Of Cajuns and Creoles: A Brief Historical Analysis

This essay is one of five in which I address current issues in Cajun and Creole studies. The other essays can be found here.

I wrote these works not only as a historian, but as someone who identifies as both a Cajun and a Creole. As I note below, “[M]any of my ancestors were Creoles of French heritage. My own family tree abounds with tell-tale Creole surnames: de la Morandière, Soileau, de la Pointe, Fuselier de la Claire, Brignac, Bordelon, de Livaudais, and others. . . . As such, I could, if I chose to do so (and sometimes I do), identify as Creole — doubly so because Cajuns themselves are to begin with a kind of Creole.”

I trust those with whom I express disagreement will accept this critique in the collegial spirit it is intended.

I thank Dr. Barry Jean Ancelet, Dr. Carl A. Brasseaux, Dr. David Cheramie, independent researcher Don Arceneaux, and former CODOFIL president Warren A. Perrin for proofing the below essay.

❧

I have observed a growing effort, particularly among south Louisiana's Creole population, to rein in use of the word Cajun to describe all things French in Louisiana. (I mean Creole in the broadest sense of the word: Creole devoid of racial connotations and thus applying equally to persons who are black, white, or multiracial. Creole meaning “Native to Louisiana” or a bit more narrowly “Native to south Louisiana, and of Roman Catholic and French- or Spanish-speaking heritage.”) 

"The matter almost demands a Venn diagram for clarity."

I concur with this effort: things that are not Cajun should not be called Cajun.

Implicit in the critique of Cajun as a blanket term for all south Louisiana culture is an assertion that Creole history and culture should be acknowledged more frequently and more substantively. This means, for example, that scholars should conduct more research into Creoles; that the tourism industry should highlight more Creole history and more Creole attractions; and that what is Creole should be identified as Creole, not as Cajun.

I support all these notions, for while I self-identify as Cajun, many of my ancestors were Creoles of French heritage. My own family tree abounds with tell-tale Creole surnames: de la Morandière, Soileau, de la Pointe, Fuselier de la Claire, Brignac, Bordelon, de Livaudais, and others. 

As such, I could, if I chose to do so (and sometimes I do), identify as Creole — doubly so because Cajuns themselves are to begin with a kind of Creole. After all, are they not, as I describe Creoles above, native to south Louisiana and of Roman Catholic and French-speaking heritage?

"It is interesting to note, for example, that in 2018 the University of Georgia Press issued a book titled Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture."

I view Cajuns, however, as merely one type of Creole among several other types of Creoles. These types include black Creoles, white Creoles, multiracial Creoles, French Creoles, Spanish Creoles, German Creoles, and perhaps still other types of Creoles who occupy part of Louisiana’s complex cultural landscape. (It is interesting to note, for example, that in 2018 the University of Georgia Press issued a book titled Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture.) And then there are other types of Creoles in other states, other nations, and even on other continents. (I once used the word Creole while lecturing in front of a group of Brazilian tourists in south Louisiana. They gasped in horror, telling me that in their country Creole is equivalent to America's most dreaded racial slur. They actually referred to the Portuguese version of Creole, which is crioulo. The reliable Wikitionary.org backs up their claim; see its entry for crioulo.)

In other words, Cajuns are to me a subset of Creoles, just as, say, Cherokees are a subset of Native Americans, Ashkenazim are a subset of Jews, and Mexicans are a subset of Latinos. But this does not mean Cajuns do not view themselves as distinct from other Creoles. They clearly do and arguably have done so since their origin as an ethnic group. Sociologist Jacques Henry of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, for example, has observed, “The definition of Cajun ethnicity has been on-going since the arrival of Acadian exiles in Louisiana. It has taken place amidst the economic, social and cultural changes that have happened since the eighteenth century.”(1)

The expulsion of the Cajuns' Acadian ancestors from Nova Scotia, 1755. Source: William Cullen Bryant, Sidney Howard Gay, Noah Brooks, Scribner’s Popular History of the United States, Vol. 3 (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896).

Cajuns have not been in Louisiana as long as other types of Creoles. However, the Cajuns’ common ancestors, the Acadians — forcibly expelled by the British military from what are now the Maritime Provinces of Canada — arrived in Louisiana beginning in 1764. By the late 1800s those exiles and their offspring had intermarried heavily with other south Louisiana ethnic groups (settlers of French, German, Spanish, even to some extent Anglo and Scots-Irish heritage) and become “Cajuns.” Thus, for example, R. L. Daniels wrote in 1879 of the word “Acadian — or rather its corruption ‘Cajun’ as they pronounce it.”(2) In 1893 Julian Ralph similarly observed that Acadians were "spoken of in their own country . . . as ‘Cajuns.’” And in 1898 a journalist aptly noted, “[A] large element of the French population of the state are . . . Acadians, or, as they call themselves and are generally called, ‘Cajuns’” [my italics].(3)

UL sociologist Henry thus concludes, “[B]y the turn of the [20th] century, Cajuns/cadiens are a group symbolically discrete. . . . [and] a breed apart.”(4) Cajun historian Carl Brasseaux echoes this view, stating, “[T]he Acadians [in Louisiana] were by 1803 on the threshold of a new and significant period of socioeconomic change, one that would transform them . . . into Louisiana Cajuns.”(5) He continues this theme elsewhere, averring that by the end of Reconstruction in 1877, “[A]scriptive [i.e., attributed] distinctions between Acadians and neighboring groups had become blurred, giving rise to the creation of a new people — the Cajuns.”(6)

If I myself sometimes gloss over the complex relationship of Cajuns to Creoles, it is because I find it less confusing for the uninitiated if I avoid explaining, “And, oh, by the way, Cajuns are Creoles.” (The matter almost demands a Venn diagram for clarity.) This may be one reason most Cajuns have generally chosen not to identify as both Cajuns and Creoles: besides the fact that most Cajuns simply do not think of themselves of Creoles, there is widespread confusion and debate about the very meaning of Creole, even among south Louisiana natives.

Elista Istre's excellent recent volume
about Creole history,
from the University of Louisiana Press, Lafayette, La.

Ultimately, there is only so much one can do — or ought to do, I would assert — about people choosing to self-identify as members of one ethnic group or another. According to U.S. census data, for example, there were in 2020 an estimated 100,000+ people across America who self-identified their ancestry as "Cajun."(7) If self-identification as "Cajun," or as a member of any ethnic group, is good enough for the U.S. Census Bureau, it is good enough for me. It is evidently good enough for most scholars, few if any of whom would presume to tell anyone what they should or should not call themselves in terms of ethnicity.

As a historian I believe my role is to observe, chronicle, and interpret, and to do so as objectively as possible. To involve oneself too closely, too personally with a living subject of study like an ethnic group — such as by seeking to change that group’s behavior — is to relinquish objectivity and to cross into the realm of activism. And while activism in itself can be a rewarding pursuit, I do not believe it mixes well with scholarship. Granted, complete objectivity is possible only in theory, but the very quest for objectivity can elevate the quality of research and analysis to a higher, more refined level. It can do so by guiding researchers around pitfalls like wishful thinking and what the historical profession calls filiopiety (or filiopietism), a fancy term for “ancestor worship.” Such weaknesses can result in misunderstanding or, worse, deification of those who came before us — at the expense of their humanity.

Notes

(1) Jacques Henry, “From Acadien to Cajun to Cadien: Ethnic Labelization and Construction of Identity,” Journal of American Ethnic History 17 (Summer, 1998): 56.

(2) Ibid., 34.

(3) “The ‘Cajuns’ of Louisiana,” Wood County Reporter (Grand Rapids, Wisc.) [reprinted from the Dallas (Tex.) News], 2 June 1898, 8.

(4) Henry, "Ethnic Labelization," 39.

(5) Carl A. Brasseaux, The Founding of New Acadia: The Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiana, 1765-1803 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 198.

(6) ________, Acadian to Cajun: Transformation of a People, 1803-1877 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992), xi.

(7)“Cajun,” People Reporting Ancestry, 2020: American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates Detailed Tables (B04006), Total U.S. Population, data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=United%20States&t=Ancestry&tid=ACSDT5Y2020.B04006, accessed 2 May 2021

Selected Readings on Creoles

This list makes no pretense of completeness. There are many other noteworthy sources about the subject.

Shane K. Bernard. “Creoles.” In Encyclopedia of Louisiana (https://64parishes.org), ed. David Johnson. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Article published 8 December 2010, https://64parishes.org/entry/creoles.

________. “Creole.” In The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 6: Ethnicity. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Carl A. Brasseaux, Keith P. Fontenot, and Claude F. Oubre. Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1994.

James H. Dormon, ed. Creoles of Color of the Gulf South. Knoxville, Tenn.: The University of Tennessee Press, 1996.

Elista Istre. Creoles of South Louisiana: Three Centuries Strong. Lafayette, La.: University of Louisiana Press, 2018.

Gary B. Mills. The Forgotten People: Cane River’s Creoles of Color. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977.

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall. Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Louisiana State University Press, 1992.

Sybil Kein, ed. Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

Joseph G. Tregle. “Creoles and Americans.” In Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization, ed. Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon, 131-85. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.

________. “On That Word ‘Creole’ Again: A Note.” Louisiana History, 23 (Spring 1982): 193-98.

Agnus Dei Artifact Found on Banks of Bayou Teche

As a professional historian and curator, I'm often asked to examine artifacts that people find in their closets, attics, backyards, and elsewhere.

Here I show one of these objets trouvés (that's a fancy French phrase for "found objects"). My neighbor uncovered it in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana — known in "the old days" as Pont Breaux — in the mud along Bayou Teche.

Agnus Dei object found on banks of Bayou Teche.

It's a metal object measuring 3/8 x 1 15/16 x 2.25 inches (5 x 49 x 56 mm) and apparently made of pewter or lead. While it looks old, I cannot be sure of its age. If I had to guess, I would say it's from the period circa 1750 to 1900. I assign a starting date of 1750 because it was around that time that the first Europeans came to the area.

And they came via the Teche, which early explorers used to travel deep into the semitropical south Louisiana frontier. For the next two hundred years residents of Attakapas (south-central Louisiana) used the Teche as a primary means of transportation, rowing and then steaming along its 130-mile path until railroads and highways all but killed off commercial river traffic. Today the Teche is used mainly by pleasure boaters, but occasionally tugboats still push barges laden with limestone or who-knows-what up the twisting waterway.

For comparison, another Agnus Dei with aureole.

Back to the object: It is obviously religious in nature and probably Roman Catholic in origin. I say this because the region's inhabitants were almost wholly of this faith, at least until recent decades. In fact, the object represents a common motif in Roman Catholic iconography: the Agnus Dei, Latin for "Lamb of God." (Agnus Dei is pronounced AG-NOOS DAY or AG-NOOS DAY-EYE, though the former seems preferable.)

The lamb symbol was associated very early with Jesus. As written in John 1:20-34, "John saw Jesus coming to him and he saith: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sins of the world."

This reference is preserved in the modern Roman Catholic liturgy when priests say:

"Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us."

Which in the old Latin liturgy would have been:

"Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis."

Another Agnus Dei example.

As seen in the photo at top, the artifact shows the lamb lying on a rectangular object and surrounded by a sunburst.

In Roman Catholic iconography the sunburst is called an aureole.

The rectangular object on the artifact symbolizes a book, specifically the Book of Seven Seals, which in Revelation was opened by a lamb. "And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals," it states, "and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see."

The Catholic Encyclopedia notes:

"Throughout the Apocalypse the portraiture of Jesus is that of the lamb. Through the shedding of its blood it has opened the book with seven seals and has triumphed over Satan."

Yet another Agnus Dei image.

The Catholic Encyclopedia identifies another Biblical figure associated with the symbol of the lamb:

"The Agnus Dei also appears in portraitures of St. John the Baptist, represented as lying upon a book held in his hand, or in an aureole. . . ."

Note the other examples of the Agnus Dei shown here.  As you can see, they closely resemble the image on the artifact found in Breaux Bridge.

So this is what we have: A symbol of Jesus that is also associated with St. John the Baptist — namely, a classic rendition of the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God, complete with aureole and the Book of the Seven Seals. (It does not have, however, the banner or flag often but not always shown in other depictions of the Agnus Dei.)

Religious symbolism aside, the purpose of the artifact in question remains a mystery: The back is flat and undecorated, suggesting the artifact was affixed to some other object, such as a Bible or piece of furniture. Whatever its origins, this objet trouvé seems to reflect the strong Roman Catholic tradition of south Louisiana, a tradition brought to the region by Acadian, French, and Spanish settlers, among others, who first moved up the Teche some two hundred fifty years ago.