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
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