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Attakapas Post was founded on the banks of
the Bayou Teche and settlers started to arrive. Some came separately from
France, such as the Frenchman Masse, who came about 1754. Masse came to
Louisiana from Grenoble. Gabriel Fuselier de la Claire a Frenchman from Lyon,
France and some other Frenchmen, from Mobile arrived in late 1763/early 1764.
Fuselier bought land between Vermilion River and Bayou Teche from the Eastern
Attakapas Chief Kinemo. It was shortly after that a rival Indian Tribe, the Appalousa
(Opelousas) coming from the area through Atchafalaya River and Sabine River,
exterminated the Attakapas (Eastern Atakapa). Gabriels son Agricole Fuselier
was prominent in the settling of the town New Iberia . Then other European
settlers came in groups, such as the first Acadians from Nova Scotia, who were
sent there in 1765 by Jean-Jacques Blaise d'Abbadie, the French official who
was administering Louisiana for the Spanish. The group was led by Joseph
Broussard dit Beausoleil. In 1768-1769 fifteen families arrived from Pointe
Coupee. Their members came from Santo Domingo (French Saint Domingue, today
Haïti) or from Paris via Fort de Chartres, Illinois. Between the arrivals of
the two groups, the French captain Etienne de Vaugine came in 1764 and acquired
a large domain east of Bayou Teche.
On April 25, 1766, after the arrival of the
first Acadians, the census showed a population of 409 inhabitants for the
Attakapas region. In 1767 the Attakapas Post alone had 150 inhabitants before
the arrival of the 15 families from Pointe Coupee.
Napoleon sold Louisiana in 1803 to the
United States through the Louisiana Purchase. The organizing of the Attakapas
Territory took place between 1807 and 1868, culminating in the creation of St.
Martin Parish. Attakapas Post was named St. Martinville
