page_title: Acadiana
section_title: People
hierarchical_section_title: Acadiana / People
caption_attribution_description: Free woman of color with quadroon daughter; late 18th century collage painting, New Orleans. Presumably the are posed in front of their home.
context_page_description: Acadiana is the official name given to the French Louisiana region that was historically home to the state's Francophone population. Many are of Acadian descent and now identify as Cajuns or Louisiana Creoles. Of the 64 parishes that make up the U.S. state of Louisiana, 22 named parishes and other parishes of similar cultural environment make up this intrastate region.
context_section_description: Cajuns are the descendants of 18th-century Acadian exiles from what are now Canada's Maritime Provinces, expelled by the British and New Englanders during and after the French and Indian War (see Expulsion of the Acadians). They prevail among the region's visible cultures, but not everyone who lives in Acadiana is ethnically Acadian or speaks Louisiana French. Similarly, not everyone who is culturally "Cajun" is descended from the Acadian refugees.
  German and Polish settlers found their way to this area as early as 1721, settling an area that became known as the German Coast. They preceded the Acadians. Acadiana is home to several Native American tribes, including the Chitimacha, Houma, Tunica-Biloxi, Attakapas, and Coushatta. Acadiana also is home to other ethnic groups, including Anglo-Americans, who came into the region in increasing numbers beginning notably with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Since the late 20th century, political refugees from Southeast Asia (Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, among others) have brought their families, cultures, and languages to the area, and have contributed significantly to its fishing industry.
  The region also boasts a large population of Creoles, descendants of the region's original "Old World" settlers who arrived in Louisiana before and after the arrival of the Acadians. In the broadest sense, the term "Creole" has been used to denote anyone who is "native to Louisiana", regardless of race or ethnic origin. In this sense, Creoles can identify as black, white, and persons of mixed-race origin. The term has also come to denote cultural origins in addition to racial classification. While many in Acadiana associate Creoles specifically with those people descended from the gens de couleur libres, others cling to the word's original definition,  so Creoles of every ethnic background are still present in the region. Many Creoles also identify as Cajuns (and vice-versa), whereas others reject association with one identity while still claiming the other. The two identities have never been mutually exclusive of one another, and documents written in Acadiana throughout the 19th century often make references to Acadiana's "Creole populations" that are understood to include people of full or partial Acadian descent. 
  Prior to the U.S. Civil War, some Creoles of color, because of their mixed-race status, were able to escape or altogether avoid the condition of enslavement. Being a French, and later Spanish colony, Louisiana had a racial classification system that was much more identical to that of many Latin American and Caribbean countries. 
   
  
  During the antebellum period, these people were known as free people of color. They played an important role in the history of New Orleans and South Louisiana, both when the area was controlled by the French and Spanish, and after acquisition by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. When French settlers and traders first arrived in these colonies, the men frequently took Native American women as their concubines or common-law wives (see Marriage 'à la façon du pays'). When African slaves were imported to the colony, the colonists took African women as concubines or wives. In the colonial period of French and Spanish rule, men tended to marry later after becoming financially established. Later, when more white families had settled or developed here, some young French men or ethnic French Creoles still took mixed-race women as mistresses, known as placées, before they officially married. The free people of color developed formal arrangements for placées, which the young women's mothers negotiated. Under the system of plaçage, often the mothers arranged a kind of dowry or property transfer to their daughters, including freedom for them and their children if the young woman was still enslaved, and education for the children. The French Creole men often paid for education of their "natural" (illegitimate) mixed-race children from these relationships, especially if they were sons, generally sending them to France to be educated. Some of these s
caption: Free woman of color with quadroon daughter: Late 18th-century collage painting, New Orleans
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