Southern Folk Artist & Antiques Dealer/Collector: The Cabildo the Louisiana State Museum part 1

The Cabildo was the seat of colonial government in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is now a museum. The Cabildo is located along Jackson Square, adjacent to St. Louis Cathedral. The Cabildo was rebuilt between 1795-99 as the home of the Spanish municipal government in New Orleans, and the mansard roof was later added in the 1840's, in French style. The building took its name from the governing body who met there — the "Illustrious Cabildo," or city council. The Cabildo was the site of the Louisiana Purchase transfer ceremonies in 1803, and continued to be used by the New Orleans city council until the mid 1850s.

In 1895 it was in a state of decay and proposed for demolition; artist William Woodward led a successful campaign to have the historic building preserved and restored.

In 1911 the Cabildo became the home of the Louisiana State Museum. The museum displays exhibits about the history of Louisiana from its settlement up through the Reconstruction era, and the heritage of the ethnic groups that live there.

Some of the original 18th century wrought iron hardware used in the Cabildo.

The Cabildo's second floor gallery has original 1790's Neoclassical architectural details

When the Marquis de Lafayette visited the Crescent City in 1825, the city allowed him the use of the Sala Capitular as his residence and the main staircase was renovated for him.

A view from the Cabildo's second floor gallery

The Cabildo's second floor gallery provides a great view of Jackson Square.

The Cabildo still has some original painted cypress wrap-around Creole mantels on the second floor

American Indians

The First Families of Louisiana on the Eve of French Settlement

At the time of French settlement in 1700, many Indian groups lived in Louisiana, which then encompassed the Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast region. These groups ranged from small clans of hunters to large communities of farmers. Several Louisiana societies established extensive cultural and economic exchange networks and traded material goods, belief systems, language patterns, technology, and recreational practices with other native groups in North America and probably even in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, and later with European settlers.

Societies

As in most Indian societies, Louisiana Indians carried out tasks defined along gender lines. Men ruled and defended the tribal communities and hunted and constructed buildings and canoes with tools they made. Women cared for children and the elderly, planted crops, and made clothes and utensils, which they used to prepare foods and decorate their homes and religious centers. One early French settler, Antoine Simon Le Page du Pratz, observed that "most of the labour and fatigue falls to the share of the women," while Indian men had "a great deal of more spare time than the women."

Hunting was economically pivotal as a source of food, clothing, tools and jewelry. Indians stalked deer, bear, bison and a multitude of smaller game animals. When Europeans came to Louisiana, they noted that the Natchez in particular practiced the "communal surround." Upon sighting a deer, about a hundred men formed an open crescent. They drove the deer from side to side until it dropped to the ground

The Iberville Stone

1699
The "Iberville Stone" was recovered from the site of Fort Maurepas, the first permanent settlement established by Iberville in the Mississippi Valley.

Colonial Louisiana

The promise of prosperity brought people to Louisiana, voluntarily or by force. Among the many ethnic groups in colonial Louisiana were people of French, Canadian, Spanish, Latin American, Anglo, German, and African descent. No one of these cultures dominated in the eighteenth century, and along with Native Americans, they provided the initial ingredients for Louisiana's famous "gumbo" of cultures.

Spaniards were the first to venture into the Mississippi River region. Hernando de Soto's overland expedition in 1542 was the first to confirm European discovery of the mighty river, but the hostile climate, wildlife, and geography convinced Spain to look elsewhere for precious metals and fertile soils. Louisiana was ignored for nearly a century and a half, until France's King Louis XIV, the "Sun King," began encouraging exploration of the Mississippi River in order to enlarge his own empire and halt Britain's and Spain's expansion. In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, reached the river's mouth and proclaimed possession of the river and all the lands drained by it for France, naming this vast expanse "Louisiane," or "Louis' land."

Phillipe de Marigny, father of Bernard Marigny, founder of the town of Mandeville.

1822 portrait of Father Anthony Sedella, “Pere Antoine,” who was pastor of St. Louis Cathedral for many years

Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville

Rudolph Bohunek
1933
A native of Montreal, Canada, and considered the "Father of Louisiana," Bienville dominated the colony's political scene for decades, serving as colonial commandant or governor of Louisiana from 1701 until 1713, 1716-17, 1718-25, and 1733-43.

While a French colony, Louisiana was governed alternately by the crown and by several chartered proprietors, who contracted with the crown for administration of the colony and a trade monopoly in exchange for settlers and slaves to supply the colony with goods. Antoine Crozat was Louisiana's first proprietor of Louisiana from 1712 until 1717, when he resigned and the crown turned the colony over to John Law, who created the corporation called the Company of the Indies in 1719 to govern Louisiana. Beset by failed crops, Indian wars, slave insurrections, and financial disaster, the Company of the Indies returned the colony back to the crown of France, who administered it until 1763, when it turned Louisiana over to Spain.

Armoire

Celestin Glapion
c. 1790
Glapion was a free man of color and furniture-maker in colonial New Orleans.

Armoire

Celestin Glapion
c. 1790
Glapion was a free man of color and furniture-maker in colonial New Orleans.

Although most settlers in Louisiana were of the Catholic faith, a few were Protestants or Sephardic Jews. Royal policy in France and Spain prohibited non-Catholics from living in the colonies, but especially in frontier regions like Louisiana, enforcement was scarce. At times Protestants were even encouraged to settle in Louisiana.

Early Louisiana's most active churchgoers were African Americans. Although in 1800 about an equal number of blacks and whites lived in New Orleans, twice as many blacks were baptized in St. Louis Cathedral, the main church in colonial Louisiana, which still stands on Jackson Square in New Orleans, next to the Cabildo. Many Africans and creoles (American-born) continued to practice their African religious rituals covertly or merged them with Catholic beliefs.

All trade conducted with the colony was supposed to take place with the mother country, thereby keeping profits within the imperial system. This practice did not work well in Louisiana at first, however, because Louisiana had too few desirable products to export and too few people to exploit what natural resources existed. Toward the end of the colonial period, an export-directed economy finally succeeded for Louisiana, and the colony benefited from the exportation of such crops as cotton, sugar, tobacco, indigo, and rice and from natural resources, like timber, furs, hides, and fish.

Louisianians used earnings from the export of cash crops and natural resources to purchase imported slaves and merchandise, primarily manufactured goods and foods they did not produce themselves, such as textiles, furniture, and household furnishings. For most of the colonial period wholesale merchants imported goods and slaves first from France and later from Spain. Smuggling goods from European and American ships became prevalent and remained so, even when trade restrictions in the colony were lifted.

New Orleans quickly became the hub of a new regional trade network, with goods flowing into the city along the surrounding waterways to be sold in the many shops and market stalls throughout the city. Louisianians also began to manufacture goods and provide services that could not legally or even illegally be obtained from other countries and colonies. During this period, most manufacturing involved the processing of crops and natural resources and the production of articles needed in the home: furniture, leather goods, clothing, utensils, and iron implements. In 1795 about half of New Orleans carpenters, joiners, shoemakers, silversmiths, gunsmiths, and seamstresses were free blacks.