What is the history of St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana?
In 1699, Pierre LeMoyne Sieur d’Iberville, a French explorer, became the first European to discover the area of present-day St. Tammany Parish. While exploring lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas, Iberville wrote in his journal, “The place where I am is one of the prettiest I have seen, fine level ground bare of canes. The land north of the lakes is a country of pine trees mixed with hard woods. The soil is sandy and many tracks of buffalo and deer can be seen.” St. Tammany was originally inhabited by numerous Indian peoples, including the: Colapissas, Bayou Goulas, Chickasaw, Biloxi, Choctaw, and Pensacola nations (although, Frederick S. Ellis, in his book St. Tammany Parish: L’autre Côté du Lac, claims that the regionally prominent Choctaw tribe did not arrive to the area until after it had begun to be settled by Europeans). After the founding and development of New Orleans, French settlers began to enter the region. Their primary industry was the production of pitch, tar, turpentine an
