Creole people

Creole peoples are ethnic groups formed during the European colonial era, from the mass displacement of peoples brought into sustained contact with others from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, who converged onto a colonial territory to which they had not previously belonged.

Often involuntarily uprooted from their original home, the settlers were obliged to develop and creatively merge the desirable elements from their diverse backgrounds, to produce new varieties of social, linguistic and cultural norms that superseded the prior forms. This process, known as creolization, is characterized by rapid social flux regularized into Creole ethnogenesis.

Creole peoples vary widely in ethnic background and mixture and many have since developed distinct ethnic identities. The development of creole languages is sometimes mistakenly attributed to the emergence of Creole ethnic identities; however, the two developments occur independently.

Etymology and overview

The English word derives from the French , which in turn came from Portuguese , a diminutive of ''cria'', meaning a person raised in one's house. ''Cria'' derives from , meaning "to raise or bring up", itself derived from the Latin , meaning "to make, bring forth, produce, beget"; — itself the source of the English word "create". The word Creole has several cognates in other languages, such as ''créole'', ''creolo'', ''criol'', ''criollo'', ''crioulo'', ''kreol'', ''kreyol'', ''krio'',
''kriol'', ''kriolu'', and ''kriyoyo''.

In Louisiana, the term Creole has been used since 1792 to represent descendants of African or mixed heritage parents as well as children of French and Spanish descent with no racial mixing. Its use to describe languages started from 1879, while as an adjective, from 1748. In some Spanish-speaking countries, the word '' Criollo'' is used today to describe something local or very typical of a particular Latin American country.

In the Caribbean, the term broadly refers to all the people, whatever their class or ancestry — African, East Asian, European, Indian — who are part of the culture of the Caribbean. In Trinidad, the term Creole is used to designate all Trinidadians except those of Asian origin. In French Guiana the term refers to anyone, regardless of skin colour, who has adopted a European way of life, and in neighbouring Suriname, the term refers only to the descendants of enslaved Africans.

In Africa, the term Creole refers to any ethnic group formed during the European colonial era, with some mix of African and non-African racial or cultural heritage. Creole communities are found on most African islands and along the continent's coastal regions where indigenous Africans first interacted with Europeans. As a result of these contacts, five major Creole types emerged: Portuguese, African American, Dutch, French and British.

The ''Crioulos'' of African or mixed Portuguese and African descent eventually gave rise to several ethnic groups in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe, Angola and Mozambique. The French-speaking Mauritian and Seychellois Creoles are both either African or ethnically mixed and Christianized. On Réunion, the term Creole applies to all people born on the island, while in South Africa, the blending of East African and Southeast Asian slaves with Dutch settlers, later produced a creolized population. The Fernandino Creole peoples of Equatorial Guinea are a mix of Afro-Cubans with Emancipados and English-speaking Liberated Africans, while the Americo-Liberians and Sierra Leone Creoles resulted from the intermingling of African Recaptives with Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans.

Perhaps due to the range of divergent descriptions and lack of a coherent definition, Norwegian anthropologist T. H. Eriksen concludes:

The following ethnic groups have been historically characterized as "Creole" peoples:

* Afro-Brazilian Crioulos
* Aku Krio people
* Atlantic Creoles
* Belizean Kriol people
* Cape Verdeans (Crioulos)
* Criollo people (European diaspora born in the Spanish colonies in the Americas)
* Fernandino Creole peoples
* Haitian Creole people
** Affranchis
* Afro-Honduran Creoles
* Liberian Creole people
* Louisiana Creole people
** Creoles of color
* Mauritian Creole people
** also Réunion Creole
* Seychellois Creole people
* Sierra Leone Creole people
* Surinamese Creole people

United States

Alaska

Alaskan Creole has its own unique and local definition with similar terminology implying people of mixed Alaska Native and Russian ancestry, sometimes colloquially spelled "Kriol" in English (from Russian креол). The intermingling of ''promyshlenniki'' men with Aleut and Alutiiq women in the late 18th century gave rise to a people who assumed a prominent position in the economy of Russian America and the North Pacific Rim.

Chesapeake Colonies

Atlantic Creole is a term coined by historian Ira Berlin to describe a group of people from Angola and Central Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries with cultural or ethnic ties to Africa, Europe, and sometimes the Caribbean. Some of these people arrived in the Chesapeake Colonies as the Charter Generation of slaves during the European colonization of the Americas before 1660. Some had lived and worked in Europe or the Caribbean before coming (or being transported) to North America. Examples of such men included John Punch and Emanuel Driggus (his surname was likely derived from Rodrigues).
Also, during the early settlement of the colonies, children born of immigrants in the colonies were often referred to as "Creole". This is found more often in the Chesapeake Colonies.

Louisiana

In the United States, the words "Louisiana Creole" refers to people of any race or mixture thereof who are descended from colonial French La Louisiane and colonial Spanish Louisiana (New Spain) settlers before the Louisiana region became part of the United States in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase. Both the word and the ethnic group derive from a similar usage, beginning in the Caribbean in the 16th century, which distinguished people born in the French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies from the various new arrivals born in their respective, non-Caribbean homelands. Some writers from other parts of the country have mistakenly assumed the term to refer only to people of mixed racial descent, but this is not the traditional Louisiana usage.Dominguez, Virginia R. ''White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana.'' New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986.Dormon, James H. ''Louisiana's 'Creoles of Color': Ethnicity, Marginality, and Identity,'' Social Science Quarterly 73, No. 3, 1992: 615-623.Eaton, Clement. ''A History of the Old South: The Emergence of a Reluctant Nation,'' third edition. New York: Macmillan, 1975.Fowler, H.W. (1926) ''A Dictionary of Modern English Usage'', Oxford University Press

In Louisiana, the term "Creole" was first used to describe people born in Louisiana, who used the term to distinguish themselves from newly arrived immigrants. It was not a racial or ethnic identifier; it was simply synonymous with "born in the New World," meant to separate native-born people of any ethnic background—white, African, or any mixture thereof—from European immigrants and slaves imported from Africa. Later, the term was racialized after newly arrived Anglo-Americans began to associate créolité, or the quality of being Creole, with racially mixed ancestry. This caused many white Creoles to eventually abandon the label out of fear that the term would lead mainstream Americans to believe them to be of racially mixed descent (and thus endanger their livelihoods or social standing). Later writers occasionally make distinctions among French Creoles (of European ancestry), Creoles of Color (of mixed ethnic ancestry), and occasionally, African Creoles (of primarily African descendant); these categories, however, are later inventions, and most primary documents from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries make use of the word "Creole" without any additional qualifier. Creoles of Spanish and German descent also exist, and Spanish Creoles survive today as Isleños and Malagueños, both found in southern Louisiana. However, all racial categories of Creoles - from Caucasian, mixed racial, African, to Native American - tended to think and refer to themselves solely as Creole, a commonality in many other Francophone and Iberoamerican cultures, who tend to lack strict racial separations common in United States History and other countries with large populations from Northern Europe's various cultures. This racial neutrality persists to the modern day, as many Creoles do not use race as a factor for being a part of the ethno-culture.

Contemporary usage has again broadened the meaning of Louisiana Creoles to describe a broad cultural group of people of all races who share a colonial Louisianian background. Louisianians who identify themselves as "Creole" are most commonly from historically Francophone and Hispanic communities. Some of their ancestors came to Louisiana directly from France, Spain, or Germany, while others came via the French and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and Canada. Many Louisiana Creole families arrived in Louisiana from Saint-Domingue as refugees from the Haitian Revolution, along with other immigrants from Caribbean colonial centers like Santo Domingo and Havana. The children of slaves brought primarily from Western Africa were also considered Creoles, as were children born of unions between Native Americans and non-Natives. Creole culture in Louisiana thus consists of a unique blend of European, Native American, and African cultures.

Louisianians descended from the French Acadians of Canada are also Creoles in a strict sense, and there are many historical examples of people of full European ancestry and with Acadian surnames, such as the influential Alexandre and Alfred Mouton, being explicitly described as "Creoles." Today, however, the descendants of the Acadians are more commonly referred to as, and identify as, 'Cajuns'—a derivation of the word Acadian, indicating French Canadian settlers as ancestors. The distinction between "Cajuns" and "Creoles" is stronger today than it was in the past because American racial ideologies have strongly influenced the meaning of the word "Creole" to the extent that there is no longer unanimous agreement among Louisianians on the word's precise definition. Today, many assume that any francophone person of European descent is Cajun and any francophone of African descent is Creole—a false assumption that would not have been recognized in the nineteenth century. Some assert that "Creole" refers to aristocratic urbanites whereas "Cajuns" are agrarian members of the francophone working class, but this is another relatively recent distinction. Creoles may be of any race and live in any area, rural or urban. The Creole culture of Southwest Louisiana is thus more similar to the culture dominant in Acadiana than it is to the Creole culture of New Orleans. Though the land areas overlap around New Orleans and down river, Cajun/Creole culture and language extend westward all along the southern coast of Louisiana, concentrating in areas southwest of New Orleans around Lafayette, and as far as Crowley, Abbeville, and into the rice belt of Louisiana nearer Lake Charles and the Texas border.

Louisiana Creoles historically spoke a variety of languages; today, the most prominent include Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole. (There is a distinction between "Creole" people and the "creole" language. Not all Creoles speak creole—many speak French, Spanish, or English as primary languages.) Spoken creole is dying with continued 'Americanization' in the area. Most remaining Creole lexemes have drifted into popular culture. Traditional creole is spoken among those families determined to keep the language alive or in regions below New Orleans around St. James and St. John Parishes where German immigrants originally settled (also known as 'the German Coast', or La Côte des Allemands) and cultivated the land, keeping the ill-equipped French Colonists from starvation during the Colonial Period and adopting commonly spoken French and creole (arriving with the exiles) as a language of trade.
Creoles are largely Roman Catholic and influenced by traditional French and Spanish culture left from the first Colonial Period, officially beginning in 1722 with the arrival of the Ursuline Nuns, who were preceded by another order, the sisters of the Sacred Heart, with whom they lived until their first convent could be built with monies from the French Crown. (Both orders still educate girls in 2010). The "fiery Latin temperament" described by early scholars on New Orleans culture made sweeping generalizations to accommodate Creoles of Spanish heritage as well as the original French. The mixed-race Creoles, descendants of mixing of European colonists, slaves, and Native Americans or sometimes ''Gens de Couleur'' (free men and women of colour), first appeared during the colonial periods with the arrival of slave populations. Most Creoles, regardless of race, generally consider themselves to share a collective culture. Non-Louisianans often fail to appreciate this and assume that all Creoles are of mixed race, which is historically inaccurate.

Louisiane Creoles were also referred to as ''criollos'', a word from the Spanish language meaning "created" and used in the post-French governance period to distinguish the two groups of New Orleans area and down river Creoles. Both mixed race and European Creole groups share many traditions and language, but their socio-economic roots differed in the original period of Louisiana history. Actually, the French word Créole is derived from the Portuguese word ''Crioulo'', which described people born in the Americas as opposed to Spain.

The term is often used to mean simply "pertaining to the New Orleans