Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama Biloxi became the second capital of Louisiana, and also celebrated French customs. Due to fear of tides and hurricanes, in 1723, the capital was moved to New Orleans, founded in 1718. That city also later started a Mardi Gras celebration. In 1763, Mobile came under British control. Its restrictions on free blacks and racial segregation caused many Creoles to leave Mobile and move west towards New Orleans. In 1780, Spain took control of the Mobile area in the aftermath of the American Revolution. The Carnival celebration incorporated the Spanish custom of torch-lit parades on Twelfth Night (January 6, also known
History of St. Louis (1763–1803) service of Jean Francois Le Dee and Pierre Laclède to build trading posts in the Illinois Country. Fur trading was becoming a more lucrative profession and many more started to travel up the Mississippi River for the same reason. Shortly before the upriver departure of Laclède in August 1763, word arrived that France had ceded its territory on the east bank of the Mississippi to Great Britain according to the Treaty of Paris (1763), giving new significance to the trading posts on the west bank. The group led by Laclède included his young stepson Auguste Chouteau and roughly twenty boatmen