Origins
New Orleans was a young, burgeoning, multi-cultural city over three hundred years ago. The town, referred to as Balbancha, is a place of foreign languages converging on the banks of the Mississippi River (Lief 2019, 27). Here were the ancestral homelands of countless Amerindian Tribes before European invasion. From 1718 to 1764, French colonizers predominantly controlled the territory before Spanish rule began in 1764. Spanish control lasted until 1803 before briefly falling back under French rule once again and the subsequent purchase of Louisiana by the United States. This span of years saw many changes to the lower Mississippi Delta, though one constant remained: the cultural influence of the French and African Diaspora, which still lingers today.
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There was one central gathering place for Amerindians, enslaved and free people of color in mid-eighteenth to nineteenth-century New Orleans located below the ramparts of the northern reaches of New Orleans, outside the city proper. Going by many names over the years, Place de Negroes, Place Publique, and Congo Square, to name a few. The area, home to numerous cultural and spiritual expressions, is most significantly regarded as the birthplace of Jazz. In days of old, it was a boisterous, bustling, music-filled market and open-air dance hall, especially after the influx of former citizens fleeing St. Domingue (Haiti) via Cuba in the late 1700s. Sounds of percussion, chants, and dance permeated the air daily.
Circumstances during the eighteenth century saw a symbiotic relationship form with African Americans befriending the Amerindian tribes located around New Orleans, learning their languages and culture, and vice versa. Much like the tribes visited Congo Square, partaking in the trading and rituals, the enslaved people likewise ventured into the swampland villages of the Amerindians. The lives of slaves, who once enjoyed considerably more freedom under French rule and, to a lesser degree, the Spanish, were denigrated under U.S. control. Many enslaved people eventually fled into the welcoming arms of the cypress-covered swamps before and during the Civil War, making new homes and lives among their Amerindian brethren in places that came to be known as Maroon Camps (Smith, 46). Out of this relationship, Black Masking at Carnival was born in the shadows of New Orleans.
