“This historical reprint from 1980 reads like an exciting novel with illustrations by well-known political cartoonist John Chase.”
Bayou St. John in colonial Louisiana is the first book depicting the role Bayou St. John played in the establishment and early development of New Orleans. The Bayou and Bayou Road were the links in the lake route between the Gulf Coast and 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 passes and up the Mississippi River, plagued 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 began.
This history, gleaned from French and Spanish court records, letters and reports of Colonial governors, 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 New Orleans of the 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 Institution”--affect not only the slaves and their owners, but also the established Indian majority? Throughout these pages the reader is constantly informed about the sameness and differences of living–then and now.
And the Bayou itself? Was it always there? How was it different from the beautiful waterway of today? No history of the New Orleans region is complete without pursuing these pages for the facts and fictions of Louisiana’s earliest times. 
 

Author: Edna B. Freigburg

6x9 Hardcover  

436 Pages

Black and White Illustrations
Published 1980, Reprint 2024
ISBN: 978-1-68593-193-3