If you look up the definition of the word "batture," oft as not, you will also see mention of the famous legal cases surrounding the New Orleans batture that began not long after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, continuing for decades. The batture (the land between the levee and the Mississippi, formed by the accretion of the river) came to symbolize all of native, mostly French New Orleanians' fears upon becoming a U.S. territory. Though the legal arguments were often misunderstood by the public, who were sometimes purposefully misled by newspaper editors and politicians, what was not misunderstood was the possible outcome: a total privatization of the land along the Mississippi that had historically been for public use and enjoyment. This dispute between the people of the city and private entrepreneurs and their lawyers even came to riots on more than one occasion. In the end, like many of the disputes that arose in Louisiana's rocky transition to statehood, a compromise was reached, which still impacts the use of the batture land today.
New Orleans Taken from the Opposite Side, A Short Distance Above the Middle or Picayune Ferry by W.J. Bennett, ca. 1841.
This is a typical batture scene. In this image, people stroll along the batture, load up their wheelbarrows with batture silt, and dock their small boats. There are also storage containers left about.
Image provided courtesy of the Historic New Orleans Collection, 1950.3.
