The "Casket Girls were sent from France to New Orleans to be wives to the
men who settled the city earlier. There are some drawings of the Casket
girls in the Ursuline Convent on Chartres Street in the Vieux Carre' in
New Orleans.
In 1724, Bienville approved the Code Noir, which set forth the laws under
which African slaves were to be treated and established Catholicism as
the territory's official religion. While it codified slavery and banished
Jews from Louisiana, the code did provide slaves recognition and a degree
of protection under the law.
One significant natural barrier to development of the population and
society in Louisiana remained: a lack of potential wives. In 1727, a
small contingent of Ursuline nuns arrived in the city and set about
establishing a convent. While they weren't exactly eligible, they did
provide a temporary home and education to many shiploads of les filles à
la cassette. The "cassette girls" or "casket girls"--named for the
government-issue cassettes or casket-like trunks in which they carried
their possessions--were young women of appropriate character sent to
Louisiana by the French government to be courted and married by the
colonists. (If we're to believe the current population of the city, the
plan was remarkably successful: Nearly everyone in New Orleans claims
descent from the casket girls or from Spanish or French nobility, which
makes one wonder at the terrible infertility of the colony's earlier
population of convicts and "fallen women.")