Posted on 03/14/2003 5:40:44 AM PST by Pern
LAFAYETTE — South Louisiana’s Frenchness comes from many sources, some of them quite remote from continental France. Whatever its origins, a local authority says, the Louisiana French culture is far removed from that of Paris and even the French provinces.
The Acadians were generations removed from their native land by the time of their exile from Canada and referred to themselves as Acadians, not Frenchmen. Likewise, black people and white people flocking to Louisiana from the West Indies had been there for generations, and although they brought a French language to Louisiana, they also brought Caribbean customs.
Bonapartists fleeing France; aristocrats and others who left at the time of the Revolution; non-Acadian, Canadian French people; and a host of other French-speaking émigrés have contributed to the culture that has become known as “Louisiana French,” according to Carl Brasseaux, director of the Center for Cultural and Eco-Tourism at UL Lafayette.
“It’s certainly a distinct culture in Louisiana,” he said. “It’s not French; it’s not Canadian; it’s Louisiana.”
He said it is the result of the comingling of the cultures of south Louisiana, including those of non-French origin.
“The vast majority of people here understand that our French culture has become something quite different than the culture of France today,” Brasseaux said.
The first resident Frenchmen were soldiers who came with Iberville in 1699 to colonize Louisiana. Some of them retired here, taking land grants as retirement pay. In the late 1700s, some 3,500 Acadians made their way to Louisiana after being forced from their ancestral homes in Canada.
More French-speaking émigrés came from 1794 to 1804, when a slave revolt in present-day Haiti drove out many white planters and thousands of free people of color. About the same time, there was another migration, this time more or less directly from France, as thousands fled the French Revolution, and again in the early 1800s with the demise of Napoleon’s grand schemes.
In modern times, renewed links with Canada have brought an influx of French Canadians to Louisiana, and a non-European element was added to the Louisiana French culture with the emigration of Catholic, French-speaking Vietnamese people who were able to escape when their country fell to the Communist north.
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