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Florida Parishes: Region
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Tangipahoa Parish, located near the center of the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, is a physical composite of most the habitats typical of the lower areas east of the Mississippi River. Prior to 1801, the region was sparsely populated as much of the area was densely forested with pine, oak, gun ash, birch, holly, magnolia, poplar, and cypress.
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The Florida Parishes, rich in people and traditions, if not in land, form a region, primarily because of quirks of political history and geography, rather than a cultural pattern fully separate from other areas. Yet, they provide an area worth considering in their own right, and as a demonstration area for processes such as diffusion, syncretism, and acculturation that work to similar ends in other places.
The Greensburg Land Office is ... significant because it housed the St. Helena District Land Office, which served the entire Florida Parishes. Although Congress had in 1812 organized a land district out of the Florida Parishes, no provision had been made for the surveying of the private claims and public lands in this area. On March 3, 1819, however, Congress officially named this region the St. Helena District and provided for its survey. It was here that Florida Parish residents applied for American patents to their lands. In fact, this can be seen as one of the many steps involved in the Americanization of Louisiana. In 1843 the land office was moved from Greensburg to Baton Rouge.
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Like the surrounding regions of the Florida parishes, St. Tammany’s pre-history was characterized by several phases of indigenous Native American development. The original nomadic hunters who traversed the region in the decades following the last ice age gave way to a more sedentary mound building culture as life changed from the constant hunt for large paleolithic animals to reliance on the types of wildlife we recognize today. With the mound building culture came not only the great temple mounds which can still be found in certain areas of the modern region, but ... more productive farming techniques that allowed for permanency in residence.
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Borrowing from the geological model of stratigraphy can help visualize the folklife of the Florida Parishes. In any given spot, the accumulation of cultural patterns may differ from that of another nearby place, depending upon just when each of them received the "deposits" of settlers. In each period, the people who settled in the Florida Parishes had their own distinct cultural preferences and their peculiar technical capabilities, such that different places offered them differing opportunities. Not all parts of the region attracted the same kind of people. As some brief examples show, the kind of settlement depended upon a mix of factors that changed from period to period.
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