A Brief History of New Orleans

In 1699, French explorers and brothers Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville found the mouth of the Mississippi River and established the first European settlement on the Gulf coast. Iberville was sure that the river was not navigable by tall ships, but brother Bienville continued to explore the river area with the help of the many native American tribes who were firmly established in the region. The native Americans showed Bienville a passage through Lake Borgne, Lake Pontchatrain, and Bayou Saint John to a patch of swampy land between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchatrain. Bienville would establish the settlement of New Orleans, named after the Duc d’Orleans, on the high ground along the Mississippi.

A four-by-eleven block area was established on the bend of the river that became known as the Vieux Carre, old square, or French Quarter. It was anchored by a Catholic church on the river, St. Louis Cathedral; a government building, the Cabildo; a public square and military practice area, the place de arms, now known as Jackson Square; and shops and apartment buildings.

The people that inhabited early New Orleans came from many groups including Native American, French, African, and Caribbean islands. No group was dominant in the early days and there was a great mixing of the cultures. From this mixing came a unique culture that influenced food, music, architecture, and language. New Orleans became America’s most unique city with its multicultural influence and it joie de vivre (joy of life) attitude.

New Orleans was not without its problems, however. It was a difficult place to live with its swampy land, terrific heat and humidity. Mosquitoes plagued the residents with Yellow Fever and resulted in an unusually high death rate. New Orleanians were encouraged to join Benevolent Societies, where, aside from societal connections, they were assured a burial plot and a brass band to play at their funerals. Out of the sorrow of death came a proliferation of Jazz bands that began and flourished in the city.

Jim Crow laws of the south began to change New Orleans’ multicultural nature after the Civil War. African-Americans and Creoles, once a vibrant part of the city’s culture and social scene, were now excluded and marginalized in the city they helped found. A rare American city that started off with various ethnic groups for the most part getting along had become like most American cities in the 50s and 60s with racial tensions that occasionally broke out into riots. New Orleans remains a city of racial tension, but it seems to be put to the side at some of the great events such as Mardi Gras and the Jazz Festival, and at almost any event that involves food and jazz. Possibly, in the new New Orleans, people will find a way to get along and prosper together once again.

Gens de Couleur Libre, or Free People of Color, lived in the Treme, the oldest African-American neighborhood still in existence

Code Noir

Congo Square, Circa 1900

Treme Brass Band

The French rulers of colonial Louisiana adopted in 1724 the Code Noir (Black Code) which formally restricted the rights of the slaves forcibly brought over from Africa. But blacks in New Orleans overall enjoyed more freedoms than their counterparts elsewhere in the New World, even after Louisiana moved to Spanish control in 1763 and then to American control forty years later. So instead of being stamped out, aspects of African culture persisted in New Orleans and were eventually absorbed into the city’s overall culture.

A vital place for this development was Congo Square, a formerly grassy area that is now part of Armstrong Park on the edge of the French Quarter. Especially on Sundays, hundreds of blacks congregated to play music, dance, and socialize. Because New Orleans slaves tended to come from culturally similar regions in western Africa, they formed new variations of common traditions and bonded with those who could speak in their native tongues. The city’s annual Mardi Gras also temporarily eased the restraints of slavery and gave blacks license to assert their heritage.

Until Irish and Italian immigration tipped the racial scales to a majority white population for about 100 years, New Orleans had been overwhelmingly a black city. The population included black Creoles descended from unions of Africans with the French and Spanish. These Creoles often were gens de couleur libres (free people of color) who lived in the Treme, the oldest African-American neighborhood still in existence. Some slaves also were allowed to earn their freedom, and other gens de couleur libres came to New Orleans from present-day Haiti, fleeing a slave revolt there and bringing voodoo and other traditions with them.

Of all the African-American contributions to New Orleans culture, music is the star that shines exceedingly bright. Most famously, the Crescent City is the birthplace of jazz, the American musical idiom whose dawn at the turn of the twentieth century can be traced back to those Sundays at Congo Square. But New Orleans African-American musicians have been leaders in everything from hip hop to funk, from gospel to a distinctive style of rhythm & blues that has exerted a huge influence on rock ’n’ roll. New Orleans remains famous for its still vibrant music scene rooted in its musical legacy, a legacy that is African-American at its core.

Many of New Orleans’ beloved Mardi Gras traditions are African-American, most prominently the Mardi Gras Indians and the Zulu parade that rolls behind Rex on Mardi Gras Day. The Krewe of Zulu grew out of social aid and pleasure clubs, and its traditions ridicule white Mardi Gras krewes’ self-importance as well as white stereotypes of African-Americans, with the riders dressed in blackface and grass skirts while handing out spears and coconuts.

New Orleans is home to two historically black colleges, Dillard University and Xavier University which is the only African-American Catholic university in the country.

Cajun Culture Floats to the CityDespite a frequent misconception, the Cajuns are not actually a New Orleans people; their domain is south Louisiana from the parishes west of the city extending all the way to Texas. But their influence is so strong throughout Louisiana and their heritage so rich that the culture of New Orleans owes a debt to the presence of its Cajun neighbors.

The word “Cajun” derives from “Acadia,” a name used to refer to Nova Scotia and other Maritime Provinces in Canada where French immigrants settled during the early colonial era. The British often fought with the French for control of the colonies, gaining full power in 1713. Although the French Acadians stayed on for several more decades, tensions between them and the British administrators eventually forced them into exile—an event called le Grand Dérangement.

A few hundred Acadians ended up in French-speaking New Orleans ten years later. A rural people, they didn’t feel comfortable in the city, and they settled elsewhere in Louisiana. Thousands of Acadians, still looking for a new home, began arriving in waves. Intermarrying with German and other settlers, they

Cajuns settled Louisiana's bayous in the mid-18th Century

Cajun Jambalaya can be found in restaurantsthoroughout the city

worked as trappers, fishermen, and hunters in bayou country, and as farmers where the land wasn’t swampy. Their old traditions and language merged with the distinctive Louisiana landscape to coalesce into a new Cajun cultural identity.

While the Creole cuisine more often looks to Europe for inspiration, rustic Cajun cuisine is firmly rooted in south Louisiana. Gumbo, étouffée, and jambalaya are Cajun dishes found on restaurant menus and dinner tables everywhere in New Orleans. Adopting a Cajun tradition, New Orleanians love to hold crawfish boils with friends and family every weekend during the spring’s crawfish season.

Traditional Cajun music typically uses fiddle, guitar, and accordion, typically in a two-step or waltzing time signature and sung with French lyrics. While not strictly Cajun, Zydeco is a more modern, electrified form of the music that’s wildly energetic (except for the occasional ballad). Cajun and zydeco musicians frequently play at New Orleans clubs and festivals. The Fais Do Do stage at Jazz Fest is a local favorite. And just walking through the French Quarter, you can hear zydeco blaring out of the tourist shops that wish to evoke the life-celebrating spirit of the Cajun expression, Laissez les bon temps rouler!

The Creole CityAny discussion of Creole culture in New Orleans needs to start with how ambiguous the word "Creole" is. Early on, the term might refer to slaves born in the New World, to gens de couleur libres (free people of color), or to people of mixed racial heritage. Especially after Louisiana transferred to American control in 1803, the white descendents of the French and Spanish who lived in New Orleans increasingly adopted the term "Creole" for themselves to distinguish themselves from the influx of Americans whom they disdained.

The Creoles were never Cajuns, also a French-speaking people but coming to Louisiana via Canada and living in rural areas. The Creoles saw themselves as urban and sophisticated. A refined style of European living was their aspiration, and their love of gastronomic pleasures gave birth to the cocktail and created their celebrated cuisine of Louisiana ingredients richly prepared with Old World flair.

The integration of Creole New Orleans into America didn't happen seamlessly. The first administrators were hampered by the fact they didn't even share a common language with their new city's citizens. Opportunity-seeking Americans arrived in New Orleans and settled in the Faubourg St. Marie (to be called "St. Mary's") on the uptown side of Canal St. This neighborhood became known as the American Quarter in opposition to the French Quarter where the Creoles lived. Political, social, and economic tensions arose between the two

Bernard de Marigny

Marigny introduces the game of Craps

neighborhoods, and no-man's-land was Canal Street's wide "neutral ground," a term that is still used for any New Orleans street median.

The Creoles loved the opera, masked balls, and café life and saw the Americans as pushy and pointlessly ambitious and greedy. One notable Creole was Bernard de Marigny who inherited a fortune at the age of fifteen, a fortune which he heedlessly squandered over his long life. He loved to gamble and is credited with popularizing craps, a Creole dice game. Although American businessmen offered to help him develop his plantation downriver from the French Quarter into a thriving commercial area, Marigny instead sold lots to other Creoles. The locale became a district of charming cottages that white Creoles used to house their mixed-race mistresses and inevitable second families. An eclectic mix of free people of color, artisans, and immigrants also lived there. Today, the neighborhood called the Faubourg Marigny is the funky, colorful heart of New Orleans bohemia while hotel skyscrapers and office buildings fill the American Quarter, now dryly called the Central Business District.

While Creole French is no longer spoken in New Orleans, the Creole accent lives on in New Orleans' food, architecture, and joie de vivre. In fact, one could easily make the case that without the heritage of both black and white Creole culture, New Orleans wouldn't be New Orleans.

New Orleans’ Latin FlavorLatin rhythms have always meshed effortlessly into New Orleans’ musical heritage, from the famous Carnival tune “Mardi Gras Mambo” to the present-day CDs of the Grammy-winning jazz group Los Hombres Calientes. Historically, Cuba and New Orleans were located on the same trade routes, and scholars have traced cultural exchanges and mutual musical influences dating back to the early 1800s. There were political ties as well, such as when a military effort to liberate Cuba from Spain was launched from New Orleans.

Grammy-winning jazz group Los Hombres Calientes

New Orleans imported bananas from Central America to distribute across the US

Latino workers have flocked to the city seeking work in the post-Katrina rebuilding effort

Although the Spanish once ruled colonial New Orleans, and in spite of the city sharing a body of water, geographical proximity, and a similar tropical spirit with much of Latin America, the Hispanic population of New Orleans didn’t become a significant presence until the mid 1900s. One twentieth century influx came from Cubans fleeing Castro’s ascent to power in 1959. However, the largest Latino population can trace its roots directly back to Honduras, giving New Orleans a larger Honduran population than most cities in that country.

As a port city, New Orleans imported bananas from Central America to distribute across the US, and two New Orleans firms in particular, the Standard Fruit Company and the United Fruit Company, developed close ties with Honduras, owning plantations there and influencing politics. Honduran immigrants began arriving in the Crescent City through these connections. Many worked as dockyard laborers, but upper-class Hondurans also sent their children to study at Catholic schools. No one neighborhood became known as Honduran, and this population, while retaining its identity and family ties, has assimilated well into the city.

Hurricane Katrina, however, is bound to have a lasting impact on the Hispanic character of New Orleans. Latino workers have flocked to the city from elsewhere in America seeking work in the rebuilding effort. The Latino population has surged, and while many workers are just in New Orleans temporarily, others are bound to settle for good. Some estimates say the ethnic group’s numbers will more than double in the next five to ten years. How this most recent wave of immigrants will influence the city’s culture remains to be seen. At least one new sight around town is the taco trucks that set up in parking lots all over the city to feed workers at lunch.

Even before Katrina, the city’s airwaves broadcast Spanish radio stations, and New Orleans boasts several Spanish-language publications. Tulane University has one of the country’s best-regarded Latin American Studies programs, first begun with a 1924 endowment of research materials by the Cuyamel Fruit Company.

Mardi Gras Indians Tracing their roots back to a time when American Indians helped shield runaway slaves, the Mardi Gras Indians are among the most colorful and mysterious of New Orleans' cultural phenomena. Finding it difficult to participate in Mardi Gras “krewes,” early African Americans developed their own way of celebrating by organizing Mardi Gras Indian tribes as krewes. Today, Mardi Gras Indians shine at every opportunity by showcasing their spectacular hand-made costume, lovely song and contagious spirit. Watch them parade and perform at several events including Jazz Fest, “Super Sunday” the Sunday after St. Joseph’s Day or come during Mardi Gras season when their celebratory spirits shine most – you can’t leave New Orleans without having joined in this truly unique tradition!

Where to Spot Mardi Gras Indians

Mardi Gras Day, of course, is the main day to find Indians as they bloom with the season’s celebrations, but other times they can be hard to track down. “Super Sunday,” the Sunday after St. Joseph’s Day, (March 19) is also a day that several Mardi Gras Indian tribes parade. Other good places to catch tribe

gatherings include the banks of the Bayou St. John at Orleans Avenue in Mid-City, Taylor Park uptown on “Super Sunday,” the corner of Washington Avenue and LaSalle Street uptown; the intersection of Orleans and North Claiborne Avenues, near Armstrong Park; at Hunter's Field at the corner of North Claiborne and St. Bernard Avenues, or at the Backstreet Cultural Museum, where the history and costumes are on display at 1116 St. Claude Street, in the heart of the historic Tremé neighborhood. It is also recommended to ask a knowledgeable local or check the local newspaper as impromptu celebrations are very common.

Origins of the Mardi Gras Indians

The origins of the Mardi Gras Indians are murky, but Chief Becate of the Creole Wild West tribe is considered a progenitor for masking as an Indian during a Mardi Gras in the 1880s, and others then copying him. Scholars also credit the Native Americans who came to perform in New Orleans with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show in 1884 for giving locals inspiration. Others believe that a connection between blacks and Native Americans was forged when New Orleans escaped slaves found asylum with Louisiana tribes. Indeed, Chief Becate is thought to have been part Native American.

Mardi Gras Indian Costumes

No one in the city dons more elaborate attire or takes costuming more seriously than Mardi Gras Indians do. Their fantastic costumes are unforgettable hand-sewn creations of intricate beadwork and dramatic images which rank among the nation's best folk art. Worn just once, the costumes take an entire year to create, with hundreds of thousands of beads, brightly dyed ostrich plumes, sequins, velvet and rhinestones sewn on by hand – some weighing as much as 150 pounds!

Mardi Gras Indian Music

Music, typically call-and-response chanting with tambourines and other handheld percussion, plays a central role in the Mardi Gras Indian spectacle, but the members of a few tribes—the Wild Magnolias and the Wild Tchoupitoulas in particular—have released critically acclaimed recordings and many times perform professionally with a full band.

Mardi Gras Indian music has also permeated into New Orleans funk, soul and R&B. The famous New Orleans tune “Iko Iko” with the lyrics, “My flag boy and your flag boy, sitting by the fire,” is rooted in Mardi Gras Indian tradition as is the New Orleans standard “Hey Pocky Way.”

Mardi Gras Indian Tribes

There are more than 50 Indian tribes in the city and each march to the beat of their own drummer, literally. With a formal hierarchy of chiefs, spy boys, flag boys, big chiefs, wild men and other unique monikers, the Indians grace the streets of New Orleans’ neighborhoods in friendly competition over which chief is the “prettiest.” With boastful singing and threatening dances and gestures, on Mardi Gras Day the tribes go out seeking other tribes to do “battle” with. In earlier days, a meeting of tribes often turned violent, and few others would dare to be present. Now, plenty of spectators come out to watch Indian tribes who compete by costume and song one-upmanship. Indians are organized into roughly three dozen tribes with names like the Golden Eagles, the Flaming Arrows, the Yellow Pocahontas, and the Bayou Renegades.

You can find out more about Mardi Gras Indians at www.MardiGrasIndians.com.

New Orleans Voodoo’s African OriginsAlthough slave owners throughout the American South worked to convert their slaves to Christianity from African religions, the slaves did not easily give up their old beliefs. In Catholic New Orleans, Africans found ways to continue their faiths by syncretizing their pantheon of gods with the saints. Because New Orleans society permitted the existence of gens de couleur libres (free people of color) and because slaves were given more latitude to congregate than elsewhere in the colonies, African religious practices found a clandestine home in the city’s early history, forming an environment open for spiritualism.

Slave revolt, St. Domingue, 1791

New Orleans icon Marie Laveau

Congo Square, once the site of public Voodoo rites

Priestess Miriam of today's Voodoo Spiritual Temple

Both Marie Laveau and Voodoo remain a part of New Orleans culture

After slaves started a massive revolt in 1791 on the island of St. Domingue, where present-day Haiti is, the assortment of beliefs and practices brought over from different parts of Western Africa coalesced into New Orleans voodoo. Both white and black residents of St. Domingue, also colonized by the French, fled to New Orleans which was attractive to them for its similar French heritage. Residents of St. Domingue already followed developed voodoo practices (in fact, an intense, well-attended voodoo ceremony inspired the slave revolt), and the refugees brought these traditions with them.

However, voodoo wouldn’t have penetrated into New Orleans culture as much as it did without the unifying force of the infamous Marie Laveau, who codified practices locally and gave the religion a beautiful but mysterious public face. Laveau is believed to have been the daughter of a white planter and a black Creole woman. For a while, she earned a living as a hairdresser, catering to a wealthy white clientele and learning their secrets through gossip, giving her insight into their affairs. Laveau bridged the world of white and black, with clients and followers of all walks of life who asked her to bring them luck, to cure ailments, to procure them their desired lovers, and to exact revenge on enemies. Another important figure of New Orleans voodoo was Dr. John, a dark-skinned, stately man with a tattooed face whose alleged powers brought him thousands of clients.

Voodoo both fascinated and repelled the white New Orleanians who came to watch the public rites that were held in Congo Square until 1857, where Armstrong Park is today. (More secretive, nocturnal rites were held elsewhere.) Rumors of spirit possessions, snake worship, zombies, and animal sacrifices scandalized them. But in private, they would consult voodoo priests and priestesses. Modern scholars argue that voodoo was a way for African-Americans to exert influence over the white ruling establishment, a manifestation of suppressed power.

In modern New Orleans, the word “voodoo” is no longer feared as it once was; restaurants, sports teams, and concerts use the word as a marketing concept. Shops in the French Quarter and in other neighborhoods still sell voodoo products, and a lot of them are geared to people who only see voodoo as an amusing diversion. But even in commercial voodoo shops, today’s serious practitioners can find the oils, icons, and gris gris they need for their ongoing ceremonies and worship.

The Jazz FuneralOriginally printed in The Soul of New OrleansOne of the more distinguished aspects of New Orleans culture is the jazz funeral. Architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe noted in 1819 that New Orleans jazz funerals were "peculiar to New Orleans alone among all American cities." The late jazzman Danny Barker, writing in his book Bourbon Street Black, noted the funeral is seen as "a major celebration. The roots of the jazz funeral date back to Africa. Four centuries ago, the Dahomeans of Benin and the Yoruba of Nigeria, West Africa were laying the foundation for one of today's most novel social practices on the North American Continent, the jazz funeral."

The secret societies of the Dahomeans and Yoruba people assured fellow tribesmen that a proper burial would be performed at the time of death. To accomplish this guarantee, resources were pooled to form what many have labeled an early form of insurance.

When slaves were brought to America, the idea of providing a proper burial to your fellow brother or sister remained strong. As time passed, these same

concepts that were rooted in African ideology became one of the basic principles of the social and pleasure club. As did many fraternal orders and lodges, the social and pleasure club guaranteed proper burial conditions to any member who passed. These organizations were precursors to debit insurance companies and the concept of burial insurance.

The practice of having music during funeral processions, Danny Barker said, was added to the basic African pattern of celebration for most aspects of life, including death. As the brass band became increasingly popular during the early 18th century, they were frequently called on to play processional music. Eileen Southern in The Music of Black American wrote, "On the way to the cemetery it was customary to play very slowly and mournfully a dirge, or an 'old Negro spiritual' such as 'Nearer My God to Thee,' but on the return from the cemetery, the band would strike up a rousing, 'When the Saints Go Marching In,' or a ragtime song such as 'Didn't He Ramble.' Sidney Bechet, the renowned New Orleans jazzman, after observing the celebrations of the jazz funeral, stated, "Music here is as much a part of death as it is of life."

The traditional New Orleans jazz funeral is as much a part of the fabric and rich cultural traditions of New Orleans as red beans and rice.

Gospel BrunchesTwo Traditions Merge into One Languorous, relaxing Sunday brunches are tradition in New Orleans. Many of the city’s celebrated restaurants feature long-standing weekly brunches often with jazz combos providing background music. But also on Sunday mornings in New Orleans, African-American churches burst into song with the joyous sounds of gospel, yet another musical genre deeply rooted in the city. Gospel brunches, a relatively new phenomenon, allow a non-religious audience to enjoy a sumptuous meal while appreciating this uplifting, soulful music on the day it was meant to be heard.

Gospel took shape in the early twentieth century from the old spirituals that gave hope and strength to slaves. In New Orleans gospel, any instrumentation aside from human voices was at first frowned upon as sinful in spite of the fact that the music adopted the upbeat rhythms honed by jazz artists. Choirs were originally quite small, but over the years they grew and the more talented vocalists began to step forward to lead emotional call-and-response numbers.

Known as “The Queen of Gospel Music,” Mahalia Jackson was born and raised in New Orleans, and even though she died in 1972, she remains a towering figure in the gospel world. The Zion Harmonizers formed in New Orleans 1939 and still perform today. During Jazz Fest, the Gospel Tent is always overflowing with energy and winning new fans, and New Orleans radio stations continue to give gospel artists a way to connect with their audiences.

Gospel brunches are a perfect way for music fans and curious visitors to enjoy gospel without having to track down neighborhood churches or to feel as if they are interrupting religious services. The House of Blues is a popular location that offers delicious Sunday brunch buffets matched with the soaring harmonies of gospel.

Second LinesOriginally printed in The Soul of New Orleans"Those parades were really tremendous things, the drums would start off, the trumpets and trombones rolling into something like 'Stars and Stripes' or 'The National Anthem' and everybody would strut off down the street, the bass drum player twirling his beater in the air, the snare drummer throwing his sticks up and bouncing them off the ground, the kids jumping and hollering, the grand marshall and his aides in their expensive uniforms moving along, dignified women on top of everybody - the second line, armed with sticks and bottles and baseball bats and all forms of ammunition to fight the foe when they reached the dividing line. It's a funny thing that the second line marched at the head of the parade but that's the way it had to be in New Orleans."

--Jelly Roll Morton to Alan Lomax

Few musical traditions abound in the Crescent City quite like 'Second Linin'. The term and event is as old as the advent of the Brass Band, which began to emerge in the first quarter of the 18th century. As the early Brass Bands were moving in a procession or a parade performing the 'song of the day,' young boys would tag along, generally at the rear of the procession. According to Danny

Barker, these youngsters would be so obsessed and delighted with the music emanating from the band, they would gather at each event to dance and prance and strut to the tempo as they would emulate the motions of the musicians and the Grand Marshall.

If you are in the vicinity or hearing range of a New Orleans Marching Band, it is quite impossible to resist joining the band in an impromptu reaction to the music and as they say in New Orleans, 'Boogie.' And rarely does a day pass that you will not find yourself in the earshot range of a parade or party in the Crescent City. And it was that sweet New Orleans Jazz Music that makes you just want to dance.

Michael White, one of New Orleans finest young Jazz musicians wrote, "the social and spiritual dimensions of the jazz culture became especially evident in processions - parades by benevolent societies (also called 'social and pleasure clubs'), church parades, and jazz funerals - where large segments of the community would gather in an almost religious- like 'celebration' to commemorate special events and occasions (or just to gather in revelry 'for no reason at all')."

Second Linin' is another great New Orleans musical tradition that you will surely want to experience in your visit to the city. Remember, it requires no pre-qualification other than the "wish to have a great time."

The People And Culture of New OrleansBy Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph LogsdonDepartment of History, University of New OrleansNormally when tourists or first-time residents come to New Orleans, they have a difficult time understanding the city. It looks like no other place in the United States. The first puzzling impression usually comes from the appearance of the French Quarter near many of the city's hotels. It is more than just a few blocks of townhouses and cottages standing side-by-side, up against the sidewalk. The size of the district startles even those well traveled in the rest of the nation. Few visitors, moreover, are accustomed to such a melange of people moving at all hours of the day and night in the very center of the city. They quickly learn that bars have no closing hour, that the food is spicy, and that the music is pulsating almost everywhere. And they may also take note that the locals talk funny but seldom have southern accents.

Even a prolonged stay brings no easy recognition or familiarity. Someone from a northern city might see something familiar like a Saint Patrick's Day parade, Italian fresh produce dealers, or some century-old Lutheran, Greek Orthodox and Jewish congregations. They would also recognize soul food restaurants, African American store-front churches, and the lilt of Spanish spoken in the streets. A southern visitor would see familiar colonnaded houses, catch a whiff of jasmine blossoms, and even find cornbread on some menus. But still most residents of the United States will still be puzzled by what they observe in New Orleans — their usual explanation is that New Orleans is a foreign place, more a European than an American city.

But it is an American city — just a very different place with a very peculiar history. New Orleans is a place where Africans, both slave and free, and American Indians shared their cultures and intermingled with European settlers. Encouraged by the French government, this strategy for producing a durable culture in a difficult place marked New Orleans as different and special from its inception and continues to distinguish New Orleans today.

Like the early American settlements along Massachusetts Bay and Chesapeake Bay on the Atlantic coast, New Orleans served as a distinctive cultural gateway to North America, where peoples from Europe and Africa initially intertwined their lives and customs with those of the native inhabitants of the New World. The resulting way of life differed dramatically from the culture that was spawned in the English colonies of North America. The New Orleans Creole population (those with ancestry rooted in the city's colonial era) ensured not only that English was not the prevailing language, but also that Protestantism was scorned, public education unheralded, and democratic government untried.

Isolation helped to nourish the differences. From its founding in 1718 until the early 19th century, New Orleans remained far removed from the patterns of living in early Massachusetts or Virginia. Established a century after those seminal Anglo-Saxon places, it remained for the next hundred years an outpost of the French and Spanish empires until Napoleon sold it to the United States with the rest of the Louisiana purchase in 1803.

Even though steamboats and sailing ships quickly connected French Louisiana to the rest of the country, New Orleans jealously guarded its own way of life. True, it became Dixie's chief cotton and slave market, but it always remained a strange province in the American South. American newcomers from the South as well as the North recoiled when they encountered the prevailing French language of the city, its dominant Catholicism, its bawdy sensual delights, or its proud free black and slave inhabitants — in short, its deeply rooted Creole or native population and their peculiar traditions. Rapid influxes of non-southern population compounded the peculiarity of its Creole past. Until the mid-19th century, a greater number of migrants arrived in the boomtown from northern states such as New York and Pennsylvania than from the Old South. And to complicate its social makeup further, more foreign immigrants than Americans came to take up residence in the city almost until the beginning of the 20th century.

Foreign French continued to arrive as well as Spaniards and Cubans. Café du Monde at Jackson Square was Spanish in its origins, not French. The largest waves of immigrants came from Ireland and Germany. In certain neighborhoods, their descendants' dialects would make visitors feel that they were back in the depression neighborhoods of Brooklyn or the southside of Chicago. From 1820 to 1870, the Irish and Germans made New Orleans one of the main immigrant ports in the nation, second only to New York and far ahead of Boston, Philadelphia or Baltimore. New Orleans also was the first city in America to host a significant settlement of Italians, Greeks, Croatians and Filipinos. Just before the opening of the 20th century, thousands of Sicilians came into New Orleans to add to the complexity of its population and enrich its culture. Since many of these immigrants came from Catholic Mediterranean countries, they helped to increase the cultural divide with the settled ways of southern Protestants. North Louisianians find this city as strange as anyone from Iowa, Tennessee, Vermont or Georgia.

These variant patterns describe the black as well as the white population of the city. During the 18th century, Africans came to the city directly from West Africa. The majority passed neither through the West Indies nor the American South. They developed complicated relations with both the Indian and European populations. Their descendants born in the colony were also called Creoles. The Spanish rulers (1765-1802) reached out to the black population for support against the French settlers; in doing so, they allowed many to buy their own freedom. These free black settlers along with Creole slaves formed the earliest black urban settlement in North America. Black American immigrants found them to be quite exotic, for the black Creoles were Catholic, French or Creole speakers, and accustomed to an entirely different lifestyle. Immigrants also augmented the

ranks of the city's black population when thousands of Haitians fled to New Orleans from that troubled island's revolutions long before Americans confronted its refugees in the late 20th century.

The native Creole population and the American newcomers resolved some of their conflicts by living in different areas of the city. Eventually, the Americans concentrated their numbers in new uptown (upriver of Canal Street) neighborhoods. For a certain period (1836-1852), they even ran separate municipal governments to avoid severe political, economic and cultural clashes. Evidence of this early cleavage still survives in the city's oldest quarters. A ride on a St. Charles streetcar will take a visitor away from the exotic French Quarter (the original downtown old city or Vieux Carré of the Creoles), initially through a business district more like that of the rest of America, and then through neighborhoods such as the lower and upper Garden Districts that look a little like Charleston or Savannah. Further still, through the University district, neighborhoods emerge filled with Victorian homes once common in American cities. Because the highest ground in this largely below sea level city runs along the natural levees of the city, the streetcar takes its riders on a passage through historical eras and their evolving architectural taste. Indeed, one of the city's nicknames, the Crescent City, came from the pattern of its growth along the river, which made a large bend through the delta starting at the original French settlement and moving out to the once separate town of Carrollton. The streetcar, the oldest surviving trolley in the United States, was constructed to connect those two 19th century settlements.

Similarly, a bus ride along Magazine Street would show the diversity of ethnic shops, just as a ride up Esplanade Avenue would reveal the evolving tastes and habits of the city's Creole population. And, of course, a stroll through any of the unique cemeteries, called "the Cities of the Dead," vividly show the multiplicity of names, birthplaces and languages of the various peoples who made up the population of the Crescent City.

Finally, New Orleans' peculiar ways need more explanation than a variant colonial past and a wildly diverse population. After all, California once belonged to Mexico, and today it draws more domestic and foreign transplants than any other place in the nation. Yet visitors seldom consider it "foreign." Quite to the contrary, California has come to define what is quintessentially American. On the other hand, New Orleans has remained an American province with a variant way of life. What is most intriguing about the city is its ability to fashion a public culture that transcends all of its varied peoples. They are more than a mosaic of identities, instead, they have to share a new cultural identity. Neither race nor nationality excludes any group from this common ground. What the city's denizens celebrate is less the Old World cultures of their ancestors and more the new way of life that evolved in New Orleans. The food, the festival, the music are shared pleasures, because somehow a novel ethnicity, born of the New World, has emerged in New Orleans. Creole cuisine, jazz and other forms of local music, Mardi Gras — all these famous attributes of the city give New Orleans a powerful sense of identity.

It is a live culture. If visitors make an effort, they can find a vibrant urban folk culture still producing new forms and practitioners. There are the neighborhood restaurants opened by bold creative chefs, the autumnal brass band parades in central city neighborhoods, the young lions of jazz now dominating the local scene as well as the world beyond, and the recently created Jazz & Heritage Festival. All these recent developments testify to the remarkable power of the city's culture to absorb new influences and fashion delights that continue to amaze not only much of the world, but also the inhabitants of New Orleans themselves.