<P> In 1764, French fur trading interests founded St. Louis in what was then known as the Illinois Country . The Spanish referred to St. Louis as "the city of Illinois" and governed the region from St. Louis as the "District of Illinois". </P> <P> To establish Spanish colonies in Louisiana, the Spanish military leader Bernardo de Gálvez, governor of Louisiana at the time, recruited groups of Spanish - speaking Canary Islanders to emigrate to North America . In 1778, several ships embarked for Louisiana with hundreds of settlers . The ships made stops in Havana and Venezuela, where half the settlers disembarked (300 Canarians remained in Venezuela). In the end, between 2,100 and 2,736 Canarians arrived in Louisiana and settled near New Orleans . They settled in Barataria and in what is today St. Bernard Parish . However, many settlers were relocated for various reasons . Barataria suffered hurricanes in 1779 and in 1780; it was abandoned and its population distributed in other areas of colonial Louisiana (although some of its settlers moved to West Florida). In 1782, a splinter group of the Canarian settlers in Saint Bernard emigrated to Valenzuela . </P> <P> In 1779, another ship with 500 people from Málaga (in Andalusia, Spain), arrived in Spanish Louisiana . These colonists, led by Lt. Col. Francisco Bouligny, settled in New Iberia, where they intermarried with Cajun settlers . </P> <P> In 1782, during the American Revolutionary War and the Anglo - Spanish War (1779--83), Bernardo de Gálvez recruited men from the Canarian settlements of Louisiana and Galveston (in Spanish Texas, where Canarians had settled since 1779) to join his forces . They participated in three major military campaigns: the Baton Rouge, the Mobile, and the Pensacola, which expelled the British from the Gulf Coast . In 1790 settlers of mixed Canarian and Mexican origin from Galveston settled in Galveztown, Louisiana, to escape the annual flash floods and prolonged droughts of this area . </P>

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