|
a CREOLE article
Cultures
of Acadiana |
Lafayette (La) Daily Advertiser, May 25, 1999
European French came for diverse reasons
They helped keep Louisiana's Gallic accent
by Jim Bradshaw
Later immigrants to Louisiana, even white emigres who shared the French language and culture, were not necessarily automatically into the established society of the old French families of Louisiana.
In his essay, "Colonial New Orleans: A Fragment of the Eighteenth- Century French Ethos" in the book "Creole New Orleans," Jerah Johnson writes:
"The two most important other (than Acadian and Spanish) ethnic groups (to come to Louisiana) during the Spanish period were refugees from the revolution on the Caribbean French Island of Saint Domingue, who soon came to be called the 'foreign French' by New Orleans creoles, and Anglo Americans, who increasingly immigrated to Louisiana from British-ruled Florida and from the United States. The major accommodation both groups would have to make would be not to the Spanish authorities, who required little of incoming settlers beyond a pledge of loyalty to the Spanish crown, observance of Spain's trade laws, and outward conformity to the Catholic Church , but to the local French creoles.
The same problem faced most of the so-called "European French" who came directly from the mother country.
As Paul F. Lachance points out in his essay, "The Foreign French," "over the whole of the antebellum period, most of the European French immigrated to New Orleans without ever having set foot in Saint-Dominique. Until 1832, according to the Annual Reports on Immigration to the United States, fewer than one thousand French immigrants per year passed through the port of New Orleans. From the until the Civil War, annual arrivals ranged from three thousand to over seven thousand."
The emigres left France for many reasons. Some of them were exiles from the French Revolution of 1789. Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d` etat in 1799 sent a second collection of French exiles to Louisiana. The group was made up of those who were at odds with his regime. Many of his supporters were forced to flee France after Napoleon was sent into exile, first to Elba in May 1814,-and then to St. Helena in October 1815.
As Arnold Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon point out in their book, "Creole New Orleans," this later surge of French emigres helped the white Creoles of the region hold onto social and political power longer than may have been the case otherwise, and also helped the cause of the Creoles of color.
"These immigrants , coming in the wake of dramatic upheavals during the Napoleonic era, provided not only crucial skilled, literate, and experienced reinforcements of the local creole elite, but also shored up French and Franco-African society in New Orleans from top to bottom," the authors say.
"Literally wedding themselves to and preserving the city's creole base for a generation after the (Louisiana Purchase and American immigration that followed it), these Gallic immigrants made certain that the obliteration of French influence that followed the Yankee invasions of Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and other French colonial settlements in the Mississippi Valley was not replicated (in New Orleans)"
The authors point to research by Joseph Tregle Jr. that showed that "French-speaking voters managed to keep control of state and city government even after they lost their numerical dominance in Louisiana. Through a manipulation of constitutional devices and legislative gerrymandering , they maintained control of state government until the mid-1840's."
After that , Tregle finds, Americans were finally able to batter down the French resistance in New Orleans and then elsewhere in south Louisiana, even though they adopted some elements of the Creole culture.
Hirsch and Logsdon point out, "The Americans found new allies among the waves of European immigrants that came,,, from nations other than France, particularly from Ireland and Germany. Before the Civil War, New Orleans ranked second only to New York as the nation's leading port of immigration.... After the 1860's , a steady stream of Spaniards, Latin Americans, Greeks, Dalmations, Chinese, Filipinos, and particularly Italians continued to settle in the city. ,,, Many of the immigrants drew solace from the well-rooted Catholic church in New Orleans and adopted creole habits of cuisine and festivity, but they showed little interest in learning the French language."
According to Tregle, the coming of the Civil War provided the white Creoles of Louisiana "their last chance for revival of creole supremacy."
On May 15, 1861, a new journal appeared in New Orleans, La Renaissance Louisianaise" Organedes Populations Franco-Americaines du Sud. Its publisher was Emile Hiriart and its backers included the elite of New Orleans white Creole society. According to Tregle, "It committed passionately to a double goal, absolute victory of the Southern Confederacy and creation within it of a Louisiana restored to ... a community whose heart, mind , and spirit were irrevocably French."
With the loss of the war, so also was lost the Creole dream of Gallic revival in Louisiana. The culture and society were absorbed by the Americans ,and white Creoles had only their identity to fight for. That is when they began to push forward the claim that "creole" meant "white".
Hirsh and Logsdon note, "White creoles began to divorce themselves from their historical association with black creoles by attempting to deny use of the traditionally broad designation to anyone of African ancestry, ... Tregle clearly demonstrates that ... the new usage of the word creole emerged only during the Reconstruction era (and because of a) struggle for white supremacy.