorms, especially in the summer.
The entire state averages over 60 days of thunderstorms a year, more than any other state except Florida. Louisiana averages 27 tornadoes annually. The entire state is vulnerable to a tornado strike, with the extreme southern portion of the state slightly less so than the rest of the state. Tornadoes are more common from January to March in the southern part of the state, and from February through March in the northern part of the state.
Publicly owned land
Owing to its location and geology, the state has high biological diversity. Some vital areas, such as southwestern prairie, have experienced a loss in excess of 98 percent. The pine flatwoods are also at great risk, mostly from Wildfire suppression, fire suppression and urban sprawl. There is not yet a properly organized system of natural areas to represent and protect Louisiana's biological diversity. Such a system would consist of a protected system of core areas linked by biological corridors, such as Florida is planning.
Louisiana contains a number of areas which, to varying degrees, prevent people from using them. In addition to National Park Service areas and a United States National Forest, Louisiana operates a system of List of Louisiana state parks, state parks, List of Louisiana state historic sites, state historic sites, one Louisiana State Arboretum, state preservation area, one Alexander State Forest, state forest, and many Wildlife Management Areas.
One of Louisiana's largest government-owned areas is Kisatchie National Forest. It is some 600,000 acres in area, more than half of which is flatwoods vegetation, which supports many rare plant and animal species. These include the Louisiana pinesnake and red-cockaded woodpecker. The system of government-owned Cypress dome, cypress swamps around Lake Pontchartrain is another large area, with southern wetland species including egrets, alligators, and sturgeon. At least 12 core areas would be needed to build a "protected areas system" for the state; these would range from southwestern prairies, to the Pearl River Floodplain in the east, to the Mississippi River alluvial swamps in the north. Additionally, the state operates a system of 22 state parks, 17 state historic sites and one state preservation area; in these lands, Louisiana maintains a Fauna of Louisiana, diversity of fauna and flora.
National Park Service
Historic or scenic areas managed, protected, or otherwise recognized by the National Park Service include:
* Atchafalaya National Heritage Area in Ascension Parish;
* Cane River National Heritage Area near Natchitoches;
* Cane River Creole National Historical Park near Natchitoches;
* Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, headquartered in New Orleans, with units in St. Bernard Parish, Barataria (Crown Point), and Acadiana (Lafayette);
* Poverty Point National Monument at Delhi, Louisiana; and
* Saline Bayou, a designated National Wild and Scenic River near Winn Parish in northern Louisiana.
U.S. Forest Service
* Kisatchie National Forest is Louisiana's only national forest. It includes more than 600,000 acres in central and northern Louisiana with large areas of flatwoods and longleaf pine forest.
Major cities
Louisiana contains 308 incorporated municipalities, consisting of four Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parishes, and 304 cities, towns, and villages. Louisiana's municipalities cover only 7.9% of the state's land mass but are home to 45.3% of its population. The majority of urban Louisianians live along the coast or in northern Louisiana. The oldest permanent settlement in the state is Natchitoches, Louisiana, Nachitoches. Baton Rouge, the state capital, is the second-largest city in the state. The most populous city is New Orleans. As defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, Louisiana contains nine metropolitan statistical areas. Major areas include Greater New Orleans, Baton Rouge metropolitan area, Greater Baton Rouge, Lafayette metropolitan area, Louisiana, Lafayette, and Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, Shreveport–Bossier City.
Demographics
![Louisiana population map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Louisiana_population_map.png)
Louisiana is the second-most populous of the South Central United States after
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
. The majority of the state's growing population lives in southern Louisiana, spread throughout New Orleans metropolitan area, Greater New Orleans, the Florida Parishes, and Acadiana,
while Central Louisiana, Central and North Louisiana have been losing population. At the 2020 United States census, Louisiana had an apportioned population of 4,661,468. Its resident population was 4,657,757 as of 2020. The United States Census Bureau estimated that the population of Louisiana was 4,648,794 on July 1, 2019, a 2.55% increase since the 2010 United States census.
In 2010, the state of Louisiana had a population of 4,533,372, up from 76,556 in 1810 United States census, 1810.
According to Immigration to the United States, immigration statistics in 2018, approximately four percent of Louisianians were immigrants, while another four percent were native-born U.S. citizens with at least one immigrant parent. The majority of Louisianian immigrants came from Mexico (16%), Honduras (15%), Vietnam (10%), the Philippines (5%), and Guatemala (4%).
Among the immigrant population in 2014, an estimated 64,500 were undocumented; Louisiana's undocumented immigrant population earned more than a billion U.S. dollars and paid $136million in taxes. The undocumented immigrant population increased to 70,000 in 2016 and comprised two percent of the state population.
New Orleans has been defined as a sanctuary city.
The population density of the state is 104.9 people per square mile.
The center of population of Louisiana is located in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, Pointe Coupee Parish, in the city of New Roads, Louisiana, New Roads. According to the 2010 United States census, 5.4% of the population age5 and older spoke Spanish language in the United States, Spanish at home, up from 3.5% in 2000; and 4.5% spoke French (including Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole French, Louisiana Creole), down from 4.8% in 2000.
Race and ethnicity
![Louisiana counties by race](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Louisiana_counties_by_race.svg)
Several Native Americans in the United States, American Indian tribes such as the Atakapa and
Caddo
The Caddo people comprise the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe headquartered in Binger, Oklahoma. They speak the Caddo language.
The Caddo Confederacy was a network of Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands, wh ...
were the primary residents of Louisiana before European colonization, concentrated along the Red River of the South, Red River and Gulf of Mexico. At the beginning of French and Spanish colonization of Louisiana, White Americans, white and black Americans began to move into the area. From French and Spanish rule in Louisiana, they were joined by
Filipinos
Filipinos ( tl, Mga Pilipino) are the people who are citizens of or native to the Philippines. The majority of Filipinos today come from various Austronesian ethnolinguistic groups, all typically speaking either Filipino, English and/or othe ...
and German Americans, Germans, both slave and free, who settled in enclaves within the Greater New Orleans region and Acadiana.
By the 19th and 20th centuries, the state's population fluctuated between white and black Americans; 47% of the population was African Americans, black or African American in 1900. The black or African American population declined following migration to states including New York and California in efforts to flee Jim Crow regulations.
At the end of the 20th century, Louisiana's population has experienced diversification again, and its Non-Hispanic or Latino whites, non-Hispanic or non-Latino American white population has been declining.
Since 2020, the black or African American population have made up the largest non-white share of youths. Hispanic and Latino Americans have also increased as the second-largest racial and ethnic composition in the state, making up nearly 7% of Louisiana's population at the 2020 census.
As of 2018,
the largest single Hispanic and Latino American ethnicity were Mexican Americans (2.0%), followed by Puerto Ricans (0.3%) and Cuban Americans (0.2%). Other Hispanic and Latino Americans altogether made up 2.6% of Louisiana's Hispanic or Latino American population. The Asian Americans, Asian American and Multiracial Americans, multiracial communities have also experienced rapid growth,
with many of Louisiana's multiracial population identifying as Cajuns, Cajun or Louisiana Creole people, Louisiana Creole.
At the 2019 American Community Survey, the largest ancestry groups of Louisiana were African American (31.4%), French Americans, French (9.6%), German (6.2%), English Americans, English (4.6%), Italian Americans, Italian (4.2%), and Scottish Americans, Scottish (0.9%). African American and French heritage have been dominant since colonial Louisiana. As of 2011, 49.0% of Louisiana's population younger than age1 were minorities.
Religion
As an ethnically and culturally diverse state, pre-colonial, colonial and present-day Louisianians have adhered to a variety of religions and spiritual traditions; pre-colonial and colonial Louisianian peoples practiced various Native American religions alongside Christianity through the establishment of Spanish missions in Louisiana, Spanish and French colonization of the Americas, French missions;
and other faiths including Haitian Vodou and Louisiana Voodoo were introduced to the state and are practiced to the present day. In the colonial and present-day U.S. state of Louisiana, Christianity grew to become its most predominant religion, representing 84% of the adult population in 2014 and 76.5% in 2020,
during two separate studies by the Pew Research Center and Public Religion Research Institute.
Among its Christian population—and in common with other southern U.S. states—the majority, particularly in the north of the state, belong to various Protestant denominations. Protestant Christians made up 57% of the state's adult population at the 2014 Pew Research Center study, and 53% at the 2020 Public Religion Research Institute's study. Protestants are concentrated in North Louisiana, Central Louisiana, and the northern tier of the Florida Parishes. According to the 2014 study, Louisiana's largest Protestant Christian denominations were the Southern Baptist Convention, National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., National Baptist Convention USA, National Baptist Convention of America International, Inc., National Baptist Convention of America, Progressive National Baptist Convention, American Baptist Churches USA, non/interdenominational Evangelicals and mainline Protestants, the Assemblies of God USA, Church of God in Christ, African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal and Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Christian Methodist Episcopal churches, and the United Methodist Church.
According to a prior study by Association of Religion Data Archives in 2010, the Southern Baptist Convention had 709,650 members, and the United Methodist Church had 146,848; non-denominational Protestant churches had 195,903 members.
In another study by the Association of Religion Data Archives in 2020, the Southern Baptists remained the state's largest Protestant denomination (648,734), followed by the United Methodists (128,108); non-denominational Protestants increased to 357,465. National Missionary Baptist Convention of America, National Missionary Baptists reported 67,518 members, and the National Baptist Convention USA had a statewide membership of 61,997, making them the largest Black church, historically and predominantly African American church bodies in the state. In this study, Pentecostalism, Pentecostals were the largest Protestant traditions outside of the Baptists and Methodism, Methodists; the Assemblies of God USA (45,773) was the state's largest Pentecostal body followed by the Church of God in Christ (32,116). The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America had 23,922 members, and the remaining largest Protestant denominations were the Churches of Christ (22,833), Progressive National Baptists (22,756), National Baptists of America (22,034), and Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship, Full Gospel Baptists (9,772).
Because of French and Spanish heritage, and their descendants the Creoles, and later Irish, Italian, Portuguese and German immigrants, southern Louisiana and Greater New Orleans are predominantly Catholic in contrast; according to the 2020 Public Religion Research Institute study, 22% of the adult population were Catholic.
Since Creoles were the first settlers, planters and leaders of the territory, they have traditionally been well represented in politics; for instance, most of the early governors were Creole Catholics, instead of Protestants.
As Catholics continue to constitute a significant fraction of Louisiana's population, they have continued to be influential in state politics. The high proportion and influence of the Catholic population makes Louisiana distinct among southern states. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge, Diocese of Baton Rouge, and Roman Catholic Diocese of Lafayette in Louisiana, Diocese of Lafayette in Louisiana are the largest Catholic jurisdictions in the state, located within the Greater New Orleans, Greater Baton Rouge, and Lafayette metropolitan statistical areas.
![St](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/St._Louis_Cathedral_%28New_Orleans%29.jpg)
Outside of Christendom, Louisiana was among the southern states with a significant Jewish population before the 20th century; Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia also had influential Jewish populations in some of their major cities from the 18th and 19th centuries. The earliest Jewish colonists were Sephardic Jews who immigrated to the Thirteen Colonies. Later in the 19th century, German Jews began to immigrate, followed by those from eastern Europe and the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jewish communities have been established in the state's larger cities, notably New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The most significant of these is the Jewish community of the New Orleans area. In 2000, before the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, its population was about 12,000. Dominant Jewish movements in the state include Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox and Reform Judaism; Reform Judaism was the largest Jewish tradition in the state according to the Association of Religion Data Archives in 2020, representing some 5,891 Jews.
Prominent Jews in Louisiana's political leadership have included Whig (later Democrat) Judah P. Benjamin (1811–1884), who represented Louisiana in the U.S. Senate before the American Civil War and then became the Confederate States of America, Confederate secretary of state; Democrat-turned-Republican Michael Hahn who was elected as governor, serving 1864–1865 when Louisiana was occupied by the Union Army, and later elected in 1884 as a U.S. congressman; Democrat Adolph Meyer (1842–1908), Confederate Army officer who represented the state in the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives from 1891 until his death in 1908; Republican Party (United States), Republican Secretary of State (U.S. state government), secretary of state Jay Dardenne (1954–), and Republican (Democratic Party (United States), Democrat before 2011) List of Attorneys General of Louisiana, attorney general Buddy Caldwell (1946–).
Other non-Christian and non-Jewish religions with a continuous, historical presence in the state have been Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. In the Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, Muslims made up an estimated 14% of Louisiana's total Muslim population as of 2014. In 2020, the Association of Religion Data Archives estimated there were 24,732 Muslims living in the state.
The largest Islamic denominations in the major metropolises of Louisiana were Sunni Islam, Non-denominational Muslim, non-denominational Islam and Quranism, Shia Islam, and the Nation of Islam.
Among Louisiana's irreligious community, 2% affiliated with Atheism and 13% claimed no religion as of 2014; an estimated 10% of the state's population practiced nothing in particular at the 2014 study. According to the Public Religion Research Institute in 2020, 19% were religiously unaffiliated.
Economy
![MSC Marina docked at Port of New Orleans](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/MSC_Marina_docked_at_Port_of_New_Orleans.jpg)
Louisiana's population, Agricultural productivity, agricultural products, abundance of Oil and gas law in the United States, oil and natural gas, and southern Louisiana's medical and technology corridors have contributed to its growing and diversifying economy. In 2014, Louisiana was ranked as one of the most small business friendly states, based on a study drawing upon data from more than 12,000 small business owners. The state's principal agricultural products include seafood (it is the biggest producer of crawfish in the world, supplying approximately 90%), cotton, soybeans, cattle, sugarcane, poultry and eggs, dairy products, and rice. Among its energy and other industries, chemical products, petroleum and coal products, processed foods, transportation equipment, and paper products have contributed to a significant portion of the state's GSP. Tourism and gaming are also important elements in the economy, especially in Greater New Orleans.
The Port of South Louisiana, located on the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, was the largest volume shipping port in the Western Hemisphere and 4th largest in the world, as well as the largest bulk cargo port in the U.S. in 2004. The Port of South Louisiana continued to be the busiest port by tonnage in the U.S. through 2018. South Louisiana was number 15 among world ports in 2016.
, Shreveport, Louisiana, Shreveport, and
Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-sma ...
are home to a thriving film industry. State financial incentives since 2002 and aggressive promotion have given Louisiana the nickname "Hollywood South." Because of its distinctive culture within the United States, only
Alaska
Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...
is Louisiana's rival in popularity as a setting for reality television programs.
In late 2007 and early 2008, a film studio was scheduled to open in Tremé, with state-of-the-art production facilities, and a film training institute. Tabasco sauce, which is marketed by one of the United States' biggest producers of hot sauce, the McIlhenny Company, originated on Avery Island.
From 2010 to 2020, Louisiana's Gross regional domestic product, gross state product increased from $213.6billion to $253.3billion, the List of states and territories of the United States by GDP, 26th highest in the United States at the time. As of 2020, its GSP is List of countries by GDP (nominal), greater than the GDPs of Economy of Greece, Greece, Economy of Peru, Peru, and Economy of New Zealand, New Zealand. Ranking 41st in the United States with a Per capita personal income in the United States, per capita personal income of $30,952 in 2014, its residents per capita income decreased to $28,662 in 2019. The median household income was $51,073, while the national average was $65,712 at the 2019 American Community Survey. In July 2017, the state's unemployment rate was 5.3%; it decreased to 4.4% in 2019.
Louisiana has three personal income tax brackets, ranging from 2% to 6%. The state sales tax rate is 4.45%, and
parishes
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...
can levy additional sales tax on top of this. The state also has a use tax, which includes 4% to be distributed to local governments. Property taxes are assessed and collected at the local level. Louisiana is a subsidized state, and Louisiana taxpayers receive more federal funding per dollar of federal taxes paid compared to the average state. Per dollar of federal tax collected in 2005, Louisiana citizens received approximately $1.78 in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state fourth highest nationally and represents a rise from 1995 when Louisiana received $1.35 per dollar of taxes in federal spending (ranked seventh nationally). Neighboring states and the amount of federal spending received per dollar of federal tax collected were: Texas ($0.94), Arkansas ($1.41), and Mississippi ($2.02). Federal spending in 2005 and subsequent years since has been exceptionally high due to the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.
Culture
Louisiana is home to many cultures; especially notable are the distinct cultures of the Louisiana Creoles and Cajuns, descendants of French and Spanish settlers in colonial Louisiana.
African culture
The French colony of ''La Louisiane'' struggled for decades to survive. Conditions were harsh, the climate and soil were unsuitable for certain crops the colonists knew, and they suffered from regional tropical diseases. Both colonists and the slaves they imported had high mortality rates. The settlers kept importing slaves, which resulted in a high proportion of native Africans from West Africa, who continued to practice their culture in new surroundings. As described by historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, they developed a marked Afro-Creole culture in the colonial era.
At the turn of the 18th century and in the early 1800s, New Orleans received a major influx of White and mixed-race refugees fleeing the violence of the Haitian Revolution, many of whom brought their slaves with them. This added another infusion of African culture to the city, as more slaves in Saint-Domingue were from Africa than in the United States. They strongly influenced the African-American culture of the city in terms of dance, music and religious practices.
Creole culture
![CreoleFood](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/CreoleFood.jpg)
Louisiana Creole people, Creole culture is an amalgamation of French, African, Spanish (and other European), and Native American cultures. Creole comes from the Portuguese word ''crioulo''; originally it referred to a colonist of European (specifically French) descent who was born in the New World, in comparison to immigrants from France. The oldest Louisiana manuscript to use the word "Creole", from 1782, applied it to a slave born in the French colony. But originally it referred more generally to the French colonists born in Louisiana.
Over time, there developed in the French colony a relatively large group of Creoles of Color (''gens de couleur libres''), who were primarily descended from African slave women and French men (later other Europeans became part of the mix, as well as some Native Americans). Often the French would free their concubines and mixed-race children, and pass on social capital to them. They might educate sons in France, for instance, and help them enter the French Army for a career. They also settled capital or property on their mistresses and children. The free people of color gained more rights in the colony and sometimes education; they generally spoke French and were Roman Catholic. Many became artisans and property owners. Over time, the term "Creole" became associated with this class of Creoles of color, many of whom achieved freedom long before the American Civil War.
Wealthy French Creoles generally maintained town houses in
as well as houses on their large sugar plantations outside town along the Mississippi River. New Orleans had the largest population of free people of color in the region; they could find work there and created their own culture, marrying among themselves for decades.
Acadian culture
The ancestors of Cajuns immigrated mostly from west central France to New France, where they settled in the Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, known originally as the French colony of Acadia. After the British defeated France in the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War) in 1763, France ceded its territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain. After the Acadians refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the British Crown, they were Expulsion of the Acadians, expelled from Acadia, and made their way to places such as France, Britain, and New England.
Other Acadians covertly remained in British America, British North America or moved to New Spain. Many Acadians settled in southern Louisiana in the region around Lafayette, Louisiana, Lafayette and the LaFourche Bayou country. They developed a distinct rural culture there, different from the French Creole colonists of New Orleans. Intermarrying with others in the area, they developed what was called Cajun music, cuisine and culture.
Isleño culture
![El_Museo_de_los_Isleños](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/El_Museo_de_los_Isle%C3%B1os.jpg)
A third distinct culture in Louisiana is that of the Isleños. Its members are descendants of colonists from the Canary Islands who settled in Spanish Louisiana between 1778 and 1783 and intermarried with other communities such as French people, Frenchman, Acadians, Louisiana Creole people, Creoles, Spaniards, and other groups, mainly through the 19th and early 20th centuries.
In Louisiana, the Isleños originally settled in four communities which included Galveztown, Valenzuela, Barataria, and San Bernardo. Of those settlements, Valenzuela and San Bernardo were the most successful as the other two were plagued with both disease and flooding. The large migration of Acadian refugees to Bayou Lafourche led to the rapid gallicization of the Valenzuela community while the community of San Bernardo (Saint Bernard Parish, Louisiana, Saint Bernard) was able to preserve much of its unique culture and language into the 21st century. This being said, the transmission of Spanish and other customs has completely halted in St. Bernard with those having competency in Spanish being octogenarians.
Through the centuries, the various Isleño communities of Louisiana have kept alive different elements of their Canary Islander heritage while also adopting and building upon the customs and traditions of the communities that surround them. Today two heritage associates exist for the communities: Los Isleños Heritage and Cultural Society of St. Bernard as well as the Canary Islanders Heritage Society of Louisiana. The Isleños Fiesta, Fiesta de los Isleños is celebrated annually in St. Bernard Parish which features heritage performances from local groups and the Canary Islands.
Languages
![Native Languages of Louisiana](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Native_Languages_of_Louisiana.svg)
According to a 2010 study by the Modern Language Association among persons aged five years and older, 91.26% of Louisiana residents speak only English at home, 3.45% speak French (standard French, French Creole, or Cajun French), 3.30% speak Spanish, and 0.59% speak Vietnamese language, Vietnamese.
Historically, Native American peoples in the area at the time of European encounter were seven tribes distinguished by their languages: Caddo language, Caddo, Tunica language, Tunica, Natchez language, Natchez, Houma language, Houma, Choctaw language, Choctaw, Atakapa language, Atakapa, and Chitimacha language, Chitimacha. Other Native American peoples migrated into the region, escaping from European pressure from the east. Among these were the Alabama language, Alabama, Biloxi, Koasati, and Ofo peoples. Only Koasati language, Koasati still has native speakers in Louisiana (Choctaw, Alabama and possibly Caddo are still spoken in other states), although several tribes are working to revitalize their languages.
Starting in the 1700s, French colonists began to settle along the coast and founded New Orleans. They established French culture and language institutions. They imported thousands of slaves from tribes of West Africa, who spoke several different languages. In the creolization process, the slaves developed a Louisiana Creole dialect incorporating both French and African forms, which colonists adopted to communicate with them, and which persisted beyond slavery. In the 20th century, there were still people of mixed race, particularly, who spoke Louisiana Creole French.
During the 19th century after the Louisiana Purchase by the United States, English gradually gained prominence for business and government due to the shift in population with settlement by numerous Americans who were English speakers. Many ethnic French families continued to use French in private. Slaves and some free people of color also spoke Louisiana Creole French. The Constitution of Louisiana#Louisiana Constitution of 1812, State Constitution of 1812 gave English official status in legal proceedings, but use of French remained widespread. Subsequent state constitutions reflect the diminishing importance of French. The 1868 constitution, passed during the Reconstruction era before Louisiana was re-admitted to the Union, banned laws requiring the publication of legal proceedings in languages other than English. Subsequently, the legal status of French recovered somewhat, but it never regained its pre-American Civil War, Civil War prominence.
Several unique dialects of French, Creole, and English are spoken in Louisiana. Dialects of the French language are: Colonial French and Houma French. Louisiana Creole French is the term for one of the Creole languages. Two unique dialects developed of the English language: Cajun English, Louisiana English, a French-influenced variety of English in which dropping of postvocalic /r/ is common; and what is informally known as Yat (New Orleans), Yat, which resembles the New York City English, New York City dialect sometimes with southern influences, particularly that of historical Brooklyn. Both accents were influenced by large communities of immigrant Irish and Italians, but the Yat dialect, which developed in New Orleans, was also influenced by French and Spanish.
Louisiana French, Colonial French was the dominant language of white settlers in Louisiana (New France), Louisiana during the French colonial period; it was spoken primarily by the French Creoles (native-born). In addition to this dialect, the mixed-race people and slaves developed Louisiana Creole French, Louisiana Creole, with a base in West African languages. The limited years of Spanish rule at the end of the 18th century did not result in widespread adoption of the Spanish language. French and Louisiana Creole are still used in modern-day Louisiana, often in family gatherings. English and its associated dialects became predominant after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, after which the area became dominated by numerous English speakers. In some regions, English was influenced by French, as seen with Louisiana English. Colonial French, although mistakenly named Cajun French by some Cajuns, has persisted alongside English.
Renewed interest in the French language in Louisiana has led to the establishment of Canadian-modeled French immersion schools, as well as bilingual signage in the historic French neighborhoods of New Orleans and Lafayette (Louisiana), Lafayette. In addition to private organizations, since 1968 the state has maintained the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), which promotes use of the French language in the state's tourism, economic development, culture, education and international relations.
In 2018, Louisiana became the first U.S. state to join the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie as an observer.
Since Louisiana joined the Francophonie, new organizations have launched to help revitalize Louisiana French and Creole, including the Nous Foundation.
Education
![Louisiana State University (aerial view)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Louisiana_State_University_%28aerial_view%29.jpg)
Louisiana is home to over 40 public and private List of colleges and universities in Louisiana, colleges and universities including Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in Lafayette, and Tulane University in New Orleans. Louisiana State University is the largest and most comprehensive university in Louisiana; the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is the second largest by enrollment. The University of Louisiana at Lafayette became an R1 university in December 2021. Tulane University is a major private research university and the wealthiest university in Louisiana with an endowment over $1.1billion. Tulane is also highly regarded for its academics nationwide, consistently ranked in the top 50 on ''U.S. News & World Report's'' U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges Ranking, list of best national universities.
Louisiana's two oldest and largest HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) are Southern University in Baton Rouge and Grambling State University in Grambling. Both these Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) schools compete against each other in football annually in the much anticipated Bayou Classic during Thanksgiving weekend in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Superdome.
Of note among the education system, the Louisiana Science Education Act was a controversial law passed by the Louisiana State Legislature, Louisiana Legislature on June 11, 2008, and signed into law by Governor Bobby Jindal on June 25. The act allowed public school teachers to use supplemental materials in the science classroom which are critical of established science on such topics as the theory of evolution and global warming.
In 2000, of all of the states, Louisiana had the highest percentage of students in private schools. Danielle Dreilinger of ''The Times Picayune'' wrote in 2014 that "Louisiana parents have a national reputation for favoring private schools."
The number of students in enrolled in private schools in Louisiana declined by 9% from circa 2000–2005 until 2014, due to the proliferation of charter schools, the 2008 recession and Hurricane Katrina. Ten parishes in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans area had a combined 17% decline in private school enrollment in that period. This prompted private schools to lobby for school vouchers.
Louisiana's school voucher program is known as the Louisiana Scholarship Program. It was available in the New Orleans area beginning in 2008 and in the rest of the state beginning in 2012. In 2013, the number of students using school vouchers to attend private schools was 6,751, and for 2014 it was projected to over 8,800. As per a ruling from Ivan Lemelle, a U.S. district judge, the federal government has the right to review the charter school placements to ensure they do not further racial segregation.
Transportation
The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development is the state government organization in charge of maintaining public transportation, roadways, bridges, canals, select levees, floodplain management, port facilities, commercial vehicles, and aviation which includes 69 airports.
Roads
Interstate highways
United States highways
In 2011, Louisiana ranked among the five deadliest states for debris/litter-caused vehicle accidents per total number of registered vehicles and population size. Figures derived from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA show at least 25 persons in Louisiana were killed per year in motor vehicle collisions with non-fixed objects, including debris, dumped litter, animals and their carcasses.
Rail
Six Class I railroad, Class I freight railroads operate in Louisiana: BNSF Railway, Canadian National Railway, CSX Transportation, Kansas City Southern Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway, and Union Pacific Railroad. A number of Class II and Class III railroads also carry freight.
Amtrak, the national passenger railroad, operates three long-distance rail routes through Louisiana. All three originate at New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal. The ''Crescent (train), Crescent'' serves then runs northeast to via , , , and The ''City of New Orleans'' stops at before continuing north to by way of and . The ''Sunset Limited'' serves , , , and on its route west to via , , , and . Before Hurricane Katrina, the ''Sunset Limited'' ran as far east as .
Mass transit
Predominantly serving
, the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority is the largest transit agency in the state. Other transit organizations are St. Bernard Urban Rapid Transit, Jefferson Transit (Louisiana), Jefferson Transit, Capital Area Transit System, Lafayette Transit System, Shreveport Area Transit System, and Monroe Transit, among others.
During the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, there was a gondola system built to go across the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
, called Mississippi Aerial River Transit, but was closed less than a year later.
The Louisiana Transportation Authority (under the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development) was created in 2001 to "promote, plan, finance, develop, construct, control, regulate, operate and maintain any tollway or transitway to be constructed within its jurisdiction. Development, construction, improvement, expansion, and maintenance of an efficient, safe, and well-maintained intermodal transportation system is essential to promote Louisiana's economic growth and the ability of Louisiana's business and industry to compete in regional, national, and global markets and to provide a high quality of life for the people of Louisiana."
Air
Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY) is the busiest airport in Louisiana by an order of magnitude. It is also the second lowest-lying international airport in the world, at just above sea level. There are six other FAA airport categories, primary airports in the state: Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport, Baton Rouge Metropolitan, Shreveport Regional Airport, Shreveport Regional, Lafayette Regional Airport, Lafayette Regional, Alexandria International Airport (Louisiana), Alexandria International, Monroe Regional Airport (Louisiana), Monroe Regional, and Lake Charles Regional Airport, Lake Charles Regional. A total of 69 public-use airports exist in Louisiana.
Waterways
![Intracoastal Waterway Louisiana](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Intracoastal_Waterway_Louisiana.jpg)
The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway is an important means of transporting commercial goods such as petroleum and petroleum products, agricultural produce, building materials and manufactured goods. In 2018, the state sued the federal government to repair erosion along the waterway.
Law and government
:
![LAGovMansion](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/LAGovMansion.JPG)
In 1849, the state moved the capital from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Donaldsonville, Louisiana, Donaldsonville, Opelousas, Louisiana, Opelousas, and Shreveport, Louisiana, Shreveport have briefly served as the seat of Louisiana state government. The Louisiana State Capitol and the Louisiana Governor's Mansion are both located in Baton Rouge. The Louisiana Supreme Court, however, did not move to Baton Rouge but remains headquartered in New Orleans.
The current Louisiana governor is Democratic Party (United States), Democrat John Bel Edwards. The current United States Senate, United States senators are Republicans John Neely Kennedy and Bill Cassidy. Louisiana has six congressional districts and is represented in the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives by five Republicans and one Democrat. Louisiana had eight votes in the United States Electoral College, Electoral College for the 2020 United States presidential election in Louisiana, 2020 election.
In a 2020 study, Louisiana was ranked as the 24th hardest state for citizens to vote in.
The Louisiana State Penitentiary, Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola - located near the border to Mississippi - is the largest Types of US federal prisons, maximum-security prison in the United States.
Administrative divisions
Louisiana is divided into 64 Parish (administrative division), parishes (the equivalent of
counties
A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...
in most other states).
*List of parishes in Louisiana
*Louisiana census statistical areas
Most parishes have an elected government known as the Police Jury, dating from the colonial days. It is the legislative and executive government of the parish, and is elected by the voters. Its members are called Jurors, and together they elect a president as their chairman.
A more limited number of parishes operate under home rule charters, electing various forms of government. This include mayor–council, council–manager (in which the council hires a professional operating manager for the parish), and others.
Civil law
The Louisiana political and legal structure has maintained several elements from the times of French and Spanish governance. One is the use of the term "parish (Louisiana), parish" (from the French: ''paroisse'') in place of "County (United States), county" for administrative subdivision. Another is the legal system of civil law (legal system), civil law based on French, German, and Spanish legal codes and ultimately Roman law, as opposed to English common law.
Louisiana's civil law system is what the majority of sovereign states in the world use, especially in Europe and its former colonies, excluding those that derive their legal systems from the British Empire. However, it is incorrect to equate the Louisiana Civil Code with the Napoleonic Code. Although the Napoleonic Code and Louisiana law draw from common legal roots, the Napoleonic Code was never in force in Louisiana, as it was enacted in 1804, after the United States had Louisiana Purchase, purchased and annexed Louisiana in 1803.
While the Louisiana Civil Code of 1808 has been continuously revised and updated since its enactment, it is still considered the controlling authority in the state. Differences are found between Louisianian civil law and the common law found in the other U.S. states. While some of these differences have been bridged due to the strong influence of common law tradition,
the civil law tradition is still deeply rooted in most aspects of Louisiana private law. Thus property, contractual, business entities structure, much of civil procedure, and family law, as well as some aspects of criminal law, are still based mostly on traditional Roman legal thinking.
Marriage
In 1997, Louisiana became the first state to offer the option of a traditional marriage or a covenant marriage. In a covenant marriage, the couple waives their right to a "no-fault" divorce after six months of separation, which is available in a traditional marriage. To divorce under a covenant marriage, a couple must demonstrate cause. Marriages between ascendants and descendants, and marriages between collaterals within the fourth degree (i.e., siblings, aunt and nephew, uncle and niece, first cousins) are prohibited. Same-sex marriages were prohibited by statute, but the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court declared such bans unconstitutional in 2015, in its ruling in ''Obergefell v. Hodges''. LGBT rights in Louisiana, Same-sex marriages are now performed statewide. Louisiana is a community property state.
Elections
![United States presidential election in Louisiana, 2016](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/United_States_presidential_election_in_Louisiana%2C_2016.svg)
From 1898 to 1965, a period when Louisiana had effectively Disfranchisement after the Civil War, disfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites by provisions of a new constitution,
this was essentially a one-party state dominated by white Democrats. Elites had control in the early 20th century, before populist Huey Long came to power as governor.
In multiple acts of resistance, blacks left behind the segregation, violence and oppression of the state and moved out to seek better opportunities in northern and western industrial cities during the Great Migration (African American), Great Migrations of 1910–1970, markedly reducing their proportion of population in Louisiana. The franchise for whites was expanded somewhat during these decades, but blacks remained essentially disfranchised until after the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, gaining enforcement of their constitutional rights through passage by Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Since the 1960s, when civil rights legislation was passed under President Lyndon Johnson to protect voting and civil rights, most African Americans in the state have affiliated with the Democratic Party. In the same years, many white social conservatives have moved to support Republican Party candidates in national, gubernatorial and statewide elections. In 2004, David Vitter was the first Republican in Louisiana to be popularly elected as a U.S. senator. The previous Republican senator, John S. Harris, who took office in 1868 during Reconstruction, was chosen by the state legislature under the rules of the 19th century.
Louisiana is unique among U.S. states in using a system for its state and local elections similar to that of modern France. All candidates, regardless of party affiliation, run in a nonpartisan blanket primary (or "jungle primary") on Election Day (United States), Election Day. If no candidate has more than 50% of the vote, the two candidates with the highest vote totals compete in a runoff election approximately one month later. This run-off method does not take into account party identification; therefore, it is not uncommon for a Democrat to be in a runoff with a fellow Democrat or a Republican to be in a runoff with a fellow Republican.
Congressional races have also been held under the jungle primary system. All other states (except Washington Initiative 872 (2004), Washington, California Proposition 14 (2010), California, and Maine) use single-party primaries followed by a general election between party candidates, each conducted by either a plurality voting system or Two-round system, runoff voting, to elect senators, representatives, and statewide officials. Between 2008 and 2010, federal United States Congress, congressional elections were run under a closed primary system—limited to registered party members. However, upon the passage of House Bill 292, Louisiana again adopted a nonpartisan blanket primary for its federal congressional elections.
Louisiana has six seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, five of which are currently held by Republicans and one by a Democrat. Though the state historically flips between Republican and Democratic governors, Louisiana is not classified as a swing state in presidential elections, as it has consistently voted for the Republican candidate by solid margins since backing Democrat 1996 United States presidential election in Louisiana, Bill Clinton in 1996. The state's two U.S. senators are Bill Cassidy (R) and John Neely Kennedy (R).
Law enforcement
Louisiana's statewide police force is the Louisiana State Police. It began in 1922 with the creation of the Highway Commission. In 1927, a second branch, the Bureau of Criminal Investigations, was formed. In 1932, the State Highway Patrol was authorized to carry weapons.
On July 28, 1936, the two branches were consolidated to form the Louisiana Department of State Police; its motto was "courtesy, loyalty, service". In 1942, this office was abolished and became a division of the Department of Public Safety, called the Louisiana State Police. In 1988, the Criminal Investigation Bureau was reorganized. Its troopers have statewide jurisdiction with power to enforce all laws of the state, including city and parish ordinances. Each year, they patrol over 12 million miles (20 million km) of roadway and arrest about 10,000 impaired drivers. The State Police are primarily a traffic enforcement agency, with other sections that delve into trucking safety, narcotics enforcement, and gaming oversight.
![Spanish Town Mardi Gras 2015 - 15922509443](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Spanish_Town_Mardi_Gras_2015_-_15922509443.jpg)
The elected sheriff in each parish is the chief law enforcement officer in the parish. They are the keepers of the local parish prisons, which house felony and misdemeanor prisoners. They are the primary criminal patrol and first responder agency in all matters criminal and civil. They are also the official tax collectors in each parish. The sheriffs are responsible for general law enforcement in their respective parishes. Orleans Parish is an exception, as the general law enforcement duties fall to the New Orleans Police Department. Before 2010, Orleans Parish was the only parish to have two sheriff's offices. Orleans Parish divided sheriffs' duties between criminal and civil, with a different elected sheriff overseeing each aspect. In 2006, a bill was passed which eventually consolidated the two sheriff's departments into one parish sheriff responsible for both civil and criminal matters.
In 2015, Louisiana had a higher murder rate (10.3 per 100,000) than any other state in the country for the 27th straight year. Louisiana is the only state with an annual average murder rate (13.6 per 100,000) at least twice as high as the U.S. annual average (6.6 per 100,000) during that period, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics from FBI Uniform Crime Reports. In a different kind of criminal activity, the ''Chicago Tribune'' reports that Louisiana is the most corrupt state in the United States.
According to ''Times Picayune, The Times Picayune'', Louisiana is the prison capital of the world. Many Private prison, for-profit private prisons and sheriff-owned prisons have been built and operate here. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly five times Iran's, 13 times China's and 20 times Germany's. Minorities are incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their share of the state's population.
The New Orleans Police Department began a new Sanctuary city, sanctuary policy to "no longer cooperate with federal immigration enforcement" beginning on February 28, 2016.
Judiciary
The judiciary of Louisiana is defined under the Constitution of Louisiana, constitution and law of Louisiana and is composed of the Louisiana Supreme Court, the Louisiana Circuit Courts of Appeal, the district courts, the Justice of the Peace courts, the mayor's courts, the city courts, and the parish courts. The chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court is the chief administrator of the judiciary. Its administration is aided by the Judiciary Commission of Louisiana, the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board, and the Judicial Council of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.
National Guard
Louisiana has more than 9,000 soldiers in the Louisiana Army National Guard, including the 225th Engineer Brigade and the 256th Infantry Brigade. Both these units have served overseas during the War on Terror. The Louisiana Air National Guard has more than 2,000 airmen, and its 159th Fighter Wing has likewise seen combat.
Training sites in the state include Camp Beauregard near Pineville, LA, Pineville, Camp Villere near Slidell, LA, Slidell, Camp Minden near Minden, LA, Minden, England Air Park (formerly England Air Force Base) near Alexandria, LA, Alexandria, Gillis Long Center near Carville, LA, Carville, and Jackson Barracks in
.
Sports
![Mercedes Benz SuperDome and Smoothie King Arena, New Orleans LA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Mercedes_Benz_SuperDome_and_Smoothie_King_Arena%2C_New_Orleans_LA.jpg)
Louisiana is nominally the least populous state with more than one major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada, major professional sports league franchise: the National Basketball Association's New Orleans Pelicans and the National Football League's New Orleans Saints.
Louisiana has 12 collegiate NCAA Division I programs, a high number given its population. The state has no NCAA Division II teams and only two NCAA Division III teams. As of 2019, the LSU Tigers football team has won 12 Southeastern Conference titles, six Sugar Bowls and four national championships.
Each year New Orleans plays host to the Bayou Classic, and the New Orleans Bowl college football games, while Shreveport hosts the Independence Bowl. Also, New Orleans has hosted the Super Bowl a record eleven times, as well as the BCS National Championship Game, NBA All-Star Game and NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship.
The Zurich Classic of New Orleans, is a PGA Tour golf tournament held since 1938. The Rock 'n' Roll Mardi Gras Marathon and Crescent City Classic are two road running competitions held at New Orleans.
As of 2016, Louisiana was the birthplace of the most NFL players per capita for the eighth year in a row.
Notable people
* Phil Anselmo, singer, songwriter, best known for being member of the metal band Pantera
* Terry Bradshaw, former NFL quarterback and sports personality
* James Carville, political strategist known for his success with Bill Clinton's presidential campaign
* Ellen DeGeneres, comedian, television host, actress, writer, and producer
* Armand Duplantis, pole vaulter. IAAF male World Athlete of the Year 2020
* Mannie Fresh; DJ, producer, and rapper
* Kevin Gates; rapper, singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur
* DJ Khaled; American DJ, record executive and media personality
* Angela Kinsey, actress
* Ali Landry, actress and Miss USA 1996
* Jared Leto, actor and musician
* Jerry Lee Lewis; singer and piano-player
* Huey Long, politician
*Peyton Manning, former American football quarterback
* Tim McGraw, singer, actor and record producer
*Tyler Perry, actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
* Dustin Poirier; American mixed martial artist, currently signed to the UFC
* Zachary Richard; Cajun singer, songwriter and poet
* Fred L. Smith (political writer), Fred L. Smith Jr., founder of Competitive Enterprise Institute
* Ian Somerhalder, actor, model and director
* Britney Spears; singer, songwriter, dancer and actress
* Jamie Lynn Spears, singer and actress
* Lil Wayne; rapper, singer, songwriter, record executive, entrepreneur, and actor
* Shane West, actor, singer and songwriter
* Reese Witherspoon, actress
* YoungBoy Never Broke Again; rapper, singer, and songwriter
See also
* Index of Louisiana-related articles
* Outline of Louisiana
* ''
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* ''
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Notes
References
Bibliography
* ''The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820–1860'' by Richard Follett, Louisiana State University Press, 2007.
* ''The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870'' by Hugh Thomas. 1997: Simon and Schuster. p. 548.
* ''Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World'' by David Brion Davis 2006: Oxford University Press.
* Yiannopoulos, A.N., ''The Civil Codes of Louisiana'' (reprinted from Civil Law System: Louisiana and Comparative law, A Coursebook: Texts, Cases and Materials, 3d Edition; similar to version in preface to Louisiana Civil Code, ed. by Yiannopoulos)
* Rodolfo Batiza, "The Louisiana Civil Code of 1808: Its Actual Sources and Present Relevance", 46 ''TUL. L. REV.'' 4 (1971); Rodolfo Batiza, "Sources of the Civil Code of 1808, Facts and Speculation: A Rejoinder", 46 ''TUL. L. REV.'' 628 (1972); Robert A. Pascal, Sources of the Digest of 1808: A Reply to Professor Batiza, 46 TUL. L. REV. 603 (1972); Joseph M. Sweeney, Tournament of Scholars Over the Sources of the Civil Code of 1808,46 TUL. L. REV. 585 (1972).
* The standard history of the state, though only through the Civil War, is Charles Gayarré's ''History of Louisiana'' (various editions, culminating in 1866, 4 vols., with a posthumous and further expanded edition in 1885).
* A number of accounts by 17th- and 18th-century French explorers: Jean-Bernard Bossu, François-Marie Perrin du Lac, Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, Dumont (as published by Fr. Mascrier), Fr. Louis Hennepin, Lahontan, Louis Narcisse Baudry des Lozières, Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe, and Laval. In this group, the explorer Antoine Simon Le Page du Pratz may be the first historian of Louisiana with his ''Histoire de la Louisiane'' (3 vols., Paris, 1758; 2 vols., London, 1763)
* François Xavier Martin's ''History of Louisiana'' (2 vols., New Orleans, 1827–1829, later ed. by J. F. Condon, continued to 1861, New Orleans, 1882) is the first scholarly treatment of the subject, along with François Barbé-Marbois' ''Histoire de la Louisiane et de la cession de colonie par la France aux Etats-Unis'' (Paris, 1829; in English, Philadelphia, 1830).
* Alcée Fortier's ''A History of Louisiana'' (N.Y., 4 vols., 1904) is the most recent of the large-scale scholarly histories of the state.
* The official works of Albert Phelps and Grace King, the publications of the Louisiana Historical Society and several works on history of New Orleans, the history of New Orleans (q.v.), among them those by Henry Rightor and John Smith Kendall provide background.
External links
*
Louisiana: State Resource Guide, from the Library of Congress
*
Louisiana Geographic Information CenterLouisiana Endowment for the HumanitiesLouisiana Weather and Tides
{{coord, 31, -92, dim:300000_region:US-LA_type:adm1st, name=State of Louisiana, display=title
Louisiana,
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