Louisiana (New France)

Louisiana, also known as French Louisiana, was a district of New France. In 1682, the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle erected a cross near the mouth of the Mississippi River and claimed the whole of the drainage basin of the Mississippi River in the name of King Louis XIV, naming it "Louisiana". This land area stretched from near the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rocky Mountains. The area was under French control from 1682 to 1762 and in part from 1801 (nominally) to 1803.

Louisiana included two regions, now known as Upper Louisiana (la Haute-Louisiane), which began north of the Arkansas River, and Lower Louisiana (la Basse-Louisiane). The U.S. state of Louisiana is named for the historical region, although it is only a small part of the vast lands claimed by France.

French exploration of the area began during the reign of Louis XIV, but the vast French Louisiana was not widely developed, due to a lack of human and financial resources. As a result of its defeat in the Seven Years' War, France was forced to cede the east part of the territory in 1763 to the victorious British, and the west part to Spain as compensation for Spain losing Florida. In the 1770s, France decided to aid revolution in Britain's North American colonies, east of the Mississippi, that became the United States. France regained sovereignty from Spain of the western territory in the secret Third Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1800. Napoleon Bonaparte made plans to further develop France's control but strained by operations in the Caribbean and Europe, he sold the territory to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, ending France's presence. Remnants of France's long tenure are still found, especially in New Orleans and along the Mississippi and its tributaries.

The United States ceded the part north of the 49th parallel to the United Kingdom in the Treaty of 1818. It is part of present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan.

In the 18th century, Louisiana included most of the Mississippi River basin (see drawing alongside) from what is now the Midwestern United States south to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Within this vast territory, only two areas saw substantial French settlement: Upper Louisiana (French: Haute-Louisiane), also known as the Illinois Country (French: Pays des Illinois), which consisted of settlements in what are now the states of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana; and Lower Louisiana, which comprised parts of the modern states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama. Both areas were dominated numerically by Native American tribes. At times, fewer than two hundred French soldiers were assigned to all of the colony, on both sides of the Mississippi. In the mid-1720s, Louisiana Indians numbered well over 35,000, forming a clear majority of the colony's population."

Generally speaking, the French colony of Louisiana bordered the Great Lakes, particularly Lake Michigan and Lake Erie towards the north; this region was the "Upper Country" of the French province of Canada. To the east was territory disputed with the thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard; the French claim extended to the Appalachian Mountains. The Rocky Mountains marked the western extent of the French claim, while Louisiana's southern border was the Gulf of Mexico.

The general flatness of the land aided movement through the territory; its average elevation is less than 1,000 metres (3,300 ft).^{[citation needed]} The topography becomes more mountainous towards the west, with the notable exception of the Ozark Mountains, which are located in the mid-south.

Lower Louisiana consisted of lands in the Lower Mississippi River watershed, including settlements in what are now the U.S. states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The French first explored it in the 1660s, and a few trading posts were established in the following years; serious attempt at settlement began with the establishment of Fort Maurepas, near modern Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1699. A colonial government soon emerged, with its capital originally at Mobile, later at Biloxi and finally at New Orleans (in 1722, four years after the city's founding). The government was led by a governor-general, and Louisiana became an increasingly important colony in the early 18th century.