The three journals included in Iberville's Gulf Journals record Iberville's service from 1699 to 1702.

Coastal Encounters opens a window onto the fascinating world of the eighteenth-century Gulf South. Stretching from Florida to Texas, the region witnessed the complex collision of European, African, and Native American peoples. The Gulf South offered an extraordinary stage for European rivalries to play out, allowed a Native-based frontier exchange system to develop alongside an emerging slave-based plantation economy, and enabled the construction of an urban network of unusual opportunity for free people of color. After being long-neglected in favor of the English colonies of the Atlantic coast, the colonial Gulf South has now become the focus of new and exciting scholarship. Coastal Encounters brings together leading experts and emerging scholars to provide a portrait of the Gulf South in the eighteenth century. The contributors depict the remarkable transformations that took place—demographic, cultural, social, political, and economic—and examine the changes from multiple perspectives, including those of Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans; colonizers and colonized; men and women. The outstanding essays in this book argue for the central place of this dynamic region in colonial history.

Deerskins and Duffels documents the trading relationship between the Creek Indians in what is now the southeastern United States and the Anglo-American peoples who settled there. The Creeks were the largest native group in the Southeast, and through their trade alliance with the British colonies they became the dominant native power in the area. The deerskin trade became the economic lifeblood of the Creeks after European contact. This book is the first to examine extensively the Creek side of the trade, especially the impact of commercial hunting on all aspects of Indian society. British trade is detailed here, as well: the major traders and trading companies, how goods were taken to the Indians, how the traders lived, and how trade was used as a diplomatic tool. The author also discusses trade in Indian slaves, a Creek-Anglo cooperation that resulted in the virtual destruction of the native peoples of Florida.

Two centuries after CortÉs and Pizarro seized the Aztec and Inca empires, Spain's conquest of America remained unfinished. Indians retained control over most of the lands in Spain's American empire. Mounted on horseback, savvy about European ways, and often possessing firearms, independent Indians continued to find new ways to resist subjugation by Spanish soldiers and conversion by Spanish missionaries. In this panoramic study, David J. Weber explains how late eighteenthcentury Spanish administrators tried to fashion a more enlightened policy toward the people they called bÁrbaros, or "savages." Even Spain's most powerful monarchs failed, however, to enforce a consistent, well-reasoned policy toward Indians. At one extreme, powerful independent Indians forced Spaniards to seek peace, acknowledge autonomous tribal governments, and recognize the existence of tribal lands, fulfilling the Crown's oft-stated wish to use "gentle" means in dealing with Indians. At the other extreme the Crown abandoned its principles, authorizing bloody wars on Indians when Spanish officers believed they could defeat them. Power, says Weber, more than the power of ideas, determined how Spaniards treated "savages" in the Age of Enlightenment.

The only New Deal program to continue into the 1990s, the Historic American Buildings Survey has through the years drawn attention to the historical and artistic significance of buildings that contemporary taste might otherwise have ignored. Louisiana Buildings, 1720-1940 makes easily available the fruit of HABS's important and enduring efforts to record Louisiana's architectural heritage. In the 1930s, the Louisiana HABS team concentrated on public edifices and grand plantation complexes threatened by destruction. Later records of HABS include still other habitations of the common man as well as industrial structures. The project has yielded not only graphic and written documentation of the buildings, many no longer standing, but also new insights into the history of the state's architecture. An invaluable part of Louisiana Buildings, 1720-1940 is the alphabetical listing of HABS structures in Louisiana both by familiar name and by parish. The listing by parish gives the location, the date of construction, the architect when known, and the current status of each building. It also presents drawings or photographs of many of the structures, over 300 pictures in all. There are, besides, nine chapters by leading architectural historians, who cover all aspects of Louisiana architecture: its Creole beginnings in the south of the state; the Appalachian folk style in the north; and developments on the plantation, in the seventeenth-century urban setting, and in the modern era. Those chapters form an essential frame of reference for the data in the HABS listings and call attention to many other structures that are a part of the history of building in the Pelican State. Anyone interested in the state's architecture or history will find Louisiana Buildings indispensable.

This collection of six original essays explores the peculiar ethnic composition and history of New Orleans, which the authors persuasively argue is unique among American cities. The focus of Creole New Orleans is on the development of a colonial Franco-African culture in the city, the ways that culture was influenced by the arrival of later immigrants, and the processes that led to the eventual dominance of the Anglo-American community. Essays in the book's first section focus not only on the formation of the curiously blended Franco-African culture but also on how that culture, once established, resisted change and allowed New Orleans to develop along French and African creole lines until the early nineteenth century. Jerah Johnson explores the motives and objectives of Louisiana's French founders, giving that issue the most searching analysis it has yet received. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, in her account of the origins of New Orleans' free black population, offers a new approach to the early history of Africans in colonial Louisiana. The second part of the book focuses on the challenge of incorporating New Orleans into the United States. As Paul F. LaChance points out, the French immigrants who arrived after the Louisiana Purchase slowed the Americanization process by preserving the city's creole culture. Joesph Tregle then presents a clear, concise account of the clash that occurred between white creoles and the many white Americans who during the 1800s migrated to the city. His analysis demonstrates how race finally brought an accommodation between the white creole and American leaders. The third section centers on the evolution of the city's race relations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Joseph Logsdon and Caryn Cossé Bell begin by tracing the ethno-cultural fault line that divided black Americans and creole through Reconstruction and the emergence of Jim Crow. Arnold R. Hirsch pursues the themes discerned by Logsdon and Bell from the turn of the century to the 1980s, examining the transformation of the city's racial politics. Collectively, these essays fill a major void in Louisiana history while making a significant contribution to the history of urbanization, ethnicity, and race relations. The book will serve as a cornerstone for future study of the history of New Orleans.