LOUISIANA HISTORY UNDER 10 FLAGS

1519
Alonso Alvarez de Pineda led an expedition along the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico and discovered the mouth of a great river which may have been the Mississippi.

1542
The Spanish adventurer Hernando de Soto died on the shores of the Mississippi River near present-day Memphis while exploring the southeastern United States. Each year the Mississippi, an Ojibwa Indian word meaning "big river" carries 400,000,000 tons of sediment into the Gulf of Mexico and discharges more water than all European rivers combined.

1682
The French explorer Sieur de La Salle, the first to descend the Mississippi to its mouth, took possession "of the country known as Louisiana," and named it for the reigning monarch of France, Louis XIV.

1714
Louis Juchereau de St. Denis founded Fort St. Jean Baptiste, present-day Natchitoches, the first permanent settlement in Louisiana.

1717-31
Louisiana experienced a surge of growth and development as a colony of the Company of the West and, after 1719, its successor the Company of the Indies. The Company of the West was an elaborate colonization scheme of the Scotsman John Law, endorsed by the French government, which wreaked havoc on the entire economy of France.

1718
Sieur de Bienville began building New Orleans as a company town for the Company of the West. By 1721 New Orleans had a population of more than 370 people, including 147 male colonists, 65 female colonists, 38 children, 28 servants, 73 slaves and 21 Indians.

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