John James Audubon and his assistant, Joseph Mason, rode aboard a flatboat starting in Cincinnati to reach New Orleans on January 7, 1821. French colonists founded the town in 1718 in the territory that they had claimed in 1682 and named La Louisiane in honor of King Louis XIV (1638-1715). The town was named in honor of a nephew of Louis XIV, Philip II (1674-1723), who held the title of Duke of Orléans. Even though English was becoming more widely spoken in New Orleans by the time Audubon and Mason arrived, Audubon having French as his native language would have still given him an advantage finding work for him and Mason drawing and selling caricatures and portraits. Most of their business was conducted in the environs of the Halle des Boucheries at Chartres St. and Dumaine St. Audubon regarded the meat market or Halle des Boucheries as “the Dirtiest place in all the Cities of the United States.” The Halle des Boucheries is today an attractive mix of retail and dining called the French Market.
In addition to portrait drawing, the buying and selling of slaves, and just about every other conceivable form of trade at the Halle des Boucheries was the sale of pet birds, the most popular of which was the songs and the stunning colors of the Painted bunting. To cage a Painted bunting required simply stuffing and posing a dead male “in a defensive attitude” on a perch hanging above a platform, positioning the platform in a location that another male was already defending, such as an orange grove or open field, and setting a trip for a cage to drop down on the platform. When the defending male perceived its potential rival, the bird would dive “towards the stuffed bird, with all the anger which its little breast can contain. It alights on the edge of the trap for a moment, and throwing its body against the stuffed bird, brings down the trap, and is made prisoner. In this manner, thousands of these birds are caught every spring. So pertinacious are they in their attacks, that even when the trap has closed upon them, they continue pecking at the feathers of the supposed rival. The approach of man seems to allay its anger in a moment. The live bird is removed to the lower apartment of the cage, and is thereby made to assist in decoying others.” The Migratory Bird Treaty Act was passed in 1918 to protect Painted buntings and other birds from becoming a stuffed bird or being lured into a cage by a stuffed bird and used to lure others or being sold for a “sixpence” as a pet bird.