Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, General Research and Reference Division

Edward King, The Great South (Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Co., 1874)

Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville (1680-1768), accompanied his older brother, Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville, on Iberville's 1698 expedition from Saint Domingue to Louisiana. Bienville established settlements in south Louisiana with colonists from France, Saint Domingue, and Canada while negotiating alliances with the local Native Americans. With Iberville's death in 1706, Bienville became governor of Louisiana and, in 1718, and founded New Orleans. The early links that Bienville forged between Louisiana and the French Caribbean led French minister Pierre Laussat to conclude: "I imagine that Saint-Domingue was, of all our colonies in the Antilles, the one whose mentality and customs influenced Louisiana the most." Pierre-Clément de Laussat, Mémoires sur ma vie, 1831.