CREOLE CULTURAL NEWS FLASH: CREOLES OF COLOR WERE THEY LYING ABOUT THEIR HERITAGE? by John laFleur II, copyright 2014. CREOLE CULTURAL NEWS FLASH! ST. LANDRY PARISHS CREOLES DE COULEURS -Were They Lying About Their Heritage? by John laFleur II copyright 2014 Compliments to Jeremy Semien, our resident Creole correspondent from Louisiana Creole Post for this invaluable document which he published/posted this morning concerning the venerable Martin Donatto of Opelousas, St. Landry Parish, who the above document on the right identifies as metif and which colonial period documents are taken from the remarkable work of genealogical scholar/historian, Mr. Winston DeVille now in advanced old age. For those who dont know, metis, metif... etc. means/refers to the mixed race children of the Colonial French & American Indians-the first strata of North American Creole society and culture established even before the arrival of the Spanish, Acadian, American and Saint-Domingue (Haitian) ethnicities in la louisiane or la Nouvelle France. Long and frequently accused and abused by resentful, vengeful and racially prejudiced blacks and whites, Creoles of color or free people of color were bitterly criticized for ostensibly, lying about their heritage in order to deny their African heritage/roots. While there maybe some individuals who did such things (with our sympathies, considering the times and consequences of living in Jim Crow and Reconstruction era Louisiana), clearly the Creoles de couleur as a class did not! These Creoles stand vindicated in their decades of claiming Indian heritage! They truly were telling the truth, as their own white and Indian parents had told them. And, they remain the metis-creole relatives of the white metis-creoles who now pass as Cajun in the upper northwestern parishes of St. Landry and Avoyelles Parishes, often sharing the same ancestors who were oblivious to any racial issues of a much later period. But, let me be clear, even if this group had any African blood by even one drop in this they were surely not unique or alone from the earliest periods of Louisianas French colonial and Spanish history; periods and peoples who had no particular problem with color. In these periods, ones status as free or as a slave dictated marriageability, not ones color. A Frenchman married his social class, meaning to another free person, without regard to color. This is not to say that prejudice did not exist in the French colonial world; it certainly did as evidenced in Andre Penicaut and Gov. Bienvilles writings noting the French tendency to avoid marrying darker-skinned Indians for fear of incurring difficulties from later French administrations new world sociological ideals; which ideals, according to Dr. Shannon Lee Dawdy, was to never be anything like the ideals of the metropole. See Building the Devils Empire: French Colonial New Orleans by Shannon Lee Dawdy, former founder of the School of Archaeology of UNO. One could only marry a slave whom he might love, on condition of emancipation of that slave; which did occur. Slaves, under Louis xivs early Code Noir, in bold distinction to slaves existing under the Anglo-American/British system, were not forever doomed. They had opportunity and privilege offered in French Colonial & Spanish Louisianas Code Noir. The issue of color or phenotype, was a later product wrought by the moral anomaly created by inhumane slavery. For example, although the first Code Noir of Louis xiv allowed and indeed, encouraged interracial marriages between French, Indians and Africans-documentation of which exists in the records of the Cabildo at New Orleans, as published by world-famous, Louisiana-born, Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo-Hall-but, strictly forbid marriage to Jews (even if they were white!), because the issue of concern to the French, as represented in the person of King Louis xiv, was Catholicism not race as we think of it -as a consequence of the Anglo-American racial boxes of black or white. Catholicism was Gods way of salvation for all through Christ, and it was the Kings awesome duty to bring this to all nations; especially, to the sauvages (wild, untamed/uncivilized according to French ideals, granted) but not in the sense of barbarians, not yet). Color was not a concern in the Roman Catholic Christian mission. In proof of this, we need only see how the Churchs righteous Jesuit priests defied the later race-based marriage laws, continuing to marry interracial couples across the massive French Colonial Louisiana territory! See Dr. Jay Higginbothams, Old Mobile: Fort Louis de la Louisiane,1702-1711. Our Louisiana courthouse records dont lie, anymore than the marriage and baptismal records of the Roman Catholic Church. They simply reflect the documented history, material culture and social taxonomy of these Creole-formative periods of our history under both the French and Spanish Colonial periods, as well as, during and since the sale of the huge territory of la Louisiane to the Anglo-Americans in and after 1803. As we can all see, from the document below, the Spanish system of racial taxonomy was specific: metis/metif is NOT African nor is it mulatre, or mulatress these last two words respectively representing male and female children of African and Caucasian parents. However, there does exist documentation to illustrate that the hateful Anglo-American myopia of seeing Louisianas French-metis & Creole people as less than white and the threat this posed to white French Creoles, was alive and well. Some of these documents, such as in Zebulun Pikes Sources of the Mississippi & the Western Louisiana Territory published in 1810 and cited in Dr. Carl Ekbergs Stealing Indian Women: Native Slavery in the Illinois Country are highly recommended because we are presented with the real history and collision of two very different national and ideological cultures; that of the Anglo-American versus the French Creole & Metis world of La Nouvelle France, formerly, the Louisiana Purchase Territory. A fact which may explain the timidity of our white Creole French-metis people in later rejecting Creole as their cultural identifier, may be due to the additional fact, that these Anglo-American simpletons also sometimes regarded the metis children of Frenchmen as mulatre or mulatresse too! With this background, we can see how and why our white Creole-metis families of Louisianas northwestern French-speaking triangle would tremble at what they saw as a dangerous racial confusion-given the historic mistreatment and abuse of people of color introduced into the Louisiana Purchase territory after the Civil War, during the Jim Crow and Reconstruction era periods of the then-new, American Louisiana. And, these fears played well into the Anglo-American desire to crush and destroy the previous cultural and familial unity of ALL CREOLES in the territory of la Nouvelle France, and Louisiana as we know her, since 1803! Just as the Nazis used the fear of death to motivate otherwise decent men and women to commit racial atrocities against Jews and even Jehovahs Witnesses for not being politically-correct, the Anglo-American government enforced its brutal social order through fear and divisiveness. This occurred not only after Jim Crow, but into Reconstruction. With the introduction of the 1910 One Drop Rule and the later reinforcing lashes of 1920s era anti-miscegenation laws forbidding interracial marriage between blacks and whites, both men and families were driven into denial of their natural familial relations, to say nothing of the horrendous social divide and public denigration of people who were never quite white enough. But, the poor free people of color were to take abuse from both sides, being too white to be black and too black to be white. With this rare document, which proves unequivocally, that the extremely wealthy metis, Martin Donatto of St. Landry Parish, whose own father, Donatto Bello was an Italian, we see that the Anglo-American system was doomed to presume even Indians as blacks due to their narrow-minded perception and classification of ethnically diverse, but brunette or Latin peoples; and all based upon the most superficial appearances and physical features associated as non-white. And, blind hatred on the part of the racially insecure white metis/Creoles supported this Anglo-American world scheme which successfully paved the road to a bifurcation or separation of Louisianas historic culture into two ridiculous and previously, non-existing classes of white and black, and Cajun versus Creole after 1968; in black and white boxes, of course! What a remarkable and wonderful world was the French Colonial empire which drew diverse peoples and cultures together to produce, what was in the words of historian Thomas Fiehrer, ...a correspondingly new people-the product of trade contacts among three continents, and the vanguard of the French empire in the tropics. And, love happened against all the odds and expectations of the established order which sought to divide these diverse patriarchs of the Creole peoples of the former French Colonial world! Thomas Fiehrer was of course, referring to the Creoles or people born in the colonies of these three great racial populations which he tells us stretched from the Indian Ocean, to Senegal (West Africa) to Martinique and Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti) to New Orleans, Louisiana; and I will add, to what is now, Acadiana since 1971 and previously known as the Creole parishes before 1968 introduced CODOFIL and its re-writing of our cultural history to credit Acadian Canada with the creation of our multi-ethnic culture whose origins long antedate the arrival of the Acadians in the territory of Orleans or Louisiana after 1763. And, so now, we begin to realize how the commercially trumpeted Cajun cultural myth has trumped all history and reality for now, four decades with the apparent approval and complicity of Lafayettes University educators who know of these facts. Their only legacy will be one of everlasting dishonor as more and more educated people discover this mass-marketed deception. All honest Creoles rejoice with the truth and salute proudly, our Creoles de couleur and truly METIS-CREOLE family! Rejoice, now! You have the documentary evidence proving you were neither delusional nor dishonest! Photo from the Colonial Census documents first published by renown, Louisiana historical genealogist, Mr. Winston DeVille and brought to our attention by Mr. Jeremy Semien of Facebooks Louisiana Creole Post.
Posted on: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 15:13:11 +0000
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