Though the transplanted trappers enslaved Native American girls, that didn’t satisfy their needs, and five years after Iberville’s landing, a shipment of twenty-two French girls arrived in Louisiana. The first settlement at what is now New Orleans was a campsite established on the east bank of the Mississippi by Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville-a former fur trader up in Canada-in 1699, on, appropriately enough, Fat Tuesday. Ned Sublette’s latest book, The World That Made New Orleans, is a journey through the early days of the city-back to before it even was one-and an examination of the influence of each culture that successively dropped its wares on the Big Easy. New Orleans has always been the most polyglot of American cities, with streets and landmarks named in a multitude of tongues (and even a little English) it is a place where stolid religiosity stands cheek by jowl with high lasciviousness.
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