History of Mardi Gras
"Mardi Gras" literally means "Fat Tuesday" in French. It is the day
before "Ash Wednesday" when Lent begins, the season of prayer and fasting
observed by the Roman Catholic Church during the forty days before Easter
Sunday. Mardi Gras in New Orleans dates back all the way to the late
seventeenth century, when the city was founded by by Jean Baptiste LeMoyne,
Sieur de Bienville, and Pierre LeMoyne, Sieur de Iberville.
Mardi
Gras was celebrated throughout the period where New Orleans was under
control of the French and Spanish. After the signing of the Louisiana
Purchase in 1803, when New Orleans became part of America, the Creoles,
primarily of French and Spanish descent, who made up the upper-crust of
New Orleans society continued the tradition.
The
Carnival season in the first half of the nineteenth century was not a
calm, quiet celebration. In fact, the citizens of New Orleans got so
wrapped up in Mardi Gras that street masking was banned by the authorities
by the 1830's.
Carnival
was rescued, however, by six young men from Mobile. They formed the
Mystick Krewe of Comus, a social club that staged the first New Orleans
Carnival parade on the evening of Mardi Gras in 1857. Naming one of their
number the king of the krewe (the word being deliberately spelled that way
to show they were an elite society), they paraded through the streets of
the French Quarter on two mule-driven floats.
After
the Civil War, several other krewes formed and did parades on the days
leading up to Mardi Gras. By 1871, Comus had been joined by the krewes of
Proteus and Momus, and a new group formed that year, known as the School
of Design. The School of Design decided to stage their parade during the
day on Mardi Gras, and they proclaimed that their king was to be Rex, the
King of Carnival.
From
the 1870's up to the present, new krewes continue to form, as groups of
friends, neighbors, business associates, etc., decide they want to
celebrate Carnival by parading through New Orleans.