A casquette girl () but also known historically as a casket girl or a Pelican girl, was a woman brought from France to the French colonies of Louisiana to marry. The name derives from the small chests, known as casquettes, in which they carried their clothes. History The French policy of sending young women known as King's Daughters () to their colonies for marriage goes back to the 17th-century. Young women were sent to Canada, Louisiana and the French West Indies. Later women, called correction girls, were supplied to the colonists by raking the streets of Paris for undesirables, or by emptying the houses of correction. France also sent women convicted along with their debtor husbands, and in 1719, deported 209 women felons "who were of a character to be sent to the French settlement in Louisiana.". The women sent to the West Indies were often from poor houses in France, but reputed to be former prostitutes from La Salpêtrière. In 1713 and again in 1743, the authorities in Saint-Domingue complained that Paris sent the settlers unsuitable former prostitutes as wives, and the practice was discontinued in the mid 18th-century. The casquette girls, however, were conspicuous by reason of their virtue. They were recruited from church charitable institutions (usually orphanages and convents) and although poor, were guaranteed to be virgins. It later became a matter of pride on the Gulf Coast to show descent from them. The first casquette girls reached Mobile, Alabama in 1704, Biloxi, Mississippi in 1719, and New Orleans in 1728. The 23 Pelican Girls arrived first on Massacre Island in late July then took shallow draft boats up Mobile Bay to 27 Mile Bluff weighing anchor on August 1st, 1704. They had sailed from France in April of that year on the ship Le Pélican. A stop in Cuba had resulted in many of the crew and young women receiving mosquito bites and thus becoming infected with Yellow Fever. Two of the young women died soon upon arrival and the epidemic spread throughout the fort even taking the life of adventurer Henri de Tonti. Being that as it may, most of the young women were married, to a man of their choosing, within a month. All of the women were between 14 and 19 years old. Unhappy with new husbands that spent much of their time in the woods not building new homes or planting them