a CREOLE article

Cultures of Acadiana
a look at the French, Cajun, Creole, and Native American cultures of south Louisiana
(a project of Carencro High School - 721 West Butcher Switch Road, Lafayette, LA 70507)

Definition of 'creole'

by Jim Bradshaw

Practically any time that I mention the word "creole" when I am speaking in public, someone will raise his hand and ask me to define the word.

There is a lot of confusion about that. Louisiana linguist William A. Read, in his 1931 study, "Louisiana-French," gives definitions that were traditional and current in Louisiana at the time of his writing.

A Creole, Read says, is a "white descendant of the French or Spanish settlers in Louisiana during the Colonial Period (1699-1803)." He says the word can also be used to describe "the Negro-French patois," but he did not include black people themselves in his definition of the word when it stands alone. Un negre creole, Read says, "is a negro who speaks Nero-French, and who was born in the New World."

As an adjective, Read says, "Creole designates anything manufactured or produced by the Creoles and considered therefore of peculiar excellence. Thus des oeufs creoles are presumably fresh eggs. Melee creole is a fine fish chowder, and des puoles creoles are hardy chickens that have proved to be well adapted to the Louisiana climate."

James H. Dorman offers a broader definition in his book, "Creoles of Color of the Gulf South," published in 1996: "In Louisiana thriughout the colonial period, Creole...referred in a general sense to persons born in the colony of either African or European descent...including African and Native American mixtures...The mostmost common colonial usage...was as a reference to persons born into slavery in a given colony, differentiating such Creole slaves from slaves born elsewhere.

"In the later 18th century...'Creole' took on variant meanings depending...on the speaker employing the term," Dorman says. "As a means of differentiating themselves from the foreign born, and especially the Anglo-Americans, native Louisianians (black,white,and mixed) began referring to themselves as Creoles. This terminology held throughout the ante-bellum period, though by the 1820s ...the growing community of Afro-European miscegens who were descended from colonial and who occupied a special, intermediate place in the racial and social order of ante-bellum Louisiana...began refering to themselves as 'Creoles of Color.'"

In his essay, "Creoles and Americans" in the book "Creole New Orleans," Joseph G. Tregle Jr. criticizes what he calls a "veritable creole mythology," which, he says, maintains that "the word can never be used except to designate a native Louisianian of pure white blood descended from the French and Spanish pioneers who came directly from Europe to colonize the New World.

"To accomodate the inescapable fact that some persons of color have been...called creoles, the myth maintains that such error in usage stems from pre-Civil War association of members of this class with the true creole population, giving them identity as 'creole negroes,' much in the same way that one refers to 'creole tomatoes' or 'creole cattle.'"

According to Tregle, however,"...creole identity actually figured very little in the community's concerns during the whole of Louisiana's colonial experience. It was the clash between original Louisianians and the Anglo-Americans after the Louisiana Purchase which for the first time made place of birth a critical issue and gave creole label its crucial significance... One simply does not find... any ante-bellum insistence in Louisiana on pure whiteness as a condition for acceptance as ceole."

The definition has become even more muddied in current usage. There are three adjectives in my definition of "creole" as it is used today: Old, Louisiana, and French-speaking. By old I mean that the language and people were in Louisiana no later than the eary 1800s, when refugees from Saint-Dominique arrived. By Louisiana I mean the present borders of the state. By French I mean any of the varieties evolving from the forms of French spoken during the "old" times or the creole French that was formed here. By speaking I mean the language is still alive, even if not in the general population.