Louisiana's Unique Creole French Language & Cultural Heritage: An Introduction by John laFleur
Though long mislabeled "Cajun" French our Louisiana (creole) French language was first revealed to North America after the début of New Orleans’ Picayune Creole Cookbook of 1901. Its unique feature of providing original Louisiana Creole French language titles for our indigenous recipes took America and Europe by storm, because it revealed our overlooked and generally, almost-forgotten historic language as a living language; a language endowed with charm and an exotic sophistication which reflects a culture and civilization far older than both American, Acadian and Spanish 'Louisiana.'
This Old World French Creole language tradition is not unique to Louisiana, but still exists, however weakly, in the former North American colonial French Creole and metis pockets still known around the Great Lakes, Missouri and Illinois regions. These states were once part of France's "Upper & Lower Louisiana" which constituted a singular cultural fabric of the almost forgotten French colonial and metis (French & Indian racial mix), world of "La Nouvelle France" which once comprised the vast territory of the "Louisiana Purchase" mentioned in American history classes, however superficially.
Who would've guessed that file' and pacane were among the many Mobilian-Choctaw trade language gifts (as well as culinary gifts), to Louisiana's francophone and creolophone peoples which has and continues to exist in her historic language traditions long before the arrival of the Acadians, which group inevitably assimilated not only this Louisiana-based language, but every component of her long present creole & metis culture as their own.
Even its sister language of "Louisiana Creole" (meaning, its africanized half-sister tongue, also referred to as “Gumbo”), was discovered to be poetic and comparable to the simplicity of early French and Classical Latin and Greek verse by no less an authority than Dr. James Broussard, author of Louisiana Creole Dialect, 1942, LSU Press. See Dr. Broussard's very interesting Preface wherein he makes the distinction of what was then referred to as "Creole French" in Louisiana.
See also Dr. William A. Read's Louisiana Place Names of Indian Origin. A Collection of Words, 1931 edited and with an introduction by George Riser. Read was the first scholar to study and to designate Louisiana's creole French as "Louisiana French," which the Cajunist movement confusingly relabeled as "Cajun French" with the rise of CODOFIL.
This same old lingua franca of the old French colonial maritime world-including “la louisiane” was the basis for the evolution of what is now loosely known as “Louisiana Creole” or more precisely, “Louisiana-Afro-Creole.
These dialects remain two distinctive yet, kindred, French creole languages.
Acadian French too, has its roots in the old, non-standardized medieval French of the former French Creole world.
The distinction between these two Louisiana French Creole languages is carefully noted in the writings of George Washington Cable of 19th century New Orleans. Cable carefully makes a distinction between the Louisiana Colonial French which was, and is still referred to as “Créole” in distinction from its Louisiana-African-derivative, or “Gumbo” (loosely re-labeled “Louisiana Creole” today!), which was spoken by illiterate former slaves who sought to reproduce to the best of their abilities the speech (Creole French), of their masters with the only syntax known to them and which syntax is observable in "Louisiana Creole." (also spelled, Kreyole).
However, to the embarrassment of Lafayette, Louisiana's early Cajunist activists' claims, this unique Louisiana–Afro-Creole is also spoken by white French creole people in Pointe Coupée, St. Martin and parts of St. Charles and St. James Parishes, as well. These creole people, ironically, no longer speak any 'Cajun' or Acadian French; even though many of these white people are longtime resident Acadian descendants!
Both linguistic traditions however, were indigenous to Louisiana before the arrival of the Acadians who were initially settled on the "German Coast" of Donaldsonville and at Cabanoce in St. James Parish.
Still later, other Acadian families gravitated to the Lafourche bayou country. A few also chose to venture into the northwest Attakapas region or lower St. Landry Parish areas of Bayou Teche and St. Martinville (St. Landry Parish's southern boundary at that early time reached to the Gulf's edge!), already inhabited by diverse French Creole and metis familes from the former "Upper Louisiana" colonies and from what is now, the States of Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas who entered the "Territory of Orleans" (Louisiana, the State, since 1812), after the Seven Years War ended in 1763.
See Dr. Carl A. Brasseaux's The Founding of New Acadia: The Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiana, 1765-1803 LSU Press, 1987 for a keen study on the true geographical settlement areas of the Acadians in Louisiana.
The implication here is clear: We French creoles of the upper northwestern French Triangle, don’t speak the true Acadian dialect, nor any so-called and misconstrued “Cajun” French (except by imagination). Their destination, home and ultimate identity and culture were provided by "Louisiana, the Creole State" and not Acadie.
Quite appropriately, their older descendants continue to identify as 'creole' while younger folks, of both French Creole and Acadian descent born after 1968 introduced CODOFIL (The Council For The Development of French in Louisiana) which powerfully forced through and grew what had previously been an embryonic Cajunization commerce.
However, with the inroduction of the television media and through academic and media, social and cultural conditioning and product mass-marketing, a new perception of the region's cultural identity of "Cajun" was unquestioningly and naively embraced by white creoles; notwithstanding, their own previous revulsion to the the term "cadjin" (including its modernized and misspelled version of "cajun"), and toward the poor 'Cadiens" and their humble way of life, in general.
See Dr. Corinne Saucier's A History of Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana 1943, LSU Press wherein she discusses this French creole revulsion to the term "cajun" since it carried the sense of a person of bad comportment; and how creoles used it in deprecation of one another, even as they applied 'creole' to well-mannered Acadians.
In 1971, Louisiana's Governor Edwin Edwards, with the support of then Senator Dudley "Hadacol" LeBlanc, his mentor and the support of a few other politicians, passed a bill renaming this historic French-speaking triangle" as "Acadiana" giving the false impression of a long and historical Acadian presence.
See Carl A. Brasseaux's Acadiana: Louisiana's Historic Cajun Country wherein Dr. Brasseaux honestly exposes these little-known facts.
This region was previously known in Louisiana history as "the Creole parishes" according to the late Professor Emeritus Joseph A. Tregle, University of New Orleans in his Louisiana In The Age of Jackson... See Index, "On That Word Creole."
"Acadiana" and "Cajun" and "Cajun French" are erroneous cultural misnomers created and promoted by mass-marketed misinformation and propaganda out of Lafayette, Louisiana for its own commercial and touristic self-interests largely after 1968. But, it was Chef K-Paul Prudhomme who was to officially rename the old country creole cuisine of Louisiana as "Cajun" during his national debut in 1972. This act and fact, apparently gave the Cajunists a 'second-wind' of bold disregard for all the previous decades of well-documented references to Louisiana's CREOLE recipes and diverse 'native-born' peoples.
Many of the University of Lafayette's present-day academic leaders knowingly perpetuate this cultural-historical carnival in open public appearances at festivals and special events, evidently presuming their audiences to be unaware or indifferent to these historical realities. They are wrong.
Cajun French or Louisiana Creole French? Our Languages Speak for Themselves by John laFleur
A comparison of the Acadian French vocabulary and dialect with that of our old
Impressum
Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Texte: John A. laFleur II
Bildmaterialien: Photo acknowledgement to Jarreau Family Collection 1938
Lektorat: Judith L. Schultz
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 15.02.2013
ISBN: 978-3-7309-1146-4
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Widmung:
To all of the forgotten French Creole & Metis peoples of North America from the Great Lakes region to Missouri and Illinois to Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and including the French maritime world of Creole people everywhere and to my parents, John A. LaFleur & Marie Mae Ardoin, I do dedicate this little book.