Jean-Baptiste

Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville (February 23, 1680 – March 7, 1767) was a colonizer, born in Montreal, Quebec, and repeat governor of French Louisiana, appointed four separate times during 1701–1743.

At the age of 18, Bienville and his brother Iberville explored the north-central Gulf of Mexico coastline, discovering the Chandeleur Islands off the coast of Louisiana as well as Cat Island and Ship Island off the coast of what is now the state of Mississippi, before moving westward to sail up the mouth of the Mississippi River all the way to what is now Baton Rouge and False River. Before heading back to France, Iberville established the first settlement of the Louisiana colony, Fort Maurepas in Ocean Springs, Mississippi (Old Biloxi), and appointed Sauvolle de la Villantry as the governor with Bienville as Lieutenant and second in command.

After Sauvolle's death in 1701, Bienville ascended to the governorship of the new territory for the first of four terms. By 1701, only 150 persons remained in the colony, the rest having died from malnutrition and disease.

On the recommendations of his brother, Bienville moved the majority of the settlers to a new settlement in what is now Alabama on the west side of the Mobile River, called Fort Louis de la Mobile ("Mobille"). He also established a deep-water port nearby on Dauphin Island for the colony, as Mobile Bay and the Mobile River were too shallow for sea-going vessels. In 1709, a great flood overflowed Fort Louis de la Mobile; as a consequence of this and the disease outbreaks, Bienville ordered the settlement to move downriver to the present site of Mobile, Alabama, in 1711 and building another wooden Fort Louis. By 1712, when Antoine Crozat took over administration of the colony by royal appointment, the colony boasted a population of 400 persons. In 1713, a new governor arrived from France, and Bienville moved west where, in 1716, he established Fort Rosalie on the present site of Natchez, Mississippi. The new governor, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, did not last long due to mismanagement and a lack of growth in the colony. He was recalled to France in 1716, and Bienville again took the helm as governor, serving the office for less than a year until the new governor, Jean-Michel de Lepinay, arrived from France. Lepinay, however, did not last long due to Crozat's relinquishing control of the colony and the shift in administration to John Law and his Company of the Indies. In 1718, Bienville found himself once again governor of Louisiana, and it was during this term that Bienville established the city of New Orleans, Louisiana.