Acadian to Cajun: Transformation of a People, 1803-1877 - Softcover

Brasseaux, Carl A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0878055835 ISBN 13: 9780878055838

Publisher: University Press of Mississippi, 1992

Synopsis

This book is the first to examine comprehensively the demographic growth, cultural evolution, and political involvement of Louisiana's large Acadian community between the time of the Louisiana Purchase (1803), when the transplanted culture began to take on a decidedly Louisiana character, and 1877, the end of Reconstruction in Louisiana, when traditional distinctions between Acadians and neighboring groups had ceased to be valid.

Serving as a model for ethnohistories of other nonliterate peoples, Acadian to Cajun reveals how authentic cultural history can be derived from alternative historical resources when primary materials such as newspapers, correspondence, and diaries are not available. Here, Carl A. Brasseaux assembles a composite picture of this large Cajun community. From civil records, federal census reports, ecclesiastical registers, legislative acts, and electoral returns, he reveals the astonishing cultural transformation of the Acadians of Nova Scotia into the Cajuns of Louisiana.

About this title

Book Description:

A study of unusual documentary resources that disclose the processes of cultural evolution that transformed the Acadians of early Louisiana into the Cajuns of today

From the Back Cover:

Students of Acadian history have traditionally focused their attention upon the dispersal of Nova Scotia's Acadian population in 1755 and upon the reestablishment of numerous exiles in Louisiana's bayou country. The subsequent transformation of the exile's transplanted culture in this new, and radically different, subtropical environment, on the other hand, has been completely overlooked by Acadian scholars. This work is the first to examine comprehensively the demographic growth, cultural evolution, and political involvement of Louisiana's large Acadian community between the time of the Louisiana Purchase (1803), when the transplanted culture began to take on a decidedly Louisiana character, and 1877, the end of Reconstruction in Louisiana, when traditional distinctions between Acadians and neighboring groups had ceased to be valid. Tracing the course of Acadian transformation is difficult because of few primary source materials, such as newspapers, correspondence, and diaries, as well as the society's widespread illiteracy. Thus the author of this volume developed innovative methodological techniques for extracting information from alternative historical resources, including civil records, federal census reports, ecclesiastical registers, legislative acts, and electoral returns. When used individually, these varied documentary resources provide a shallow, one-dimensional view of nineteenth-century Acadian/Cajun society, but, taken together, they afford a broad view of a largely nonliterate people whose contemporary oral traditions are now all but forgotten. This work serves as a model for compiling ethnohistories of other nonliterate peoples.

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0878055835
• ISBN 13: 9780878055838
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 276