Casquette girl

[3][11] The 23 Pelican Girls arrived first on Massacre Island in late July then took shallow-draft boats up Mobile Bay to 27 Mile Bluff weighing anchor on August 1, 1704.

[4][12] Two of the young women died soon upon arrival and the epidemic spread throughout the fort even taking the life of adventurer Henri de Tonti.

[4][13] Unhappy with new husbands that spent much of their time in the woods, not building new homes or planting them gardens, the girls staged what became known as the “Petticoat Rebellion.”[13] Until they were provided a roof and food they refused “bed and board.”[13] The men eventually came around.

Historian Joan Martin maintains that there is little documentation that casket girls, considered among the ancestors of white French Creoles, were sent to Louisiana.

Martin suggests this was a myth, and that interracial relationships occurred from the beginning of the encounter among Europeans, Native Americans and Africans.

The ladies are a masked marching society donning 18th century dress and distributing trinkets made and personalized by the members themselves.