Louisiana - the Child of the Mississippi (From the United States Series) - Yahoo Voices

Louisiana - the Child of the Mississippi (From the United States Series) - Yahoo Voices On April 30, 1812, when Louisiana became a State, the purchased land was renamed the Territory of Missouri. States acquired by the Louisiana Purchase included Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, part of Minnesota west of the Mississippi River, most of North and South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, part of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide, and Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including New Orleans. History: Native American Indians originally inhabited the land that would become the State of Louisiana, including those from the Archaic Period who built the earliest mound complex in the United States, the Watson Brake on the Ouachito River near Monroe, a structure of eleven mounds constructed around 3500BC, and Poverty Point, the largest mound site in the State, that dates back to about 1500BC, in Epps. Other early Indian cultures that resided in Louisiana included the Tchefuncte Culture, well known pottery builders, the Marksville Prehistoric Culture, the Baytown Pre-Columbian Era Culture, the Lake Cormorant Woodland Culture, the Coles Creek Culture with large population growths and simple elite politics pre-dating chiefdoms, the Plum Bayou Culture famous for building complex religious centers, the Fourche Maline Culture, the Caddoan Mississippi Culture with a continuously unbroken language spoken from Prehistoric times to Modern days, and the Plaquemine Culture known for large ceremonial sites and extensive maize agriculture. In 1528 Spanish explorers became the first to reach Louisiana when they entered the mouth of the Mississippi River, but Spain had no strong desires to develop the area, and in the 17th Century France established several settlements in the State intending to control the region from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. Settled in 1714 Natchitoches was the oldest French settlement in Louisiana becoming a major river port city with large plantations, and in the 1720s, German immigrants settled along the German Coast region above New Orleans. Losing the 1754 to 1763 French and Indian War, France ceded most of its American territory to England, who began deporting its French inhabitants from Acadia in Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New England, and they settled in Acadiana becoming the Cajuns. The French kept New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain, while the rest of Louisiana remained a Spanish Colony, and on October 1, 1800 France regained the State in the secret Third Treaty of San Ildefonso. Expanding in 1709 with concessions allowing the importation of Blacks into the territory every year, although the practice was illegal in the United States, slavery was a major institution in the history of Louisiana and sugar became the predominant crop. Haitians, especially from the French Colony of Saint Dominque, developed strong political, religious, and cultural influences on Louisiana during the early part of the 1700s, and with the Slave Revolt establishing Haiti as a country, massive amounts of multiracial immigrants poured into the State with approximately thirteen hundred Haitian refugees arriving in New Orleans between 1791 and 1803. Ratifying the Treaty that purchased the Louisiana Territory, and doubled the size of the Country, the United States gained Louisiana on October 20, 1803, and represented by Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition fame, accepted possession on December 20, 1803. Battle of New Orleans: The Battle of New Orleans was known as the greatest American land victory of the War of 1812, and was faught from December 23, 1814 to January 26, 1815 to prevent England from invading the city and the territory the United States had gained with the Louisiana Purchase. The contest began with the December 14, 1814 Battle of Lake Borgne when British forces attacked the American flotilla defending Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne, followed by the December 23, 1814 original skirmish nine miles south of New Orleans, the January 8, 1815 attack, and the January 9, 1815 British naval assault on Fort St. Natchez Steamboat, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, the Haunted History Tours of New Orleans, the Backstreet Cultural Museum, the Washington Artillery Park, the Edgar Degas House, the Odyssey's Shipwreck and Treasure Adventure, the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park, the 1850 House Louisiana State Museum, the Jackson Barracks Military Museum, Algiers Point, the New Orleans Ghost Tours, the St. Famous Cajun Performers Cajun Dave has played with include Doug Kershaw, Jimmy C. Joseph. Lakes: Louisiana contains more than 1300 lakes and some of the major ones include Lac des Allemands, the "Lake of the Germans," in St. Louis Cathedral, the oldest continuously operating Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United States, the Old City Hall Complex, known as The 1795-1799 Cabildo, where the Louisiana Purchase was signed, the 1791 Presbytere Museum built to match the Cabildo, the 1840s-built matching red brick, block long, four story buildings and oldest rented apartments of their type in the Country, the 1891 Jackson Brewery, the Toulouse Street Wharf, and the Natchez Steamboat make Jackson Square a well known painters, fortune tellers, mimes, tarot card readers, and street performers favorite gathering place. Known for its drinking establishments, including the Pat O'Brien's Bar, where the popular Hurricane drink was invented, the Old Absinthe House, the Napolean House Bar, Johnny White's Sports Bar, Oz, the Bourbon Pub, the Cafe Lafitte In Exile, the Lafitte Blacksmith Shop, and the Southern Decadence Labor Day Weekend Festival make Bourbon Street the most famous road in the French Quarter. Climate: Louisiana has a Classic South Central United States humid subtropical climate, with long hot summers and short mild winters heavily influenced by the Gulf of Mexico, producing heavy rainfalls, tropical cyclones, strong thunderstorms for more than sixty days a year, more than twenty-five annual tornadoes, one of the fastest land erosion rates in the world, and devastating huricanes. Hurricanes: Major hurricanes the State of Louisiana has experienced include the August 11, 1856 Last Resort Hurricane that completely destroyed Isle Derniere splitting the area into five islands, the June 27, 1957 Hurricane Audrey that struck from Grand Chenier to Cameron in southwest Louisiana, the September 9, 1965 Hurricane Betsy that struck New Orleans, the first hurricane in history to cause more than a billion dollars damages, the August 17, 1969 Hurricane Camille that struck the mouth of the Mississippi River with a 23.4 foot storm surge in low-lying regions of the State, the August 26, 1992 Hurricane Andrew that struck Morgan City, the French Quarter, and the Atchafalaya River Basin, the third most powerful Category 5 hurricane to make land fall in the United States during the 1900s, the October 3, 2002 Hurricane Lili, the costliest storm of the 2002 Atlantic Hurricane Season, that struck the State's barrier islands and marshes, the September 24, 2005 Hurricane Rita, the most intense tropical cyclone ever observed in the Gulf of Mexico, that struck Johnson Bayou, and the fourth most intense Atlantic Hurricane ever recorded, and the September 1, 2009 Hurricane Gustav that struck Cocodrie in the southeastern part of Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina: With 125 mile an hour winds on August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina, the costliest, deadliest, and largest natural disaster in the history of the United States, and the sixth strongest hurricane ever recorded, struck the State of Louisiana near Buras-Triump washing away New Orleans, closing the city until October 2008, displacing about two million Gulf Region citizens, and killing more than 1,500 residents in its wake. Tammany Parish, a Dedicated Natural and Scenic River, the Bogue Falaya River on the Gulf Coastal Plain, the Tchefuncte River, an important waterway that drains into Lake Pontchartrain, the Amito River near Baton Rogue, the Blind River in St. Philip. Louisiana is also the only State with Parishes instead of Counties. Topography: Located in the Southern region of the United States and bordered by Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana can be divided into the higher hills of the Uplands Region and about 20,000 sqaure miles of Alluvial swamplands, beaches, coastal marshes, bayous, levees, inlets, and barrier islands along the Red River, the Ouachita River, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico. Name: Originally part of the Viceroyalty of New Mexico of the Mexican Empire, and known as the "Child of the Mississippi," Louisiana was named by French Explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier after the French King Louis XIV. Louisiana Purchase: By a treaty signed on April 30, 1803, and for fifteen million dollars, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, doubling the size of the Country and extending it from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, after Napolean Bonaparte abandoned his plans for establishing a French Empire in the New World, centered around Hispaniola, and had no further use for Louisiana but needed money for upcoming battles with England and European enemies, and on December 20, 1803 the French officially turned the territory over to the United States. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site, the Bayou Pierre Alligator Park, the Prairie Acadian Cultural Center, the Bayou Terrebonne Waterlife Museum, the Jungle Gardens Bird Sanctuary, the Tabasco

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