Three centuries of chivalric tradition and Lazarite presence in Louisiana

Abstract

While embracing mainstream American lifestyles and culture, the citizens of the State of Louisiana perpetuate the chivalric and charitable traditions instilled by their ancestors – the administrators and colonists who hailed from Mother France during the early 18th century. Spaniards under Hernando de Soto explored what is now Louisiana in the 1540s, but it was the French who claimed the country and named it La Louisiane in honour of King Louis XIV during the expedition of Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle in 1682. The province of La Louisiane was a major part of La Nouvelle France or France’s Western Hemisphere holdings and constituted much of the present United States, centering upon the drainage basin of the great Mississippi River and its tributary streams.1 Settlers from France, including military officers and troops, governmental officials and craftsmen, established La Nouvelle Orleans (New Orleans) and subsequent communities, and the province thrived due to its agricultural fecundity. Descendants of the colonial French families have traditionally been referred to as Creole, signifying Old World ethnicity and culture transplanted in the New World.