Explorers were impressed with lush St. Landry lands

Near the end of the report, the officers wrote that the Acadians were very industrious and that their women "also work hard; from cotton they make very good cloth for their clothes. They also manufacture stockings and finer cloth like that made from flax."

Nugent and Kelly put the population of the St. Landry area at about 500, including 148 slaves. Inhabitants of the Opelousas District owned 2,400 cattle, nearly 650 horses, some 700 hogs, about 200 sheep, 38 goats, 12 mules, and 3 donkeys.

Jacques Courtableau was the first leader, if not the first commandant of the Poste des Opélousas and of the district then comprising all of southwest Louisiana. It is certain that he was a capitaine of the Opelousas area, but not all historians recognize his status as commandant. It may have been that he was a self-appointed leader in the region.

The first acknowledged commandant was Louis Gerard Pellerin, appointed in 1763. He was followed by Gabriel Fuselier de la Clair. Other distinguished commandants or military officials of the district during the Spanish years included Alexandre Declouet, Nicolas Forestall, Etienne Robert de la Monrandièrre and Martin Duralde.

The land of the Opelousas and Attakapas districts of south Louisiana was fertile and well suited to agriculture and to raising cattle. It was hard to get to, and the trail was devious, but, by 1791, not only the French and Spanish, but the English, Scotch, Irish, and some German colonists had found their way to the broad prairies. Some of the early settlers were free people of color, and the Yankee traders were already beginning to bring slaves into the area.

William Darby, a geographer who traveled in south Louisiana in 1807, said that the boundary between the Opelousas district, administered from the Poste des Opélousas, and the Attakapas district that was administered from what is today St. Martinville, began at the mouth of the Mermentau River and ran to the mouth of Bayou Queue-de-Tortue. It followed Bayou Queue-de-Tortue to its source, then followed a line from there to the head of Bayou Carencro. It continued down Bayou Carencro, to its mouth, then up the Vermilion River to Bayou Fuselier (at Arnaudville), then down to Bayou Fuselier's junction with the Teche, then straight east across the Atchafalaya Basin.

Everything west of the boundary, as far as the Sabine River, was in the Opelousas district. That included the present parishes of St. Landry, Evangeline, Acadia, Jefferson Davis, Beauregard, Allen, Calcasieu, and part of Cameron, The Attakapas district included the present parishes of St. Martin, St. Mary, Iberia, Lafayette, Vermilion, and the part of Cameron that is east of the Mermentau River.

By the time of De la Clair's appointment, Opelousas had grown into an agricultural and trade center with about 100 residents. De la Clair was commandant at the Attakapas post at St. Martinville also and, apparently, spent most of his time there.

When the first Acadians began to arrive in Louisiana, the Spanish government wanted to place them in strategic defensive locations and use them to strengthen its hold on sparsely populated regions. The Acadians didn't always want to go where the Spanish wanted them.

On April 4, 1768, the governor issued a circular letter requiring the commandants at Attakapas, Opelousas, des Allemands, Cabannoce (St. James), and Pointe Coupée to prevent any newly arrived Acadians from settling at their respective posts.

Some 30 Acadians had already settled near Opelousas on lands granted them by Jacques Courtableau at Prairie des Coteaux, along the west bank of Bayou del Puent and in northern Prairie Bellevue, along the west bank of bayous Sandy and Callahan. These and other Acadians from the Attakapas post would eventually spread across the prairies of south Louisiana.