These are some points I offered to a contact who asked if Louisiana Creole culture was most influenced by Saint-Domingue (Haiti/Dominican Republic) refugees who fled to Louisiana at the beginning of the 19th century. The answer is no. This post also responds to a related thought, which is that Louisiana’s Créolité was transplanted directly from Saint-Domingue.
Note that these points are not intended to be exhaustive. Consider them talking points that offer some bits of evidence through which to understand cultural synthesis that created Louisiana culture … long before Saint-Dominguan and Cuban refugees arrived en masse in Louisiana between 1809-1811.
1. If you consider the population makeup of Louisiana, it contained the same ingredients as other Latin colonies: roughly, Europeans, Africans and folks who predated them in the Americas.
2. According to Midlo-Hall’s findings, roughly 2/3 of the slaves that came to Louisiana during the first French period (up until 1762) were composed of Mandinga, Wolof, and others from the Senegambian region. The first cargo of slaves to enter the colony was in 1719, one year* after New Orleans was founded.
3. During this period, the colony also became home to fur and pelt traders (fourriers and pelletiers), woodsmen (courreurs de bois), military officers (offered a position in the military if they’d leave the Kingdoms of Navarre and France) from present-day Québec and cities like Grenoble, Bordeaux, Nantes, and Paris. The nation we know of as France in the 21st century was far from unified culturally and linguistically in the early 18th century.
4. We have reason to believe that during this period, there was some, but limited, traffic between other French colonies in the Americas (Saint-Domingue, Martinique), due mostly to commercial trade routes.
5. Along the Mississippi, John Law, the economist who was awarded a monopoly trade deal with France called The Company of the West (Later, Company of the Indies), successfully established about 1,000 Rheinlanders and Swiss at that point on the Mississippi called The German Coast, or, La Côte-des-Allemands, now St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes. Families well known in Louisiana in 2010 descend from these resettlers: Folse (Foltz), Vicknair (Wickner), Waguespack (Wagenspack), Darensbourg (von Arensberg/d’Arensbourg), Theal (Thiel), Ritter, Matherne (Mattern), Wagner, Trosclair (Troxler) and Frederick (Friedrich). The modern nation of Germany was not unified until 1871 and was, in the early 18th century, a medley of kingdoms, duchies, independent territories, each with its own history, traditions, languages and dialects.
6. There is evidence suggesting that during this period, lands west of the Mississippi in present-day Louisiana, virtually had no geopolitical boundaries distinguishing it from Spanish Téjas and that through the Caddo and Ishák (Atákapa), the French military commandants in Natchitoches, and future districts like the Opelousas and the Attakapas, benefited economically and militarily from interactions with these three groups and their relatives on both the “Louisiana side” and the “Spanish Téjas” side. The military commandant at the Natchitoches Post, Louis JUCHEREAU de Saint-Denys, was imprisoned on several occasions in Mexico City for illegal trading through the Caddos in areas around Nacogdoches, TX.
7. We have reason to believe that because of these interactions, the Spanish colonial ranching industry quickly spread to the Natchitoches, Opelousas and Attakapas districts in French Louisiana (by 1750) and that there was extensive marrying among all involved (Afro-Euro-Caddo-Atákapa-etc). As early as the 1740s, André MASSE established a Cattle Ranch on Bayou Teche and attempted another on the Trinity River in Southeast Texas, both among Ishák (Atákapa), worked almost autonomously by 20 Senegambian and Louisiana Creole slaves (statuts libres) and a handful of Ishák slaves.
8. By the Spanish Louisiana period (1768-1803), the cultural makeup of provincial Louisiana (excluding New Orleans) was predominantly Caddo, Ishák, Tænsas and Tunicas (Northwest LA, then extreme Southeast), Chétimachas (Bayou Lafourche), Biloxi (in and around New Orleans), Québécois from all across the province of Québec, Parisians, Grenoblais, Bordelais, Nantais, Wolofs, Sénégals, Mandingas, Manégas and Bambaras. There were Acadians and their Louisiana Creole, French, English and American children, also, which I will return to.
9. New Orleans proper, remained somewhat a phenomenon of its own, since this was the location of the High Colonial Courts (Conseil Supérieur), Governor, Mayor, Archdiocese and so on. Back then, Métairie, which was then known as Tchoupitoulas, was BFE (bum f*kc Egypt), and so was Bayou St. John. The area where Audubon Park is today was once the very large plantation of Étienne DE BORÉ, who was Louisiana’s first successful sugar planter.
Despite its particularly small size (the city of New Orleans was literally the Vieux Carré at that time), those located therein were as influenced by plantation life, since New Orleans was the place where folks purchased slaves, sold goods, purchased goods, entered into business partnerships, requested/obtained/transferred concessions of land, and so on. Those who lived there only after 1803 asserted a “French” identity and culture. In practice, they were more Louisiana Creole in culture, than French.
10. The Spanish officials arrived in 1766 with Antonio DE ULLOA (first Spanish governor) and were met with bayonets and guns from the local Francophones who were not happy, and were not interested in Spaniards running their affairs. He deserted the governorship in 1768.
Charles-Philippe AUBRY, the last French governor, replaced DE ULLOA until 1769 when Carlos III sent Irish-born Captain-General Alejandro “Bloody O’Reilly” O’REILLY to take over. Which he did for only one year, before being replaced by Luis DE UNZAGA.
Right off you notice the turbulent legal affairs with the colony. The Spanish crown could not keep a governor in office and the local Francophones** (and Creolophones***) wanted them out. NB: slaves weren’t the only Creolophones in French and Spanish Louisiana. Many “whites” and free people of color spoke Kouri-Vini, also.
11. There is evidence that suggests, in Louisiana primary historical documents (civil), that the Spaniards were determined to beef up the colony with their own kind, that is, speakers of Spanish (Hispanophones). A handful of attempts were successful at establishing permanent inhabitants: one being the 60 Malagueños and Granadenses that gave New Iberia its name, another 1700 Canarios from Las Palmas, Fuerteventura and other islands of the Canarias on Bayou Lafourche (the city of Gonzáles, LA gets its name from them and their legacy lies in the “Spanish Town” Mardi Gras parade in Bâton-Rouge), another small settlement at Gálveztown (Bayou Manchac, which turned out fatal due to military conflict) and the ones most known, the Canarios (y otros hispanohablantes) at Bayou Terre-aux-Bœufs (Tierra de los Bueyes) and De la Croix Island in St Bernard Parish.
12. We’ve also strong reason, through civil records, to believe that the Spaniards, abhorred by Muslims, switched the pool from which slaves from West Africa came. The previous French administrations took from their own concession of Senegambia, which is/was heavily Muslim. The Spanish halted that all together and sent mostly Congos to the colonies. Congo was an umbrella term for many different ethnic groups in the area of the Congo.
13. Between 1765 and 1770, Louisiana administrators accepted resettlement of some 1300 Acadian refugees from Maryland, Halifax (Nova Scotia), Saint-Domingue and Georgia. 660 of them were sent to present-day St. James Parish (called La Première Côte des Acadiens). 241 were sent to resettle at St-Gabriel (Mississippi-Bayou Lafourche juncture). 195 were sent to the Attakapas District (along Bayous Teche, Vermilion, Carencro). Finally, 149 were sent to San Luis de Natchez (Natchez, MS). Between 1785 and 1788, 7 more ships arrived with (1400) refugees, this time from France by way of England. 600 of them were sent to upper Bayou Lafourche at Ascension and Assumption parishes (then called La Fourche-des-Tchétimachas), 271 at Bayou des Écores (Thompson’s Creek), 145 at Bâton-Rouge and about 124 at Manchac (Tangipahoa Parish).
14. I’ve provided figures in question 13 only to illustrate that when considering the population at Upper Bayou Lafourche in 1790, Acadians (850 of them) represented roughly 33%, whereas the Canarios represented nearly 67% (almost 1700 at this location alone).
At the Attakapas, in 1771, Acadians only represented roughly 30% of the that district’s population.
15. In the 1770s and 1780s, Irish and Scotch (or, Scots, if you prefer) descended folks from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, predominantly Catholics, such as the COLLINS, settled in Louisiana in places like The Opelousas Post. Other families included the O’BRYANs, O’CONNORs, FULTONs, JOYs and HOPKINS. They were then met by growing number of Anglo-Saxons, some directly from England, like the WHITEs.
And such was the population makeup near the turn of the 19th century: Nagos/Yorubas, Congos, Bambaras, Wolofs, Mandingas, Parisians, Madrileños, Canarios, Malgueños, Catholic Irish, Catholic Prussians, Alsatians, Lorrainers, Acadians, Québécois, Biloxi, Tunica, Chétimachas, Bayougoula, Ishák, Caddo, Tejanos, and much more.
16. You should consider that each settlement in the colony remained a bit isolated (there was no TV, mobile phones, etc) and their evolution was not linear, but clustered, meaning, what happened in New Orleans did not necessarily influence daily life in Natchitoches. The Canarios on Bayou Lafourche did not influence life in the Attakapas, and what happened on the Louisiana savannahs in ranching, did not affect folks in Illinois.
17. By the time the insurrections took place in Saint-Domingue, Louisiana already had a full-fledged colonial/creole/Latin culture (and sub-cultures) of its own, with French already spoken there since the beginning of the first French period, and Kouri-Vini emerging soon thereafter. That’s 60 years of cultural synthesis.
18. Through perusing civil records from the first French period, we know that Kouri-Vini was already spoken as early as 1735-1740 from court proceedings related to conspiracies and slave revolts and petty crimes for which slaves were brought in to testify, and their testimonies were transcribed verbatim: Louisiana Creole, not French. By 1790, it was firmly established in different colonial districts.
19. The waves of Saint-Domingue refugees must be understood from two prisms: those directly from Saint-Domingue and those born in Cuba then arriving in Louisiana.
The latter group, culturally, were at the very least Cubanos, not Saint-Domingue Creoles. They likely spoke Saint-Domingue Creole and perhaps Saint-Domingue French, but they also spoke Cuban Spanish, which isn’t spoken on Saint-Domingue’s western portion. So, culturally, this group of refugees are most akin to the Canarios at Bayou Terre-aux-Bœufs (who had contact with Francophones and Kouri-Vini-speakers) than they were to folks in Port-au-Prince.
The former group, clearly were culturally Saint-Domingue Creoles, speaking either or both of S-D’s languages.
20. Roughly 10,000 refugees from both Cuba and Saint-Domingue arrived in New Orleans between 1800 and 1810. 2,710 were whites, 3,100 were Free people of Color, and 3,200 were slaves. Once in Louisiana, the general scope of the S-D refugees was New Orleans, with a few exceptions elsewhere (e.g. present-day St. Mary, St. Landry, Pointe-Coupée, and other parishes). All other districts only received a handful, at most, of refugees (free and slave) from Cuba and Saint-Domingue.
It is therefore safe to argue that New Orleans and New Orleans alone, was most influenced by the Saint-Domingue revolution.
21. Within Louisiana, as mentioned above, each district had its own sub-culture and only the leading elite families there had ties to New Orleans, physical ones, and visited back and forth. They, naturally, would not be in a position to sit and chat with former slaves from Saint-Domingue or with free people of color about Saint-Domingue or the revolution there. They would sit and speak with the slave owners with whom they shared that affinity.
How then would that change what happens in the districts? The owners of slaves freaked out! Afraid of a similar fate, they most often rejected slaves from Saint-Domingue at market, afraid they’d transplant the spirit of slaughter among their own slaves.
22. In 1811, Charles DESLONDES, a slave and slave-driver on the plantation of Colonel Émmanuel “Manuel” ANDRÉ in St Charles Parish, devised a slave uprising, noted as being the largest in U.S. history. As a result, heightened paranoia set in among slave holders and legislators, resulting in increased disfranchisement of free people of color, or gens de couleur libres in French. Social conditions and legal restrictions were so impressive that more than 10,000 Louisiana free people of color fled to Mexico and thousands more to Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico when the Spanish Crown issued the Royal Decree, or Cédula de Gracias in 1815 offering free land and tax breaks.
In closing, refugees from Saint-Domingue contributed immensely to the blossoming of the arts (theatre, opera, plays), and skilled labor (silversmiths, ironsmiths, architects, bakers, engineers). The ranks of educators, composers, writers, poets, statesmen and visionaries skyrocketed as a result of the Saint-Domingue revolution, specifically in New Orleans.
As we have seen, that upward mobility spiraled downward by the Civil War, leading to the outmigration of thousands of New Orleans’s skilled class (free), leaving more vestiges, like the gorgeous ironworks on New Orleans balconies in the Vieux Carré, the sounds of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s classical music and nostalgia, from a time when French and Creole were spoken natively in New Orleans. A New Orleans memory of the recent past for some, and of the distant past for others.
– Christophe Landry, 2010
