There aren’t many books detailing what life was like in the early days of the Louisiana colony. But Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz lived in Louisiana from 1718 to 1734 and wrote his “History of Louisiana” in 1774.
Le Page was an ethnographer, historian and naturalist. He lived for a time near Fort Rosalie and Natchez on the Mississippi River and befriended the Natchez people, including learning their language. He owned land and cultivated tobacco. He wrote that the French word Mississippi is a contraction of the Indian "Meact Chassipi," meaning ancient father of rivers.
The Louisiana being referred to by the author is, in the author's words, “that part of North America, which is bounded on the south by the Gulf of Mexico; on the east by Carolina, an English colony, and by a part of Canada; on the west by New Mexico; and on the north, in part by Canada; in part it extends, without any assignable bounds, to the Terrae Incognitae, adjoining to Hudson’s Bay. Its breadth is about two hundred leagues, extending between the Spanish and English settlements; its length undetermined, as being altogether unknown.”
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Louisiana Book News is written by journalist Chere Dastugue Coen, who writes Louisiana romances under the pen name of Cherie Claire. The first two books in her award-winning series are FREE as ebooks! For more information and to sign up for her newsletter visit www.cherieclaire.net.
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