<P> The land mass that was to become the city of New Orleans was formed around 2200 BC when the Mississippi River deposited silt creating the delta which would be New Orleans . Before Europeans founded what would become known as the city of New Orleans, the area was inhabited by Native Americans for about 1300 years . The Mississippian culture peoples built mounds and earthworks in the area . Later Native Americans created a portage between the headwaters of Bayou St. John (known to the natives as Bayouk Choupique) and the Mississippi River . The bayou flowed into Lake Pontchartrain . This became an important trade route . Archaeological evidence has shown settlement here dated back to at least 400 A.D. </P> <P> French explorers, fur trappers and traders arrived in the area by the 1690s, some making settlements amid the Native American village of thatched huts along the bayou . By the end of the decade, the French made an encampment called "Port Bayou St. Jean" near the head of the bayou; this would later be known as the Faubourg St. John neighborhood . The French also built a small fort, "St. Jean" (known to later generations of New Orleanians as "Old Spanish Fort") at the mouth of the bayou in 1701, using as a base a large Native American shell midden dating back to the Marksville culture . These early European settlements are now within the limits of the city of New Orleans, though predating its official date of founding . </P> <P> New Orleans was founded in Spring of 1718 by the French as Nouvelle - Orléans, under the direction of Jean - Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville . After considering several alternatives, Bienville selected the site for several strategic reasons and practical considerations, including: it was relatively high ground, along a sharp bend of the flood - prone Mississippi River, which thus created a natural levee (previously chosen as the site of an abandoned Quinipissa village); it was adjacent to the trading route and portage between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain via Bayou St. John, offering access to the Gulf of Mexico port of Biloxi without going downriver 100 miles; and it offered control of the entire Mississippi River Valley, at a safe distance from Spanish and English colonial settlements . From its founding, the French intended it to be an important colonial city . The city was named in honor of the then Regent of France, Philip II, Duke of Orléans . The priest - chronicler Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix described it in 1721 as a place of a hundred wretched hovels in a malarious wet thicket of willows and dwarf palmettos, infested by serpents and alligators; he seems to have been the first, however, to predict for it an imperial future . In 1722, Nouvelle - Orléans was made the capital of French Louisiana, replacing Biloxi in that role . </P> <P> In September of that year, a hurricane struck the city, blowing most of the structures down . After this, the administrators enforced the grid pattern dictated by Bienville but hitherto previously mostly ignored by the colonists . This grid plan is still seen today in the streets of the city's "French Quarter" (see map). </P>

When did the french settle in new orleans