While the first French presence in Hôpital, the region later to contain Port-au-Prince was that of the ''flibustiers''; as the region became a real French colony, the colonial administration began to worry about the continual presence of these pirates. While useful in repelling foreign pirates, they were relatively independent, unresponsive to orders from the colonial administration, and a potential threat to it. Therefore, in the winter of 1707, Choiseul-Beaupré, the governor of the region sought to get rid of what he saw as a threat. He insisted upon control of the hospital, but the ''flibustiers'' refused, considering that humiliating. They proceeded to close the hospital rather than cede control of it to the governor, and many of them became ''habitans'' (farmers) the first long-term European inhabitants in the region.