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Compliments of Hancock County Chamber of Commerce
HISTORY OF HANCOCK COUNTY
As far as can be determined, Robert Cavalier de LaSalle was the first	white	man
to explore this	part of the Coast. LaSalle descended to the mouth	of	the	Mis-
sissippi River and on April 7, 1682, he went to reconnoiter the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and was never heard from again. In 1688, Tonti, the faithful friend of LaSalle, came as far as the Gulf to seek tidings of his lost leader.
On this trip Tonit examined the Coast thirty leagues toward Mexico and twenty-five leagues toward Florida.
When Pierre le Moyne d'lberbille came to plant the Fleur de Lis of France on the Gulf Coast on April 12, 1699, he set out to visit a bay about nine leagues from Ship Island to which he gave the name St. Louis, in memory of Louis IX of France, crusader and Saint. But finding the water very shallow there, he decided to place his settlement at Biloxi. It remained for his brother, Jean Baptiste le Moyne Bienville, to set foot on the land and give it its presentname, on the day of the Feast of St. Louis, August 25, 1699. Pericault, the journalist from the frigate Le Maria, described the adventure as follows:
"We shortly afterwards found a beautiful bay about one league in width,
by four in	circumference, which was narped Bay of St. Louis__________We
hunted for	three days and killed 50 deer. Next day we camped	at	the
entrance of Bay St. Louis near a fountain of water that flows down from the hills which Moyne Bienville named Belle Fontaine (now called Pine Hills). We hunted several days around this ba,y and filled our boats with venison, buffalo, and other game.0
Long before the advent of these French explorers, the present site of Bay St. Louis was an Indian village called Chicapoula (or Chou-cqu-pou-lou) meaning "bad grass", probably referring to the rock-a-chain grass which sfTTT abounds in sections of the land. The Indians were of the Choctaw Tribe, by far the yn strongest in Mississippi. They lived mostly in the area call'd Devil's Swamp a-long Bayou La Croix several miles west of the present city. The fine hunting and fishing grounds with abundant game made this a mecca for the Choctaws. The Frenchmen, realizing that this was an excellent location for obtaining good grade furs, apparently made friends with the Indians and set up a trading post. Beaver, muskrat, otter, bear and other fur-bearing animals were abundant in the marshy interior lands, while the vaters abounded with excellent game and commercial fish.
In December, 1699, d'Iberville placed a few families in Bay St. Louis with a sergeant and'fifteen men in a small fort on the beach. On January 3, 1721, two ships, La Gironde and La Volage, arrived with about 300 persons for concessions of M. LeBlanc and Court Bellville on the Yazoo River, and Madame Mezieres on the Bay of St. Louis, and Madame Chaumont on the Pascagoula Bay. From the record o' land grants, it. would appear that the colony of Madame Mezieres settled on a 17,084 acre grant north of what is now Felicity Street. These were the pioneer settlers. It was during this period that the "filles de la Cassette", or Casket Girls, arrived here from France. These women were imported fo furnish brides
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CHAMBER Of COMMERCE