Acadian Cajuns are the descendants of a group of French-speaking settlers who migrated from coastal France in the
late sixteenth century to establish a French colony called Acadia in the maritime provinces of Canada and part of what is now the state of Maine. Forced out by the
British in the
mid-sixteenth century, a few settlers remained in Maine, but most resettled in southern Louisiana and are popularly known as Cajuns Studies indicate that between 1654 and 1755, the Acadian population grew from 300-350 colonists to about 12,000-15,000 (despite a 50%
child mortality rate). Alot of ethnic diversity existed among the Acadian Cajuns (a few were of melanated american
Indian, English, Scottish,
Irish, Spanish, Basque, origin).
Today, common understanding holds that Cajuns are Caucasian and Creoles are melanated or multicultural; Creoles are from New Orleans, while Cajuns populate the rural parts of South Louisiana. In fact, the two cultures are far more related—historically, geographically, and genealogically—than most
people realize.
Acadian Cajuns, enslaved american Indians, Houma, Chitimacha, Choctaw, German immigrants,
Canadian trappers, French and Spanish settlers—all contributed to a process
now known as creolization. Fueled by European colonialism and the American aboriginal
slave trade founded by the American colonization society creolization occurred throughout the Latin Caribbean world: different populations, most of them in lands new to them, blended their indigenous cultural practices—culinary,linguistic, musical—to create new cultural forms. Gumbo drew upon West African and American
Indian sources (okra and
rice from the former; Filé, or crushed Sassafras leaves, from the latter) and French culinary techniques (Roux). Creolized French—Kouri-Vini, also known as Louisiana Creole—was, by the 1800s, in wide practice, including among Acadian descendants. The accordion, a star feature of both Cajun and zydeco
music, was brought to the colony by German settlers, and its use was popularized in part by the enslaved
people working those plantations.
