The Historic New Orleans Collection [1991.34.3]

Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville (1661-1706), pioneered the successful French settlement of lower Louisiana in 1698, after King Louis XIV ordered him to fortify the region against British and Spanish encroachments. On December 31, he set out from Léogane, Saint Domingue's seventeenth-century capital. In Louisiana, he established a fort on Biloxi Bay, in present-day Mississippi, and returned to France. Between 1699 and 1702, he led two subsequent expeditions to Louisiana, stopping in Saint Domingue for additional colonists and supplies. His voyages marked the beginning of close ties between French Louisiana and France's Caribbean colony.