So what’s the difference between the terms “Creole” and “Cajun?” Louisiana historian and cultural authority Joseph Dunn sets the record straight on the Acadian exile, assimilation within the Creole population, and the late 20th century Cajun marketing machine.
Authored by Joseph Dunn
Table of Contents
Introduction
Travel can be defined as relaxation, recreation, or vacation. But travel is also education, and when visiting historical sites, nothing is more important to the learning process than having an accurate historical context.
I have visited the state of Louisiana many times, and I have published several articles about travel destinations across the state. On a recent River Road plantations trip, I had the privilege of meeting Joseph Dunn, the sales, marketing, and public relations director at Laura Plantation. Over lunch, we had an enlightening discussion about the history of Louisiana Creole language, culture, and identity. My eyes were opened to truths I had previously misunderstood.
Later that afternoon, I joined Joseph for a guided tour of Laura Plantation, where I encountered Louisiana Creole history once again. But this time with a fresh and proper understanding.
When I began working on a new article entitled Louisiana Plantation Tours that Interpret the Slave Experience, I knew it was time to add Joseph to the conversation, so that readers planning travel to Louisiana can approach their itinerary destinations with an accurate schema and cultural understanding.
With Backroad Planet’s first academic article, I give you Joseph Dunn.
Preface
My approach to this article comes from my background working in the realm of Louisiana French and Creole heritage language activism. As a past Director of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), the only state agency in the United States charged with overseeing the “development, utilization, and preservation” of minority languages, I was faced daily with the challenges of promoting their use in social, educational, and professional settings.
Following countless hours of reading, researching, interviewing, listening to archival audio and video recordings, and simply talking (in French and Creole) with Louisianians, old and young alike, I was finally able to articulate that the language shift from French to English had also resulted in a radical shift in identity. In sum, their relationship to their own heritage languages, culture, sense of place, and history had been reprogrammed in English from a strictly American perspective.
This is an extremely complex topic with many subtleties and nuances. It is also controversial because it challenges what we have been taught about ourselves in English for more than a century.
Le Grand Dérangement
Between 1755 and 1762, the Acadian settlers in what is now Nova Scotia (then called “Acadie”) were forcibly exiled by the British, following the British takeover of the colony during the first part of the French and Indian War. Known in French as, “Le Grand Dérangement” (“The Great Upheaval”), it is often compared to an ethnic cleansing.
Though it is difficult the know the exact number of Acadians who were deported, estimates hover between 8,000 to 10,000 men, women, and children. Many were resettled in the English colonies along the Atlantic coast; others were sent to England and France.
Louisiana had been colonized by the French in 1699 and transferred to Spain in 1762, precisely because the English had defeated the French in Canada. “La Louisiane,” which comprised the entire middle part of the North American continent, from the Mississippi River west to the Rocky Mountains, was now threatened by takeover by English Protestants. The French had lost. The Spanish offered the best protection against Protestant expansion.
The first group of Acadian exiles made their way to Louisiana in 1764, to be followed over the succeeding twenty years (the last arrived in 1785) by several more. In total, just under 3,000 Acadian refugees were absorbed into the existing Louisiana French and Creole-speaking population of approximately 20,000 people that included a large number of enslaved Africans. This estimate does not include the Native American populations, for which it seems little data exists.
Louisiana Creoles
There is ample written and anecdotal evidence that the descendants of the Acadian exiles were assimilated into the larger Creole culture, language and identity over the succeeding generations and into the middle of the 20th century.
This does not mean, however, that Acadian or the succeeding “Cajun” identity completely disappeared or that the white Creoles and Creoles of color did not see them as the “other,” often poor, rural French speakers. The main point here is that the Acadians were part of larger Louisiana Creole whole.
Conversely, the Acadian descendants who remained isolated within their own communities often regarded the Creoles as wealthy urbanites or of the planter class. This is evident in the Louisiana French language literature of the late 19th century, notably Sidonie de la Houssaye’s “Pouponne et Balthazar,” published in 1888 or in Kate Chopin’s 1897 collection of short stories in English, “A Night in Acadie.”
Segregation and Assimilation
The emergence of a “Cajun” identity, removed from the earlier “Acadian” identity and separate and apart from “Creole,” dates mostly to the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement and desegregation. As Americanization and heritage language loss accelerated, the term “Creole” had become increasingly racialized. Association with Acadian ancestry connected to Canada, whether real or imagined, offered “white” people an alternative to the perception of “blackness” now associated with “Creole.”
French and Creole speakers of color and Native American descent who could neither pass nor want to pass for white would now be racially excluded from what had previously been an inclusive linguistic and cultural identity.
Cajun* would henceforth mean “white” and Creole would mean “black.”
The later designation of a 22-parish area as “Acadiana” by the Louisiana state legislature in 1971 to recognize the area’s “strong French Acadian cultural aspects” further distanced Creoles of Acadian descent from the common Louisiana Creole identity that many had previously shared with non-Acadian-identified Louisianians.
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the divergence continued as the native French and Creole speakers for whom these perceived “differences” mattered little were replaced by newer generations of Louisianians who been reared and educated in English in segregated schools.
Therefore, the baseline for identity in Louisiana shifted from language and culture to race and skin color as a direct result of heritage language loss, forced assimilation into English, and Americanization.
Cajun Branding
The marketing and promotion efforts related to the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans put tremendous emphasis on the emerging “Cajun” brand, introducing the world to gombo and jambalaya, Creole dishes now remarketed as “Cajun.” Beginning in the 1980s, most everything in Louisiana that had been known since the 18th century as “Creole” . . . people, food, culture, language . . . would be rebranded “Cajun” as part of a massive campaign.
Financially, it has been wildly successful for more than 40 years. In terms of tourism and media coverage dollars alone, “Cajun” is a billion-dollar label. Despite the dollar signs, however, some would argue that the rebranding has come at great expense.
• It has divided the remaining native French and Creole speakers into opposing camps.
• It has divided the assimilated monolingual English-speaking descendants of the French and Creole speakers into opposing camps.
• It has confused locals, tourists, and academics into believing that everything about Louisiana French history, language, culture, cuisine, and music originated with the arrival of the Acadian exiles.
Despite how it may appear, this article is not meant to discount the contributions to the rich and complex history of Louisiana made by the Acadians or their Cajun-identified descendants.
The simple objective is to illustrate that we cannot credit the French language, the culture, the cuisine, and the music to a single minority ethno-racial group that arrived more than half a century following the founding of the colony.
We must begin to recognize the historical evidence and celebrate the fact that Louisiana has always been a remarkably diverse society developed over more than three centuries by many francophone and créolophone peoples, only one of which was the Acadians.
For more information on Louisiana Creole language and identity, consider Joseph Dunn’s articles: A Primer on the Evolution of Creole Identity in Louisiana and A Primer on French and Creole Heritage Language Loss in Louisiana as a Result of Contextual Erosion.
* It bears explaining that “Cajun” is an English-language deformation of the Louisiana French pronunciation “Acadien,” which over time in local vernacular French was contracted to “Cadien.” English-programmed ears hear the French ‘dien’ as ‘jun.’
Bibliography and Sources
Bernard, S.K. The Cajuns: Americanization of a People: University Press of Mississippi, 2003
de la Houssaye, S. Pouponne et Balthazar, L’Athenée Louisianais, 1888
Chopin, Kate, A Night in Acadie, 1897
Brasseaux, C.A. French, Cajun, Creole, Houma: A Primer on Francophone Louisiana: LSU Press, 2005
Brasseaux, C.A. Acadian to Cajun: Transformation of a People: University Press of Mississippi, 1992
Bruce, C. Allons brasser le gombo, Regards nouveaux sur le fait acadien en Louisiane, 2015
Hirsch, A. and Logsdon, J. Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization: LSU Press, 1992
Klingler, T. How Much Acadian is there in Cajun: 2009
Landry, C. A Creole melting pot, the politics of language, race, and identity in southwest Louisiana, 1918-45: Doctoral thesis, University of Sussex, England
Other: various readings and analysis of Louisiana French-language literature and newspapers, including L’Athenée Louisianais and L’Abeille.
Prior to founding Louisiana Perspectives in 2014, Joseph served as Executive Director of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL). He has held positions at the Consulate General of France in New Orleans; the Office of the Lieutenant Governor; the Louisiana Office of Cultural Development; the Louisiana Travel Promotion Association; Laura: A Creole Plantation; and the Louisiana Office of Tourism.
Internationally, he has twice worked as a product development and interpretation consultant with Parks Canada. While with the Office of Cultural Development and the Lt. Governor’s Office, he played an integral role in the early development of the World Cultural Economic Forum. Later, as executive director of CODOFIL, Joseph led the renegotiation of Louisiana’s cultural and educational accords with the governments of France and Belgium.
He has presented in English and French at conferences, workshops, and political and economic trade missions in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and Europe. Joseph is often featured in francophone print and broadcast media and documentaries as a leader in the French language movement in Louisiana.
Current and past clients include Laura: A Creole Plantation; The City of New Orleans; La Ville d’Orléans (France); the St. Landry Parish Tourist Commission; the West Feliciana Tourist Commission; Festival International de Louisiane; the Louisiana Bed & Breakfast Association; Pelican Publishing; and others.
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We Would Love to Hear From You
We enjoy dialogue with our readers, especially when they share thoughts and reflections on our academic articles. Have you ever tried to understand the difference between the Louisiana terms “Creole” and “Cajun?” If so, we would love to hear your story. We invite you to leave your comments and questions below, and we always respond!
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Your article pretty much sums it up. My family Creole heritage stems from East Baton Rouge, St. James, and New Orleans. We have been in Louisiana before it was Louisiana (early 1700s.). We are a proud Creole multicultural people with Native American, African, French, Spanish, and Irish roots.
Merci Beaucoup, Joseph, for an extremely interesting article. My grandmother, Agnes Barilleaux, was a first-language French speaker, and my family traced her lineage as part of the Acadian diaspora to Louisiana (and did it in a pre-internet age!). Since I was born and raised in New Orleans, I have read many Cajun/Creole “explanations.” I think the history you’ve illustrated makes me want to just dig more into it because it’s also MY history. And it just shows what a wonderful gumbo Louisiana is.
My aunt was born in the early 1880s and always referred to our family as Creole, born in Louisiana of French and Spanish ancestors. Now I believe a Creole can be any one born in Louisiana, not just blacks. I do not understand how the word, to the rest of the country, is now applied just to blacks. My father’s ancestors came from Acadia, and that is the only people that should have the title of Cajun!
Sorry, Joseph, but I think your hypothesis is more than slightly wrong. I am from the exact middle of the affected area in an region that is located almost exactly between groups of “Creole” and “Cajun” identities. I can promise you that “race” entered not at all into the picture. That is a meme that is put into the mix by outside ethnologists, who imported the idea from the Caribbean.
Merci for taking the time to read the article and to comment. If you haven’t already, I’d like to suggest that you read Carl Brasseaux’s, “French, Cajun, Creole, Houma: A Primer on Francophone Louisiana” and the Hirsch / Logsdon work, “Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization.”
As someone who has worked in the field of heritage language revival for more than 2 decades, I can say with unequivocal authority that the racialization and segregation of Louisiana’s French and Creole-speaking populations over the past century is the single biggest obstacle to firmly relaunching the languages in social, academic and professional settings.
Thank you for this article. I am part of the Creole diaspora, as my grandparents left Avoyelles Parish for Texas in the 1920s. When I was a teen in the 1960s, I remember a neighbor asking my grandmother if her family was Cajun. Her response was very emphatic, “NO. We are NOT.”
On our Avoyelles Parish Genealogy Facebook group, I recently pointed out that someone who was identified as “Cajun” in a recent obituary had no Acadian ancestry. I was surprised at the immediate and very pointed rebuttals I received from distant relatives who live in Avoyelles and Rapides Parishes, who informed me that this area is considered “Cajun Country.”
This continues to be perplexing to me. I view all this from some distance (geological and cultural), having grown up on the west side of Fort Worth, but being very well-versed in my Louisiana French ancestry, none of which is Acadian.
BONJOUR et merci beaucoup for taking the time to read and to respond. As you likely gleaned from the article, it’s a very complicated and complex issue that is difficult to fully understand through a monolingual, English-speaking lens. In this country, we are programmed to think in terms of race and skin color as the baselines for identity. Flipping that paradigm to think of identity in terms of language and culture is not an easy step for most people. If you’re interested in these kinds of discussions, please visit my Louisiana Perspectives blog for more!
Amitiés,
Joseph.
Joseph, I was born in Jennings, LA, sixty-four years ago. Growing up my grandmother spoke only Cajun French. She and her family and ours have always considered ourselves as Cajun. At no time during my childhood growing up in Louisiana did I ever hear anyone in my familiar any of our friends refer to themselves as Creole. We were always Cajun/Acadians.
Hi David,
Merci beaucoup de votre commentaire.
The article *does* state : “This does not mean, however, that Acadian or the succeeding “Cajun” identity completely disappeared or that the white Creoles and Creoles of color did not see them as the “other,” often poor, rural French speakers. The main point here is that the Acadians were part of larger Louisiana Creole whole.” This corroborates you and your family’s lived experience.
As for the term “Cajun French,” there is ample documented and anecdotal evidence that first-language French speakers in Louisiana a century ago did not attach any ethno-racial label (“Cajun,” “Creole,” etc.) to the language they spoke. They simply called it “français.”
Excellente journée !
Yes, David, Joseph has this TOTALLY wrong!! My mother, a native French speaker, was born in St. Martinville. My grandfather did not speak English very well. My father was from Breaux Bridge. I majored in French in college. The people in that area considered themselves Cajuns —as far back as I can remember and I am now in my 70s. We are descendants of the Acadians who migrated from Nova Scotia to Louisiana. There was never any talk about Creoles –other than in reference to those living in the New Orleans area –those that were NOT descendants of the Acadians. We never considered ourselves to be Creoles. Those Cajuns in SW Louisiana did not assimilate with the Creoles. However, some Cajuns who migrated to New Orleans did assimilate with the Creoles —as a result of intermarriages. Most of the Cajuns remained in SW and South Central Louisiana for 300 years and protected their heritage. Most usually stayed close to home; they were born, they raised a family and they died within that area.
I think we need to readjust your view of “Cajun” history in SW Louisiana. You said “Most of the Cajuns remained in SW and South Central Louisiana for 300 years….” Subtracting 300 years from 2019 would indicate that the first Acadian exiles settled in Louisiana in 1719, or just one year after the founding of New Orleans. However, we know that is not true.
The first group of 200 Acadians did not arrive in Louisiana until 1765. That was a bit over 250 years ago.
Bonjour Norman,
Respectfully, the first small group of Acadians arrived in Louisiana in 1764, almost exactly 255 years ago. They were settled along the Mississippi River in what is now St. John and St. James Parishes in a region that was then called “La Première Côte des Acadiens.”
This group is mostly ignored/overlooked by the descendants of the later groups that were settled more westward along Bayou Lafourche and into the region of the Poste des Attakapas, present day St. Martinville.
Bonjour Dunn:
I stand corrected, they arrived one year earlier than I had previously read. But, as you said, that was almost exactly 255 years ago, and NOT 300 years ago. So, I believe the point I was making still stands – it was not 300 years ago.
Bonjour Deborah,
As I mentioned in an earlier response to David, I never suggested that people did not claim or adhere to a “Cajun” identity in Louisiana. I simply pointed out that “Creole identity” among white people, even of Acadian descent, also existed and continues to exist, despite the imposed English-language racialisation of the term.
The historical record is quite clear that people throughout South Louisiana from the 19th century and into the middle of the 20th century, both white and black, called themselves Creole. This is borne out in both written documents and recorded audio/video interviews en français.
-When St. Martinville was called “Le Petit Paris” and French was the primary language, the local society identified as “Créole.”
-Governor Alexandre Mouton, himself of Acadian descent, was billed “the Creole pony” in election campaigns.
-The “à propos” of the New Orleans newspaper L’Abeille, in print in the early 1920s, read “Elle est reçue non seulement dans toutes les paroisses créoles de la Louisiane, mais dans les Etats voisins…”
The first small group of Acadians arrived in Louisiana in 1764, almost exactly 255 years ago. They were settled along the Mississippi River in what is now St. John and St. James Parishes in a region that was then called “La Première Côte des Acadiens.” Later groups were settled more westward along Bayou Lafourche and into the region of the Poste des Attakapas, present day St. Martinville.
That looks like a mess that’s gonna take a long time to entangle.
What led to the “rebranding” of Creole to Cajun?
Thanks for reading and for posing an interesting question that would make for a fascinating thesis topic !
I’m not aware of any in-depth research specific to the emergence of the “Cajun” brand, but “Creole” was ubiquitous on tourism souvenirs, cookbooks and license plates until the 1960s, which coincides with the ethnic pride movements both here in the United States and abroad.
I would suggest that because Creole identity had become so racialized by that point, many of those of color aligned themselves with the Civil Rights movement. This is certainly the case in New Orleans with such leaders are A.P. Tureaud and Ernest “Dutch” Morial, among others. Farther afield, research and interviews with “white” people who formerly identified as “Creole” began to move toward “Cajun” identity around the same period, notably the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s.
The bibliography above suggests some good primary sources and starting points to delve further into the topic.
“Association with Acadian ancestry connected to Canada, whether real or imagined, offered “white” people an alternative to the perception of “blackness” now associated with “Creole.”:
What total rubbish. To imply that Cajun heritage began in the 60’s to avoid a perception of blackness is a total attempt to rewrite history to somehow make people feel ashamed of their past.
Pure radical liberalism at its worst.
Author should be ashamed of himself.
Thank you for your comment.
Much of this is clearly outlined in the academic research to be found in the books referenced in the bibliography and sources.
It is no way an effort to “rewrite history or somehow make people feel ashamed of their past,” but a perspective on identity shift directly related to heritage language loss, forced assimilation into English and imposed Americanization.
I agree, Peter! The Creoles were in the New Orleans area. I am Cajun and I can tell you that we did not have much communication with the Creoles. The Cajuns go back 300 years —and we never were Creoles—Creoles are a totally different group —Creoles have absolutely no connection with the French.
There were historically, and remain today, people who identify as “Creole,” both white and black, throughout Louisiana.
The first Acadians did not arrive in Louisiana until 1764, sixty-five years and three generations *after* the founding of the Louisiana colony in 1699.
To imply that “Creoles have absolutely no connection to the French” is quite simply inaccurate. The very foundation of Creole identity in Louisiana was and is at least partial French ancestry and connection to the French and/or Creole language.
Notre relation à la vérité, pour certaines et certains, est tout comme la relation à la langue : cassée. Un miroir ne peut pas être l’adversaire, c’est juste le moyen — tout comme cet article. Très bien posé, un gros merci ! Vive la Louisiane !
Our relationship with the truth, for some of us, is just like our relationship with the language: broken. A mirror isn’t the adversary, it’s just the medium — just like this article. Very well done, a big thank-you is owed. Vive la Louisiane !
Merci Brian, d’avoir apporté cette perspective. Tout comme ta métaphore du miroir, j’en ai une autre sous forme de question : La langue française en Louisiane, un tremplin vers l’avenir ou un miroir devant lequel on passe de temps en temps pour regarder en arrière ?
Thanks for this perspective, Brian. Like your mirror metaphor, I have another, in the form of question: The French language in Louisiana, a springboard to the future, or a mirror that we pass in front of from time to time to look into the past?
Mr. Joseph, that was a good article and one that would invite interested persons to learn more. The “Landry, C.” cited is my cousin, from whom I have learned so much about our family history.