* * *

NEW YORK, N.Y., _June_, 1905.

I have the honor to transmit herewith the report of the Board of Lady
Managers of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, which was appointed by
you as provided for by the act of Congress dated March 3, 1901.

Very respectfully,
MARY MARGARETTA MANNING,
_President of the Board of Lady Managers
Louisiana Purchase Exposition_.
The LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION COMMISSION.

Historical Data.[1]

[Footnote 1: Compilation.]

The territory originally known as Louisiana was taken possession of by
the explorer La Salle in 1682, in the name of Louis XIV, and the first
colony was founded by the French at Biloxi in 1699. The vast domain was
transferred to Spain, by secret treaty, in 1763, and remained in the
possession of that country until 1800, when the King of Spain, during
the assistance of Napoleon in the erection of the Kingdom of Etruria for
his son-in-law, the Duke of Parma, ceded the Louisiana Territory to
France in return for that aid. It was part of Bonaparte's policy and
earliest ambition to restore to France all her lost possessions, and by
the significant treaty of San Ildefonso, signed by Manual Godoy, the
Spanish minister of state (known as the "Prince of Peace"), and Marshal
Berthier, minister of France at Madrid, all that vast and vaguely
defined territory known as Louisiana, which France had originally
transferred to Spain, was reconveyed to France.

Up to the end of the revolution the possession of the Louisiana
Territory by one foreign power or another had not touched Americans
closely, but now conditions changed. When rumors of the last treaty
finally reached the United States, the planters in the Mississippi
Valley became alarmed. The laws and customs regulations of the Spaniards
at New Orleans were arbitrary, and their business methods antiquated,
complicated, and irksome to the colonists, and there had already been
friction between them, the Spaniards being aided by Indians hostile to
the frontiersmen. The right of deposit was essential to the pioneers who
journeyed down the river in their flat-bottom homemade boats; they
required a place to store their goods at New Orleans while waiting the
arrival of trading vessels. In the early nineties the Spanish
authorities closed navigation and refused the right of way to the ocean,
but in 1795 a treaty was signed which gave the right of deposit, with
certain minor limitations, for three years, and the way t