Louisiana has a distinctive history. It has occupied a position in the mind of most Americans unlike that of any other state. Poets, novelists, songwriters, artists, historians, and essayists have found in its past a wealth of material. Many dispute the claim of Huey P. Long, Louisiana's bestknown political leader, that he was sui generis (one of a kind), but few quarrel with the application of that term to the state.

Despite the influx of other cultures, many elements of Louisiana's French heritage and some of the Spanish influences lingered well into the twentieth century. Louisiana has long been the destination of travelers heading downriver from the interior of the continent-ranging from the early, canoe-paddling voyagers to steamboat passengers-and upriver from the sea. As the culture of the increasing number of Anglo Americans became dominant, the French-Spanish culture of Louisiana gradually receded. European statesmen and later the leaders of the new nation that emerged along the Atlantic Coast wisely coveted the Great River, the Mississippi. And when migrants from the Old World and the new United States pushed up the river or across the Appalachian Mountains into what is now Louisiana, they found a land and resources undreamed of in those early years.

Louisiana did not escape the horror that was slavery; the enslavement of African Americans, and some Indians, indeed ensued early in its history. In some ways this chapter refuses to be closed, for some minorities still are not treated as equals throughout the United States. So it is with Louisiana. For years southerners outside Louisiana threatened slaves who violated rules with the admonition that they would be sold “downriver.” Many and dark were rumors spread of slave life and treatment in Louisiana. Yet the evidence does not support the allegation that the form of slavery practiced in Louisiana merited the reputation it held throughout the South and the nation. In effect, “selling a slave downriver” might have expressed black peoples' fear of being sold down the Niger or Congo Rivers (as slavery had indeed existed in their native Africa) as much as . . .