Regions Of Louisiana Research Articles

Price interactions and discovery among natural gas spot markets in North America

Recent advances in modeling causal flows with time series analysis are used to study relationships among eight North American natural gas spot market prices. Results indicate that the Canadian and US natural gas market is a single highly integrated market. Further results indicate that price discovery tends to reflect both regions of excess demand and supply. Across North America, Malin Hub in Oregon, Chicago Hub, Illinois, Waha, Texas, and Henry Hub, Louisiana region, are the most important markets for price discovery. Opal Hub in Wyoming is an information sink in contemporaneous time, receiving price information but passing on no price information. AECO Hub in Alberta, Canada, receives price signals from several markets and passes on information to Opal and the Oklahoma region.

Poverty and Food Intake in Rural America: Diet Quality Is Lower in Food Insecure Adults in the Mississippi Delta

Objective To determine if measures of diet quality differ between food insecure and food secure adults in a rural high-risk population. Design Random digit dialing telephone survey of a cross-section of the population designed to collect data on food intake, household demographics, and food security status. Setting A representative sample of adults who live in 36 counties in the Lower Mississippi Delta region of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Subjects One thousand six hundred seven adults, both white and African American. Main outcome measures Food security status and diet quality, as defined by adherence to the Healthy Eating Index and Dietary Reference Intakes by determinations from self-reported food intake (1 day intake). Statistical analyses Regression analysis, t tests, Wald statistic, and beta tests were employed. Results Food secure adults scored higher on Healthy Eating Index than food insecure adults ( P=0.0001), but the regression model showed no differences when multiple factors were included. Food secure individuals consistently achieved higher percentages of the Dietary Reference Intakes (specifically Estimated Average Requirements and Adequate Intakes) than food insecure individuals, with the greatest differences seen for vitamin A ( P<0.0001), copper ( P=0.0009), and zinc ( P=0.0022) and very little difference for vitamins C ( P=0.68) and E ( P=0.32). Both populations consumed diets extremely low in fiber. Conclusions Food insecurity is associated with lower quality diets in this population. It is acknowledged that serious limitations are associated with the use of one 24-hour recall and for comparison between food intake and assessment of food security. These findings still suggest a pressing need for nutrition interventions to improve dietary intake in these at-risk impoverished individuals.

Possible Existence of Deep-Seated Oil Deposits on Gulf Coast

Editor's Note: Originally published in AIME Transactions, this paper, which is heavily excerpted here, discusses the possibility of oil lying beneath salt domes along the US Gulf Coast. The discovery of oil in 1901 on the Spindletop dome, Texas, inaugurated a new industry on the Gulf Coast, an industry which has grown with the discovery of successive fields, until today it engages the services of thousands of workers and employs enormous capital. New fields are being discovered from time to time and doubtless some still remain to be found, though of late years, discoveries have become more infrequent. Nowadays, several hundred dry holes are drilled each year in a fruitless and blind effort to discover new fields, for as yet geologic science has developed no effectual method of locating the coastal oil deposits in advance of drilling. Moreover, despite the occasional discovery of new fields, the total production of the Gulf Coast is today no greater than it was in 1906, for the added production of the new fields has been offset by the rapid decline and more or less complete exhaustion of some of the older ones. Careful geologic work within the fields has in some cases increased the production temporarily, but has developed no really new supplies. The Gulf Coast oil industry seems to have passed its period of greatest expansion and to be declining at a fairly steady rate, and this condition is naturally viewed with alarm by the more far-sighted operators. In my opinion, the time has come for the adoption of radical and aggressive methods of prospecting; and a fraction of the money wasted yearly in drilling shallow wells in hopeless locations might well be devoted to this purpose. Many facts lead me to believe that all the salt-dome oil has had a common origin; that it has migrated up from considerable depth along lines of structural weakness; and that a deep well, properly located, stands an excellent chance of discovering the parent reservoir and thus of developing new and probably great supplies. All of the oil produced in the coastal region of Texas and Louisiana is probably associated with salt domes, though in Goose Creek, Edgerly, and one or two other fields no salt has yet been actually penetrated. As a result of the innumerable wells that have been drilled on the various domes, it is now known that a typical salt dome consists of a very thick mass of pretty pure rock salt, generally almost flat-topped, but sloping abruptly away from the rim on every side. The flat top of the salt is generally covered by rock 25 ft to several hundred feet thick, consisting chiefly of limestone, dolomite, anhydrite, or gypsum, with generally more or less sulfur. The sediments above the salt are slightly domed and those on the sides of the salt mass generally slope at angles of 30 to 60°, and in some fields at even greater angles. These sediments consist of sand, gravel, shale, and gumbo, arranged in beds so lenticular and irregular that they can seldom be correlated from one well to another.

MERCURY BIOACCUMULATION AND TROPHIC TRANSFER IN SYMPATRIC SNAPPER SPECIES FROM THE GULF OF MEXICO

Consumption of marine fish is a major route of toxic methyl mercury (MeHg) exposure to ocean apex predators and human populations. Here we explore the influence of trophic structure on total mercury (Hg) accumulation in red snapper (RS, Lutjanus campechanus) and gray snapper (GS, Lutjanus griseus) from the coastal Louisiana region of the Gulf of Mexico, west of the Mississippi River. The objectives of this investigation were to: (1) determine the effectiveness of the use of offshore recreational fishing charter boats and marinas as sources of fish samples and (2) compare species differences in Hg bioaccumulation, trophic position, and carbon sources. Our data show that length-normalized Hg concentrations (> or = 97% as MeHg in tissue of both species) were 230% greater in GS in comparison to RS collected from the same general area. Stable C and N isotope signatures (delta15N and delta13C) indicate that GS occupy a slightly higher trophic position (approximately 30% of one trophic position higher) on the Gulf food web in comparison to RS and that GS appear to incorporate higher trophic positioned prey, continually and at smaller sizes. Mercury was strongly correlated with combined delta15N and delta13C in pooled species data, arguing that most of the substantial difference in Hg bioaccumulation between RS and GS can be explained by modest differences in their trophic position and, to a lesser degree, carbon sources, which had low variation and high overlap among species. These observations demonstrate that even minor to moderate differences in trophic position and food habits in sympatric species can create relatively large differences in bioaccumulation regimes and underscores the importance of quantitative characterization of trophic structure in marine MeHg bioaccumulation studies.

Framing perceptions of oil development and social disruption

This paper examines the perceived relationship between the presence and growth of the offshore oil industry in Louisiana and patterns of social disruption, particularly crime. Interview data were obtained from long-time residents in the coastal region of Louisiana, and a social constructionist perspective was used to frame the perceptions of these individuals ( N = 94). Much previous research on the effects offshore oil development and its cyclical expansion and contraction has been premised on a boom/bust social impact model reflecting the experience of resource extraction in communities in the Western United States. In contrast to this literature, we found our subjects perceived far less in the way of disorganizing effects of oil development, and for the most part suggested the impacts to be either benign or positive. There was little support for a boom/bust model of community disruption, and thus we suggest research in this area consider alternative paradigms of interpretation of social impact.

Economic fluctuation and crime: a time-series analysis of the effects of oil development in the coastal regions of Louisiana

This research examines the relationship between patterns of crime and the development of the oil and gas extraction industry in the coastal regions of Louisiana using pooled time-series analysis. The suggestion of a link between these phenomena has often been made, but little systematic research has been conducted to determine if there is indeed a crime–oil development nexus. Limited previous research has focused primarily on the issue of “boom and bust” cycles on some forms of deviant behavior, but the data and the methods used were inadequate, and thus, the resulting conclusions were often misleading or possibly erroneous. The results from the analysis suggest that changes in oil activity and high levels of labor market involvement in the offshore oil industry are neither strongly nor consistently associated with community disruption in the form of crime.

IBERIABANK Corp

AbstractCommercial Banking (MIC: 8.1 SIC: 6022 NAIC: 522110)IBERIABANK is the bank holding company for IBERIABANK, a Louisiana chartered commercial bank. The Bank operates 44 full service offices in its market areas, including New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Monroe, and the Acadiana region of Louisiana. Co. provides a variety of financial services to individuals and businesses throughout its service area. Primary deposit products are checking, savings and certificate of deposit accounts and primary lending products are consumer, commercial and mortgage loans. Co. also provides discount brokerage services and insurance services to its clients. As of Dec 31 2005, Co. had total assets of $2.85 billion and total deposits of $2.24 billion.

Pediatricians' Experiences 80 Miles up the River: Baton Rouge Pediatricians' Experiences Meeting the Health Needs of Evacuated Children

On August 29, 2005, the Gulf Coast experienced one of our nation's most devastating natural disasters in modern history with the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. Heavy damage was inflicted from Louisiana to Alabama, causing Katrina to become the most destructive and costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States and likely the deadliest since 1928. This article documents the preparations, responses, experiences, and lessons learned from the point of view of just a few of the practicing general pediatricians in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. Baton Rouge is the state capital, located approximately 80 miles northwest of New Orleans and situated on the east bank of the Mississippi River. The 2000 census data list the city's population as 227818, with the metropolitan population being 602894. It is the closest urban area to the region of Louisiana impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Medical care is supplied to a 7-parish area of approximately 1 million people. In the days before Katrina, the population of greater Baton Rouge was estimated to have doubled. It is interesting to note that almost 13 months to the date before Katrina, a statewide hurricane exercise involving a category 3 strike on New Orleans was rehearsed. In July 2004, in the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge, officials from 50 state, federal, and volunteer organizations and Louisiana parishes participated in a mock scenario almost identical to the reality of Katrina. During the tabletop exercise, more than 250 planners used the scenario to develop a recovery plan for the 13 parishes in the New Orleans area. This exercise was known as “Hurricane Pam.” The Hurricane Pam exercise envisioned sustained winds of 120 mph and up to 20 inches of rain to parts of southeast Louisiana and a storm surge that topped levees in the New Orleans … Address correspondence to David E. Thomas, MD, PhD, FAAP. E-mail: DThoma01{at}ololrmc.com

IBERIABANK Corp

Mergent's Dividend AchieversVolume 3, Issue 2 p. 148-148 U.S. Company Reports IBERIABANK Corp† First published: 20 April 2006 https://doi.org/10.1002/div.3956 † Contact: : William H. Fenstermaker — Chmn. Address: : 200 West Congress Street, Lfayette, LA 70501 Web Site: : www.iberiabank.com AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Abstract Commercial Banking (MIC: 8.1 SIC: 6022 NAIC: 522110) IBERIABANK is the bank holding company for IBERIABANK, a Louisiana chartered commercial bank. The Bank operates 44 full service offices in its market areas, including New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Monroe, and the Acadiana region of Louisiana. Co. provides a variety of financial services to individuals and businesses throughout its service area. Primary deposit products are checking, savings and certificate of deposit accounts and primary lending products are consumer, commercial and mortgage loans. Co. also offers discount brokerage services and insurance services to its clients. At Dec 31 2005, Co. had total assets of $2.85 billion and total deposits of $2.24 billion. Volume3, Issue2Spring 2006Pages 148-148 RelatedInformation

Louisiana’s Wetlands: A Lesson in Nature Appreciation

Hurricane Katrina’s disastrous flooding of the Gulf Coast confirmed three decades of warnings by scientists. Most of New Orleans is below sea level, and South Louisiana’s coastal wetlands, which once helped buffer the city from giant storms, have been disappearing at a spectacularly swift pace. Now some researchers are calling for restoration of wetlands and barrier islands to help protect New Orleans the next time a hurricane strikes. An average of 34 square miles of South Louisiana land, mostly marsh, has disappeared each year for the past five decades, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). As much as 80% of the nation’s coastal wetland loss in this time occurred in Louisiana. From 1932 to 2000, the state lost 1,900 square miles of land to the Gulf of Mexico. By 2050, if nothing is done to stop this process, the state could lose another 700 square miles, and one-third of 1930s coastal Louisiana will have vanished. Importantly, New Orleans and surrounding areas will become ever more vulnerable to future storms. “New Orleans can’t be restored unless we also address coastal and wetland restoration too,” says Craig E. Colten, a geographer at Louisiana State University (LSU).

IBERIABANK Corp

Mergent's Dividend AchieversVolume 3, Issue 4 p. 147-147 U.S. Company Reports IBERIABANK Corp† First published: 10 October 2006 https://doi.org/10.1002/div.4790 † Contact: : William H. Fenstermaker — Chmn. Address: : 200 West Congress Street, Lafayette, LA 70501 Web Site: : www.iberiabank.com AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Abstract Commercial Banking (MIC: 8.1 SIC: 6022 NAIC: 522110) IBERIABANK is the bank holding company for IBERIABANK, a Louisiana chartered commercial bank. The Bank operates 44 full service offices in its market areas, including New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Monroe, and the Acadiana region of Louisiana. Co. provides a variety of financial services to individuals and businesses throughout its service area. Primary deposit products are checking, savings and certificate of deposit accounts and primary lending products are consumer, commercial and mortgage loans. Co. also offers discount brokerage services and insurance services to its clients. At Dec 31 2005, Co. had total assets of $2.85 billion and total deposits of $2.24 billion. Volume3, Issue4Autumn (Fall) 2006Pages 147-147 RelatedInformation

Household Food Insecurity Is Associated with Adult Health Status

The prevalence of household food security, which reflects adequacy and stability of the food supply, has been measured periodically in the United States and occasionally in high-risk groups or specific regions. Despite a plausible biological mechanism to suggest negative health outcomes of food insecurity, this relation has not been adequately evaluated. This study was conducted in the Lower Mississippi Delta region to examine the association between household food insecurity and self-reported health status in adults. A two-stage stratified cluster sample representative of the population in 36 counties in the Delta region of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi was selected using list-assisted random digit dialing telephone methodology. After households were selected and screened, a randomly selected adult was interviewed within each sampled household. Data were collected to measure food security status and self-reported mental, physical, and general health status, using the U.S. Food Security Survey Module and the Short Form 12-item Health Survey (SF-12). Data were reported on a sample of 1488 households. Adults in food-insecure households were significantly more likely to rate their health as poor/fair and scored significantly lower on the physical and mental health scales of the SF-12. In regression models controlling for income, gender, and ethnicity, the interaction between food insecurity status and race was a significant predictor of fair/poor health and lower scores on physical and mental health. Household food insecurity is associated with poorer self-reported health status of adults in this rural, high-risk sample in the Lower Mississippi Delta.

GENETIC VARIATION IN BLACK BEARS IN ARKANSAS AND LOUISIANA USING MICROSATELLITE DNA MARKERS

In the 1950s and 1960s, translocation projects reintroduced black bears (Ursus americanus) from Minnesota and Manitoba to Arkansas and Louisiana. Today, several geographically disconnected populations exist in Arkansas and Louisiana, but their origins are unclear. Some populations may represent a separate subspecies, U. a. luteolus, which is federally protected. We characterized 5 microsatellite loci in 5 isolated populations in Arkansas and Louisiana and compared them with genotypes from Minnesota. Our data indicate that bears of the Ozark and Ouachita mountains of Arkansas, an inland area of Louisiana, and those of Minnesota are similar in overall genetic diversity and allele frequencies, consistent with these populations being wholly or mostly descended from bears from the reintroduction programs. In contrast, bears from southeastern Arkansas and the coastal region of Louisiana genetically are more restricted and homogeneous. Because they exhibit a limited set of genotypes found in the other black bear populations, they represent isolated fragments of a single North American black bear population. Furthermore, genetic distance estimates indicate that the bears in southeastern Arkansas are more genetically distinct from bears in Louisiana, which are currently federally protected.

Using national dietary data to measure dietary changes.

To demonstrate that dietary datasets from the Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals, a US population survey, allow comparisons with national data and provide food composition datasets that can be used to generate similar dietary data. Two studies are described: the Lower Mississippi Delta Nutrition Intervention Research Initiative (Delta NIRI), which used a 24-hour recall, and a Department of Defense Military Nutrition Research Task, which used 3-day dietary records. Both studies used the same food composition tables. Rural Lower Mississippi Delta and an Army post. Four hundred and nine residents (adults and children) from the rural Delta region of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and 74 career soldiers from the Sergeants Major Academy, Fort Bliss, Texas. The Delta NIRI study found that fruit and vegetable consumption for these rural residents was lower than that found nationally. Additionally, the quality of vegetable servings is of concern since a large percentage came from french fries and potato chips. In the Sergeants Major Academy study, the national survey food composition tables allowed for easy analysis of intake data and comparisons with dietary recommendations. Strategies similar to those used for the Delta NIRI and Military Nutrition Research Task can be used widely, allowing comparisons of 'defined populations' with nationally distributed data. Additionally, measurement of dietary change is more efficient when the same protocol is used subsequently to collect more data, a method similar to that used by the US Department of Agriculture to describe food consumption patterns from one survey to another.

The Second Great Emancipation: The Mechanical Cotton Picker, Black Migration, and How They Shaped the Modern South

In the Cotton South before World War II, every task, from plowing to cultivating to harvesting the crop, was done by hand. These labor-intensive practices, coupled with too many farmers -- both tenants and owners -- trying to survive on small, uneconomical farms, kept the region poor, backward, and unmechanized. From 1940 to 1970, however, in the Great Migration, southern blacks and whites thronged to new opportunities in the postwar, industrial North. In this revisionist study, Donald Holley marshals impressive statistical and narrative evidence to show that mechanization occurred in the Delta region of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi only after the region's oversupply of small farmers was reduced. He thereby corrects a long-standing belief that mechanization pushed labor off the land. Development of the mechanical cotton picker not only made possible the continuation of cotton cultivation in the post-plantation era, it helped free the region of Jim Crow laws as political power was relocated from farms to cities and thereby opened the door for the civil rights movement of the 1950s. Just as President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed African Americans from chattel slavery, the mechanical cotton picker freed laborers from the drudgery of the cotton harvest and brought the agricultural South into a period of greater prosperity.

Legal Systems in Conflict: Property and Sovereignty in Missouri, 1750-1860

Legal Systems in Conflict: Property and Sovereignty in Missouri, 1750-1860. By Stuart Banner. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. Pp. xiii, 206. Maps. $39.95.) In this brief book, Stuart Banner, law professor at Washington University, compares the legal systems of the region of Louisiana that would become the state of Missouri before and after the Louisiana Purchase. This comparison, the author notes, addresses five historiographical gaps (4). Aside from challenging the anti-Spanish bias of local historians, who accepted the conclusion of American settlers that under Spain the region had no law, the focus on Upper Louisiana counters the emphasis on the Atlantic seaboard colonies perpetuated by most colonialists. Western historians are aided by the book's examination of why American lawyers migrated and became such influential figures in the territories. For economic historians, Banner explores the shift in land usage from open fields to enclosed private holdings. Finally, as legal historian, the author addresses the basic but often-neglected question, What causes the law to change? (6) Prior to the Purchase, civil and criminal procedure for the French-dominated population of Spanish Upper Louisiana relied upon oral presentations to local officials, who would interrogate parties and witnesses before issuing decisions that were deemed final. Despite this seemingly imperious structure, Banner contends that the territory's inhabitants accepted these decrees because officials based their judgments upon mores and local customs. Finding only minimal reference to the legal texts that governed the Spanish empire further south, the author concludes that cases were decided according to intuitive sense of justice shared by the community, or at least by large enough fraction of the to make the decision acceptable (52). Banner points to low court costs, quick decisions, and effective enforcement to demonstrate that the residents of Upper Louisiana seldom resorted to informal settlements, and he concludes that the large proportion of civil suits among the population reflected widespread acceptance of legal system in which judgments were made reference only to the unwritten norms of the community (56). Reliance on local custom provided residents with degree of control despite the absence of representative assembly or elected officials. Property rights reinforced this sense of self-government. Contrary to the American concept of public ownership, inhabitants understood common lands to be owned by the public directly, without the intermediation of any government as the public's agent (74). Spanish officials tended to permit the French residents to regulate the commons themselves (76), and residents clung to this privilege, despite the commons' economic inefficiencies, because control of the commons provided them with a way of recapturing sense of political participation (80). commons, Banner concludes, was thus zone of self-government, against the background of political system that otherwise contained few formal representative institutions (77). The transfer of the Louisiana Territory to the United States brought flood of American settlers to Upper Louisiana. Many of these migrants were lawyers trained in the Anglo-American legal tradition, and they came because the federal government established an American court system in St. Louis and needed judges with legal training immediately (86). Those who failed to secure appointments usually profited by setting up successful practices, by entering politics, and by using their knowledge of titles to speculate in frontier lands. …

Validity of a Telephone-Administered 24-Hour Dietary Recall in Telephone and Non-Telephone Households in the Rural Lower Mississippi Delta Region

Objective To determine if 24-hour dietary recall data are influenced by whether data are collected by telephone or face-to-face interviews in telephone and non-telephone households. Design Dual sampling frame of telephone and non-telephone households. In telephone households, participants completed a 24-hour dietary recall either by face-to-face interview or telephone interview. In non-telephone households, participants completed a 24-hour dietary recall either by face-to-face interview or by using a cellular telephone provided by a field interviewer. Subjects/setting Four hundred nine participants from the rural Delta region of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Main outcome measures Mean energy and protein intakes. Statistical analyses performed Comparison of telephone and non-telephone households, controlling for type of interview, and comparison of telephone and face-to-face interviews in each household type using unpaired t tests and linear regression, adjusting for gender, age, and body mass index. Results Mean differences between telephone and face-to-face interviews for telephone households were −171 kcal ( P=0.1) and −6.9 g protein ( P=0.2), and for non-telephone households −143 kcal ( P=0.6) and 0.4 g protein ( P=1.0). Mean differences between telephone and non-telephone households for telephone interviews were 0 kcal ( P=1.0) and −0.9 g protein ( P=0.9), and for face-to-face interviews 28 kcal ( P=0.9) and 6.4 g protein ( P=0.5). Findings persisted when adjusted for gender, age, and body mass index. No statistically significant differences were detected for mean energy or protein intake between telephone and face-to-face interviews or between telephone and non-telephone households. Applications/conclusions These data provide support that telephone surveys adequately describe energy and protein intakes for a rural, low-income population. J Am Diet Assoc 2001:101:216-222.

The Education of Fernando de Leyba: Quapaws and Spaniards on the Border of Empires

IN 1771, A YOUNG SPANISH OFFICER, Fernando de Leyba, traveled from New Orleans to his new post on the Arkansas River. Spain had acquired the vast Louisiana region from France in 1763, and Commandant Leyba's superiors expected him to institute Spanish control over his part of the Louisiana interior. Knowing that Indian alliances were essential to Spanish dominance in Louisiana, the governor in New Orleans had sent a Spanish medal for Leyba to give to the leader of the Quapaws, the Indians who lived near Arkansas Post. The Quapaws' great chief, Cazenonpoint, was supposed to exchange his old French medal for the new Spanish one, signifying his people's shift in alliance from the French to the Spanish. At a formal assembly, Leyba presented the medal to Cazenonpoint. But to the chief's shock, the Spanish medal was smaller than the French one. Cazenonpoint declared that the Spanish had cheated him, and he demanded his French medal back.1 Through the clumsy error of a skimpy medal, the Spanish had insulted the Quapaws and endangered their alliance. From this inauspicious beginning, Chief Cazenonpoint and Commandant Leyba became antagonists in a strained alliance between their peoples. But the Quapaws gradually converted the Spanish to Quapaw ways of diplomacy. Over the following year, Cazenonpoint and the other Quapaw chiefs demonstrated their power to Leyba and taught him the wisdom of giving the Quapaws what they wanted-frequent and generous presents and the respectful treatment that alliance partners deserved. While Leyba learned Indian relations the hard way, the two men filling Leyba's and Cazenonpoint's respective positions a decade later-- Commandant Balthazar de Villiers and Quapaw chief Angaska-quickly forged a mutually beneficial personal and political partnership. Unlike Leyba, Villiers came to his post understanding Indian power and Spanish weakness in the Louisiana interior. Furthermore, both he and Chief Angaska had stronger personal incentives for forging a dependable alliance. Each had less support from his own people than had Leyba or Cazenonpoint. Villiers was French by birth, so he was an outsider to the Spanish empire. Angaska was an ambitious young chief, not the established leader that Cazenonpoint had been in 1771. While Leyba and Cazenonpoint had tested each other's power, Villiers and Angaska reinforced each other's legitimacy. The Quapaws' education of Fernando de Leyba and the symbiotic relationship between Angaska and Villiers both reveal the importance of individuals and local circumstance in determining the fate of empires and should remind us to be cautious in generalizing about the relationships among various European and Indian groups. Examining the interactions among a few important Quapaws and Spanish officials suggests not a static relationship between Indians and Europeans but a perpetual construction and reconstruction of those colonial relations. Different personalities shaped very different relationships. Individuals affected the course of history on the edges of empires, where power was diffuse. To overlook Indians' and Europeans' personal assumptions, interests, and actions distorts the reality of Indian-white relations. Policies and decrees meant little without implementation and reveal nothing about how Indians interpreted and reacted to them. This is not to say that Indian chiefs and Spanish officers did not act within structural constraints. Officers had orders and budgets, and chiefs had pressures and expectations from their peoples. The political structures of both Spanish and Quapaw society limited the powers of commandants and chiefs. All were influenced by their cultural and religious backgrounds and beliefs. But in colonialism, the personal and the structural were always intertwined. The conventional wisdom that the Spanish did not develop as strong a Quapaw alliance as the French neglects the differing situations and goals of the French on the one hand and the Spanish on the other. …

"With the Aid of God and the F.S.A.": The Louisiana Farmers' Union and the African American Freedom Struggle in the New Deal Era

This article examines African Americans' participation in the Louisiana Farmers' Union, a communist-led, interracial organization of tenant farmers and farm laborers that was active in the cotton and sugar plantation regions of Louisiana in the New Deal era. It argues that rural black people saw the union as an ally in their ongoing struggles for economic justice, access to education, political participation, and protection from violence, and used their union locals to further those goals. The author suggests links between the rural unions of the 1930s and the civil rights movement of the 1960s by pointing out continuities in the objectives of African American activists in both decades.

Growth and invasive potential of Sapium sebiferum (Euphorbiaceae) within the coastal prairie region: the effects of soil and moisture regime

The introduced tree Sapium sebiferum (Euphorbiaceae) is considered a serious threat to the preservation of the coastal prairie region of Louisiana and Texas, although it is currently uncommon in the western part of the region. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential effects of location, soils, and available moisture on the growth and survival of S. sebiferum in coastal prairie. In a field experiment, S. sebiferum mortality was significantly greater at a western site than at central and eastern sites. The greatest mortality and least growth of surviving plants occurred on a soil from the western region, regardless of site. A greenhouse study also found that S. sebiferum growth was lowest on the western soil. Watering frequency significantly affected S. sebiferum growth, except on the western soil. Sapium sebiferum growth responded to both nitrogen and phosphorus additions for all soils. Soil analyses revealed the highest sand, sodium, and phosphorus contents, and much higher electrical conductivity in the western soil. It is concluded that the soil examined from the western region is unfavorable for S. sebiferum growth, though not to the extent to preclude S. sebiferum completely. Evidence suggests that soil salinity may be the primary cause of the poor S. sebiferum growth at the western site.