Historical Doccuments Shed Light on Colonial Louisiana

[Thagarr]

With the exception of our official game announcement for Hearts of Oak: Conquest of the Seas, it has been a bit of a slow past couple of weeks for news pirate game wise. I was looking for news when I ran across this story about a project being carried out by the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. On the surface, the story seems rather boring, but I figured I would read a bit more just to make sure I didn't miss anything, and I am sure glad I did! The museum is digitizing thousands of documents from the French Superior Council and Spanish Judiciary dating between 1714 and 1803, when the United States purchased the territory from France.

These documents could potentially be a treasure trove of all kinds of historical information never studied about the area before. These documents cover a lot of of things that English courts did not record, a lot of them deal with the history of slaves and slavery in the region, and the Atlantic slave trade. Some of America's early history is there as well, there are documents signed by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, the founder of New Orleans, and Louis XVI, the king of France. More importantly however, there are documents that also describe shipwrecks and pirates who operated in the area!

It will probably be several years before these documents reveal all their secrets, but they could help us shed some light on what real life in the region was like. If we are going to include the area in our new game, they could really help us flesh it out, and potentially give us inspiration for a lot of story ideas!

The fact that these historical documents survived Katrina in 2005 is a miracle in it's self. There are a few of the documents are available online Louisiana Digital Library. The archives are currently housed in the Old United States Mint museum, and they are currently in the process of adding more researches to speed up the digitization process. You can read the full story over at The Tennessean.

The few historians who’ve pored over the unique archive say it’s pivotal because it connects early America to the broader history of the Atlantic slave trade. It’s at the heart of a wave of research tracing American roots beyond the English colonies and into Spain, France and Africa.
“We don’t think of American society simply built from east to west, but we think of it as built from south to north,” said Ira Berlin, a University of Maryland historian. “As you begin to think of a different kind of history, you’re naturally looking for new kinds of sources to write that history.”

Civil cases show what life was like

This massive trove mostly describes domestic life as found in civil court papers, because the colony’s administrative records were taken back to Europe when the United States took possession of Louisiana in 1803.
So they tell of shipwrecks and pirates, of thieves and murderers, of gambling debts and slave sales, of real estate deals and wills. One finds pages signed by historical figures like Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, better known as Bienville, the founder of New Orleans, and Louis XVI, the king of France. And the bizarre, as in the case of a man accused of selling dog meat to Charity Hospital.