Before the Europeans
Not much is known of the pre-colonial era. The area was mostly populated by Kalina, or Galibi before the arrival of the French in the late 17th century.
There is a place not far from the town called les Roches Grav�es ("The Carved Rocks"), where indigenous art can be seen on the rock walls.
Early colonization
Vicente Yanez Pinzon sailed along most of the north coast of South America and passed by the current location of Kourou in 1500.
The Jesuits Lombard and Creuilly baptised a few Galibis at the church of Saint Nicholas in Cayenne in December 1710 and returned with them soon after to farm the land at Guat�mala, across the river from Kourou. The Society of Jesus was disbanded (in Guiana) in 1762, however, and Kourou was nothing more than a small village until the arrival of the Expedition.
In 1744, La Condamine, in charge of the expedition sent to Peru in 1735 to determine the length of a degree of the meridian arc in the neighborhood of the equator, passed by and gave his name to one of the mountains behind Kourou.
The expedition
The mission at Kourou being abandoned by the Jesuits, the engineers Mentelle and Tugny designed the layout of the future town. This resulted in the neighborhood called the Bourg, around the Church of Saint Catherine and next to the port on the river.
That same year, 1763, as agreed in the Treaty of Paris, Great Britain took control of New France. Having lost their largest and richest colony, the French decided to send a large expedition to Guiana, commanded by Choiseul. Around 10,000 to 12,000 people, mostly Frenchmen, tempted by stories of an El Dorado on the other side of the ocean, settled in Kourou.
The small town, surrounded by marshes and rainforest, was unprepared for such a massive influx of people, and around 6,000 of the pioneers died within the year due to fevers and other illnesses. Those remaining fled to the �les
