PRESENTING
300 YEARS OF FRENCH AND CREOLE HISTORY
IN LOUISIANA
INTRODUCTION
INDIGENOUS
LOUISIANA
When the French first arrived in what we now call Louisiana, thousands of Indigenous communities, including the Choctaw, Chitimacha, Tunica-Biloxi, and Houma, had been calling the banks of the Mississippi River home for over 10,000 years. One of the earliest known communities, the Poverty Point culture in northeast Louisiana, built massive earthworks that are a UNESCO World Heritage Site today. The construction of these mounds between 1,700 and 1,100 BCE was contemporary with Pharaoh Ramses II in Ancient Egypt.
Indigenous communities indelibly shaped the land that would become Louisiana. They developed trade routes through places such as Bayou St. John, which linked the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, eventually informing the French decision to establish New Orleans in its current spot. Gulf South Indigenous communities also domesticated many animals and plants native to the Gulf South, such as the sassafras leaf, which is still ground into a powder to thicken gumbos. The latanier (palmetto) was also used in housing and basket weaving and remains a symbol of the Houma people.
European contact did not erase Indigenous communities from Louisiana. Despite centuries of mistreatment, discrimination, and displacement, the communities resisted and still reside and shape the region they have called home for millennia. The United States Federal government recognizes four American Indian tribes in Louisiana: the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians, and the Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe of Louisiana. The State of
Louisiana recognizes eleven tribes: the Adai Caddo Indians of Louisiana, the Bayou Lafourche Band of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, the Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb, the Clifton Choctaw Tribe of Louisiana, the Four Winds Cherokee Tribe, the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, the Louisiana Band of Choctaw, the Natchitoches Tribe of Louisiana, the Pointe-au-Chien Tribe, and the United Houma Nation. Federal recognition is essential because it offers funding and services that state-recognized tribes are not afforded. Federal recognition is all the more important as many unrecognized tribes in South Louisiana are on the frontlines of climate change, living in communities where coastal erosion and rising sea level put their homes and livelihoods at risk.
Some Indigenous communities in Louisiana remain French-speaking to this day – a result of the forced assimilation policies started during colonization. These communities have left their mark on the French language, with many Indigenous terms being used in Louisiana French, such as bayou or chaoui (raccoon). While French retains its importance within these Francophone communities, the preservation and transmission of Indigenous languages, spoken for generations, also remains a key issue.
1682 - 1762
‘LA LOUISIANE’
UNDER FRENCH
COLONIAL RULE
After initial waves of Spanish exploration, in 1682, French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle claimed Indigenous lands bordering the Mississippi River and its vast tributaries for France. The land was named La Louisiane (Louisiana) after French King Louis XIV. The French established colonial settlements in Louisiana to control their claim in the region. They founded Biloxi on the coast of modern-day Mississippi (1699), Mobile in Alabama (1702), and Natchitoches in northwestern Louisiana (1716). In 1718, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, a French colonial administrator born in Montréal, founded La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) near the existing trade route of several Indigenous communities. The capital of French Louisiana would move from Mobile to New Orleans in 1723.
European settlements began an important historical chapter in the arrival of the transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans onto the shores of the Gulf South. In 1719, the first African peoples forced into chattel slavery were brought to New Orleans. These people represented a mosaic of African communities, especially from Western Africa, including Wolof, Igbo, Bambara, and other ethnic groups. By 1724, Governor Bienville imposed the Code Noir, a set of laws to regulate state-sanctioned slavery initially decreed under King Louis XIV. These laws regulated the everyday lives of the enslaved in colonial Louisiana, imposing cruel punishments and the death penalty for even minor infractions.
Living conditions were extremely difficult in the co- lony as diseases and natural disasters ravaged the population and the cultivation of cash crops proved challenging. As a result, from the 1730s to 1760s, the population of Louisiana only experienced incremental growth – despite the arrival of new European settlers and enslaved peoples of African descent, who added to the existing Indigenous population. The interactions between these different communities gradually forged new identities in Louisiana and a new language began to develop in the 18th century: Louisiana Creole (Kouri-Vini). This language, distinct from Louisiana French, remains to this day spoken by nearly 6,000 speakers. Despite a rigid social hierarchy under colonialism – placing Europeans at the top of the hierarchy – a new group emerged into this space: the gens de couleur libres (free people of color), bringing together formerly enslaved peoples who bought or petitioned for their freedom. This population would occupy an important place in Louisiana, being afforded some economic rights while having their political rights highly curtailed.
The first period of the French colonial administration ended with the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). France signed the secretive Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762) with Spain, ceding its Louisiana territory to the Spanish crown to avoid losing all its North American colonies to its wartime enemy Great Britain.
1762 - 1800
‘LUISIANA’
UNDER SPANISH
COLONIAL RULE
The Spanish already had vast colonial viceroyalties in the Americas. The Louisiana territory was administered from Havana, with local administration based in New Orleans. The Spanish viewed Louisiana as a buffer territory to protect Mexico from British expansion in North America. While Spanish was the official language of the administration, French and the Louisiana Creole language remained widely spoken among the population. Many Spanish colonists who arrived in Louisiana started to speak French and Louisiana Creole and progressively became part of the local population. The Spanish system of coartación, or self-paid manumission, allowed for enslaved peoples to make down payments to slaveholders until they reached an agreed amount to purchase their freedom, thus growing the ranks of gens de couleur libres (free people of color). The period of Spanish control was thus important for the emergence of identities that still exist today.
Louisiana Creole is an identity that emerged gradually as native-born colonists of European descent, gens de couleur libres, and enslaved Africans formed a unique identity in Louisiana. The term Creole derives partly from the Spanish criar (to raise or bring up), implying that people of Creole descent were raised in the colony, as opposed to in Spain, France, or other colonial European countries. Communities across Latin America and the Caribbean also developed a notion of being Creole. In Louisiana, Creole identity led to a distinct culture melding the European, African, and Indigenous influences of the territory’s inhabitants. To this day, the people who identify as Louisiana Creole may be of European, African, or Indigenous lineage.
The story of the Acadians (the French term Acadien evolved in Louisiana to become Cadien and later to its anglicized form of Cajun) in Louisiana dates to the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). French colonists in Acadia resisted the British conquest of French-held lands in the modern-day Maritime Provinces of Canada. As a result, the British authorities forcibly expelled these French speakers in Le Grand Dérangement (the Great Upheaval). Many Acadians were deported to France, France’s Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue, and the British colonies of Virginia and Maryland. In negotiation with the French crown, the Spanish permitted an initial group of Acadians to come to Louisiana, granting some families land concessions, notably in southwest Louisiana. Over time, the deported families reunited with loved ones, leading to around 4,000 Acadians arriving in Louisiana by the end of Spanish colonial rule in 1800.
The Spanish administration was thus marked by the development and coexistence of Creole and Cadien peoples. Both French-speaking groups gave rise to a unique culture in Louisiana based on multiple layers of identity that were in constant movement and continual contact. As unique cultural identities formed in Louisiana, the consequences of Europe’s descent into the Napoleonic Wars would create political change. In 1800, the First Consul of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, negotiated the brief return of Louisiana to France from Spain – ending the period of Spanish control over Louisiana.
1803
LOUISIANA
PURCHASE
By 1803, Napoleon recognized that his plan to create a North American empire for France faced significant obstacles. The revolt of enslaved peoples in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, known as the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), meant that France’s grip on power in the Americas was untenable. Meanwhile, the newly independent United States of America had territorial ambitions to ensure uninterrupted commercial access to the Mississippi River.
To finance his wars in Europe, Napoleon negotiated the sale of the massive Louisiana territory to the American Republic in 1803: the famed Louisiana Purchase. Overnight, the United States under President Thomas Jefferson nearly doubled in size and found itself in control of a territory with diverse communities of peoples of Indigenous, African, and European descent – the majority of whom spoke languages other than English. Adding to this population was an influx of French colonists, gens de couleurs libres, and the enslaved peoples forcibly brought with them, from the French colony island of Saint-Domingue. These former inhabitants of Saint-Domingue would leave in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution, when enslaved Africans and some free people of color in the colony rose up against the French and led to the establishment of the first Black-led republic in the world: Haiti. 15,000 people from Saint-Domingue would arrive in Louisiana, of whom the majority settled in New Orleans, doubling the city’s population from 8,000 (in 1803) to around 18,000 people (in 1810).
The start of the American administration of Louisiana did not lead to an inevitable decline of French & Creole-speaking communities. Creole and Cadien identities continued to adapt and evolve. The region’s cuisine (such as gumbo, red beans & rice, and jambalaya), unique architecture, and religious practices combined the numerous influences from the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and the United States. In religious life, Catholicism remained firmly established after first being brought to the territory by the French and Spanish. Some communities of African descent practiced the syncretic religion of Vaudou (known as Vodou or Voodoo in English), which combined elements of Catholicism and various African-based religious practices, especially those from modern-day Benin. French was widely used in politics, schools, commerce, and religious spaces during the early American period, even after Louisiana became a state in 1812.
1803 - 1860
BOOMTOWN
The start of the American period coincided with the vast expansion of sugar and cotton cultivation in Louisiana. Among that era’s most lucrative cash crops, the pursuit of fortunes through the sale of cotton and sugar led to the wholesale clearing of wetlands and forests to increase production and the expansion of the inhumane system of chattel slavery as enslaved peoples were forced to work laboriously in brutal conditions on plantations. Despite the United States Congress’s adopting a law in 1808 that imposed heavy fines on international slave traders to stop the importation of enslaved peoples from abroad, the system of slavery would continue through the domestic slave trade. New Orleans became the center of the domestic enslaved Africans trade, leading to the purchase and sale of 135,000 people during this period, who were separated from loved ones and had to endure routine sexual and physical torture.
In the 1820s, under President Andrew Jackson, the expansion of the United States westward beyond the Appalachian Mountains caused the Trail of Tears, in which around 60,000 Indigenous peoples were forcibly expelled west of the Mississippi River in brutal conditions. In Louisiana, many Indigenous peoples were dispossessed of their lands and forced west, while others moved closer to the coastal regions such as Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, where they lived alongside French & Creole-speaking communities.
As the United States expanded intensive agriculture westwards, Louisiana commercially benefited from its strategic position at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The newly arrived farmers used the equivalent of a 19th-century transportation superhighway – the interconnected Missouri, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers – to bring their goods for export to market in New Orleans. The population of the city grew from 17,242 in 1810 to 116,375 in 1850 – making it the fifth largest city in the country. The city was very attractive for new immigrant groups, from Germany, Ireland, and other countries – of whom many settled into Francophone communities. The city’s commercial expansion also attracted scores of Américains, who would settle in the upriver faubourg (French for suburb) Sainte-Marie and bring with them the English language and Protestantism. Cultural, linguistic, and political tensions between nearly-arrived Américains and the Creole communities established downriver in the Vieux Carré (or French Quarter) and faubourgs Tremé and Marigny grew so fierce that the city was divided into three political administrations (two in majority Creole neighborhoods and one American) from 1836 until 1852.
These tensions did not prevent Louisiana from becoming a hub for Francophone literature, music, and the arts. In 1845, the first anthology of Black poetry, Les Cenelles (named after a fruit grown on the Mayhaw tree), was published in New Orleans by Creole poets of color. Many of the French-language poems by famed authors such as Armand Lanusse challenged openly the system of slavery and inequalities that Afro-descendent people faced in the United States. In 1860, New Orleans had thirty-three French-language newspapers. The city was also home to famed theaters such as the Théâtre d’Orléans and the French Opera House, which established the city as a premier opera destination in the United States.
1861 - 1877
CIVIL WAR
& RECONSTRUCTION
The rivalry between French-speaking Creoles and Cadiens and English-speaking Américains in Louisiana would be superseded by political developments that would plunge the United States into the Civil War (1861-1865). In 1860, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was elected President. He opposed expanding slavery into western states, which caused pro-slavery South Carolina to declare independence on December 20, 1860. Louisiana’s pro-slavery legislature followed suit on January 26, 1861 (113 representatives out of 130 voted to secede from the Union). Louisiana then joined the Confederate States of America in March 1861 and fought against the Union government of President Lincoln.
With 174,000 people in 1860, New Orleans was larger than the following seven Southern cities combined. The city’s being a major port and commercial center made it strategically critical during the war. A fleet under Admiral Farragut allowed the Union to retake the city in April 1862 successfully. Throughout the war, the Union and Confederacy fought over Louisiana, with the Union army based in New Orleans. Right after the war, the capital formally moved in 1866 from Baton Rouge (which had become the state’s capital in 1846) to New Orleans to be closer to pro-Union political factions.
The end of the Civil War and the defeat of the South brought unprecedented changes to the South in a period known as Reconstruction (1865-1877). With former Confederates disbarred from holding elected office after the war, the system of slavery was dismantled, and civil rights were expanded. People of African descent gained access to public schools and transportation. The expansion of political rights brought many Creoles of color into politics, many of whom descended from the gens de couleur libres, who drew on ideals from the French & Haitian revolutions to craft laws that expanded the rights of Black Louisianans, including recently freed, formerly enslaved peoples. Emblematic of the hopes and aspirations of this period, Camille Naudin wrote La Marsaillaise Noire, denouncing slavery and racism, which was published in La Tribune in 1867. However, the Reconstruction government faced much political instability and violence from Confederate sympathizers, which led to attempted coups d’état such as the Battle of Liberty Place in 1872. The period of Reconstruction would come to an end in 1877, thus bringing White militias to power.
1878 - 1896
CREOLE ACTIVISM
The collapse of the pro-Union government after Reconstruction began a new era of reactionary, discriminatory laws targeting people based on their race, socio-economic class, and the languages they spoke. Pro-Southern political factions gained power and quickly moved the capital back to Baton Rouge, away from pro-Union factions in New Orleans. The new government began to reestablish segregation in public spaces - including schools, theaters, religious spaces, and on transportation – heralding the stripping away of hard-fought advancements towards civil rights. This new imposition of racial segregation was an added threat to the gens de couleur libres population that had been able to patronize certain public spaces, such as theaters and concert halls, before the Civil War. These spaces were now being closed off to all people of African descent based on an arbitrary color line separating White and Black.
Many Black-led activist organizations emerged to oppose the injustice of segregation and advocate for civil rights. In 1890, in response to a law passed to segregate railcars, a civil rights organization called the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens Committee) was formed with Creoles, African Americans, and other members who opposed the law. With a legal strategy devised by well-known politician and lawyer Louis André Matinet, the Comité created a legal challenge by placing a Creole of color who appeared White, Homère Plessy, in a ‘Whites-only’ railcar. Homère Plessy then signaled to the conductor that he was Black and thus violated the law. His arrest set the stage for a six-year-long legal battle, concluding before the United States Supreme Court in the 1896 landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which determined that segregation was constitutionally legal so long as “separate but equal” services were provided. In practice, the case legalized the establishment of a binary color line (White vs. Black) that did not acknowledge complex racial identities such as those held by Creole communities.
1896 - 1920s
THE DIVISION OF
FRANCOPHONE
LOUISIANA
The many French and Creole-speaking communities of Louisiana had to adapt to the aftermath of Plessy v. Ferguson. Many Afro-descendant people, especially formerly enslaved peoples, and some Indigenous communities were automatically considered Black under racial segregation. Resultantly, their access to education and even employment became severely restricted. Some English-language newspapers and politicians also argued that Creoles and Cadiens who appeared White were not “White enough” and were hiding Black ancestry. White Creoles and Cadiens thus began to distance themselves from Afro-descendant communities (in particular from Creoles of color), which contributed to the erosion of the cultural and linguistic ties that had united French & Creole-speaking communities for over a century. Some Creoles of color who could passer blanc (or pass as White, in the terminology of the time) were sometimes encouraged to sever ties with family members who were considered Black.
At the end of the 19th century, French and Creole remained widespread in local politics, education, and everyday life, despite the system of segregation that prevailed. Faced with increased Americanization, however, there was a growing awareness of the decline of French. Some Creole and Anglo-American authors sought to renew an interest in Creole culture, seen through George Washington Cable (The Grandissimes) and Kate Chopin (The Awakening), whose fictional works were written in English and introduced a large American public to this culture. African-American and Creole musicians excluded from theaters and concert halls also began to perform in the Storyville district, near the historic Tremé district, where they developed a new musical genre: jazz.
1920s - 1950s
JIM CROW &
LANGUAGE DISCRIMINATION
English became predominant in Louisiana during the first half of the 20th century as French and Louisiana Creole became progressively marginalized. During this period, laws known as Jim Crow were passed and imposed strict racial segregation. These laws also aimed to Americanize the French and Creole-speaking populations of Louisiana, gradually curtailing the use of French. In 1921, Louisiana adopted a constitutional amendment prohibiting the use of French as the primary language of instruction in public schools. The Catholic Church, which previously strongly advocated for the French language, also gradually turned away from French in favor of English.
As a result, the intergenerational transmission of French eroded progressively. The adoption of discriminatory laws and the creation of ethnic divisions within historically French-speaking communities played a critical role in accelerating language loss. In the context of segregation, the distinction between the Cadiens, perceived as White, and the Creoles, perceived as Black, contributed to denying the diversity of French-speaking groups in Louisiana and to creating artificial divisions between them, which further slowed language transmission. The development of industry, particularly the oil industry in South Louisiana (a historically French and Creole-speaking region), also played a role. As many of these industries operated nationwide, fluency in English became increasingly seen as a requirement for employment, and younger generations gradually abandoned French.
The French-speaking cultures of Louisiana did not completely disappear, however. The Cadien and Creole musicians living in the rural areas of Louisiana, renowned for their mastery of the fiddle, blended multiple musical influences to create new musical styles closely associated with Louisiana today (including la-la and later zydeco), often including lyrics in French or Louisiana Creole. Among the most well-known musicians of these genres are Amédé Ardoin, Clifton Chenier, the Balfa brothers, and Zachary Richard. During World War II, the American army also relied on the French speakers of Louisiana, who served as translators in Europe and North Africa. The use of French in the context of war contributed to renewing a certain pride and a feeling of belonging among the Francophone populations.
1950s - 1980s
TOWARDS A CULTURAL
& LINGUISTIC REVIVAL
In the 1950s, the United States underwent significant social changes embodied by the Civil Rights Movement championed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The long-critiqued system of racial segregation started to be dismantled as the Civil Rights Act (1964) and similar laws expanded rights for African American, Indigenous, and other communities of color.
In the 1960s, French and Creole-speaking communities across Louisiana began to spearhead initiatives to advocate for their languages and cultures. In 1968, these efforts, carried out both by civil society and by French-speaking legislators, led to the creation of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), a state agency with the mandate to promote French. In 1974, the amendment banning French as the primary language of education in schools was finally stricken from the state’s constitution. The amendment’s repeal opened the door for French-language immersion programs in schools that received teachers from France, Belgium, and other French-speaking countries as part of a program supported by CODOFIL. Despite these efforts and increased visibility, the number of French speakers continued to decline. In 1970, about 500,000 Louisianans had French as their first language (and around 1 million reported being able to speak some French) compared to about 100,000 today (with around 200,000 knowing some French), according to US census data.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the music and cuisines associated with the Cadien and Creole peoples of Louisiana became popular throughout the United States. This popularity increased the visibility of these cultures, attracting millions of tourists to Louisiana. However, it also resulted in their commercialization and commodification, thus having a limited impact in terms of improving language transmission. This mass commercialization was also based on an excessive use of the term Cajun, thereby denying the contributions of Creoles of color, indigenous communities and even Cadiens themselves - and contributing to reinforcing a binary imaginary created by segregation. This misrepresentation thus led the public to identify Louisiana French speakers as simply Cajuns, thereby creating new divisions between French-speaking groups in Louisiana.
2010s - Present Day
MODERN
REVITALIZATION MOVEMENT
A new wave of French and Creole revitalization in Louisiana has taken root since the early 2010s, based both on political support and grassroots initiatives launched by civil society. This new wave aims to address two key issues: increasing the visibility of French-speaking communities in Louisiana and building capacity for French and Creole.
In 2013, the Louisiana legislature passed a law facilitating the opening of immersion schools, which now number 40 in Louisiana, enrolling approximately 5,000 students. As part of the programs led by CODOFIL, teachers from France, Belgium, and other French-speaking countries come to Louisiana to strengthen teaching capacities in French. The French immersion programs continue to develop and grow today, even as the parents of the students attending them are often Anglophones themselves.
Francophone Louisiana is now also resonating internationally, with Louisiana becoming an observer member of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) in 2018, following an initiative spearheaded by civil society actors and state authorities. This membership has made it possible to give increased visibility to the French-speaking communities of Louisiana, by grouping them under the term francophone and by connecting them to a vast international organization bringing together 93 countries and governments and nearly one billion people. Also, driven by the emergence of social media, young French and Creole speakers in Louisiana can also communicate with each other and other French and Creole-speaking communities worldwide, helping to develop and strengthen a sense of belong – without denying their belonging to historically French-speaking groups in Louisiana.
Since the beginning of the 2010s, many initiatives carried out by civil society actors have also emerged in fields ranging from education to culture and even the economy and environment. These initiatives are critical because they contribute to creating an environment conducive for francophone populations to get involved and defend the use of French and Louisiana Creole. Created in 2020, the New Orleans Foundation for Francophone Cultures works alongside multiple organizations to support the revitalization movement by raising funds to finance the creation of original content in French and Creole and the emergence of innovative projects in these languages.
With the reality of climate change, many French-speaking communities along the coast are now forced to move due to coastal erosion and rising sea levels, resulting in cultural and linguistic loss. In this context, developing the capacities of French and Creole-speaking communities must remain a priority in Louisiana. The past has so much to tell us – and the future will tell us just as much. And the future of French and Creole in Louisiana is being written now, with us – with you.