Bulbancha

Bulbancha is the Choctaw name for New Orleans, a place where many languages meet. The bend of the Mississippi near its mouth lies between the river and Lake Pontchartrain, amid waterways that Indigenous people used long before French settlement. Bayous and portages linked the river with the lake and the Gulf.

The French founded New Orleans in 1718, choosing a site on high ground beside the river. Its position gave it access to both the Mississippi interior and the Gulf, and it became the capital of French Louisiana in 1722. People of Indigenous, African and European origins shaped the port as commerce grew. Spain took possession in the later eighteenth century, before Louisiana passed briefly back to France and was sold to the United States in 1803.