New Orleans was founded in Spring of 1718 by the French as Nouvelle - Orléans, under the direction of Jean - Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. After considering several alternatives, Bienville selected the site for several strategic reasons and practical considerations, including: it was relatively high ground, along a sharp bend of the flood - prone Mississippi River, which thus created a natural levee (previously chosen as the site of an abandoned Quinipissa village); it was adjacent to the trading route and portage between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain via Bayou St. John, offering access to the Gulf of Mexico port of Biloxi without going downriver 100 miles; and it offered control of the entire Mississippi River Valley, at a safe distance from Spanish and English colonial settlements. From its founding, the French intended it to be an important colonial city. The city was named in honor of the then Regent of France, Philip II, Duke of Orléans. The priest - chronicler Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix described it in 1721 as a place of a hundred wretched hovels in a malarious wet thicket of willows and dwarf palmettos, infested by serpents and alligators; he seems to have been the first, however, to predict for it an imperial future. In 1722, Nouvelle - Orléans was made the capital of French Louisiana, replacing Biloxi in that role.
when did the french settle in new orleans
1718