Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2008 - (Page 19) products that make New Orleans one of the world’s greatest ports. Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Gulf of Mexico to the south further enhance the city’s stature as a hub of travel, trade, and recreation. Yet periodic flooding, tropical storms, and vanishing wetlands are everpresent reminders of instability. Surrounded by water, the city is also surrounded by risk. And still, New Orleans perseveres. As it flows to the Gulf, the Mississippi River deposits vast quantities of sediment upon its banks. Over the ages, the river has shaped much of the waterscape of southeast Louisiana: lakes Pontchartrain, Borgne, and Maurepas; numerous interconnected brackish bays; and countless secondary rivers, streams, and bayous. Habitation patterns, too, have taken their cues from the river’s course. Prior to European settlement of the Gulf South, the region’s waterways served as important trade routes for a multitude of Native American groups. River, lakes, and tributaries remained vital to Native American, European, and eventually American trade and development throughout the colonial, territorial, and antebellum periods. Not only commerce, but culture, too, has flowed both upriver and down, while Louisiana’s lakes and streams have attracted generations of boaters, bathers, and sportsmen. Since the 1930s, engineering projects essentially have fixed the river’s course south of Baton Rouge. Ecological and economic concerns have coalesced to prompt federal and state efforts to protect the city from flooding and sustain the fragile wetlands. Likewise, early 20th-century land reclamation projects along Lake Pontchartrain’s southern shore, and population increases on both shores of the lake, have altered the ecological balance. The recognized need to reestablish the lake as a healthy, multi-use resource has energized both the public and private sectors. As curators, we embrace and extend the challenge to respect, and protect, our unique landscape. This exhibition celebrates the human spirit — the industry and the artistry — that allows us to be borne, and continually reborn, upon the water. —Pamela D. Arceneaux, John H. Lawrence, John Magill Exhibition Curators above: The French were the first Europeans to consider the Mississippi River as a key conduit for North American trade and growth. Explorers Jacques Marquette (1637–1675) and Louis Jolliet (1645–after 1700) launched an expedition from the Canadian shores of Lake Michigan in 1673, “discovering” the Mississippi and following its course as far south as the Arkansas River. In 1682, René Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle (1643–1687) claimed the vast area drained by the river and its tributaries and named the surrounding land “la Louisiane” in honor of King Louis XIV. La Salle sought a trade route linking the St. Lawrence river system to the North American interior, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico, via the Great Lakes and Mississippi River. Night Landing on the Mississippi, by Charles Morgan McIlhenney, painted between 1875 and 1885 Spring 2008/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 19
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