|State nickname: Pelican State|
- % water
- Total (2000)
|Admittance into Union
April 30, 1812
|Time zone||Central: UTC-6/-5|
29°N to 33°N
89°W to 94°W
Louisiana was long inhabited by Native American tribes including the Chocktaw[?], Tchopitoulas[?], and (list?) others. The first European explorers to visit what is now Louisiana was a Spanish expedition in 1528 led by Panfilo de Navaez which located the mouth of the Mississippi River. Some 13 years later Hernando de Soto's expedition crossed through the region. Thereafter the region was long neglected by the Spanish authorities, and the next explorers were French. Louisiana was named by the French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle in honour of Louis XIV in 1682. The first permanent settlement was founded by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville in 1699.
The French colony of Louisiana originally claimed a great region of land on both sides of the Mississippi River and north to Canada. Most of the settlement concentrated along the banks of the Mississippi and its major tributaries, with little European settlement north of present-day Saint Louis, Missouri other than fur-trappers and small trading posts. See also: French colonization of the Americas
Most of the territory to the east of the Mississippi was lost to Great Britain in the French and Indian War, except for the area around New Orleans and the parishes around Lake Pontchartrain. The rest of Louisiana became a colony of Spain by the Treaty of Fountainebleau[?] of 1762.
See: Louisiana Purchase
The southern portion of the Louisiana Territory was granted statehood within the USA in 1812.
There are still remnants of its former status as a possession of France, including: the use of a civil law legal system, the Napoleonic Code (like France, and unlike the rest of the United States, which uses a common law legal system derived from England), the term "parishes" being used to describe the state's sub-divisions as opposed to "counties", French as an official language (the only state that has French as an official language), etc.
In the American Civil War Louisiana seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861. New Orleans was captured by Federal troops on April 25, 1862. As some portion of the population had Union sympathies, unusually the portions of Lousiana under Federal control were recognized as a state within the Union and elected representatives who were sent to the congress in Washington, D.C. through the rest of the war.
The capital of Louisiana is Baton Rouge and its governor is Murphy J. "Mike" Foster[?] (Republican). Its two U.S. senators are John B. Breaux[?] and Mary Landrieu, (both Democrats). See:List of Louisiana Governors Geography See List of Louisiana parishes
The total gross state product in 1999 for Louisiana was $129 billion, placing it 24th in the nation. Its Per Capita Personal Income was $23,334, 45th in the nation. The state's principal agricultural outputs include seafood, cotton, soybeans, cattle, sugarcane, poultry and eggs ,dairy products, and rice. Its industrial outputs include chemical products, petroleum and coal products, food processing, transportation equipment, paper products, and tourism.
As of 2000, the state's population was 4,468,976.
Two separate historically Francophone communities exist in Louisiana. The ancestors of Creoles generally came to Louisiana directly from France or from the French colonies in the Caribbean and settled in New Orleans or in South Eastern Louisiana.
The ancestors of the Cajuns are the Acadians, a French-descended people of what are now New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada. When the British won the French and Indian War, the British forced all of the citizens to take a pledge of allegiance. Most Acadians declined and emigrated from Canada, most of them fleeing to the South Western portion of Louisiana, centered in the region around Lafayette.
USS Louisiana was named in honor of this state.