Part of that adaptation—building with rot-resistant cypress, growing rice instead of wheat—meant interacting with Native peoples and other inhabitants of the region. By the midth century, Louisiana Creole identity had been two generations in the making. Contrary to popular belief today, the term carried no racial designation—one could be of entirely European, entirely African, or of mixed ancestry and still be a Creole.
It simply meant someone who was native to the colony and, generally, French-speaking and Catholic. An s drawing by Alfred Waud depicts people on Bayou Lafourche, part of the parish area of South Louisiana designated Acadiana by the Louisiana state legislature in By this time this drawing was made, Acadian Creoles had been settled in the area for generations.
Acadians, enslaved West Africans, Houma, Chitimacha, Choctaw, German immigrants, Canadian trappers, French and Spanish settlers—all contributed to a process now known as creolization. Fueled by European colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade, creolization occurred throughout the Latin Caribbean world: different populations, most of them in lands new to them, blended their native cultural practices—culinary, linguistic, musical—to create new cultural forms.
Creolized French—Kouri-Vini, also known as Louisiana Creole—was, by the s, in wide practice, including among Acadian descendants.
The accordion, a star feature of both Cajun and zydeco music, was brought to the colony by German settlers, and its use was popularized in part by the enslaved people working those plantations. It all gets back to self-identification.
Three teenagers are pictured at the Carencro racetrack. Much harder to substantiate is when those Acadian Creoles began calling themselves Cajun. If the first step in becoming Cajun was creolization, then Americanization was step two. Well established by the s, Jim Crow separated white from nonwhite, funneling the historically diverse Creole populace into a racial binary at a time when its language traditions were under threat.
A publicity image from the film Evangeline depicts the world of the 18th-century Louisiana Acadians as a romantic, Eurocentric idyll. During the s the hardening of the racial divide prompted white historians and community leaders to valorize the period of the Acadian expulsion, on which the story of Evangeline is based. Many had arranged legal liaisons with whites and their offspring were freed, all permissible in the Spanish colony, a practice unique in the southern United States.
One of the contributions to Louisiana made by Spain was the plantation among other accomplishments of the Creoles. The business process of sugar refinement, the arts and letters, and the ecclesiastical development of the church all carry Creole family names.
There are about forty Creole communities scattered across Louisiana, each such as the Isle Brevelle community in Natchitoches Parish by and large centered on a Roman Catholic Church and cemetery. After the American Civil War , most Creoles of Color lost their privileged status and joined the position of indigent former Black slaves. Yet the word Creole persisted as a term also referring to white Louisianans, usually of the upper class, non-Cajun origin although, confusing many, even Cajuns sometimes were called Creoles, primarily by outsiders unfamiliar with local ethnic labels.
In Acadiana, newly impoverished White Creoles often intermarried with Cajuns and were largely assimilated into Cajun culture. And today Creole is most often used in Acadiana to refer to persons of full or mixed African heritage.
It is generally understood among these Creoles that Creole of Color still refers to Creoles of mixed-race heritage, while the term Black Creole refers to Creoles of African descent. Increasingly, both African-originated groups are putting aside old animosities based largely on skin color and social standing for mutual preservation, and as such often merely describe themselves as Creole. In the preservation group, C. In they began to publish Creole Magazine, which contains articles by and about Creoles in southwest Louisiana.
It connects people to their colonial roots, be they descendants of European settlers, enslaved Africans, or those of mixed heritage, which may include African, French, Spanish, and American Indian influences. Cane River Creole National Historical Park's Oakland and Magnolia Plantations are excellent places to immerse oneself in the Creole culture and observe their past and continuing contributions to our entire nation. Explore This Park. Info Alerts Maps Calendar Reserve.
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