French Louisiana Research Articles

A history of French Louisiana: v.2: Years of transition, 1715-1717

A history of French Louisiana: v.2: Years of transition, 1715-1717

Relationships of Louisiana Colonial Land Claims with Potential Natural Vegetation and Historic Standing Structures: A GIS Approach∗

Louisiana's French, Spanish, and British colonial administrations left a vivid imprint on the landscape in the form of unique cadastral survey systems. The collective distribution of these colonial land claims presents a picture of the colonial occupation of the state. Settlement shows up clearly along the waterways of the bayou state. Equally significant are the areas devoid of land claims. This paper discusses the compilation of the colonial Louisiana land claims map and demonstrates its utility to GIS-based historical geography and historic preservation. By merging this map with other digitized datasets such as potential natural vegetation and historic structures, the seemingly chaotic 18th century occupance of an extremely heterogeneous physical environment becomes patterned, and prior assumptions about the colonial settlement process may be tested with greater precision.

The social consequences of writing Louisiana French

ABSTRACTStudies on language shift often refer to the demise of the ousted variety by detailing various stages of language decay and extinction. Problematic for these accounts are well-documented cases of intervening social phenomena, such as language revival movements, which can alter in some way the stages of decline. French Louisiana's situation illustrates language shift interacting with a strong revival movement. In the wake of the revival and in spite of continued shift, another trend is apparent – the writing of Louisiana French. Whereas shift clearly represents a stage of language decline, the creation of a written code functions as a key ingredient for language maintenance. A sociolinguistic analysis of these forces reveals the complexity and the conflict involved in the choice of the written word. (Sociolinguistics, Louisiana French, Cajun, Louisiana French Creole, variation in writing, ethnography, literacy, language maintenance)

A History of French Louisiana. Volume 5: The Company of the Indies, 1723-1731.

A History of French Louisiana. Volume 5: The Company of the Indies, 1723-1731.

Cajun and Creole Treaters: Magico-Religious Folk Healing in French Louisiana

Cajun and Creole Treaters: Magico-Religious Folk Healing in French Louisiana

A History of French Louisiana. Volume 5, The Company of the Indies, 1723- 1731.

A History of French Louisiana. Volume 5, The Company of the Indies, 1723- 1731.

Bouki, the Hyena, in Louisiana and African Tales

Bouki and Lapin tales, the Louisiana equivalent of the Br'er Rabbit stories, are among the most widely collected folktales in French Louisiana. Alcee Fortier, a folklorist and linguist, heard such narratives as a child and later collected and published them. Because of his training as a linguist, he paid particular attention to the linguistic elements in the tales. The first scholarly collector of these tales in Louisiana, Fortier identified the name Bouki as hyena in the Wolof African language. The African term bouki was maintained in North America in Louisiana and other places, including Haiti and Missouri (Carriere 1937), although the tales were told and collected in French. Reflecting on the folkloric significance of the hyena, and the sexual ambivalence of the hyena in particular, may give an added dimension of interpretation and meaning to the tales collected in Louisiana and to similar tales collected elsewhere.

Getting the Job Done Well: African American Students and Catholic Schools

African Americans have affiliated with Catholicism and Catholic schools in the United States since the beginning of the colonial era. Records document that some of the earliest African-Caribbean settlers in the colonies professed Catholicism in the very early 1500s (Davis, 1990). One factor which enhanced this relationship during the 18th century was the Code Noir (1724-1803), which prescribed the more liberal treatment of free African Americans, mulattos, and slaves in the French and Spanish Catholic Louisiana Territory. As a result of the Territory's laws, several African American girls were educated at Ursuline Academy in New Orleans in 1727 (McDermott & Hunt, 1991). Two thousand African Americans, freed under Code Noir, migrated to Louisiana following Santo Domingo's slave revolt in 1791 (Williams, 1983). They were generally characterized as wealthy, educated, French-speaking, and Roman Catholic. One of the oldest Catholic schools founded specifically for African American children is St. Augustine's School in Washington, D.C. The school opened in 1858 to provide a Catholic education for the children of freed slaves. Catholic religious communities opened an impressive number of 76 schools for African American children at the turn of the century between 1890 and 1917 (Benson, Yeager, Wood, Guerra, & Manno, 1986). The First Colored Catholic Congress elucidated the purpose and distinction of Catholic schools for African American youths in its 1889 general statement to the assembly:

A history of French Louisiana: v.5: The Company of the Indies, 1723-1731

A history of French Louisiana: v.5: The Company of the Indies, 1723-1731

The Cajunization of French Louisiana: Forging a Regional Identity

French Louisiana is the only remnant of France's vast Mississippi Valley empire and its only effectively settled region in the eighteenth century. It remains today one of the most distinctive culture regions of the United States. However, perception of French Louisiana does not reflect its reality. The French population of Louisiana is very diversified in terms of its origins. Despite this diversity, French Louisiana is now usually associated exclusively with Cajuns, a word which until recently was considered derogatory. The beautification of the Cajun identity began to take place in the late 1960s. It was followed by a gradual Cajunization of the white French Louisiana identities and of the regional ethnic territory. However, this process of Cajunization remains incomplete because black Creoles and French-speaking Indians remain unintegrated. Hence, the apparent ethnic homogeneity of French Louisiana, viewed from the outside, contrasts sharply with the cultural variety of its communities.

The Creole of Mon Louis Island, Alabama, and the Louisiana Connection

Louisiana French Creole (LFC) has clearly been undergoing decreoli-zation in the twentieth century; its exact nature is difficult to determine, since the only evidence from the previous century available up to now has come from literary texts of that time. Language data was elicited from elderly informants whose parents were the last monolingual creole speakers living in the vicinity of Mobile, Alabama. Since communication between the speakers of New Orleans Creole and Mobile Creole was quite commonplace, Mon Louis Island Creole (MLIC) represents new evidence relating to nineteenth century LFC. This study presents an analysis of the MLIC and LFC noun phrase and verb phrase. Mon Louis Island (MLI) speakers use two-stem verbs which are not attested in nineteenth century LFC texts. On the other hand, there are developments in LFC, such as preposed definite articles, that were not documented in MLIC. Thus, the MLIC data might help distinguish the features already present in the nineteenth century from those which represent more recent changes in LFC.

The Louisiana French Language in the Nineteenth Century

The Louisiana French Language in the Nineteenth Century

The Louisiana French in 1900

When writing about nineteenth-century Louisiana most commentators have concluded that, because of geographical isolation or Gallic assimilation prowess, the Louisiana French were untouched by change. It is proposed here, however, that the nineteenth century was one of significant transformation in which an aggressive Anglo-saxon nation displaced the French as Louisiana's predominant people. To substantiate this proposition, the written record as well as a gradational paradigm were used to analyze the culminating nineteenth-century geographical patterns of the Louisiana French. The gradational modeling examined as a spatial surrogate of change the intensity of cultural distance-decay outward in a series of gradations or zones from the Gallic regional focus. Fifty-four economic, social, and political variables drawn primarily from the 1900 manuscript census schedules were tested statistically against the gradational morphology. The findings of this study challenge several important traditional interpretations of the Louisiana French.

Mapping the Louisiana French

Mapping the Louisiana French

The Catholic Church in French Louisiana: An Ethnic Institution?

French Louisiana is Catholic country. Because of the association between the Louisiana French and the Roman Catholic Church, the Church's role in French ethnic persistence has always been taken for granted. However, from a paternalistic colonial Church, the Louisiana Catholic Church has become an American one very much out of touch with the cultural character of the population it has served. In the racial field the Church's conformity to American values has impaired the unity of the Louisiana French. In the matter of language the Church has helped to undermine the position of French in French Louisiana society. The assertion of one's Catholicism in French Louisiana at a time of increasing Anglo-American contacts may simply be a reliable way of saying “we are us—not them.”

Boom and Bust: The Rise and Fall of the Tobacco Industry in Spanish Louisiana, 1770-1790

French royal officials, speculators such as John Law, and the French Crown itself had placed great hopes in the development of the tobacco industry in French Louisiana. Some officials even anticipated that Louisiana tobacco might someday be grown in sufficient quantities to supply all the needs of the French Tobacco Monopoly. These lofty expectations were never realized although tobacco production did reach 400,000 pounds in 1740.By the time of the transfer of the colony to Spain in 1766 the perils of war and erratic shipping had almost killed the industry. Most planters had switched to the more profitable production of indigo. Historian Jacob Price claims that the failure of the French government's efforts to develop the tobacco trade resulted from a misunderstanding about costs. In Louisiana, he writes, labor was expensive and freight dear, yet French authorities expected Louisiana tobacco to be competitive in price in the French market with Virginia tobacco, grown in an established market, with abundant labor, and much closer to Europe. Fortunately, the Spanish officials had no such illusions.

Louisiana French Music

Louisiana French Music

Toward the critical study of French Louisiana: Views from inside and outside “Acadiana”

Glen R. Conrad, ed. The Cajuns: Essays on Their History and Culture. Lafayette: The U.S.L. History Series No. 11, Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1978. 432 pp. Editor's foreword, index, maps, and illustrations. $15.00. John‐Smith Thibodeaux (pseudonym). Les francophones de Louisiane. Paris: Editions entente, 1977.117 pp. Tables, appendix, bibliography.

Experiencing French Louisiana

ABSTRACT In order to study indigenous French culture and history in America, a group of high school students of French undertook a trip to Louisiana. To raise the necessary money, they staged an “evening of French entertainment” to which they invited their parents and friends. In preparation for the trip, the students read history books and novels pertaining to the French in Louisiana and shared their knowledge with each other by making oral reports. During the trip itself, the students were introduced to people, food, and points of interest which represent the French heritage in the United States. The students were also afforded a respite from learning in the classroom, an opportunity to broaden their knowledge of this country, and a chance to test their ability to communicate with others.

Mexican Border and Louisiana French Music

Mexican Border and Louisiana French Music