Spanish governors came and went. The people settled down. At one time Padre Antonio de Sedella, a Spanish Capuchin, arrived with a commission to establish in the city the Holy office of the Inquisition, but he was discouraged and shipped back to Cadiz. Miss King tells us that when, half a century later, the calaboose was demolished, secret dungeons containing instruments of torture were discovered.
On Good Friday, 1788, fire broke out, and as the priests refused to let the bells be rung in warning, saying that all bells must be dumb on Good Friday, the conflagration gained such headway that it could not be checked, and a large part of the old French town was reduced to ashes. Six years later another fire equally destructive, completed the work of blotting out the French town, and the old New Orleans we now know is the Spanish city which arose in its place: a city not of wood but of adobe or brick, stuccoed and tinted, of arcaded walks, galleries, jalousies, ponderous doors, and inner courts with carriage entrances from the street, and, behind, the most charming and secluded gardens. Also, owing to premiums offered by Baron Carondelet, the governor, tile roofs came into vogue, so that the city became comparatively fireproof. Much of the present-day charm of the old city is due also to the noble Andalusian, Don Andreas Almonaster y Roxas, who having immigrated and made a great fortune in the city, became its benefactor, building schools and other public institutions, the picturesque old Cabildo, or town hall, which is now a most fascinating museum, the cathedral, which adjoins the Cabildo, and which, like it, faces Jackson Square, formerly the Place d’Armes. In front of the altar of his cathedral Don Andreas is buried, and masses are said, in perpetuity, for his soul. When the Don’s young widow remarried, she and her husband were pursued by a charivari lasting three days and three nights—the most famous charivari in the history of a city widely noted for these detestable functions. The Don’s daughter, a great heiress, became the Baronne Pontalba and resided in magnificence in Paris, where she died, a very old woman, in 1874.
In the Place d’Armes much of the early history of New Orleans, and indeed, of Louisiana, was written. Here, and in the Cabildo, the transfers from flag to flag took place, ending with the ceding of Louisiana by Spain to France, and by France to the United States. At this time New Orleans had about ten thousand inhabitants, most of the whites being Creoles.
Harris Dickson, who knows a great deal about New Orleans, declared in an article published some years ago, that outside lower Louisiana the word “Creole” is still misunderstood, and added this definition of the term: “A person of mixed French and Spanish blood, born in Louisiana.” As I understand it, however, the blood need not necessarily be mixed, but may be pure Spanish or pure French, or again, there may be some admixture of English blood. The word itself was, I am informed, originally Spanish, and signified an American descended from Spaniards; later it got into the language of the French West Indies, whence it was imported, to Louisiana, about the end of the eighteenth century, by refugees who arrived in considerable numbers from San Domingo, after the revolution of the blacks there. Thus, the early French settlers did not use the word.