a ACADIAN REBIRTH 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)

Many factors involved in Americanization of Acadiana

by Jim Bradshaw

Until the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and even for a while after, it would have been easy for a visitor to mistake Louisiana for a French colony. But Americans began to find the delights of Louisiana in the late 1700s, and their numbers increased steadily after Louisiana became a U.S. possession.

American settlement in south Louisiana was encouraged by a land dispute that lasted for some years after the Purchase. The United States and Spain each claimed a part of south Louisiana between the Mermentau and Sabine Rivers. While diplomats argues over who owned it, the United States encouraged settlement in the "No Man's Land," figuring that Americans on the land would strengthen the U.S. argument.

But the early 1800s was also a period when the United States was growing in population and the Louisiana Purchase encouraged western expansion.

According to a study by historian Carl Brasseaux in "Acadian to Cajun," "The Anglo-American influx into the present state of Louisiana began in the late 1770s, when religious refugees from Fort Pitt made their way to Attkapas and Opelousas districts. They were later joined by loyalist émigrés, East Coast merchants, and land-hungry frontiersmen. Until the Louisiana Purchase, however, Anglo-American immigration into rural south Louisiana constituted a steady trickle. Despite its notable but localized impact on present day St. Mary, Vermilion, and St. Landry parishes, the migration did not significantly alter the composition of the population in original Acadian settlement areas."

According to Brasseaux, "It has been estimated that in 1803 French-speakers enjoyed a seven-to-one numerical advantage over English-speakers among Louisiana's free population. By the time of Louisiana's admission to the Union in 1812, the ration had fallen to three-to-one, despite the influx of nearly then thousand Saint-Dominigue refugees in 1809. Anglo-American immigrations, primarily from the Southeast, continued unabated throughout the antebellum era. By 1860, English-speakers constituted 70 percent of (Louisiana's) free population. This remarkable disproportionate population growth was achieved despite uninterrupted French immigration throughout the antebellum period.

"Shielded by the Atchafalya Basin and by the high antebellum land values for prime...properties, most of South Louisiana's...Acadian parishes did not receive the full impact of the Anglo invasion. As late as 1870, Acadians outnumbered Anglos in nine of the fifteen principal Acadian parishes."

Those parishes, according to Brasseaux, were Ascension, Iberville, St. James, and West Baton Rouge on the Mississippi River; Assumption, Lafourche, and Terrebonne, along Bayou Lafourche; and the prairie parishes of Calcasieu, Cameron, Iberia, Lafayette, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary, and Vermilion.

"Only in Calcasieu and Cameron parishes, areas adjacent to Texas and possessing large quantities of cheap public land, did Anglo percentages approach those of the Anglo-dominated portions of north Louisiana, " Brasseaux says.

The arrival of an "Anglo-elite" in South Louisiana signaled the quickening of the decline of the Acadian culture.

"The antebellum Anglo settlers of the bayou lands were generally of English descent and better educated and far more affluent than the English-speaking immigrants to north Louisiana," according to Brasseaux's study. "These individuals, many of whom were planters, professionals, and merchants, wielded greater economic influence than their numbers would suggest. Because of the Anglos' influence and prestige, the Acadian upper and upper-middle classes gauged their success by their acceptability to the region's new (Anglo) elite. ...It is hardly coincidental that the decline of the French language occurred when the Anglo elite emerged-generally in the late 1830s an d1840s."

Indeed, an Acadian governor may have helped with the change from French to English. In 1843, Gov. Alexandre Mouton signed an act that allowed Louisiana newspapers to quit published certain legal and political advertisements that were usually written in French.

"Elimination of the requirement freed journalists from published a bilingual paper to satisfy state publishing requirements," Brasseaux says. "And many journalists moved quickly to divest themselves of what had become an expensive albatross-the French portion of the weeklies...(since the) French readership in most rural South Louisiana parishes was small and unstable...Most lower-class Acadians and Creoles were...illiterate...(and) abandonment of the French language (in newspapers) elicited no outcry or opposition from the literate Acadian elite."

In Brasseaux's view, "The quiet acceptance of the English language...was symptomatic of upwardly mobile Acadians' obsessive drive toward mainstream culture throughout the bayou country...By the 1840s Anglo-Americans had attained a position of social and economic leadership within the state, and ...leaders of the...French-speaking communities found it expedient...to wed themselves, sometime literally as well as figuratively, to the new majority."