SLSL "TSR" Cajuns

[pynchonoid]

"It's the goddam Cajuns again." (31) 

Hollander's observation is apt:
"The destroyed town in the story is Creole, and the
victims of the flood are largely Cajuns. Cajuns are
descended from dispossessed Acadians, French Canadians
captured by the British in 1755 during the French and
Indian War, removed from their farms in Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick by force of arms, and forcibly
resettled on Bayou Teche. These folk, romanticized in
Longfellow's Evangeline, are the first of Pynchon's
subcultures of the dispossessed, not unlike the
Ojibwa, the gypsies, the Annamese, or the American
blacks who appear in the other short stories."

http://www.vheissu.be/art/art_eng_SL_hollander.htm
Charles Hollander, Pynchon's Politics: The Presence of
an Absence
originally published in: Pynchon Notes, 26-27
(spring-fall 1990, pp. 5-59 )

The 1959 publication date for TSR also puts it ahead
of the revival of Cajun culture and pride in that
heritage that took hold in the '60s.  (My sixth-grade
teacher, Mrs. Savoy, was a leading light in the move
to re-introduce French language instruction in the
Lafayette, Louisiana elementary schools, as part of a
broader effort at the local university, SLU --
Southwestern Louisiana University, which I think may
have since been renamed and made part of the LSU
system). Cajuns were looked down on by many non-Cajuns
-- the occupying Army, as seen in TSR, and by
managers/executives/bankers who flocked to this part
of Louisiana as part of the oil boom (which also
brought my father and our family to New Orleans in the
very early '50s, then on to Lafayette). 

The Cajun/Creole distinction is also an interesting
one.  I've always understood Creole to incorporate a
far larger ethnic and racial mixing that results in a
south Louisiana culture, centered in New Orleans, with
Spanish, Native American, Caribbean, African, and
French influences.  Cajun culture is not free of those
influences, but, in my experience at least, focuses
more closely on the descendents of the French refugees
from Canada.  



http://www.cajunculture.com/Other/cajun.htm
Dictionaries generally define Cajun as "a Louisianian
who descends from French-speaking Acadians."  However,
many common Cajun surnames — for instance, Soileau,
Romero, Huval, Fontenot — are not Acadian in origin,
but rather are Spanish, German or French Creole.  Some
are even of Anglo or Scotch-Irish origin, as in the
case of famed Cajun musicians Lawrence Walker and
Dennis McGee.  For this reason, contemporary scholars
of Cajun history and culture tend to offer a more
complex, comprehensive view, attributing the traits of
modern-day Cajuns to a dynamic, unending process of
ethnic interaction.  Although modern Cajuns are
largely homogenous, their ancestry consists of a
mixture of many ethnic groups.   Most early Acadians
originated in the Centre-Ouest region of France, but
others came from families of Spanish, Irish, Scottish,
English, Basque, and, in a few instances, American
Indian heritage.  After their 1755 expulsion from Nova
Scotia, Acadians seeking refuge in South Louisiana
again intermixed with other ethnic groups,
particularly with French, Spanish, German, and, later,
Anglo-American settlers, as well as Indians (albeit to
a lesser extent).  Historian Carl A. Brasseaux has
shown, for example, that after the Civil War over
fifty percent of brides and grooms with Acadian
surnames were marrying persons with non-Acadian
surnames.  In addition, Cajuns borrowed much of their
culture from their black Creole neighbors.  This
cross-cultural pollination in Acadia and South
Louisiana changed many dissimilar ethnic groups into a
single new ethnic group — the Cajuns.  Cajuns thus
derive not only from French-speaking Acadians, but
from several ethnic groups over which Acadian culture
prevailed (at least until this century, when Cajuns
underwent a wide-spread process of rapid
Americanization).  (See also "Cultural Cajun")

Sources: Ancelet et al., Cajun Country; Brasseaux,
Acadian to Cajun; Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia;
Dormon, People Called Cajuns.


http://www.cajunculture.com/Other/creole.htm
Always a controversial and confusing term, the word
Creole, to put it simply, means many things to many
people.  It derives from the Latin creare, meaning "to
beget" or "create."   After the New World’s discovery,
Portuguese colonists used the word crioulo to denote a
New World slave of African descent.  Eventually, the
word was applied to all New World colonists,
regardless of ethnic origin, living along the Gulf
Coast, especially in Louisiana.  There the Spanish
introduced the word as criollo, and during Louisiana’s
colonial period (1699-1803) the evolving word Creole
generally referred to persons of African or European
heritage born in the New World.  By the nineteenth
century, black, white, and mixed-race Louisianians
used the term to distinguish themselves from
foreign-born and Anglo-American settlers.  It was
during that century that the mixed-race Creoles of
Color (or gens de couleur libre, "free persons of
color") came into their own as an ethnic group,
enjoying many of the legal rights and privileges of
whites.  They occupied a middle ground between whites
and enslaved blacks, and as such often possessed
property and received formal educations.   After the
Civil War, most Creoles of Color lost their privileged
status and joined the ranks of impoverished former
black slaves.  All the while, however, the word Creole
persisted as a term also referring to white
Louisianians, usually of upper-class, non-Cajun origin
(although, confusingly, even Cajuns sometimes were
called Creoles, primarily by outsiders unfamiliar with
local ethnic labels).  Like the Creoles of Color,
these white Creoles (also called French Creoles)
suffered socioeconomic decline after the Civil War. 
In Acadiana, newly impoverished white Creoles often
intermarried with the predominantly lower-class
Cajuns, and were largely assimilated into Cajun
culture.  Many names of French Creole origin, like
Soileau, Fontenot, and François, are now widely
considered Cajun.  And today Creole is most often used
in Acadiana to refer to persons of full or mixed
African heritage.  It is generally understood among
these Creoles that Creole of Color still refers to
Creoles of mixed-race heritage, while the term black
Creole refers to Creoles of more or less pure African
descent.  Increasingly, both African-derived groups
are putting aside old animosities (based largely on
skin color and social standing) to work for mutual
preservation, and as such often merely describe
themselves as Creole.   In 1982 they founded a
preservation group, C.R.E.O.L.E., Inc. (Cultural
Resourceful Educational Opportunities toward
Linguistic Enrichment), which operates along the lines
of CODOFIL.  In 1990 they began to publish Creole
Magazine, which contains articles by and about Creoles
in southwest Louisiana.  Their popular ethnic music,
known as zydeco, is celebrated annually at the
Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Festival in Plaisance. 
Creoles of African descent exerted a strong influence
on Cajun culture (and vice versa), affecting, for
example, the Cajuns' music, foodways, and religious
practices.  Ultimately, however, the word Creole
remains murky, with some individuals (black, white,
and mixed-race) futilely claiming the right of
exclusive use.   As the Encyclopedia of Southern
Culture states, perhaps the "safest" course is to say
that a Creole is "anyone who says he is one."

Sources: Brasseaux, Creoles of Color in the Bayou
Country; Dormon, "Preface"; Encyclopedia of Southern
Culture; Reed, 1001 Things Everybody Should Know about
the South; Tregle, "Creoles and Americans"; Tregle,
"On that Word ‘Creole’ Again."





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