Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2009 - (Page 56) mushrooming in the area. “We need to learn from it before development impacts it,” Mann warned, since no laws exist to restrict digging up cultural resources. At the national level, he observed, “we lose hundreds of sites per year to development of suburbs.” Who knows what will happen at Galveztown? In November, 1778, Bernardo de Galvez, governor of Spanish Louisiana, arrived at the northeast corner of the Isle of Orleans, where Bayou Manchac meets the Amite River. He was on a reconnaissance mission, exploring his new territory to ascertain where to strengthen Spanish defenses against the British in West Florida. Perhaps the governor was surprised to be greeted by a small encampment of refugees from the British community of Canewood, just across the Amite River, who had moved to this quiet corner of Spanish territory to avoid the frictions of the American Revolution. Galvez encouraged the squatters to remain and, as the tale goes, they gratefully named their tiny enclave Villa de Galvez. The governor was impressed with the apparent high elevation and easy water access of the land at the confluence of the two waterways and deemed it suitable for a settlement and fort. It was a strategic location to cut off British trade to the Gulf, through Bayou Manchac, the Amite River, and the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain. It would be one of four settlements planned for the defense of New Orleans — Galveztown on the Amite River, AN AUSPICIOUS LOCATION right: Perchet map, 1797. Note the star-shaped fort; its actual location has not yet been determined. below: Facsimile list of Galveztown settlers from an exhibit on Spanish settlement at the Iberville Museum. Valenzuela on Bayou Lafourche, and St. Bernard and Barataria south of the port city. Lieutenant governor Francisco Bouligny received glowing words from Galvez about the site, but Bouligny was fearful that the location, surrounded by swamps, forests, and bayous, was not propitious. Nevertheless, the governor appointed Francisco Collel to be commandant at Galveztown, charging him with laying out lots, building homes, and transforming the indigenous forests into fields before the first new Spanish settlers arrived. They came in January 1779, a mix of Spanish soldiers and emigrés from the Canary Islands joining the British squatters. The Canary Islands, a small archipelago off the coast of Morocco, also known as the Fortunate Islands, had been taken over by the Spanish in 1495. By the 1770s, they were struggling economically and therefore a likely source of recruits to populate the new Spanish colony of Louisiana. The crown advertised for recruits with defined specifications: age — between 17 and 36; height — at least five feet one-half inches tall; appearance — robust and without noticeable imperfections or vice. When too few single men were available, married men with families were accepted; however, mulattoes, gypsies, executioners, and butchers were excluded. Approximately 2,000 Isleños, as Canary Islanders in Louisiana have been called, arrived over a several year period, beginning in 1778. The men were small farmers, poor and illiterate, accompanied by their wives, children, and close relatives. On the ships’ manifests are listed names that remain familiar in south Louisiana — Acosta, Garcia, de Silva, Gonzales, Rodriquez, Diaz, Truxillo, Perez, Gutierrez, LOUISIANA AND MISSISSIPPI VALLEY COLLECTION Disease plagued the settlement and, in the summer of 1780, before the harvest could be gathered, a hurricane damaged buildings and flooded fields. Ramos, Bermudez, and others. Fourteen Canary Islander families — 50 individuals — arrived at Galveztown in January 1779, followed in February, March and April by additional Canary Islanders and Spanish colonists. The population expanded to 400. The town had been laid out in traditional Spanish style — a square plaza with a Catholic church at one end and one-square-arpent blocks laid out around the 56 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2009
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