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Swathed in the romance of pirates, voodoo and Mardi Gras, LOUISIANA
is undeniably special. Its history is barely on nodding terms
with the view that America was the creation of the Pilgrim Fathers;
its way of life is proudly set apart. This is the land of the
rural, French-speaking Cajuns (descended from the Acadians,
eighteenth-century French-Canadian refugees), who live in the
prairies and swamps in the southwest of the state, and the Creoles
of jazzy, sassy New Orleans . (The term Creole was originally
used to define anyone born in the state to French or Spanish
colonists - famed in the nineteenth century for their masked
balls, family feuds and duels - as well as native-born, French-speaking
slaves, but has since come to define anyone or anything native
to Louisiana, and in particular its black population.) Louisiana's
spicy home-cooked food , regular festivals and lilting French-based
dialect - and above all its music ( jazz, R&B, Cajun and
its bluesy black counterpart, zydeco) - draw from all these
cultures. Oddly enough, north Louisiana - Protestant Bible Belt
country, where old plantation homes stand decaying in vast cottonfields
- feels more "Southern" than the marshy bayous, shaded
by ancient cypress trees and laced with wispy trails of Spanish
moss, of the Catholic south of the state.
The French first settled Louisiana in 1682, braving swamps
and plagues to harvest the abundant cypress, but the state was
sparsely inhabited before its first permanent settlement, the
trading post of Natchitoches , was established in 1714. In 1760,
Louis XV secretly handed New Orleans, along with all French
territory west of the Mississippi, to his Spanish cousin, Charles
III, as a safeguard against the British. Louisiana remained
Spanish until it was ceded to Napoleon in 1801, under the proviso
that it should never change hands again. Just two years later,
however, Napoleon, strapped for cash to fund his battles with
the British in Europe, struck a bargain with president Thomas
Jefferson known as the Louisiana Purchase . This sneaky agreement
handed over to the US all French lands between Canada and Mexico,
from the Mississippi to the Rockies, for a total cost of $15
million. The subsequent "Americanization" of Louisiana
was one of the most momentous periods in the state's history,
with the port of New Orleans, in its key position near the mouth
of the Mississippi River , growing to become one of the nation's
wealthiest cities. Though the state seceded from the Union to
join the Confederacy in 1861, there were important differences
between Louisiana and the rest of the slave-driven South. The
Black Code , drawn up by the French in 1685 to govern Saint-Domingue
(today's Haiti) and established in Louisiana in 1724, had given
slaves rights unparalleled elsewhere, including permission to
marry, meet socially and take Sundays off. The black population
of New Orleans in particular was renowned as exceptionally literate
and cosmopolitan.
The international airport is in New Orleans; regional airlines
serve the rest of the state and surrounding areas. Amtrak trains
link New Orleans with New York, Chicago and Memphis, and Los
Angeles via Lafayette. Greyhound buses connect the major towns
with the rest of the country, and are supplemented by smaller
local lines. In addition to the Mississippi's bridges and causeways,
ferries cross the river at New Orleans, St Francisville in Cajun
country, and at various points along the River Road to Baton
Rouge.
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