Le Page du Pratz

Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz was a French historian and observer of colonial Louisiana, remembered above all for his Histoire de la Louisiane. He spent years in the French colony during the early 1700s, and his writing drew on what he personally saw as well as what he learned from settlers and Indigenous communities.

His work is especially noted for its descriptions of the land, everyday colonial life, and the peoples of the Mississippi Valley, including the Natchez. Because he wrote close to the events he described, later readers and historians have often turned to his books as an important early source on Louisiana under French rule.

Some basic details of his life are not consistently reported in the sources easily available online, but he is generally identified as having died in 1775. Even so, his reputation rests less on biography than on the rich, firsthand picture he left of a formative period in North American history.