History of Baton Rouge

The foundation of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, dates to 1721, at the site of a bâton rouge or "red pole" Muscogee boundary marker. It became the state capital of Louisiana in 1849.

Human habitation in the Baton Rouge area has been dated to about 8000 BC based on evidence found along the Mississippi, Comite, and Amite rivers.Earthwork mounds were built by hunter-gathererHistory of Baton Rouge, Louisiana societies in the Middle Archaic period, from roughly the 4th millennium BC. Proto-Muskogean divided into its daughter languages by about 1000 BC; a cultural boundary between either side of Mobile Bay and the Black Warrior River begins to appear between about 1200 BC and 500 BC, the Middle "Gulf Formational Stage". Eastern Muskogean began to diversify internally in the first half of the 1st millennium AD. The early Muskogean nations were the bearers of the Mississippian culture which formed around AD 800. By the time the Spanish made their first forays inland from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico in the early 16th century, many political centers of the Mississippians were already in decline, or abandoned, the region at the time presenting as a collection of moderately-sized native chiefdoms interspersed with autonomous villages and tribal groups.

French explorer Sieur d'Iberville led an exploration party up the Mississippi River in 1699. The explorers saw a red pole marking the boundary between the Houma and Bayogoula tribal hunting grounds. The French name le bâton rouge ("the red pole") is the translation of a native term rendered as Istrouma, possibly a corruption of the Choctaw iti humma "red pole"; André-Joseph Pénicaut, a carpenter traveling with d'Iberville, published the first full-length account of the expedition in 1723. According to Pénicaut,

...
Wikipedia