The intersections of Colonial policy and Colonial practice: Creolization on the eighteenth-century Louisiana/Texas frontier

Abstract

By the mid-18th century, the population that lived on the Louisiana/Texas frontier was comprised of French, Spanish, Native American, African, and creoles (or mixed-bloods). French and Spanish colonial policies dictated the kinds of social and economic relations that were to exist between people of different racial and ethnic groups on the frontier. Colonial practices often ran counter to official policies, however, as individuals crossed social and racial borders created by the Crown to construct not only multiethnic communities but also multiethnic households. This process of creolization resulted in the negotiation of new colonial identities for those that did not fit into neat colonial categories. Using ethnohistoric and archaeological data, the process of creolization that occurred within multiethnic communities and households along the colonial Louisiana/Texas border is considered.