French Louisiana stretched from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, with barely any French
In 1682 La Salle planted a cross near the Mississippi's mouth and claimed its entire drainage basin for Louis XIV, from the Appalachians to the Rockies. The colony was enormous on maps but thin on settlers: at times fewer than two hundred French soldiers guarded it, and Native Americans far outnumbered colonists.
French interest began in 1660 with a push into the interior from Canada, driven by hopes of a passage to China, the fur and mineral trade, and missionary work. On May 17, 1673, Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette set off down the Mississippi, reached the Arkansas River and turned back once they realised the river flowed to the Gulf of Mexico rather than the Pacific. Nine years later La Salle made his sweeping claim and named the land after the king.
Only two pockets saw real settlement. Lower Louisiana, covering parts of today's Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama, grew from Arkansas Post in 1686 and Fort Maurepas near Biloxi in 1699; its capital moved from Mobile to Biloxi and then, in 1722, to New Orleans. Upper Louisiana, the Illinois Country, drew farmers and trappers from French Canada to villages such as Kaskaskia, Cahokia and Ste. Genevieve, where many married into Illinois families. In the mid-1720s the Native population exceeded 35,000, a clear majority.
Stretched resources kept the colony underdeveloped, and war undid it. After the Seven Years' War, France handed the land west of the Mississippi to its ally Spain in 1762, compensating Spain for losing Florida, and gave the east to Britain in 1763. Many French settlers crossed to the Spanish bank, founding St. Louis in 1764 as a fur-trading base. Spain secretly returned its share in 1800, but Napoleon, stretched by campaigns in Europe and the Caribbean, sold it to the United States in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase.
Traces linger. The modern state of Louisiana preserves the name, though it covers only a sliver of the old claim, and New Orleans keeps a strong French imprint. French Creoles moved into the Missouri Ozarks to found mining settlements such as Old Mines, and they developed their own dialect, Missouri French, now spoken by only a handful of elderly people.
Source: Louisiana (New France)
