New Orleans and Gumbo History on Fat Tuesday

I decided to turn my attention to culinary history of New Orleans today in honor of Fat Tuesday and the start of Mardi Gras. As part of the Lower Mississippi Valley region, New Orleans historically as a rich Native American cultural heritage including the Choctaw and others. Starting in eighteenth century French settlers migrated to New Orleans establishing it as French controlled city in 1718. The French ceded the city to the Spanish in 1736 and then regained control of it in 1801. The demand for enslaved Africans to work sugar plantations throughout Louisiana and the shipping industry in the port New Orleans resulted in black majorities in the state and the city with large shipments of slaves arriving from the Caribbean and directly from Guinea in West Africa and Angola in Central Africa. Whites in New Orleans who could afford to, consumed large amounts of beef, veal, mutton, and pork. Enslaved Africans survived on rice and sagamité—a salt water boiled corn mush as rations from their owners, meats scraps from the tables and rubbish of city elites, and gardens where they raised okra and other produce. They also had permission in most instances to hunt and fish on Sundays. Hence New Orleans creole cookery as three roots: Indian, African, and European however the African is the predominate influence in New Orleans cuisine. “The thick base, or roux, from which all forms of gumbo are made is produced by cooking either sliced okra or powdered sassafras in a slowly heated oil” writes Historian Daniel Usner. “The name of the finished stock of seafood, poultry, meat, or any combination of these ingredients has been attributed to the Angolan word for okra, guingombo,” a plant that enslaved Africans brought to New Orleans “or to the Choctaw word for sassafras powder, kombo ashish, which local Indians continued to market into the twentieth century.”
Here is a Fat Tuesday New Orleans Creole gumbo recipe (traditional and vegan):

Traditional gumbo recipe: http://www.bigoven.com/170608-New-Orleans-Creole-Gumbo-recipe.html

Vegan gumbo recipe: http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=27730.0