In 1682, the French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle named the region Louisiana to honor France's King Louis XIV. The first permanent settlement, Fort Maurepas was founded by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville a French military officer from Canada, in 1699. By then the French had also built a small fort at the mouth of the Mississippi at a settlement they named La Balise (or La Balize),seamark" in French. By 1721 they built a 62-foot wooden lighthouse-type structure to guide ships on the river. Louisiana was settled by the French, and also contains a high number of Acadians, Cajuns, Creole and the like, the ancestral language of the lot being....French.
These are Mardi Gras dolls. They celebrate Mardi Gras there because they have French ancestry.