Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, September 30, 1997

Treaty of Paris sent settlers to Opelousas area

1763 land deal gave French lands to Great Britain

by Jim Bradshaw

That meant that French-speaking people who lived in some of the first settled parts of the Louisiana territory were now subjects of Great Britain. Most of them didn't like that idea, and many of them moved from Mobile, Fort Tombekbe, and Fort Toulouse in Alabama, from the Illinois territory, and from other formerly French lands. A good number of them moved to Opelousas.

The exodus wasn't totally unexpected. Early in 1763, the French government had instructed Jean-Jacques Blaise d'Abbadie, a high government official in Louisiana, to give the colonists the right to remain under British rule, but also to be sure that colonists would have the opportunity to move.

Families moving from Fort Toulouse at that time included Fontenot, LaFleur, Doucet, Lagrange, Bonin, and Brignac. They went first to New Orleans in early January 1764 and then were sent to Pointe Coupée, where they remained only a little while. Most of these refugees soon migrated to the newly established Opelousas post. About 50 former Alabama post settlers were settled along Bayou Courtableau near present-day Washington. From there, they spread along Bayou Cocodrie and its tributaries, and, by 1782, their holdings were scattered from Grand Prairie to Prairie des Cannes and Prairie Bayou Chicot.

Neither did the Illinois French want British or American rule. They had already been facing adversity after adversity: Indian massacres, disastrous floods, wars, crop failures, and more. The change of allegiance was the final straw. Many decided to leave, some going to St. Louis, others heading south to Louisiana, where they had family and friends. Most of these Louisiana émigrés settled at Opelousas and along the Mississippi River in St. James, Ascension, and Pointe Coupée parishes.

In 1804, the year after the Louisiana Purchase, what is now the state of Louisiana was divided into 12 counties. Opelousas was named one of those counties with borders similar to the old district administered from the Poste des Opelousas. The name of the county was changed to St. Landry in 1805, after the church at Opelousas.

It was still a large, and largely empty post. Historian William Henry Perrin tells us: "When Saint Landry was the county of Opelousas, the town of Opelousas was the capital of a large district. The scattered settlers from the Atchafalaya River on the east to the Sabine and the Calcasieu on the west were under the necessity of going to Opelousas to vote and to attend the courts of the district. Appreciating the fact that the undertaking, for that day, was an onerous one, they strove to combine pleasure with business. When, for instance, an interesting and stirring campaign was inaugurated, our pioneer fathers took pretty much the same interest in it we do today. They would, as the election drew nigh, make their preparations to attend it.

"A number of them would get together when time came to start, and, well supplied with the necessities of life, mount their horses or bronco ponies, and start on the eventful journey. From a week to ten days were required to make the trip, cast their ballots, and return. As there were no houses or taverns along the route they would camp where night overtook them, and 'with the green earth for a couch and the blue sky for a covering,' they would repose themselves until the morning alight aroused them," Perrin continued . "This will seem strange to many," he continued, "but it is nevertheless true.

There are those still living who well remember the occurrences of these periodical trips of the western citizens to the capital to exercise their rights of freemen, to cast their ballots for the men of their choice. Their journeys were not devoid of pastime and excitement. They would hunt, cook their fresh meats, and around the camp fires tell stories of wilderness life, perhaps gamble a little by way of relieving the tedium of their encampment. Upon their return to their homes they had much to tell."

Families displaced by the Treaty of Paris weren't the only ones to come to the Opelousas post because they did not want to live under British rule.

On June 24, 1780, Alexandre Declouet commandant at Opelousas, notified Spanish Gov. Bernardo de Galvez that 60 Irish and German refugees from Fort Pitt in Pennsylvania had arrived at the Opelousas Post and had asked permission to settle there. They claimed to have fled their homes in Pennsylvania because of English suppression of Catholicism.

Declouet never got an answer to his inquiry as to what to do with them, and they presumably spread out and settled in the Opelousas and Attakapas districts.

A Louisiana census ordered by Gov. Don Bernardo de Galvez placed the population of the Opelousas territory at 1,211 in 1785. Another census in 1728 placed it at 1,985. The gain was attributed to the arrival of Acadian families. By 1803, the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the population had risen to 2,454. A census taken in 1809 by the U.S. Marshal set the population of the Opelousas territory at 5,048.