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The Origin of Cajuns and Creoles.
Who is a "Cajun"?
Who is a "Creole"?
Who is a "Cajun"?
Dictionaries generally define Cajun as "a Louisianian who descends from French-speaking Acadians banished from Nova Scotia in the early 1700s." However, many common Cajun surnames — for instance, Soileau, Romero, Huval, Fontenot — are not Acadian in origin, but rather are Spanish, German or French Creole. Some are even of Anglo or Scotch-Irish origin, as in the case of famed Cajun musicians Lawrence Walker and Dennis McGee. For this reason, contemporary scholars of Cajun history and culture tend to offer a more complex, comprehensive view, attributing the traits of modern-day Cajuns to a dynamic, unending process of ethnic interaction. Although modern Cajuns are largely homogenous, their ancestry consists of a mixture of many ethnic groups. Most early Acadians originated in the Centre-Ouest region of France, but others came from families of Spanish, Irish, Scottish, English, Basque, and, in a few instances, American Indian heritage. After their 1755 expulsion from Nova Scotia, Acadians seeking refuge in South Louisiana again intermixed with other ethnic groups, particularly with French, Spanish, German, and, later, Anglo-American settlers, as well as Indians (albeit to a lesser extent). Historian Carl A. Brasseaux has shown, for example, that after the Civil War, over fifty percent of brides and grooms with Acadian surnames were marrying persons with non-Acadian surnames. In addition, Cajuns borrowed much of their culture from their black Creole neighbors. This cross-cultural pollination in Acadia and South Louisiana changed many dissimilar ethnic groups into a single new ethnic group — the Cajuns. Cajuns thus derive not only from French-speaking Acadians, but from several ethnic groups over which Acadian culture prevailed.
Sources: Ancelet et al., Cajun Country; Brasseaux, Acadian to Cajun; Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia; Dormon, People Called Cajuns.
From the Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture, www.cajunculture.com
Who is a "Creole"?
Always a controversial and confusing term, the word Creole, to put it simply, means many things to many people. It derives from the Latin creare, meaning "to beget" or "create." After the New World’s discovery, Portuguese colonists used the word crioulo to denote a New World slave of African descent. Eventually, the word was applied to all New World colonists, regardless of ethnic origin, living along the Gulf Coast, especially in Louisiana. There the Spanish introduced the word as criollo, and during Louisiana’s colonial period (1699-1803), the evolving word Creole generally referred to persons of African or European heritage born in the New World. By the nineteenth century, black, white, and mixed-race Louisianians used the term to distinguish themselves from foreign-born and Anglo-American settlers. It was during that century that the mixed-race Creoles of Color (or gens de couleur libre, "free persons of color") came into their own as an ethnic group, enjoying many of the legal rights and privileges of whites. They occupied a middle ground between whites and enslaved blacks, and as such often possessed property and received formal educations. After the Civil War, most Creoles of Color lost their privileged status and joined the ranks of impoverished former black slaves. All the while, however, the word Creole persisted as a term also referring to white Louisianians, usually of upper-class, non-Cajun origin (although, confusingly, even Cajuns sometimes were called Creoles, primarily by outsiders unfamiliar with local ethnic labels). Like the Creoles of Color, these white Creoles (also called French Creoles) suffered socioeconomic decline after the Civil War. In Acadiana, newly impoverished white Creoles often intermarried with the predominantly lower-class Cajuns, and were largely assimilated into Cajun culture. Many names of French Creole origin, like Soileau, Fontenot, and François, are now widely considered Cajun. 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 more or less unmixed African descent. Increasingly, both African-derived groups are putting aside old animosities (based largely on skin color and social standing) to work for mutual preservation, and as such often merely describe themselves as Creole. Ultimately, the word Creole remains murky, with some individuals (black, white, and mixed-race) futilely claiming the right of exclusive use. As the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture states, perhaps the "safest" course is to say that a Creole is "anyone who says he is one."
Sources: Brasseaux, Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country; Dormon, "Preface"; Encyclopedia of Southern Culture; Reed, 1001 Things Everybody Should Know about the South; Tregle, "Creoles and Americans"; Tregle, "On that Word ‘Creole’ Again."
From the Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture, www.cajunculture.com
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