History of slavery in Louisiana History of slavery in Louisiana Following Robert Cavelier de La Salle establishing the French claim to the territory and the introduction of the name "Louisiana", the first settlements in the southernmost portion of Louisiana (New France) were developed at present-day Biloxi (1699), Mobile (1702), Natchitoches (1714), and New Orleans (1718). Slavery was then established by European colonists. The institution was maintained by the Spanish (1763–1800) when the area was part of New Spain, by the French when they briefly reacquired the colony (1800-03), and by the United States following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Due to its complex history, Louisiana
French people in Nebraska as present-day Illinois. Trappers and traders established relationships with Native American tribes at major points around the Great Lakes and along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. In the Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1762, France ceded its lands west of the Mississippi River to Spain. In 1794 a French trapper named Jean-Baptiste Truteau established a trading post 30 miles up the Niobrara River. The next year, in 1795, Jacques D'Eglise traveled the Missouri River Valley on behalf of the Spanish crown. Searching for the elusive Northwest Passage, D'Eglise did not go any further than central North Dakota. In 1803 the United