The CreolesA Diverse Culture Found in Louisiana

Presented by Francene KennedyTESOL/5072-9-2015

Who Are The Creole People?

• Creole people are typically descended from white European colonial settlers who intermarried with non-European people. Their language, culture, and race represents the creolization (the unique culture resulting from the interaction and adaptation of the two cultures).

Where did they come from?

Immigration From France

• 1682 Rene- Robert Cavalier claims Louisiana for France’s King Louis XIV.

• 1699 Pierre le Moyne founds a settlement near Biloxi and European settlers take permanent residence in Mississippi and Louisiana.

• 1718 Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, founds New Orleans which gives him a strategic position for control of the Mississippi River. French immigrants establish trading.

• 1722 Ursuline Nuns arrived from France and built their first covenant with monies from the French Crown.

Immigration From Canada

• 1755 Six thousand Acadians (descendants of First Nations or Aboriginal peoples of Canada and Europeans) are expelled from Nova Scotia to prevent them supporting the French in that area. French and Indian Wars 1754 – 1763. Many settle in Louisiana.

• 1763 The Seven Years’ War in Europe, along with the French and Indian Wars in North America end. France turns over Canada and eastern Louisiana to England. Western Louisiana, including New Orleans, is turned over to Spain.

Present day residents of Louisiana, who are descended from the French Acadians of Canada are referred to as “Cajuns” versus Creoles. Cajun is a derivation of the word Acadian. Cajun French dialect and culture is different from French Creole and extends westward along the southern coast of Louisiana as indicated in the map.

The Osage Nation Connection

• 1803 (April 30) France sells the United States the Louisiana Territory, doubling the size of the United States.

• 1804 (May 14) Lewis and Clark set off to explore the Louisiana Territory, sailing up the Missouri River.

• 1808 (Sept. 8) The Osage Nation (Native American Siouan-speaking tribe) give up most of their lands in the Louisiana Territory and are moved to a reservation.

• 1860 (Jan. 9 – Feb. 1) Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas secede from the Union.

• 1872 (Dec. 11) Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchbeck is elected the governor of Louisiana. He is the first African-American state governor.

Immigration From Spain

• 1541 Hernando de Soto claims the Mississippi and all of its tributaries for the Spanish Crown.

• 1762 Louis XV of France secretly proposed to his cousin Charles III of Spain that France give Louisiana to Spain in the Treaty of Fontainbleau. Negotiations were in effect to end the Seven Years’ War.

• 1764 Spain’s acquisition of Louisiana from France was formally announced.

• 1765 Joseph Broussard led the first group of nearly 200 Acadians to settle on Bayou Teche below present-day St. Martinville, Louisiana.

• 1768 Antonio de Ulloa became the first Spanish governor of Louisiana. He did not fly the Spanish flag and was forced to leave by a pro-French mob in the Rebellion of 1768.

• 1769 Alejandro O'Reilly suppressed the rebellion, executed its leaders and sent some plotters to prison in Morro Castle in Havana.

• 1770 Luis de Unzaga started the era of benign Spanish rule and freed the imprisoned plotters.

• 1770 Spain began an administrative of process of governing Upper Louisiana with lieutenant governors.

• 1779 Spain declared war on Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War and began the West Indies and Gulf Coast campaigns.

• 1779 Spanish settlers lead by Francisco Bouligny found Nueva Iberia along Bayou Teche.

• 1780 The Battle of Saint Louis was the only battle west of the Mississippi in the war.

• 1788 The Great New Orleans Fire destroyed virtually all of New Orleans. Governor Esteban Rodríguez Miró was a hero for his relief efforts.

• 1789 Work on rebuilding New Orleans began, including what is referred to today as the French Quarter.

Immigration From Africa

• 1607-1766 Almost all slaves introduced into colonial Louisiana come directly from Africa. Most slave traders meet the ships directly in the Caribbean Islands.

• 1717-1722 Two thousand slaves are brought directly from Africa by the French, though many perish from European diseases.

• 1719 Two hundred slaves are brought to New Orleans from the Senegambian region to cultivate rice because their own Senegal Valley was similar to the Mississippi Valley.

Immigrants From Haiti

• 1809 Approximately 10,00 refugees arrive in New Orleans from Saint-Dominigue (present-day Haiti). Approximately one third were free persons of color and one-third were slaves.

Additional European Immigrants

• 1717 Irish and Scottish immigrants arrive, felling bad times and persecution.

• 1722 German immigrants begin to arrive in Louisiana, and continue to arrive each year. A small portion are Jewish.

• 1820’s Large numbers of Irish arrive to escape the famine.• 1840’s Large numbers of German and Irish immigrants

arrive, working as laborers in the busy port.• 1871 Portuguese immigrants arrive as laborers, and

continue to do so each year.

The United States of America was built, and continues to be built, by the blood, sweat,

and tears of it’s immigrants and their subsequent heirs.