“ This historical reprit from 1980 reads like an exciting novel with illustrations by well-now political cartoonist John Chase.”
    Bayou St. John in colonial Louisiana is the first book depicting the role Bayou St. John played in the established and early development of New Orleans. The Bayou and Bayou Road were the lins in the lake route between the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi River - the best route available to Indians, trappers and explorers on their way to the upper Mississippi and Canada. Prior to the introduction of steam powered vessels, the lake-bayou route was both safer and shorter than the one through the passess and up the Mississippi River, plagues by strong currents and winds from the North. The first plantations of the region fronted on the Bayou in  1708 - ten years before the building of New Orleans begin.
    This history, gleamed from French and Spanish court records, letters and reports of Colonial govenors, and countless other sources gives fascinating insight into the everyday lives of the earliest settlers on Bayou St. John and its environs.
    What was it like to live on Bayou St. John and in the New Orleans of 1700s? What food was available? How did the settlers travel? How was business and trade carried on? What was the status of religion and education? When did Voodoo begin in Louisiana?  And how did slavery - that “Particular Instituion” - affect not only the slaves and their owners, but also the established Indian majority? Throughout these pages the reader is constanty informed about the sameness and the differences of livng - then and now.
    And about the Bayou itself? Was it always there? How was it different from the beautiful waterway of today? No history of New Orleans region is complete without perusing these pages for the facts and fictions of Louisiana’s earliest times.

ISBN: 978-1-68593-193-3

448 Pages

6x9 Hardcover

Black and White Illustrations

Wise Publications