Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, January 26, 1999

La Balise may have lighted the way for ships from the Gulf

by Jim Bradshaw

Around 1700, the French established a tiny settlement on an island about five miles below Head of Passes, naming it La Balise. One definition French for "balise" is "the beacon," although the term is also used to indicate a buoy or channel marker. There was a settlement there by at least September 1703, when a Sieur Barbin (whom most historians think was Nicolas Godefroy Barbin) was commissioned garde-magasin (quartermaster) of the post. What is not certain is exactly when the first beacon was established there.

There was certainly a lighted tower at La Balise by 1721. It was designed by Adrien de Pauger, the architect who had just come to Louisiana to plan New Orleans. But the name suggests that a lighthouse might have been at least planned for the mouth of the Mississippi much earlier than that George C. Poret reports in his "Vignettes of Church History in Louisiana" that the steeple of the first church at La Balise was to have doubled as a lighthouse, but that the church was never built.

The pass marked by the light was considered a primary entrance to the Mississippi River. In later years, a customs station was built there as a base for agents patrolling for pirates.

A considerable settlement developed there in the colonial times but, near the end of the French regime, the island began to sink and was abandoned. The settlement was re-established farther up the Pass. The old location became known as Bayou Balize, but it gradually filled up and disappeared.

It took several years to build the fort at La Balise. The marshy soil and tropical heat was unhealthy for European workers, so slaves were imported from Saint-Domingue to do the work. Most of them didn't like the place better than the Europeans and fled into the marshlands at the first opportunity. A hurricane swept across the mouth of the river when the fort was half done, wrecking most of what had been built.

Father Bruno des Langres and four other Capuchin priests arrived in Louisiana in 1702, and established the Church of St. Louis at New Orleans. According to Poret, Father Bruno assigned Father Christophe de Chaumont as resident pastor of the Parish of La Balise.

According to Poret, "A chapel had been planned for the Fort but the work was delayed on account of various interruptions, principally (from a) lack of competent artisans and sickness. A hurricane in the late summer of 1722 did considerable damage to what had been built."

"When Father Chaumont arrived at La Balise," Poret continues, "he found no church, not even a satisfactory place to live. There was not even a satisfactory place in which to conduct Divine Services. A small shack or hovel was provided for him to five. It was small, had a dirt floor, no windows, and an opening for a door but no door. He had to cook his food outdoors and live mostly on rice and shellfish."

The settlers at La Balise were typical of the Louisiana settlers of the day and had been recruited from poorhouses and jails. They were a tough crowd to preach to.

Poret says, "Father Chaumont, zealous in his labors among the workers and officials of the Fort soon saw that despite his teachings and pleas, his earnest appeals fell on deaf ears. If they heard, they did not heed. They paid no attention to his admonitions, remained indifferent and persisted in continuing to lead dissolute lives in gambling, fighting, and drinking tafia."

Father Chaumont became ill after two years at La Balise and went back to New Orleans. He was followed there by a Father Gaspard who also got sick. He was followed by a Father Raphael, who "after spending a few days in that desolate place and seeing for himself the miserable conditions under which his colleagues lived made a lengthy report ... to the governor," according to Poret. "He reported that the living conditions there were unsatisfactory and debilitating to all the residents. The small huts in which the workers lived were crowded and lacked basic sanitation which caused illnesses of all sorts. The excessive heat of the summers and the constant rain tamed the place into a quagmire. Sand flies and hordes of mosquitoes made life miserable. Fevers were prevalent among the workers, and ships from the Caribbean which were stopped for the examination of cargoes often brought yellow fever which caused the deaths of many officials and workers. The lack of variety of food caused malnutrition and scurvy. The number of grave markers grew in the small fort cemetery as the months passed."

Priests continued to serve the fort until the middle 1700s, when its importance began to wane.

According to Poret's account, "In the late summer of 1752 a hurricane of great magnitude and intensity visited the region. The force of the wind and the tidal waves which accompanied it practically devastated the section. Some of the fort buildings disappeared; casements and parapets were shaken as mountainous waves swept over the land carrying floating wreckage seaward. Said a resident who lived through the storm, "Let no man who witnessed the forces of Nature which I have experienced ...deny the existence of God."

After that storm, La Balise became little more than a stopping place for ships coming in from the Gulf or heading out for it. When the Spanish took over Louisiana in 1763, they abandoned they post altogether, since they controlled all of the northern Gulf and had no need for a fort there.