Colonial history of the United States Lower Louisiana. This vast tract was first settled at Mobile and Biloxi around 1700, and continued to grow when 7,000 French immigrants founded New Orleans in 1718. Settlement proceeded very slowly; New Orleans became an important port as the gateway to the Mississippi River, but there was little other economic development because the city lacked a prosperous hinterland. In 1763, Louisiana was ceded to Spain around New Orleans and west of the Mississippi River. In the 1780s, the western border of the newly independent United States stretched to the Mississippi River. The United States reached an agreement with Spain for
Monarchies in the Americas souls remained, mainly in the Eastern part of the Island. Through the Treaty of Riswick in 1697, King Louis XIV received the western third of the Island from Spain as retribution and formalized the first French pirate settlement in existence since the mid-1600s, with the colony administered by a governor-general representing the French crown, an arrangement that stood until the French Revolution toppled the monarchy of France on 21 September 1792. Though the French government retained control over the region of Saint-Domingue, on 22 September 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who had served as Governor-General of Saint-Domingue since 30 November 1803, declared