Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site commemorates the fort commissioned by French commandant and Natchitoches founder Louis Antoine Juchereau de St. Denis. St. Denis established the Natchitoches site in 1714, and the fort's construction was completed in 1716.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Had it been a race, Louis Juchereau de St. Denis would have won the gold.
The people of Natchitoches know him as St. Denis, the founder of their city. A bust of the French commandant can be found on the Cane River side of Natchitoches' bricked Front Street directly across from the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.
A bust of Natchitoches founder Louis Juchereau de St. Denis stands along the Cane River side of the city's bricked Front Street.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY TOM BOSSE/HISTORIC MARKER DATABASE
In 1714, St. Denis set up a trading post, marking the official beginning of the settlement that would become the City of Natchitoches.
Still, the date 1714 piqued Walker Lasiter's question.
"Does Natchitoches predate New Orleans?" the New Orleans resident asked.
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville didn't set up shop for what would become New Orleans until 1718, four years after the establishment of St. Denis' post. This not only makes Natchitoches the oldest settlement in Louisiana but the oldest in the Louisiana Purchase Territory, a fact often emphasized by the city.
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville French explorer who, with his brother, Pierre LeMoyne, Sieur d'Iberville explored Bayou St. John in 1699. He established the settlement that evolved into New Orleans in 1719.
FILE PHOTO
The treks to both Natchitoches and New Orleans actually began in 1701 — at the same time.
"St. Denis and the brothers Bienville and (Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville) were all part of France's original expedition coming up the Mississippi River from Mobile in 1701," said Logan Schlatre, director of programming for the Cane River Creole National Historic Park in Natchitoches.
When they got to the mouth of the Mississippi River, Sieur d'Iberville Bienville went back to France to get more supplies and left his younger brother and St. Denis to make the rest of the trip. St. Denis eventually broke away to travel up the Red River.
New Orleans sculptor Angela Gregory, who studied with Aguste Rodin protege Antoine Bourdelle in Parish, was commissioned to create a monument to New Orleans founder Bienville. statue of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville. The monument stands in a small triangular piece of land bounded by Decatur, North Peters and Conti streets in the French Quarter.
FILE PHOTO BY G.E. ARNOLD
At that time, the Natchitoches area was inhabited by the Natchitoches Indians, who made up what Schlatre calls a "confederacy, loosely based on a series of Native American tribes."
"The way that we try to interpret things here is that this is the traditional or the original Creole colony for Louisiana, which means that we have to start back with the Native American peoples who make up a large portion of the culture," Schlatre said. "The people that live here are part of what we call 'the Caddo' in culture, dating back to about 700 or 800 AD. And by about 1000 AD, they have their own solidified culture."
Schlatre explained that the Caddo people had contact with the French through St. Denis as a part of the expedition to explore Louisiana.
While the Natchitoches Tribe inhabited the northwest Louisiana territory settled by St. Denis, such tribes as the Houma, Bayougoula, Biloxi, Choctaw, Quinipissa, Acolapissa and Pascagoula inhabited the Mississippi River deltaic plain and adjacent coastal regions.
An aerial shot of Natchitoches as it appears today.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY NICHOLAS BOLIN
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne Bienville, meanwhile, ran into several obstacles in his exploration — many of them spurred by politics back in France — before finally establishing New Orleans.
"Disillusioned and preoccupied with other matters, France grants a commercial monopoly to financier Antoine Crozat for the development of Louisiana (in 1712)," writes New Orleans author Richard Campanella for the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans. "Crozat hopes to discover gold and silver, raise tobacco and trade with Spain, while the French Crown is content to unburden itself of Louisiana."
Campanella, also a geographer and associate dean for research with the Tulane School of Architecture, created a detailed timeline of New Orleans' founding in his article, "What led to the founding of New Orleans in 1718?" for the center's bimonthly July 2018 edition of Preservation in Print commemorating the city's 300th anniversary.
Natchitoches' bricked Front Street. The city was founded in 1714, four years before New Orleans was founded. The city not only is the oldest settlement in Louisiana but also the Louisiana Purchase territory.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY NICHOLAS BOLIN
The timeline points out how Crozat became disillusioned with his exploration of Louisiana, opening the way for John Law and his newly formed Company of the West's 25-year charter to develop the territory.
"The Company of the West, according to its ledger, 'resolved to establish, thirty leagues up the river, a burg which should be called La Nouvelle Orléans, where landing would be possible from either the river or Lake Pontchartrain' (on Sept. 9, 1717)," Campanella writes. ”The name of the envisioned city aimed to flatter the project’s royal sponsor, Philippe, the Duke of Orleans, without whom Law’s venture would have been impossible."
In the winter of 1718, Bienville received orders to move to the new destination and began preparing six vessels with supplies and a crew of 43 men for the voyage.
Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site offers a full reproduction of the fort commissioned by Natchitoches founder Louis Juchereau St. Denis Statue. The settlement was establishe in 1714, and construction on the fort was completed in 1716.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY FORT ST. JEAN BAPTISTE HISTORIC SITE
"In late March or early April, Bienville’s expedition anchors off today’s upper French Quarter to begin work on New Orleans," Campanella writes. '“Bienville cut the first cane,' recalled one colonist of that undated moment. Afterward, 30 workers, all convicts, proceeded to clear the 'dense canebrake' probably around present-day 500-600 Decatur Street, at a time when the river flowed closer inland."
New Orleans sculptor Angela Gregory's monument of Bienville now stands at 400 Decatur St., only a couple of blocks from the founder's landing.
Back in Natchitoches, St. Denis began working to establishing trade with the Spanish at nearby Los Adaes. Los Adaes State Historic Site now commemorates the Spanish fort site along La. 6, some 21 miles west of Natchitoches.
"The French governor (Antoine de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac) sent St. Denis to talk with Father (Francisco) Hidalgo, a missionary who worked with the Tejas (Texas) Indians, who insinuated that he would help open up trade between the French and the Spanish," Schaltre said. "So it was St. Denis' job to establish a trading post then go find the Spanish to begin opening up that trade network. That's what led to him arriving in late 1714, and commissioning the construction of a barracks for the 40 soldiers that he has under his command and a storehouse for all the trade goods, their food and things like that."
Los Adaes, the Spanish Fort, stood in the Spanish territory of Texas, 21 miles west of Natchitoches. St. Denis initiated trade between the Spanish fort and the French settlement of Natchitoches. Los Adaes is now commemorated by a state historic site.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY MILES PARTNERSHIP/EXPLORE LOUISIANA
Those barracks would become Fort St. Jean Baptiste in 1716. A state historic site within Natchitoches city limits commemorates this fort with a full reproduction of the original, though the historic site doesn't stand on the original fort site.
"The fort moved a few times," Schlatre said.
Today, according to 2020 census data, more than 37,000 people live in Natchitoches Parish with 19,000 of those residents making up the City of Natchitoches, while New Orleans has more than 383,000 residents.