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A Fierce and Fractious Frontier: The Curious Development of Louisiana's Florida Parishes, 1699-2000. Edited by Samuel C. Hyde Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004. Pp. xvi, 232. Paper, $21.95, ISBN 0-8071-2923-2; cloth, $59.95, ISBN 0-8071-2908-9.)
Part of a slowly developing hinterland, the ethnically diverse, still-rural region north of New Orleans and east of Baton Rouge has a history notable for blood feuds, hostility to authority, and natural beauty combined with environmental despoliation. Its distinctive history has gone largely unrecognized. When treated, it has often been misunderstood. This collection of conference papers, edited by the director of Southeastern Louisiana University's fine Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies, is important for what it includes and for what it does not.
Charles N. Elliot's chapter, "A Geography of Power: French and Indian Alliances on the Southeastern Louisiana Fonder," focuses on early-eighteenth-century French alliances with Indian cultures that had been reduced in number by European disease. The alliances were designed to protect alternative French trade routes from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi River from English and Chickasaw depredations. The result was the further decimation of these petites nations in geopolitically strategic southeast Louisiana.
Robin F. A. Fabel's interesting essay entitled...