French and Creole in Louisiana, 2010-2022: A Very Brief Analysis

As a follow up to my recent essay “Disappearing Cajuns and Creoles? Ethnic Identity and the Limits of Census Data,” I have produced line charts representing data for two Louisiana languages, French and Creole, as spoken at home by persons aged five and older. The statistics used to construct these charts derive from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS), compiled annually from 2010 to 2022. (Stats for 2023 and 2024 are not yet available.)

Each language is represented by two charts: one chart is based a one-year estimate, and the other, on a five-year estimate.(1)

On viewing these charts one feature becomes immediately clear: a general decline in the number of Louisiana’s French and Creole speakers.

In particular, for the twelve years ending in 2022, data indicates a 50- or 53-percent decline in the number of French speakers in Louisiana's homes (depending on whether one consults the one-year or five-year estimate). For speakers of French Creole/Haitian, the data shows a 45- or 61-percent drop over the same period (again, depending on which estimate is used; see my below analysis of the ACS's use of the terms “French Creole” and “Haitian”).

Discussing this with others who share my interest in all things Cajun and Creole, the consensus, though speculative, is that the decline stems largely if not solely from the demise of older French- and Creole-speaking persons, combined with an insufficient number of younger French- and Creole-speakers to replace them.

This downward trend — perceptible today even through impressionistic data (such as the dearth of French or Creole heard on the street, in commerce, or in other workday contexts) — explains the fervent “call to arms” among Louisiana’s sizeable corps of language and cultural activists. “Nowadays, our language is flooded, buried, not yet dead but above all desperate,” notes recently founded activist group l’Assemblée de la Louisiane. It goes on: “Language is not the only marker of our collective identity, but it is probably one of the most important and undoubtedly the most threatened.”(2)

Clearly there is no time to lose, yet, as esteemed folklorist and linguist Barry Jean Ancelet has often pointed out, “Chaque fois que l’on s’apprête à fermer le cercueil sur le cadavre de la culture cadienne et créole, il se lève et commande une bière!” Or, in translation, “Every time we prepare to close the coffin on Cajun and Creole culture, the corpse gets up and orders a beer!”(3)

It should be kept in mind that the stats in question are estimates derived from sampling and not the result of direct inquiry of all possible census respondents. Moreover, while it is fact that the U.S. Census Bureau reports the results shown on the following charts (assuming, of course, I convey the data accurately, and I think I do), readers with a healthy measure of skepticism might rightly ask, “Does this census data actually reflect the reality of language use in Louisiana?” That, however, is a topic for another day. (I will, however, give one example of how this census data cannot tell the entire story: My adult daughter, who attended French Immersion schools as a child in the early 2000s, speaks French very well — but she does not speak French “at home,” mainly because she has no one with whom to speak it. As such, the Census Bureau would not count her (or others like her, from children to the elderly) as speaking French. Because of the narrow wording of the language question, the answers it solicits no doubt underrepresent the number of French speakers in Louisiana — though by how much, who can say?)

Regarding the terms “French Creole” and “Haitian” as used by the U.S. Census Bureau: from 2010 to 2015 the Bureau collected language data on “French Creole.” From 2016 onward, however, it apparently ceased to collect data on that language or dialect, and instead began to collect data on what it referred to as “Haitian.” (A vertical red line on the ”French Creole/Haitian” charts indicates where in time this change occurred.) 

It is unclear if, in Louisiana’s case, the Census Bureau regarded “Haitian” as merely “French Creole” by another name. There does, however, appear to be some continuity in the numbers reported before and after the change in terms. It is therefore possible that census respondents considered “Haitian” a reasonable substitute for “French Creole,” especially given historic links between Louisiana and the people and culture of Haiti. I refer to large numbers of Haitians, both free and enslaved, who came to Louisiana in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

I leave it to others to determine why the Census Bureau made this switch and if, in the context of these ACS results, it is valid to interpret “Haitian” as synonymous with (or at least a close approximation to) “French Creole.” Regardless, “French Creole” is now viewed as a misnomer because it implies a dialect of continental French: rather, the tongue is now viewed as its own distinct standalone language called Creole, Kreyòl, or Kouri-Vini. (For more about census stats and language in Louisiana, see my earlier essay “Tracking the Decline of Cajun French”.)

Notes

(1)As the Census Bureau explains regarding the difference between 1-year and 5-year ACS estimates, “Each year, the U.S. Census Bureau publishes American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates for geographic areas with populations of 65,000 or more. . . . For geographic areas with smaller populations, the ACS samples too few housing units to provide reliable single-year estimates. For these areas, several years of data are pooled together to create more precise multiyear estimates. Since 2010, the ACS has published 5-year data (beginning with 2005–2009 estimates) for all geographic areas down to the census tract and block group levels. . . . This means that there are two sets of numbers — both 1-year estimates and 5-year estimates — available for geographic areas with at least 65,000 people. . . [while] Less populous areas . . . receive only 5-year estimates. . . . There are no hard-and-fast rules for choosing between 1-year and 5-year data.” “Understanding and Using ACS Single-Year And Multiyear Estimates,” U.S. Census Bureau, 2018 [PDF document (excerpt)], https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/acs/acs_general_handbook_2018_ch03.pdf, accessed 30 July 2024.

(2)“Declaration of St. Martinville, Louisiana, at the Founding of the Assembly of Louisiana, September 16, 2023,”  l’Assemblée de la Louisiane, https://www.assemblee.la/our-vision, accessed 1 August 2024.

(3)Ancelet is quoted in Jean-Benoît Nadeau, “Mardi gras en Louisiane,” Le Devoir (Montreal), 24 February 2020, https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/chroniques/573560/mardi-gras-en-louisiane, accessed 30 July 2024.

Race, Language, and Culture: A Note on Identity in Louisiana

I thank historians Dr. Carl A. Brasseaux (Ret.) and Dr. Michael S. Martin of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for evaluating this essay:

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I have seen it stated in a few journalistic and social media outlets that, to quote my fellow researcher Joseph Dunn (for whom I have great respect), “From the late 19th century through today, the baseline for identity in Louisiana shifted from language and culture to race and skin color.” This change occurred, he states, because “of heritage language loss, forced assimilation into English, and Americanization.”(1)

I think it is important, however, to note that the idea of ascribing identity to race, or racialization, did not appear from nothingness after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.(2) Indeed, there is strong evidence that race — not merely language and culture — served as a vital element in fixing identity decades before Napoleon sold Louisiana to the fledgling United States.

The Code Noir (1724)
Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France

In 1724, for example, French administrators in Louisiana adopted a set of regulations aimed at governing race relations in the colony. The very name of that decree invoked race: the Code Noir — the Black Code. France created the Code Noir, to quote Louisiana’s highly accessible state encyclopedia, “to regulate the interaction of European-descended (blancs) and African-descended people (noirs) in colonial Louisiana.”(3) Though it contained some measures pertaining to Jews in the colony, the Code Noir (again, as its name implies) primarily concerned persons of African heritage: it regulated “nègres,” both “libres” and “esclaves,” as well as their treatment by enslavers and by the colonial apparatus in general.

Furthermore, it identified those it regulated based not on their language or culture, but on their race and, beyond that, their status as free or enslaved. For example, the code outlawed (on paper if not in practice) marriage between Whites and persons of African descent, even if the latter were not enslaved but “gens de couleur libre” (free persons of color). It precluded enslaved Blacks from selling anything without the written permission of their enslavers. It forbade Blacks enslaved by different masters from gathering in large groups, even for weddings, on pain of being flogged or even branded. And so on.(4)

After Louisiana became Spanish territory in 1762 its new rulers adopted (eventually) their own race-based regulations, the Sistema de Castas, or Caste System. Tulane historian Lawrence N. Powell describes this intricate system as “a taxonomic arrangement that often verged on the absurd” because of its tortuous attempt to categorize race. As Powell observes about New Spain in general in The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans:

A mixed-race population was forever spilling into the interstitial spaces, and obliging the Spanish bureaucrats charged with keeping track of it all — the census takers and notaries on the one hand, and thousands of parish priests on the other, all keeping racially distinct baptismal and marriage records — to devise, on the fly, cognitive labels for new people. . . . One Mexican scholar counted forty-six different mixed-blood types in the sources he consulted. Only ten categories were fundamental, however, and these were all spinoffs of three main divisions: Spaniards, Indians, and Negroes. . . . One scholar has dubbed the system a ‘pigmentocracy’ [my italics]. 

Those racial categories and sub-categories used by the Spanish included Mestizos, Castizos, Mulatos, Moriscos, Lobos, and Coyotes, as well as the overtly quantitative Cuarterones and Quinterones, among other gradations based on racial descent and admixture.

Las castas (The Castes).
Anonymous, 18th century,
Museo Nacional del Virreinato,
Tepotzotlán, Mexico.
Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Although the Spanish did not import the full Sistema in all its complexity to Louisiana, Powell nonetheless remarks “the essence of the classificatory regime did get transferred to Louisiana, implanted by the priests and notaries tasked with verifying individual genealogies and entering their verdicts in registry books segregated by race” [my italics]. Racial gradations in Louisiana during the Spanish colonial period included Negro, Mulato, Cuarterón (Quadroon), Grifo (or Grifa), Pardo (“Colored”), and Moreno (“Black”).(5)

What evolved over time from this byzantine race-based system of identity was a simpler, more fundamental three-tiered racial order placing enslaved Blacks on the bottom; free, often multiracial (part-White) persons in the middle; and free Whites on top. This framework would in time be replaced by an even more fundamental binary system that viewed persons as either “Black” or “White,” with no “in-between” multiracial gradations. The binary system arose, strangely enough, even as some continued to refer to a trichotomy made up of “Blancs,” “Noirs” and “Mulâtres.” (Indeed, as late as 1920 the U.S. Census Bureau classified respondents as Black, White, or Mulatto, among other racial/ethnic classes.)(6)

As illustrated by the Code Noir under French rule and the Sistema de Castas under the Spanish, racialization existed in Louisiana long before the coming of American rule. This is important because, as noted, it has been argued that “heritage language loss, forced assimilation into English, and Americanization” shifted “the baseline for identity in Louisiana . . . from language and culture to race and skin color. . . .” Clearly, the issue is not so clear-cut. If a shift occurred, it may have been one of degree, with Americans continuing to use race as the major criterion for identity, albeit perhaps on a larger or more stringent scale than the colonial French and Spanish (though the Spanish, as shown, were fairly stringent when it came to racial identity).(7)

Powell's The Accidental City (2012)

Still, something must account for the presence of race-based identity in early colonial Louisiana. That something, I suggest, was an influence that existed on a vastly larger scale than Louisiana (even as colonial Louisiana covered about a third of the North American continent). I refer to novel if benighted theories of race — part quasi-religious, part pseudo-scientific — that permeated western thought at the time. These theories stemmed from interactions between Europeans and persons of African descent, both in the New World and on the African continent. In short, by the 18th century race as identity was a notion known across the western world, and not at all unique to Louisiana. This explains how Paris and Madrid were able to impose ideas about racial identity not merely on Louisiana, but on colonies throughout their far-flung empires.

This, however, does not mean language and culture exerted no impact on identity. As they do today, language and culture, like race, ethnicity, religion, and other attributes, served as boundaries, markers, or shibboleths used to inform inclusion as well as exclusion (which, for good or bad, is how group identity works). Yet the rise to dominance of racial identity in colonial Louisiana occurred well before the coming of the American period and its pervasive Americanizing agent, the English language.

NOTES

(1) Joseph Dunn, “A Primer on the Evolution of Creole Identity in Louisiana,” Louisiana Perspectives [blog], 13 February 2018, https://louisianaperspectives.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/a-primer-on-the-evolution-of-creole-identity-in-louisiana/, accessed 1 May 2024. See also Howard Blount (with Joseph Dunn), “The Acadian Exile, Louisiana Creoles, and the Rise of Cajun Branding,” Backroad Planet, 6 December 2018, https://backroadplanet.com/acadian-exile-louisiana-creoles-cajun-branding/, accessed 4 May 2024; Jules Bentley, “Blanc like Me: Cajuns vs. Whiteness,” Antigravity, July 2019, https://antigravitymagazine.com/feature/blanc-like-me-cajuns-vs-whiteness/, accessed 4 May 2024.

(2) Merriam-Webster defines racialization as "the act of giving a racial character to someone or something: the process of categorizing, marginalizing, or regarding according to race. . . . : an act or instance of racializing." "Racialization," Merriam-Webster.com, n.d., https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racialization, accessed 8 May 2024.

(3) Michael T. Pasquier, “Code Noir of Louisiana,” 64 Parishes [Louisiana state encyclopedia], 6 January 2011, https://64parishes.org/entry/code-noir-of-louisiana, accessed 2 May 2024.

(4) “Louisiana’s Code Noir (1724),” English translation, 64 Parishes, n.d. [October 2013], https://64parishes.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/LouisianaCodeNoirTranslation.pdf, accessed 2 May 2024, see Secs. I, VI, XIII, XV. For the Code in the original French see: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b86086055/f1.item

(5) Lawrence N. Powell, The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), 293, 294, 295; Benjamin Groth, “‘Sacred Legalities’: The Indelible and Interconnected Relationship between Baptism and Race in Spanish New Orleans,” Louisiana History 64 (Winter 2023): 48, 56.

(6) Powell, Accidental City, 293; Paul Schor, “The Disappearance of the ‘Mulatto’ as the End of Inquiry into the Composition of the Black Population of the United States,” Counting Americans: How the US Census Classified the Nation (Oxford University Press, 2017), abstract, July 2017, https://academic.oup.com/book/25441/chapter-abstract/192603358?redirectedFrom=fulltext, accessed 2 May 2024.

(7) For more on Americanization, see my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003).

FURTHER READING

Recent works touching on racialization in colonial Louisiana, as recommended by historian Michael S. Martin:

Dewulf, Jeroen. From the Kingdom of Kongo to Congo Square: Kongo Dances and the Origins of the Mardi Gras Indians (Lafayette: UL Press, 2017).

Groth, Benjamin. “‘Sacred Legalities’: The Indelible and Interconnected Relationship between Baptism and Race in Spanish New Orleans,” Louisiana History 64 (Winter 2023): 45–82.

Johnson, Jessica Marie. Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).

Johnson, Rashauna. Slavery’s Metropolis: Unfree Labor in New Orleans during the Age of Revolutions (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Milne, George. Natchez Country: Indians, Colonists, and the Landscapes of Race in French Louisiana (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015).

Wegmann, Andrew N. An American Color: Race and Identity in New Orleans and the Atlantic World (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2022).

White, Sophie. Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

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.

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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.

My Cajun Book for Children Soon Available in French Translation

I'm pleased to announce that my 2008 book, Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors: A Young Reader's History, will be available in May 2013 in a French translation by Faustine Hillard.

J’ai le plaisir d’annoncer que mon livre intitulé Les Cadiens et leurs ancêtres acadiens: l'histoire racontée aux jeunes sera disponible en mai 2013 en version française, traduite par Faustine Hillard.

Cover of the English version and the French translation.
Couverture du livre en anglais et la traduction en français.

Published by the University Press of Mississippi and funded in part through a translation grant from the
Quebec Ministère des Relations Internationales, the book, retitled Les Cadiens et leurs ancêtres acadiens: l'histoire racontée aux jeunes, is aimed at middle-school and high-school readers — though it is useful as an adult primer — particularly students in French Immersion and other French education courses.

Publié par la Presse Universitaire du Mississippi et financé en partie par une subvention du Ministère des Relations Internationales du Québec, le livre, intitulé Les Cadiens et leurs ancêtres acadiens: l'histoire racontée aux jeunes, cible le jeune lecteur collégien ou lycéen, surtout celui des classes d’immersion en français ou ceux qui apprennent le français langue seconde.  Il s'avère toutefois une introduction enrichissante au lecteur adulte voulant s’initier à la question. 

Inside the French version. (click to enlarge)
L'intérieur de la version en français. (Cliquez pour agrandir.)

Of the English version, the Times-Picayune noted:

Au sujet de la version en anglais, le quotidien de la Nouvelle Orléans, The Times-Picayune, remarqua:

Bernard takes just 85 pages to provide a concise history of one of the unique peoples that make Louisiana special. It is a brief but delightfully engaging account of who the Cajuns are and how they got that way, a narrative as informative as it is easy to navigate. . . . [The book] fills an important gap on the Louisiana history bookshelf, and its value can be appreciated by the not-so-young as well. 

Bernard nous raconte l'histoire abrégée d’un des peuples qui contribue à l'extraordinaire mosaïque démographique de la Louisiane en un récit de moins de 85 pages.  Ce bref mais charmant compte rendu entraîne le lecteur à découvrir le peuple cadien et suivre son évolution dans un récit qui informe tout en restant facile à naviguer. . . . [Ce livre] comble une lacune importante en ce qui est de l'histoire de la Louisiane.  C'est un livre qui s'apprécie à tout âge. 

     

In 2008 the Louisiana Center for the Book, located in the state library, selected the English version of Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors to represent Louisiana at the National Book Festival's Pavilion of the States in Washington, D.C.

En 2008, Les Cadiens et leurs ancêtres acadiens: l'histoire racontée aux jeunes (version langue anglaise) fut sélectionné par le Centre du Livre en Louisiane, qui se trouve à la bibliothèque de l’état, pour représenter la Louisiane au Pavillon des Etats du Festival National du Livre à Washington, D.C.

Inside the French version. (click to enlarge)
L'intérieur de la version en français. (Cliquez pour agrandir.)

If you wish to be notified of the French translation's release, please e-mail me at: inf...@cajunculture.com [Click on the "..." to reveal the full e-mail address]

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Tracking the Decline of Cajun French

The history of the Cajuns in the twentieth century often touches on the subject of language — that is, the decline of Cajun French as more and more young Cajuns learned to speak English as their first and often their only language. As I wrote in my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People

As I grew older, I became increasingly aware of the cultural rift between [my Bernard family’s] generations. How was it, I wondered, that after more than three hundred years in the New World, our family had suddenly lost the ability to speak French? What had occurred between my generation and that of my grandparents to bring about this significant change?

Americanization, I asserted, is what had occurred. And that Americanization was spurred along, more than any other factor, by the punishment of Cajun children for speaking French at school. As I noted:

The consequences [of punishment] were disastrous for Cajun French, pushing the dialect to the brink of extinction. For the first time [1946-1950], a minority of the ethnic group's children spoke French as their primary language. The percentage would plummet to 21 percent for those born between 1956 and 1960, a woeful decline from the 83 percent for Cajuns born at the dawn of the century. . . . [Furthermore] Among Cajuns born between 1966 and 1970 . . . only about 12 percent grew up speaking French as their primary language; for those born between 1971 and 1975, the figure dropped to about 8 percent.

I arrived at these figures by using census data — in particular, Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS), available mainly to scholars through academic institutions. PUMS offers raw census data extrapolated from 5 percent of households in specific geographic regions.

In my case, I used PUMS data to track the decline of Cajun French throughout the twentieth century. This is shown in the below chart, which I made in the 1990s and now publish for the first time.

Click to enlarge chart.

A word of caution:

The chart does not measure the percentage of Cajuns who spoke French in any given year. It does, however, measure the percentage of Cajuns who spoke French as their first language in 1990 according to their dates of birth (broken into five-year age groups).

So the chart reveals, for example, that for the five-year age group born between 1921 and 1925, approximately 76% spoke French as their first language in 1990.

(Some may wonder why I placed the dark vertical line denoting the start of the World War II era with the 1936-40 age group and not the 1941-45 age group. I did this because children born in the mid- to late 1930s would not have exhibited linguistic traits until they actually began to speak and they would not have exhibited permanent linguistic traits until they entered school at age five or six — and by that time the US would have entered World War II.)