Archaeology
Historical Archaeology in Louisiana
Archaeologists at sites across Louisiana help fill in the written record through physical excavations of the past.
Archaeology
Archaeology Index
Archaeology
Troyville Earthworks
Located near Jonesville, the Troyville earthworks are a Baytown period Native American archaeological site that dates from 400 to 700 CE.
Archaeology
Native American Mounds
Louisiana boasts some of the most significant Native American earthen monuments in North America and ranks second only to Mississippi in the number of mound sites.
Archaeology
LSU Campus Mounds
The LSU Campus Mounds are two Native American earthworks from the Middle Archaic Period located on the grounds of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
Architecture
Architecture IndexArchitecture
Bocage Plantation
Although Bocage's early history is hazy, local tradition has maintained that the house was built in 1801 by Emanuel Marius Pons Bringier as a wedding gift for his fourteen-year-old daughter, Françoise.
Architecture
US Custom House
The US Custom House at the foot of Canal Street in New Orleans is one of the most significant mid-nineteenth-century buildings in the nation.
Architecture
Promised Land Plantation
Leander Perez purchased Promised Land in 1925 and occupied the plantation house until the early 1960s.
Architecture
Ashland-Belle Helene Plantation
Perhaps more than any other plantation house, Ashland-Belle Helene epitomizes the popular image of the grand Greek Revival southern mansion.
Art
Art IndexArt
Eric Waters
Many view Eric Waters' photography as a commitment to the preservation of New Orleans' African American culture.
Art
Coushatta Baskets
The skills of the Coushatta Tribe’s contemporary basket weavers have elevated this centuries-old utilitarian craft to a highly valued art form showcased in private and museum collections nationwide.
Art
William Henry Baker
William Henry Baker was a itinerant Grand Manner portrait painter active in the New Orleans area during the nineteenth century.
Art
Clementine Hunter
Clementine Hunter was an Afro-Creole artist who is best known for her paintings depicting scenes from African-American life on the southern plantation in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.
Business & Industry
Business & Industry IndexBusiness & Industry
Belle Isle Salt Mine Collapse
Once one of the most productive salt mines in the country, the Belle Isle Salt Mine was the site of numerous deadly accidents.
Business & Industry
Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville
One of the wealthiest Louisiana residents of his generation, Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville was active in Louisiana politics and lucratively subdivided his New Orleans plantation, creating the neighborhood that still bears his name.
Business & Industry
Citrus Industry
Louisiana’s citrus industry traces its origins to the early 1700s, but the effects of climate change increasingly threaten its long-term viability.
Business & Industry
Paul Trévigne
Paul Trévigne, a free man of color, was an editor, teacher, and orator who advocated for civil rights in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Disasters
Disasters IndexDisasters
Hurricane Ike
Hurricane Ike’s size and timing was a sobering reminder that Louisiana was underprepared for another storm on the scale of Hurricane Katrina.
Disasters
Hurricane Camille
Hurricane Camille struck coastal Mississippi in mid-August of 1969, marking the first designated Category 5 storm and one of Louisiana’s most storied tropical weather events.
Disasters
Steamboat Princess Disaster
On February 27, 1859, the Steamboat Princess exploded on the Mississippi River killing between 70 and 200 passengers and crew.
Disasters
Hurricane Audrey
Hurricane Audrey, the first named storm of the 1957 season, took residents by surprise with an earlier-than-expected landfall and claimed more than four hundred lives.
Folklife
Folklife IndexFolklife
John Lomax
John Avery Lomax was a folklorist and musicologist who, with his son Alan Lomax, made the first recording of the Louisiana blues guitarist Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly) at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
Folklife
Los Adaes
The history of the fort, mission, and settlement of Los Adaes reflects both intercolonial rivalry and cooperation among the Spanish, French, and Native Americans who lived along the border of New Spain and French Louisiana.
Folklife
Lagniappe
"Lagniappe" is a vernacular word used in New Orleans to refer to a complimentary giveaway in a retail environment.
Folklife
Darryl Reeves
Darryl Reeves is a master blacksmith who hand-forges decorative and functional ironwork for many of New Orleans' historic homes and public buildings.
Foodways
Foodways IndexFoodways
Okra
Although okra is consumed throughout the South, it is predominantly associated with South Louisiana, where it is used as a thickener for gumbo.
Foodways
Bread Pudding
Stale loaves of bread get a sweet rebirth in this popular baked dessert.
Foodways
Freeman & Harris Café
Freeman & Harris Café was a Black-owned restaurant that served as a pillar of Black social, cultural, and political life in Shreveport.
Foodways
Gumbo
Gumbo is a thick soup that could be considered the signature dish of South Louisiana.
Geography
Geography IndexGeography
Sherwood “Woody” Gagliano
Woody Gagliano sounded the alarm on Louisiana’s coastal land loss crisis and worked with his colleagues for decades to remedy the problem.
Geography
Red River Raft
The Great Raft was a thousand-year-old logjam in the Red River that prevented transportation downriver to New Orleans.
Geography
Bayou Teche
Before railroads and highways, Bayou Teche served as an important transportation route deep into the fertile interior of south-central Louisiana.
Geography
Freeman and Custis Red River Expedition
An American effort to explore the Louisiana Purchase territory was hindered by a log jam on the Red River and two hundred Spanish troops.
Government, Politics & Law
Government, Politics & Law IndexGovernment, Politics & Law
William Heard
Democrat William Heard, an accountant and banker, won the governorship in 1900 with strong support from Murphy J. Foster, his predecessor.
Government, Politics & Law
Sieur de Sauvole
French explorer and commander Sieur de Sauvole served as the acting governor of Louisiana from May 2, 1699, until his death on August 22, 1701.
Government, Politics & Law
Grabow Riot (Massacre)
Labor union meeting results in death and arrest of timber workers.
Government, Politics & Law
Les Petites Nations
Approximately forty ethnically and politically distinct North American Indigenous polities located in the Gulf Coast region and lower Mississippi River valley made up les petites nations.
History
History IndexHistory
Comité des Citoyens
The Comité des Citoyens was an equal rights organization formed in 1891 that played a key role in the events leading up to Plessy v. Ferguson.
History
Etienne de Perier
From 1727 to 1733 Etienne de Périer governed Louisiana as commandant-general for the Company of the West (later known as the Company of the Indies), which then held a charter for the development of the Louisiana colony.
History
Louise Brazzel Johnson
Union Parish businesswoman, civic leader, and politician Louise Brazzel Johnson was the first woman elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives from her northern Louisiana district.
History
Zachary Taylor
President Zachary Taylor, a shrewd businessman and land speculator, owned a plantation near Baton Rouge that he called home after the 1820s.
Literature
Literature IndexLiterature
The Double Dealer
A New Orleans-based literary journal, The Double Dealer was published over a period of five and a half years, between January 1921 and May 1926.
Literature
Les Cenelles
Les Cenelles is a groundbreaking collection of original French poems published by a group of free men of color in nineteenth-century Louisiana.
Literature
Louisiana Folktales
Louisiana’s folktales have been influenced by Indigenous peoples and the many cultural and ethnic groups that have immigrated to the state.
Literature
Ernest J. Gaines
Considered among the most important southern writers, Ernest J. Gaines was an award-winning fiction writer whose work often features the region where he grew up: rural and small-town south-central Louisiana.
Music
Music IndexMusic
White Gospel Music
White gospel music, also known as Southern gospel, represents a widespread aspect of US culture.
Music
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was a French composer best known for "Les Indes galantes", an opera-ballet published in 1735.
Music
Zydeco
Zydeco is a musical genre that emerged from Black Creole dance music in rural areas of Louisiana.
Music
Ken Colyer
Born in England, Ken Colyer was nonetheless a catalytic figure in the Traditional New Orleans Jazz Revivial which began in the late 1940s.
Peoples of Louisiana
Peoples of Louisiana IndexPeoples of Louisiana
Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb
The Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb is Louisiana’s second-largest tribe, with more than seven thousand enrolled citizens.
Peoples of Louisiana
Houma Nation
The United Houma Nation claims approximately 17,000 members and continues to keep Native American traditions alive from their tribal center in Lafourche Parish.
Peoples of Louisiana
Taensa Tribe
One of Louisiana's pre-contact indigenous groups
Peoples of Louisiana
Ishak Indigenous People
The Ishak are an Indigenous people who have lived in southwest Louisiana and southeastern Texas since precolonial times.
Religion & Spirituality
Religion & Spirituality IndexReligion & Spirituality
Wesley Chapel
One of the first Black Protestant churches in Louisiana, Wesley Chapel played pivotal roles in social and political movements, from teaching freed Black women to read after the Civil War to engaging in the civil rights movement.
Religion & Spirituality
All Saints Day
All Saints Day or All Hallows Day is a Catholic tradition honoring the saints and also deceased family members each November 1.
Religion & Spirituality
Cypress Grove Cemetery
The Cypress Grove Cemetery in New Orleans has a monumental entrance gate suggesting a triumphal passage from one world to the next.
Religion & Spirituality
Judaism in Louisiana
Jewish people have greatly contributed to Louisiana’s culture and economy as philanthropists, civic and educational leaders, business owners, and art patrons.
Science & Technology
Science & Technology IndexScience & Technology
Coastal Land Loss
The gradual loss of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands is a slow-moving disaster largely set in motion by a series of human interventions in natural processes.
Science & Technology
Freeman and Custis Red River Expedition
An American effort to explore the Louisiana Purchase territory was hindered by a log jam on the Red River and two hundred Spanish troops.
Science & Technology
Sherwood “Woody” Gagliano
Woody Gagliano sounded the alarm on Louisiana’s coastal land loss crisis and worked with his colleagues for decades to remedy the problem.
Science & Technology
World War II Industrialization in Louisiana
The United States’ entry into World War II spurred Louisiana’s recovery from the economic doldrums of the Great Depression.
Sports & Recreation
Sports & Recreation IndexSports & Recreation
Eddie Morgan
A star athlete at Tulane University, Eddie Morgan played for the New Orleans Pelicans in 1927 before joining the Cleveland Indians.
Sports & Recreation
Bob Pettit
When Louisiana's Bob Pettit retired from the National Basketball Association in 1965, he was widely regarded as an all-time great and had earned two Most Valuable Player awards.
Sports & Recreation
Negro Leagues of Louisiana
The Negro Leagues were the network of African-American baseball teams and players from the 1880s to the integration of baseball in 1946–47.
Sports & Recreation
New Orleans Pelicans
New Orleans’s basketball team is named for Louisiana’s state bird, the brown pelican.
