|left |left In the 16th century, the area between the
Atchafalaya River, in Louisiana, the
Gulf of Mexico and
Trinity River, in
Texas, was occupied by numerous tribes or subdivisions of the
Attakapan people. The territory was not closed to outsiders, and several traders roamed through it on business. Europeans did not begin to settle there until French explorers claimed and founded the colony of Louisiana in 1699. They referred to the territory between the Atchafalaya River and
Bayou Nezpique, where the Eastern Atakapa lived, as the Attakapas Territory, adopting the name from the Choctaw language term for this people. The French colonial government gave land away to French soldiers and settlers.
Poste des Atakapas (Attakapas Post) was founded as a trading post on the banks of the Bayou Teche, and settlers started to arrive. Some came separately from
France, such as M. Masse, who came about 1754 from
Grenoble. Gabriel
Fuselier de la Claire, a Frenchman from
Lyon, and some other Frenchmen from
Mobile, in present-day Alabama, arrived in late 1763 or early 1764. Fuselier bought land between
Vermilion River and
Bayou Teche from the Eastern Attakapas chief
Kinemo. Shortly after that, the rival Appalousa (
Opelousas) invaded the area via the
Atchafalaya and
Sabine rivers, and exterminated much of the Eastern Atakapan. Gabriel Fuselier's son Agricole Fuselier was prominent in settling what developed as
New Iberia, Louisiana. Gradually groups of more French speakers arrived, such as the first
Acadians from
Nova Scotia. They were assigned to this area in 1765 by
Jean-Jacques Blaise d'Abbadie, the French official who was administering Louisiana for the Spanish. They had been
expelled from Acadia by the British, who had defeated France in the
Seven Years' War and taken over its territories in North America east of the Mississippi River. Spain took over Louisiana and other territories west of the Mississippi but tended to rely on French colonists to administer
La Louisiane. The Acadians were led by
Joseph Broussard. In 1768-1769, fifteen families arrived from
Pointe Coupee, another French colonial community. Their members had migrated from
Saint-Domingue (now
Haïti) or from
Paris via
Fort de Chartres, in present-day Illinois. Between the arrivals of the two groups, the French captain Étienne de Vaugine came in 1764 and acquired a large domain east of Bayou Teche. On April 25, 1766, after the arrival of the first Acadians, the census showed a population of 409 inhabitants for the Attakapas region. In 1767, the Attakapas Post had 150 inhabitants before the arrival of the 15 families from Pointe Coupee. In 1803, after losing his effort to regain control over Saint-Domingue during its slave revolt,
Napoleon sold Louisiana in 1803 to the United States through the
Louisiana Purchase. The U.S. settlers and territorial government organized the Attakapas Territory between 1807 and 1868. After Louisiana became a state,
Saint Martin Parish was created. Attakapas Post was renamed as Saint Martinville and designated as the parish seat. In 1867, Governor
Benjamin Flanders appointed
Monroe Baker as mayor who was one of the earliest if not the first African-American mayor to serve in the United States. ==Geography==