Quote:
Originally Posted by Deezus
New Orleans has the purest Spanish colonial architecture(of a certain era) of any major US city in the "French" Quarter. I think amlost majority of the architecture that we think of being the Quarter(wrought-iron balconies) was built under Spanish rule. There's a number of French-influenced buildings as well and the result is sort of a mix, but it's very reminiscint of the Spanish Carribbean. I remember seeing parts of the Casco Viejo(old quarter) of Panama City that looked similar, same with pictures of San Juan or Havana. A lot of the other US cities that were under Spanish rule however brief, don't have much architecture left from that era. And Santa Fe and Albuqueque have their old districts, but it's the Spanish/Pueblo adobe mix of architectural styles rather than a pure Spanish colonial style. A lot of other US cities that were once ruled by the Spanish might have some old mission churches from that era, but not much else.
Though the culture of New Orleans was more influenced by French emigrees from Haiti and the mix of black Carribbean culture and Southern black culture. But in some ways in terms of attitude it's the most "Latin" feeling of US cities in regards to a more relaxed nature(late night culture, festive musical city)... But I don't know if it's neccesarily Spanish in feel--though there are elements from the Spanish in the area. There were immigrants from the Canary Islands to the south of New Orleans in Louisiana as well.
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"Did Hispañola Create Louisiana culture?" by Christophe Landry
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These are some points I offered to a contact who asked if Louisiana Creole culture was most influenced by Saint-Domingue (Haiti/Dominican Republic) refugees who fled to Louisiana at the beginning of the 19th century.The answer is NO. See why below.
This not at all exhaustive, but offers some channels through which to understand cultural synthesis that created Louisiana culture as defined by the beginning of the 19th century, when Saint-Domingue refugees arrived.
Some key points:
1. Most people are ill-informed.
2. Most people rely on hearsay, rather than research.
3. If you consider the population makeup of Louisiana, it contained the same ingredients as other Latin colonies: roughly, Europeans, Africans and folks who predated them in the Americas.
4. Sources suggest that roughly 2/3 of the slaves that came to Louisiana during the first French period (up until 1764) were composed of Sénégal, Mandinga and Wolof (from the Senegambian region).
5. During this period, fur and pelt traders (fourriers and pelletiers), woodsmen (courreurs de bois), military officers (offered a position in the military if they’d leave the Kingdoms of Navarre and France) from present-day Québec and cities like Grenoble, Bordeaux, Nantes, Paris. The nation we know of as France in 2010 was far from unified culturally and linguistically, back then.
6. We have reason to believe that during this period, there was some, but limited, traffic between other French colonies in the Americas (Saint-Domingue, Martinique).
7. Along the Mississippi, John Law, the economist who was awarded a monopoly trade deal with France called The Company of the West (Later, Company of the Indies), successfully establish about 1,000 Prussians at that point on the Mississippi called The German Coast, or, La Côte-des-Allemands, now St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes. Families well known in Louisiana in 2010 descend from these resettlers: Folse (Foltz), Vicknair (Wickner), Waguespack (Wagenspack), Darensbourg (von Arensberg/d’Arensbourg), Theal (Thiel), Ritter, Matherne (Mattern), Wagner, Troxler and Frederick (Friedrich). These families were predominantly Rheinlanders (from the Rheinland region) and Germanophone Swiss.
8. There is evidence suggesting that during this period, lands west of the Mississippi in present-day Louisiana, virtually had no geopolitical boundaries distinguishing it from Spanish Tejas and that through the Caddo and Ishák (Atákapa), the French military commandants in Natchitoches, Opelousas and the Attakapas benefited economically and militarily from interactions with these three groups and their relatives on both the “Louisiana side” and the “Spanish Tejas” side. The military commandant at the Natchitoches Post, Louis JUCHEREAU de Saint-Denys, was imprisoned on several occasions in Mexico City for illegal trading through the Caddos in areas around Nacogdoches, TX.
9. We have reason to believe that because of those interactions in number 7, the Spanish colonial ranching industry quickly spread to the Natchitoches, Opelousas and Attakapas districts in French Louisiana and that there was extensive marrying among all involved (Afro-Euro-Caddo-Atákapa-etc). As early as the 1740s, André MASSE established a Cattle Ranch on Bayou Teche and attempted another on the Trinity River in Southeast Texas, both among Ishák (Atákapa), worked almost autonomously by 20 Wolof slaves (statue libers*) and a handful of Ishák slaves.
10. By Spanish Louisiana period (1768-1803), the cultural makeup of provincial Louisiana (excluding New Orleans) was predominantly Caddo, Ishák, Tænsas and Tunicas (Northwest LA, then extreme Southeast), Chétimachas (Bayou Lafourche), Biloxi (in and around New Orleans), Québécois from all across the province of Québec, Parisians, Grenoblais, Bordelais, Nantais, Wolofs, Sénégals, Mandingas, Manégas and Bambaras.
11. New Orleans proper, remained somewhat a phenomenon of its own, since this was the location of the High Colonial Courts (Superior Council), Governor, Mayor, Archdiocese and so on. Back then, Métairie, which was then known as Tchoupitoulas, was BFE (bum f*kc Egypt), and so was Bayou St. John and the area where Audubon Park was (once the very large plantation of Étienne DE BORÉ).
Despite its particularly small size (the city of NOLA was literally the Vieux Carré), those located therein were as influenced by plantation life as those who lived there, since NOLA was the place where folks purchased slaves, sold goods, purchased goods, entered into business partnerships, requested/obtained/transferred concessions of land and so on. Those who lived there were only convinced that they retained distinctly French customs, traditions, mannerism and so on, and went out of their way to prove it. In practice, they were more creole (locally bred) than French.
12. The Spanish officials arrived in 1766 with Antonio DE ULLOA (first Spanish governor) and were met with bayonets and guns from the local Francophones who were not happy, nor interested in Spaniards running their affairs. He deserted the governorship in 1768.
Charles-Philippe AUBRY, the last French governor, replaced DE ULLOA until 1769 when Carlos III sent Irish-born Captain-General Alejandro “Bloody O’Reilly” O’REILLY to take over. Which he did for only one year, before being replaced by Luis DE UNZAGA.
Right off you notice the turbulent legal affairs with the colony. The Spanish crown could not keep a governor in office and the local Francophones** (and Creolophones***) wanted them out.
13. There is evidence that suggests, in Louisiana primary historical documents (civil), that the Spaniards were determined to beef up the colony with their own kind, that is, speakers of Spanish (Hispanophones). A few *of the attempts were successful at establishing permanent inhabitants, one being the 60 Malagueños and Granadenses that gave New Iberia its name, another 1700 Canarios from Las Palmas, Fuerteventura and other islands of the Canarias on Bayou Lafourche (the city of Gonzáles, LA gets its name from them and their legacy lies in the “Spanish Town” Mardi Gras parade in Bâton-Rouge), another small settlement at Gálveztown (Bayou Manchac, which turned out fatal due to military conflict) and the ones most known, the Canarios (y otros hispanohablantes) at Bayou Terre-aux-Bœufs (Tierra de los Bueyes) and De la Croix Island in St Bernard Parish.
14. We’ve also strong reason, through civil records, to believe that the Spaniards, abhorred by Muslims, switched the pool from which slaves from West Africa came. The previous French administrations took from their own concession of Senegambia, which is/was heavily Muslim. The Spanish halted that all together and sent mostly Congos to the colonies.
15. Between 1765 and 1770, Louisiana administrators accepted resettlement of some 1300 refugees from Maryland, Halifax (Nova Scotia), Saint-Domingue and Georgia. 660 of them were sent to present-day St. James Parish (called La Première Côte des Acadiens). 241 were sent to resettle at St-Gabriel (Mississippi-Bayou Lafourche juncture). 195 were sent to the Attakapas District (along Bayous Teche, Vermilion, Carencro). Finally, 149 were sent to San Luis de Natchez (Natchez, MS). Between 1785 and 1788, 7 more ships arrived with (1400) refugees, this time from France by way of England. 600 of them were sent to upper Bayou Lafourche at Ascension and Assumption parishes (then called La Deuxième Côte des Acadiens), 271 at Bayou des Écores (Thompson’s Creek), 145 at Bâton-Rouge and about 124 at Manchac (Tangipahoa Parish).
16. I’ve provided figures in question 14 only to illustrate that when considering the population at Upper Bayou Lafourche in 1790, Acadians (850 of them) represented roughly 33%, whereas the Canarios represented nearly 67% (almost 1700 at this location alone).
At the Attakapas, in 1771, Acadians only represented roughly 30% of the Attakapas population.
17. In the 1770s and 1780s, Irish and Scotch (or, Scots, if you prefer) descended folks from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, predominantly Catholics, such as the COLLINS, settled in Louisiana in places like The Opelousas Post. Other families included the O’BRYANs, O’CONNORs, FULTONs, JOYs and HOPKINS. They were then met by growing number of Anglo-Saxons, some directly from England, like the WHITEs.
And such was the population makeup near the turn of the 19th century: Nagos, Yorubas, Congos, Sénégals, Bambaras, Wolofs, Mandingas, Parisians, Madrileños, Canarios, Malgueños, Catholic Irish, Catholic Prussians, Alsatians, Lorrainers, Acadians, Québécois, Biloxi, Tunica, Chétimachas, Bayougoula, Ishák, Caddo, Tejanos.
18. You should consider that each settlement in the colony remained a bit isolated (there was no TV, mobile phones, etc) and their evolution was not linear, but clustered, meaning, what happened in NOLA did not influence daily life in Natchitoches, the Canarios on Bayou Lafourche did not influence life in the Attakapas, and what happened on the Louisiana Savannah in ranching, did not effect NOLA folks.
19. By the time the insurrections took place on Hispañola/Saint-Domingue, Louisiana already had a full-fledged colonial/creole/Latin culture (and sub-cultures) of its own, with French, Louisiana Creole already spoken there since the beginning of the first French period. That’s 60 years of cultural synthesis.
20. Through perusing civil records from the first French period, we know that Louisiana Creole was already spoken as early as 1735-1740 from court proceedings related to conspiracies and slave revolts and petty crimes for which slaves were brought in to testify, and their testimonies were transcribed verbatim: Louisiana Creole, not French.
21. The waves of Saint-Domingue refugees must be understood from two prisms: those directly from Saint-Domingue and those born in Cuba then arriving in Louisiana.
The latter group, culturally, were at the very least Cubanos, not Saint-Domingue Creoles. They likely spoke Saint-Domingue Creole and perhaps Saint-Domingue French, but they also spoke Cubano, which isn’t spoken on Saint-Domingue’s western portion. So, culturally, this group of refugees are most akin to the canarios at Bayou Terre-aux-Bœufs than they are to folks in Port-au-Prince.
The former group, clearly were culturally Saint-Domingue Creoles, speaking either or both of S-D’s languages.
22. Roughly 10,000 refugees from both Cuba and Saint-Domingue arrived in New Orleans between 1800 and 1810. 2,710 were whites, 3,100 were Free people of Color, and 3,200 were slaves. Once in Louisiana, the general scope of the S-D refugees was NOLA, with a few exceptions (St. Mary Parish). All other districts only received a handful, at most, of refugees (free and slave) from NOLA.
It is therefore safe to argue that NOLA and NOLA alone was most influenced by the Saint-Domingue revolution.
23. Within Louisiana, as mentioned above, each district had its own sub-culture and only the leading elite families there had ties to NOLA, physical ones, and visited back and forth. They, naturally, would not be in a position to sit and chat with former slaves from Saint-Domingue or GDCL about it, they would sit and speak with the slave owners with whom they shared that affinity.
How then would that change what happens in the districts? The owners of slaves freaked out! Afraid of a similar fate. They most often rejected slaves from Saint-Domingue at market (Afraid they’d contaminate spirit of slaughter among their own LA-born slaves).
24. In 1811, Charles DESLONDES, a slave and slave-driver on the plantation of Colonel Émmanuel “Manuel” ANDRÉ in St Charles Parish, devised a slave uprising, noted as being the largest in U.S. history. As a result, heightened paranoia set in among slave holders and legislators, resulting in increased disfranchisement of Free People of Color, Gens de couleur libres, or Gente de color libre. Social conditions and legal restrictions were so impressive that more than 10,000 Louisiana Free People of Color fled to Mexico and thousands more to Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico when the Spanish Crown issued the Royal Decree, or Cédula de Gracias in 1815 offering free land and tax breaks.
In closing, refugees from Hispañola (Saint-Domingue) contributed immensely to the blossoming of the arts (theatre, opera, plays), skilled labor (silversmiths, ironsmiths, architects, bakers, engineers). The ranks of educators, composers, writers, poets, statesmen and visionaries skyrocketed as a result of the Saint-Domingue revolution and specifically in New Orleans.
As we have seen, that upward mobility spiraled downward by the Civil War, leading to the migration of thousands of New Orleans’s skilled class (free) and leaving vestiges in permanent fixtures in 2010, like the gorgeous ironworks on NOLA balconies in the Vieux Carré, the sounds of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s classical music and nostalgia, from a time when French and Creole were spoken natively in New Orleans.
A NOLA memory of the recent past for some and of the distant past for others.
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