Baton Rouge, Louisiana

===Colonial period===
{{further|Louisiana (New France)|West Florida|Red Sticks}}
[[File:Pierre Le Moyne Iberville.jpg|thumb|Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville, named Baton Rouge and lakes [[Lake Pontchartrain|Pontchartrain]] and [[Lake Maurepas|Maurepas]] in the early French colonial era.|left|192x192px]]
French explorer [[Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville]] led an exploration party up the Mississippi River in 1698. The explorers saw a red pole marking the boundary between the [[Houma people|Houma]] and [[Bayagoula]] tribal hunting grounds. The French name ''le bâton rouge'' ("the red stick") is the translation of a native term rendered as ''Istrouma'', possibly a corruption of the [[Choctaw language|Choctaw]] ''iti humma'' ("red pole");<ref>Rose Meyers, ''A History of Baton Rouge 1699–1812'' (1976),  [https://books.google.com/books?id=rvt8XrCzlwQC&pg=PA4 4] ff.</ref> André-Joseph Pénicaut—a carpenter traveling with d'Iberville—published the first full-length account of the expedition in 1723. According to Pénicaut:
<blockquote>From there &#91;[[Bayou Manchac|Manchacq]]&#93; we went five leagues higher and found very high banks called ''écorts'' in that region, and in savage called ''Istrouma'' which means red stick [''bâton rouge''], as at this place there is a post painted red that the savages have sunk there to mark the land line between the two nations, namely: the land of the Bayagoulas which they were leaving and the land of another nation—thirty leagues upstream from the ''baton rouge''—named the Oumas.</blockquote>The red pole was presumably at Scott's Bluff, on what is now the campus of Southern University.<ref name="Stocksieker_307">{{cite book| editor1-first=Irene Stocksieker| editor1-last=Di Maio| title=Gerstäcker's Louisiana: Fiction and Travel Sketches from Antebellum Times Through Reconstruction| publisher=[[Louisiana State University Press]]| year=2006| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vN2-0lQpZHkC&pg=PA307| page=307| isbn=9780807131466}}</ref> It was reportedly a {{convert|30|ft|m|adj=mid|-high}} painted pole adorned with fish bones.<ref>{{cite journal| first=Andrew C.| last=Albrecht| title=The Origin and Early Settlement of Baton Rouge, Louisiana| journal=Louisiana Historical Quarterly| volume=28| number=1| year=1945| pages=5–68}}</ref>

European settlement of Baton Rouge began in 1721 when French colonists established a military and trading post. Since then, Baton Rouge has been governed by France, Britain, Spain, Louisiana, the [[Republic of West Florida]], the United States, the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate States]], and the United States again. In 1755, when French-speaking settlers of [[Acadia]] in Canada's [[The Maritimes|Maritime provinces]] were [[Expulsion of the Acadians|expelled]] by British forces, many took up residence in rural Louisiana. Popularly known as [[Cajuns]], the descendants of the Acadians maintained a separate culture. During the first half of the 19th century, Baton Rouge grew steadily as the result of [[Riverboat|steamboat]] trade and transportation.