Editing Creole peoples (section)

=== Louisiana ===
{{Main|Louisiana Creole people|Creoles of color}}
{{multiple image
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| image1 = Portrait of a Black Man by Julien Hudson 1835.jpg
| image2 = Creole women of color out taking the air, from a watercolor series by Édouard Marquis, New Orleans, 1867.jpg
| image3 = Portrait of Matias Francisco Alpuente y Ruiz by José Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza.jpg
| caption1 = A Creole of [[New Orleans]]
| caption2 = Bourgeois [[Louisiana Creoles|Louisiana Creole]] girls in fashionable dress
| caption3 = New Orleans Creole Matias Alpuente
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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.<ref name="Louisiana1">Dominguez, Virginia R. ''White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana.'' New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986.</ref><ref name="Louisiana2">Dormon, James H. ''Louisiana's 'Creoles of Color': Ethnicity, Marginality, and Identity,'' Social Science Quarterly 73, No. 3, 1992: 615-623.</ref><ref name="Louisiana3">Eaton, Clement. ''A History of the Old South: The Emergence of a Reluctant Nation,'' third edition. New York: Macmillan, 1975.</ref><ref name="Fowler">Fowler, H.W. (1926) ''A Dictionary of Modern English Usage'', Oxford University Press</ref>

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.<ref name="Louisiana1"/><ref name="Louisiana2"/><ref name="Louisiana3"/>

Contemporary usage has again broadened the meaning of [[Louisiana Creole people|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 [[French language|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,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Buman |first1=Nathan |title=Two histories, one future: Louisiana sugar planters, their slaves, and the Anglo-Creole schism, 1815-1865 |url=https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2907&context=gradschool_dissertations |access-date=2019-07-23 |archive-date=2021-08-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210804064752/https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2907&context=gradschool_dissertations |url-status=live }}</ref> being explicitly described as "Creoles."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Landry |first1=Christophe |title=Attakapas Post Spanish Militia Rolls, 1792 |url=http://www.mylhcv.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/1792-Militia.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.mylhcv.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/1792-Militia.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live}}</ref> 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{{citation needed|date=April 2019}}. 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{{citation needed|date=April 2019}}. 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{{citation needed|date=April 2019}}. 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.

[[File:Free Woman of Color with daughter NOLA Collage.jpg|thumb|[[Free people of color|Free woman of color]] with [[mixed-race]] daughter; late 18th-century collage painting, New Orleans]]
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 [[Ursulines|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]] area," but this, too, is not historically accurate. People all across the Louisiana territory, including the ''[[Illinois Country|pays des Illinois]],'' identified as Creoles, as evidenced by the continued existence of the term ''Créole'' in the critically endangered [[Missouri French]].