LOUISIANA, FLAG OF

U.S. state flag consisting of a blue field (background) featuring a pelican and its young in a nest above a ribbon emblazoned with the state motto, Union, justice & confidence. A pelican tearing at its breast to feed its young is the central emblem of the flag. Real pelicans never perform this activity, but from the Middle Ages this symbol has represented the spirit of self-sacrifice and dedication to progeny. In graphic form the image was found in many books, prints, and paintings, and it was traditionally recalled by early French settlers of Louisiana. As early as 1812 the pelican was used as a Louisiana symbol; it appeared on the state seal, as well as on some unofficial flags. During the Civil War (186165) Louisiana adopted a flag somewhat resembling the Stars and Stripes but with stripes of red, white, and blue and a red canton with a single yellow star. It thus incorporated the colours of France and Spain, former colonial rulers of Louisiana, and of the United States. In 1912, the centennial of statehood, the state legislature recognized the current flag design. Whitney Smith History Early settlement At least 16,000 years before European exploration, Indians occupied the region that was to become Louisiana. At least seven archaeological sites have been excavated, notably the so-called Poverty Point sites (approximately 700 BC) and the Marksville site (AD 100 to 550). Most Louisiana Indians lived in hunting and gathering camps in the uplands and coastal prairies, though there were farming villages in the rich, low-lying areas known as bottoms. It is estimated that there were 15,000 Indians in the area when settlement by Europeans began during the 1700s. By 1980 only about one-fifth as many Indians remained. Their heritage is present in many place-names that lend colour to the state's map. While the Spanish were the first Europeans to discover the area, it was the French who colonized it. Serious colonization by France began in 1702, when Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and his brother Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville explored the area and struggled to found permanent colonies. The city of New Orleans was established by Bienville in 1718. Royal charters covering the area had been granted, first to Antoine Crozat, in 1712, and then, in 1717, to the Scottish businessman John Law, whose Company of the West failed in 1720. When Louisiana became a French crown colony in 1731, its population had grown from fewer than 1,000 to nearly 8,000, including slaves. In addition to the French settlers, many thousands of Germans arrived, settling on the river just above New Orleans on what became known as the German Coast. Colonization was increased during the 1760s with the arrival of the French-speaking Acadians, who had been expelled from Nova Scotia by the British. In 1762 Louisiana and New Orleans were ceded to Spain by a secret treaty that was to establish nearly four decades of Spanish rule and influence in the area. In 1779 the Spanish wrested Baton Rouge from the British and took all West Florida, which then extended from the peninsula westward across the Gulf Coast to the Mississippi River. In 1800 the Spanish re-ceded Louisiana to France, and in 1803 the United States concluded the Louisiana Purchase. The 19th century Louisiana was subsequently divided into the Territory of Orleans, which consisted essentially of the state within its present boundaries, and the Territory of Louisiana, which included all the vast area drained by the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. In 1810 the Territory of Orleans consisted of 77,000 people, and statehood proposals were beginning to be heard. When, in 1812, the territory petitioned to enter the Union, the eastern region, now called the Florida Parisheswhere the people had rebelled against the Spanish and established the Republic of West Floridawas included. There was an economic boom during the 1830s, generated by slave labour toiling on the flourishing sugarcane and cotton plantations, and sets of natural cleavages emerged in the political affairs of the state as FrenchAmerican, and later planterfarmer, interests clashed in the political process. While the yeoman farmer held the suffrage, representation rested in the hands of a plantation aristocracy that overcame one-man, one-vote principles by counting slaves in the determination of district units. Under this circumstance, and with the breakdown of the two-party system during the 1850s, sentiment in the state was divided on the issue of secession from the Union. The pro-secession group prevailed in the convention of 1861, even though later research would make it appear that a majority of the citizens wanted to stay in the Union. Separation was short-lived in southern Louisiana, for by May 1, 1862, New Orleans was occupied by Union forces. Following the end of the war, Louisiana was readmitted into the Union in 1868, and a severe Reconstruction period began. Political conflict occurred between the federal Republicans who were located in New Orleans and the former Confederates from the rural parishes. After 1876 the Democrats contested with the Republicans as the freed black citizen, whose vote represented the balance of power in the state, became the pawn in the electoral struggle. A number of clashes occurred between the factions, the most noted of which was Sept. 14, 1874, in New Orleans, when the White League briefly wrested control of the city from the Republican police. In 1876 the Democrats claimed that General Francis T. Nicholls was elected governor, but the Republicans claimed that S.B. Packard had won. Their claims were intertwined with the choice of presidential electors for that year in the famous HayesTilden dispute. The Republicans manipulated the state returning board and sent two sets of election returns to Congress, and the Democrats sent their returns. The electoral commission accepted the Republican electors, just as it did those in dispute from South Carolina, Florida, and Oregon. Both Nicholls and Packard took the oath as governor in January 1877 and set up rival governments, which continued until President Rutherford B. Hayes, elected as a part of a bargain, ordered the withdrawal of federal troops from the capital on April 20, 1877, and the white Democratic Party was left in control. The plantation economy continued as the farmer class, white and black alike, was squeezed from farm ownership and forced into sharecropping or tenancy. Agrarian protests that emerged during the 1880s and '90s produced the People's (Populist) Party and what seemed at the time to be a chance to overthrow the state's plantermerchantlawyer rule. By the early 20th century, however, Louisiana was under a restrictive rule, as the elite was able to defeat the reform movement of the farmers in the gubernatorial election of 1896 and to enact the constitution of 1898. As a result, nearly all blacks were legally denied the right to exercise the franchise, while many of Louisiana's whites lost the will to do so.