A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 9)

but still the profits were not forthcoming. The future destiny of New Orleans, however, despite its miserable start, was not lost on a French Canadian priest who visited the primitive village in 1721: “I have the best grounded hopes for saying that this wild and deserted place, at present almost entirely covered with canes and trees shall one day . . . become the capital of a large and rich colony. . . . Rome and Paris had not such considerable beginnings.” Bienville apparently agreed with the good father for in 1722 he moved the capital of Louisiana from Biloxi to New Orleans. As he built this city on the river, speculators back in France played a masterful political game through Bienville to secure patronage and favor. The city was named Nouvelle Orleans for the Duc d’Orleans, then Regent of France for the young Louis XV, and streets were named to honor members of the royal family, their ancestors, patron saints, cousins, and major stockholders in France. During the 1720s and 1730s, the French continued to expand their settlements with the founding of Baton Rouge in 1722, the Poste de Rapides on the Red River (today’s Alexandria) in 1723, and Pointe Coupée in the early 1720s. After 1723 the Company of the Indies had lost interest, and with the massacre of settlers at Fort Rosalie (site of today’s Natchez, Mississippi) by the Natchez Indians, the company’s directors threw up their hands. In 1731 the company returned the colony to the crown where it would remain for the duration of the French colonial era. Despite the company’s financial failure in Louisiana, it did succeed in firmly planting the colony’s roots in the lower Mississippi Valley. It had founded the city of New Orleans and the colony’s population had grown from about 400 in 1717 to over 8,000, including African slaves. The history of Louisiana is inseparable from New Orleans. France had hoped to reap great riches from the interior of North America, but the anticipated gold and silver did not pour from the wilderness. Industry and manufacturing in French colonial Louisiana were small scale even though plantations produced indigo, tobacco, animal hides, bricks, candles, faience, tiles, lumber, pitch and tar, barrels, and other goods that were floated downriver on flatboats to the new city. There, ships from France, Spanish Florida, the West Indies, and the British colonies waited to trade for spices, cloth, wine, and other items. Though the colony failed to meet the expectations of the French crown, proprietors, and private investors who later ruled and governed the colony, New Orleans, principally by virtue of its strategic position on the river, became a commercial center, connecting Europe and the West Indies with the upper regions of the Mississippi. International storms were on the horizon, however. For almost a century and a half, the three major European colonial powers— France, Spain, and England—wrestled for control of North America. By the early 1750s, both France and England were claiming the Ohio River Valley. In 1754 war broke out in North JEAN BAPTISTE SIMON THIERRY Plan de la Ville La Nouvelle Orleans Capitale de la Province de la Louisiane, 1755 Ink and watercolor The Historic New Orleans Collection COLONIAL THROUGH ANTEBELLUM LOUISIANA 9 

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A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

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