CODOFIL often criticized, for example, negative portrayals of Cajuns in movies and on television. Between 1654 and 1755, the estimated population of the colony rose from about 325 to about 15,000 settlers. Quiet Desperation, a look at the ancestry of Gary M. Lavergne, The colonists viewed wartime neutrality as vital to their safety, since siding with the British would invite attacks from French and Indian marauders. About three thousand Acadian exiles eventually made their way to Louisiana. know. bands of mounted Texas and Louisiana guerillas made life very uncomfortable Differences between the Cajun and Creole cooking can be distinct but are often blurred. Bernard, Shane K.Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors: A Young Reader’s History. In addition to a substantial genealogy As the Federal troops approached Opelousas an exhausted lone Survival in combat depended on the Cajuns’ ability to speak English. Events after the Civil War left most Cajuns in poverty and pushed them farther into bayou country. In 1916 the state of Louisiana passed a compulsory education law, prompting a flood of French-speaking children into southern Louisiana schools. Even though many Cajuns fought in WWI, gaining exposure to the world, it was wide-spread military service in the second war that jump-started the Americanization process. Even though many Cajuns fought in WWI, gaining exposure to the world, it was wide-spread military service in the second war that jump-started the Americanization process. Parish clerk, and swore a loyalty oath. In the postwar era, they eagerly embraced mainstream American culture, including rampant consumerism. house, farm and store in Imperial St. Landry Parish (St. Landry, Acadia |. Despite misgivings by Domengeaux, who, as a genteel Acadian, disliked working-class Cajun music, CODOFIL agreed to cosponsor, with the Smithsonian Institution, the first “Tribute to Cajun Music” in 1974. I don’t know anyone named McGee who doesn’t speak French.” Thus, the Cajuns are not merely the descendants of Acadian exiles who settled in southern Louisiana, but of all the ethnic groups with whom these exiles and their offspring intermarried. As late as the 1970's, Cajun descendants referred to the Civil War as "la guerre des Confederes;" or the Confederate's War. Troops from both sides of the conflict marched back and forth through the region, seizing crops and livestock, burning bridges, and interrupting trade and commerce. Whether the Cajun people can survive without French is a matter of contention among Cajuns themselves and the linguists, sociologists, folklorists, and historians who study them. and decisive. That treaty addressed the issue of the Acadians, permitting them to leave the colony with their movable property or to remain on their treasured farms. The concert also presented working-class Cajun musicians as mentors for younger generations of Cajun musicians and as cultural ambassadors for the general public. For Which is perhaps a much more supportable claim. for the residents of the area. The Acadians occupied lands considered strategically important by both France and its major rival, Great Britain. shouting the ominous message: "Les Federaux sont sur le Carencro!" Revolutionary Patriot Paul Revere, dashed through the streets of Opelousas As this ethnic pride and empowerment movement swept through southern Louisiana, Cajuns were inspired to preserve their language, history, culture, and folkways. It was all for naught; the jayhawking and marauding continued Although many Cajuns criticized CODOFIL’s use of foreign teachers and its emphasis on continental French, the organization nonetheless created a new interest in the French language in Louisiana. was done through a "Loyalty Oath." As a young man of 19 at the end of the war, Eugene Lavergne had witnessed the military struggle as an adolescent, and was forced to deal with Reconstruction as a young adult. and Evangeline Parishes) from Plaquemine Brulee (Church Point) to Barre's Troops from both sides of the conflict marched back and forth through the region, seizing crops and livestock, burning bridges, and interrupting trade and commerce. Cajun children born in the postwar period primarily spoke English as their first language. The Civil War The Civil War cam and devastated the economy. In 1968, the Louisiana state legislature passed several bills designed to preserve and perpetuate the French language in Louisiana. Most of them spoke French as their first, if not only, language. Creole culture truly swelled just after the Civil War, when all the black slaves high tailed off the plantations and headed for New Orleans. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992. Privacy Policy, Council for the Development of French in Louisiana. Acadians and members of other ethnic groups–mainly the descendents of French, Spanish, and German immigrants–combined and evolved into a new ethnic group dominated by a core Acadian identity. ___. as a Confederate state was no more. In 1803, Napoleon sold Louisiana and les Acadiens (the Acadians) to the United States through the Louisiana Purchase (The Cajun Experience. In defeat, the South’s economy collapsed, casting many previously affluent Louisianans into poverty and reducing them to … foraging teams." While CODOFIL sought to preserve French using a top-down approach, a parallel grassroots movement took shape in southern Louisiana. In 1710 the British captured Acadia permanently, formalizing the conquest three years later in the Treaty of Utrecht. |Before Brown| Worse The Cajuns: Americanization of a People. Despite these generous terms, the British pressured the Acadians to swear an unconditional oath of allegiance to the crown. area's young men and their families to search for convincing behaviors Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1991. The influence of mainstream American culture also brought a new emphasis on the English language, which had already made inroads into the Cajun parishes. In the 1940s, when America entered World War II, so too did the isolated Cajuns. Their spouses learned French and became absorbed into the Cajun population. and farms. amnesty and to solemnly swear to: 1. faithfully defend the Constitution of the United States; 3. support the Proclamations and laws passed by Congress during the The Lavergnes were never wealthy owners of vast tracts of land, and … In fact, so many Cajun baby boomers spoke only English that some observers predicted the complete disappearance of French in Louisiana. In defeat, the South’s economy collapsed, casting many previously affluent Louisianans into poverty and reducing them to sharecroppers and tenant farmers. to secure a marriage license, or to protect whatever property he did own, The “Tribute to Cajun Music” continues today as part of the annual Festivals Acadiens et Créoles. The Acadians came to the New World for several reasons. Brasseaux, Carl A. Acadian to Cajun: Transformation of a People, 1803–1877. “Cajun is being so commercialized,” warned Dewey Balfa. One unit was named "Independent Rangers of Iberville Squadron Militia Cavalry", after Acadian war hero Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville . Cajuns are the descendants of Acadian exiles from the Maritime provinces of Canada—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island—who migrated to southern Louisiana.Today they reside primarily in a twenty-two-parish region of southern Louisiana known as Acadiana. A 1923 dispatch from Bastrop, Louisiana, by NCWC News Service - the initial name of Catholic N Cajuns in the Twentieth Century: This association between identity and poverty was reinforced by the virtual collapse of the south Lousiana economy after the Civil War, which reduced yeomen to tenantry. The other half of Louisiana is defined as the Creole, which is to say the mixed ancestors of African slaves, Native Americans, Cajuns, and the bastard children of the high Frenchmen of the plantations. contents of LIVES OF QUIET DESPERATION and is made available to the public. It was from this mass of poor Acadians that the Cajun people would spring. David C. Edmonds, author of Yankee Autumn in Acadiana, points out that As the surrounding society became more anglo-conformist, they resisted assimilation until after World War II. Finally, the colony’s lieutenant governor, Colonel Charles Lawrence—the governor had returned to Great Britain because of illness—used the issue as a pretext for expelling every Acadian man, woman, and child from Nova Scotia. The Cajuns, also known as Acadians, are an ethnic group mainly living in the U.S. states of Louisiana and Texas, and in the Canadian maritimes provinces consisting in part of the descendants of the original Acadian exiles—French-speakers from Acadia in what are now the Maritimes of Eastern Canada. The subsequent "Battles of the were never wealthy owners of vast tracts of land, and not likely to ever In July, 1862, Congress passed an act providing for the confiscation A concert held in Lafayette, this event proved to be a milestone in Cajun history, demonstrating that Cajun music—dismissed by some as noisy “chanky-chank” music suitable only for smoky barrooms—could be appreciated as a vital expression of Cajun culture. This was, of course, a radical change from the policy of punishing the use of French, in place just a few years earlier. But this distinction altered after the Civil War. First, there was a small group of wealthy, slave-owning cotton and sugar planters, who would later be called “genteel Acadians.” In addition, there was a small group of middle-class Acadians made up of farmers and artisans, including blacksmiths, carpenters, and bricklayers. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991. By the 1810s, the Acadians had evolved from a single group of poor subsistence farmers into three distinct groups. Throughout all of this, most people of color in Louisiana can’t find the origins of their heritage as easily as the Cajuns can, despite the majority of Lafayette citizens being of African descent by then. He also coveted the Acadians’ valuable farmlands, which he planned to give to loyal Anglo-Protestant colonists. The Founding of New Acadia: The Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiana, 1765–1803. (Although a largely nonliterate people, some Acadians were able to read and write, and those who could not were able to find someone to read or write for them.). Particular emphasis is placed upon defining and describing the was even more traumatic than the war itself. Within a few generations, however, a small number of young Acadians adopted the South’s plantation system and its brutal institution of slavery. Chachere, a St. Landry “Scattered to the Wind”: Dispersal and Wanderings of the Acadians, 1755–1809. Television, that great Americanizing agent, was among the products they consumed. In the War of 1812, there were hundreds of Cajun soldiers. “Someday it’s going to be too much, if it ain’t already.”. So I guess maybe your claim is simply that the deep woods, off the reservation Cajuns didn't want to participate in any national struggle. One bill established the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL). However, Gary M. Lavergne retains copyright and war. He summoned Acadian men to the capital at Halifax allegedly to discuss the return of their firearms, which British troops had earlier seized. His son was a rookie high school American History teacher who asked a seemingly all rights are reserved. Perrin rose to prominence in the Cajun pride and empowerment movement only a few years earlier by threatening to sue the Queen of England over the expulsion of the Cajuns’ ancestors in the mid-1700s. While sitting on Fast-food eateries sought to profit from the enthusiasm for all things Cajun by serving faux Cajun menu items, such as Cajun pizza and Cajun tacos. Boudreaux, Guidry, LeBlanc, and Trahan, for example, reflect the group’s Acadian ancestry, while Fontenot, Soileau, Delahoussaye, and Fuselier suggest its French heritage. These families arrived in Acadia in 1632, more than a quarter of a century after French explorers established the colony to engage in fur trade with the local Micmac Indians. When the British acquired Nova Scotia in 1755, the Acadians or "Cajuns" as they were known, were forced to leave. as of 1 January 1863. large skirmishes, the presence of Union forces brought fear and even terror. unabated. The wanton confiscation and senseless destruction of valuable property By living in between Texas and New Orleans, Cajuns and other French Louisianians were caught in the middle; geography brought the Civil War to Acadiana. The vast majority of the ancestors were simple, poor, tenant farmers When the colony’s Spanish governor, Antonio de Ulloa, forced some of the exiles to settle on the Mississippi River near present-day Natchez, Mississippi, far from their Attakapas kin, the Acadians marched on New Orleans with other discontented colonists and overthrew the governor in the Insurrection of 1768. Colonel Thomas E. Chickering of the 41st Massachusetts Infantry Unlike the Civil War itself, the war in Louisiana was relatively quick in Pennsylvania killed more Americans than some of America's wars. Chef Paul Prudhomme’s dish called “blackened red fish” became an international phenomenon, while restaurants outside southern Louisiana hastened to add Cajun-inspired cuisine to their menus. Butler, the commanding Union officer in New Orleans ordered all persons GROWING UP CAJUN (pages 164-168) THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION: Amnesty for Eugene Lavergne (pages 23-25) THE GRAND DERANGEMENT and THE NEW DERANGEMENT (pages 121-126) SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS: Some Acadian Pioneers (pages 145-146) LOUISIANA'S FRENCH AMALGAM (pages 36-38) Our Relationship to the pathfinder Daniel Boone (pages 93-94) Put Your … As a young man of 19 at the end of the Census data reflect the impact of this punitive policy on the French language in Louisiana. For a century and a half the southern Louisiana cultural group called Cajuns maintained a separate and unique identity that preserved the traditional values brought by their ancestors from Nova Scotia (Acadia) after brutal expulsion by the British in 1755-56. During the American Civil War, in Louisiana there were numerous Cajun militia units raised in the Army of the Confederacy. After the Civil War, Creole food was again influenced from other directions. South, even those remote areas barely scarred by military clashes. As the surrounding society became more anglo-conformist, they resisted assimilation until after World War II. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP CONTRIBUTIONS In September, General Benjamin the uncommon were pioneers of note. Sherman was in good company in California before the Civil War, among his fellow residents were Ulysses S. Grant, who spent time in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, Joseph Hooker, who led a state militia from 1859-1861, and Mark Twain, who moved to California during the Civil War at the age of 29, following a stint in a Confederate State Militia. Lives of Much as the Civil War led to the “creation” of a distinctly Cajun people, World War II would integrate them into mainstream American culture. It is military service that accounts for the Americanization of many Cajuns. Meanwhile, other British soldiers fanned out across the colony, using similar deceptions to round up the remaining Acadians. By living in between Texas and New Orleans, Like their ancestors, they maintained close ties to the earth, often making their living as farmers, trappers, and boat builders. It also boosted Cajun pride and served as an effective watchdog group, speaking out against perceived affronts to the Cajun people. Soon, Acadians began to marry those who were not Acadians. few places suffered more from invasion, occupation and confiscation than In 1944 Louisiana enacted an even tougher compulsory education law, again flooding classrooms with French-speaking children. they of neutrality. that helped to determine the migrations of various groups of French-speaking British soldiers under Lawrence’s command ensnared Acadians throughout the colony, marching them at gunpoint to the coast, dividing them according to age and sex, and loading them aboard overcrowded transport ships. Foreigners, Confederates, free men of color, Acadians Subscribe today to support our mission and contributors. Meanwhile, Cajun music (and black Creole zydeco music, which the American public often conflated into a single musical genre) appeared on movie soundtracks and in television commercials. These first Acadians in Louisiana wrote to other distant groups of exiles, providing glowing descriptions of their new homes. with over 1,200 names, Lavergne includes a series of concise essays placing of the property of disloyal persons. Although fur trapping remained an important part of the local economy, many Acadians became subsistence farmers, growing what they and their families needed to survive and producing only a small surplus for trade. Although best known outside Louisiana for their spicy food and music, Cajuns have made many important contributions to Louisiana’s history and culture. in print until 1868, three years after Appomattox. Many Cajuns laughed off the denigration of their culture. In the 1940s, when America entered World War II, so too did the isolated Cajuns. who refused to take the loyalty oath to be registered as enemies and to Events after the Civil War left most Cajuns in poverty and pushed them farther into bayou country. World War II transformed both Cajun GIs and civilians; increasingly they no longer regarded themselves as les Français and everyone else in the United State as les Américains. Meanwhile, Cajuns on the home front immersed themselves in the war effort: buying war bonds, growing victory gardens, collecting scrap metal, and volunteering as auxiliary nurses, policemen, and firemen. Lawrence sent these ships to distant lands, scattering the Acadians throughout the British colonies of North America and beyond. The treaty also allowed the Acadians to retain their Roman Catholic faith. This page contains links to the entire While Cajun pride soared in southern Louisiana, mainstream America “discovered” this unique culture in its own backyard. La guerre de Sécession ou guerre civile américaine (généralement appelée « The Civil War » / ð ə ˈ s ɪ v ə l w ɔ ɹ / [1], litt. The first families of Acadia bore surnames still familiar today in southern Louisiana: Boudreaux, Bourgeois, Breaux, Comeaux, Cormier, Doucet, Girouard, Hebert, LeBlanc, Theriot, and Thibodeaux, among others. the front steps of a very modest home in the small Cajun community of Church Members of this group might own a few slaves but certainly not as many as planters. Example: Yes, I would like to receive emails from 64 Parishes. Now, they are citizens of the United States. Violence at Cajun dances, bars, and night clubs increased exponentially after the Civil War. One-Year subscription (4 issues) : $20.00, Two-Year subscription (8 issues) : $35.00, © 64 Parishes 2021. The KKK was founded on nativist and anti-Catholic sentiment; the Cajuns, as French Catholics, were despised by the organization. Opelousas. Religious violence rocked Centre-Ouest, which also suffered from disease, poverty, famine, and drought, as well as heavy feudal-era taxation. Cajun soldiers fought alongside troops from Brooklyn and Berkeley and absorbed aspects of new cultures. and other Frenchmen saw their valuables taken, including cotton, sugar, and hardships of growing up on a tenant farm in rural St. Landry Parish. Special treatment is given to the forces This bottom-up effort owed much to Cajun musician Dewey Balfa, who became a cultural activist after performing at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964. They were simple tenant ___. A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland. Bayou Country" were more attempts to prevent an invasion of Texas It was a ruse, however, and British troops arrested the Acadian men. Cajuns and the Civil War. Lawrence wanted to deport the French-Catholic Acadians because he feared they would rise up against him if a war with France ever erupted. For decades the British continued to press the Acadians to swear the oath of allegiance unconditionally. CODOFIL continued to act as a watchdog group for the Cajun people even after Domengeaux’s death in 1988. Soon after, Irish and German immigrants arrived and contributed the best of their cooking to evolving Creole cuisine. Rodrigue, George (Artist). A pair even served in the same unit 80 years before my grandparents would join the families. differences between Cajuns, Creoles, and other Louisiana French cultures. value. On 19 August 1865, less that a month before his marriage to Marie Hermine Punishment continued until about 1960, when few, if any, solely French-speaking Cajun children remained. Balfa realized that Cajun music could galvanize the Cajun pride and empowerment movement and promote the use of French in Louisiana. The mobilization of millions of U.S. soldiers and civilians included about twenty-five thousand Cajun GIs, many of whom had never left their home parishes before the war. " A Savage Conflict the decisive role of Guerrilla Warfare in the Civil War" Daniel Sutherland University of North Carolina Press. Even more were involved in the Civil War. After nearly a decade of wandering, one group of Acadian exiles found its way to Louisiana, which was then a Spanish Colony. At the end of it all, they once again stood on the edge of cultural overthrow, but they fought their way out and managed to reclaim their proud heritage. Search. Cajuns in the early twenty-first century continue to thrive and exhibit a strong sense of ethnic pride, even as fewer speak French—a decline that has abated slightly because of the rise of French immersion programs in Louisiana’s public school system. The First Cajuns. 2012). They soon found themselves in ships, tanks, and foxholes around the globe with English-speaking GIs. Modern Cajun surnames indicate that even some Anglo-Americans and Scots-Irish Americans were absorbed into the Cajun people. Events after the Civil War left most Cajuns in poverty and pushed them farther into bayou country. Cajun's Comments. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987. Very cool. The use of the word "Cajun" in the context of the War of 1861 thus would be anachronistic. Union officials were interested in having the men of the area renounce provide a list of their property. Louisiana’s colonial government provided them with land, livestock, tools, and other necessities and settled them in the fertile, semitropical region known as Attakapas in the south-central part of the state. At Grand Pré, for example, British troops lured more than four hundred Acadian men into the local church. In Louisiana, Acadian and Cajun are often used as broad cultural terms without reference to actual … Many Cajuns served in the forces Richard Taylor led against Banks in both the Bayou Fourche and Red River Campaigns. ___. The father did not The Cajuns: Americanization of a Peopleexplores these six decades and analyzes the forces that had an impact on Louisiana's Acadiana. While the battles were little more than