History of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States an explorer and fur trader), but the more known Spanish emigration during this period happened between 1778 and 1783, when the Governor of Louisiana Bernardo de Galvez recruited groups from the Canary Islands and Malaga´s Spanish regions and sent them to Louisiana in order to populate regions of New Orleans. So, more than 2,700 Canaries and 500 Malaga´s natives emigrated to Louisiana in these period. In 1800, Spain returned Louisiana to France, although it sell it to the U.S. in 1803. The descendants of Spanish settlers still living there. The first European explorers, flying the flags of Spain, sailed along
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