Cajun South Louisiana
Charles Reagan Wilson, University of Mississippi
Essay Sections:
1800s:
Language change was part of a broader process of Acadian
acceptance of Anglo influence on the public culture of Louisiana. An Anglo
economic, social, and political elite had emerged by the 1840s, and many
descendants of Acadians in south Louisiana increasingly adopted their
values and outlook. Socially aspiring Acadian descendants who had once
adopted the tastes of Creole planters in furnishings and homes by the
late antebellum era were building Greek
Revival plantation homes and following Anglo planter families to Kentucky
to see thoroughbred racing both emerging symbols of an Anglo southern
identity. Anglo culture had stigmatized French language and culture by
the time of the Civil War.
Scores of Acadian descendants were actually among south Louisiana's planter elite by the time of the Civil War, but the wealthy were only a small segment of the overall population. An Acadian yeomanry demographically dominated south Louisiana throughout the nineteenth century, evolving from Acadian to Cajun. By 1860, nearly two-thirds of Louisianas Acadian descendants, mostly small farmers, grew sugar on farms east of the Atchafalaya River. Lafayette Parish was the center of a cotton culture in the 1850s, with prairie counties west of there dominated by the growing of rice. Trapping and hunting supplemented agricultural production, with communal identity reinforced through typical rural rituals such as house raisings, weekly house dances, horse racing, and traditional music. French ways continued to inform the culture through surviving bilingualism, folk customs, and a Francophile Roman Catholic church.
Acadian descendants at first kept their distance from politics, but Andrew Jackson's Democratic party stirred passions. Alexander Mouton, a third generation Acadian, was a leader of south Louisianas Democrats, serving as Louisiana governor and United States Senator and establishing a potent Acadian political influence in the prairie districts. South Louisiana joined other parts of the South in embracing slavery and southern rights in the 1850s. The Civil War brought increased outside influence in the bayous and prairies of Acadian settlement, and it brought devastating results to south Louisiana. It led to the virtual disappearance of a well-off Acadian planter class, loss of economic independence for many yeomen, and downward postwar mobility in general. The regions dominant Anglo elite co-opted a small Acadian middle and upper class, while the impoverished and poorly educated mass of Acadians preserved older ways, evoking increasing cultural hostility and aggressive opposition from the elite throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
American popular writers portrayed working class Acadians with the worst of stereotypical southern traits: backward, lazy, inbred, and ignorant because often uneducated. They were predominantly rural people who did not embrace the consumerism of emerging modern society, and they were the target of American Protestant suspicion of Catholics. Cajuns returned the favor. Writing of Cajuns in the late 1870s, R.L. Daniels noted that of Americans, as a class, they have not the highest opinion. He then added a revealing description of Cajun distance from other southerners: southerners as well as northerners are Yankees, unless regarded with exceptional favor.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the term Cajun had become a socioeconomic descriptor for sometimes distinct groups. In addition to the descendants of Acadians, Cajuns came to include poorer Creoles in the prairie and bayou areas, recent French immigrants, and downwardly mobile Anglo farmers in south Louisiana. Poverty became the bonding agent that brought them together despite their ethnic differences, and by the early twentieth century they had created a common, French-based culture that included contributions from other groups and came to dominate south Louisiana. South Louisiana was a racially segregated place, but common poverty between blacks and Cajuns led to cultural exchanges that influenced modern Cajun music and cuisine and Zydeco music among African Americans in the area.
Scores of Acadian descendants were actually among south Louisiana's planter elite by the time of the Civil War, but the wealthy were only a small segment of the overall population. An Acadian yeomanry demographically dominated south Louisiana throughout the nineteenth century, evolving from Acadian to Cajun. By 1860, nearly two-thirds of Louisianas Acadian descendants, mostly small farmers, grew sugar on farms east of the Atchafalaya River. Lafayette Parish was the center of a cotton culture in the 1850s, with prairie counties west of there dominated by the growing of rice. Trapping and hunting supplemented agricultural production, with communal identity reinforced through typical rural rituals such as house raisings, weekly house dances, horse racing, and traditional music. French ways continued to inform the culture through surviving bilingualism, folk customs, and a Francophile Roman Catholic church.
Acadian descendants at first kept their distance from politics, but Andrew Jackson's Democratic party stirred passions. Alexander Mouton, a third generation Acadian, was a leader of south Louisianas Democrats, serving as Louisiana governor and United States Senator and establishing a potent Acadian political influence in the prairie districts. South Louisiana joined other parts of the South in embracing slavery and southern rights in the 1850s. The Civil War brought increased outside influence in the bayous and prairies of Acadian settlement, and it brought devastating results to south Louisiana. It led to the virtual disappearance of a well-off Acadian planter class, loss of economic independence for many yeomen, and downward postwar mobility in general. The regions dominant Anglo elite co-opted a small Acadian middle and upper class, while the impoverished and poorly educated mass of Acadians preserved older ways, evoking increasing cultural hostility and aggressive opposition from the elite throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
American popular writers portrayed working class Acadians with the worst of stereotypical southern traits: backward, lazy, inbred, and ignorant because often uneducated. They were predominantly rural people who did not embrace the consumerism of emerging modern society, and they were the target of American Protestant suspicion of Catholics. Cajuns returned the favor. Writing of Cajuns in the late 1870s, R.L. Daniels noted that of Americans, as a class, they have not the highest opinion. He then added a revealing description of Cajun distance from other southerners: southerners as well as northerners are Yankees, unless regarded with exceptional favor.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the term Cajun had become a socioeconomic descriptor for sometimes distinct groups. In addition to the descendants of Acadians, Cajuns came to include poorer Creoles in the prairie and bayou areas, recent French immigrants, and downwardly mobile Anglo farmers in south Louisiana. Poverty became the bonding agent that brought them together despite their ethnic differences, and by the early twentieth century they had created a common, French-based culture that included contributions from other groups and came to dominate south Louisiana. South Louisiana was a racially segregated place, but common poverty between blacks and Cajuns led to cultural exchanges that influenced modern Cajun music and cuisine and Zydeco music among African Americans in the area.
Essay Sections:
