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Further information: Cajuns and Louisiana Creole people
At the 2000 U.S. census the total population of Acadiana was 1,352,646 residents. At the 2019 American Community Survey, the tabulated population of Acadiana was an estimated 1,490,449. In 2020, the tabulated population of Acadiana's parishes was 1,486,345.
The Cajun and Creole population of Crowley enjoying a Cajun music concert in 1938
The quasi-eponymous 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.[citation needed]
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.
A painting of bourgeois Creole ladies
The region also boasts a large population of Creoles, descendants of the region's original 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 (free people of color), others cling to the word's original definition, so Creoles of every ethnic background are still present in the region. Some Creoles also identify as Cajuns (and vice versa), whereas others reject association with one identity while claiming the other. Documents written in Acadiana throughout the 19th century often make references to Acadiana's "Creole populations" that are understood to include people of Acadian descent.
Prior to the U.S. Civil War, Louisiana Creoles of color were a class of free people who either gained their freedom or were born into free families. The gens de couleur libres played an important role in the history of New Orleans and French Louisiana, both under French and Spanish occupation, and after the Louisiana Purchase by the United States. Some Creoles of color were wealthy businessmen, entrepreneurs, clothiers, real estate developers, doctors, and other respected professions; they owned estates and properties in French Louisiana. Being a French, and later Spanish colony, Louisiana maintained a three-tiered society that was very similar to other Latin American and Caribbean countries.
In the colonial period of French and Spanish rule, men tended to marry later after becoming financially established. Men frequently took Native American women as their wives (see Marriage à la façon du pays), and as slaves were imported into the colony, settlers also took African wives. Intermarriage between the different groups of Louisiana created a large multiracial Creole population.
As more families settled Louisiana, young Frenchmen or French Creoles coming from wealthy backgrounds courted mixed-race women as their mistresses, known as placées, before they officially married. The gens de couleur libres developed formal arrangements for placées, which the young women's mothers negotiated. Under the system of plaçage, the suitor had to be wealthy and prove that he could support the daughter, and take care of their children. Often the mothers arranged a kind of dowry or property transfer to their daughters; if the daughter was a slave, she and their children would gain freedom. The fathers often paid for the education of their mixed-race children from plaçage relationships, especially if they were sons, generally sending them to France to be educated.
Many descendants of the gens de couleur libres, or free people of color, of the Louisiana area celebrate their culture and heritage through a New Orleans–based Louisiana Creole Research Association (LA Créole). The term Créole is not synonymous with "free people of color" or gens de couleur libres, but many members of LA Créole have traced their genealogies through those lines. Today, the multiracial descendants of the French and Spanish colonists, Africans, and other ethnicities are widely known as Louisiana Creoles. Louisiana's Governor Bobby Jindal signed Act 276 on 14 June 2013, creating the license plate "I'm Creole", honoring Louisiana Creoles' contributions and heritage.[full citation needed]
Similarly, the Acadiana region is home to many African Americans, who have contributed greatly to the region over the centuries. Many primarily descend from those persons brought to the State of Louisiana in various waves during the colonial period to work the area's sugarcane and rice plantations in the southern part of the state and the cotton plantations in the northern part of the state. Between 1723 and 1769, most slaves imported to Louisiana were from modern day Senegal, Mali and Congo, many thousands being imported to Louisiana from there. A large number of the imported slaves from the Senegambia region were members of the Wolof and Bambara ethnic groups. Saint-Louis and Goree Island were sites where a great number of slaves destined for Louisiana departed from Africa.
During the Spanish control of Louisiana, between 1770 and 1803, most of the slaves still came from the Congo and the Senegambia region, but others were imported from modern-day Benin. Many slaves imported during this period were members of the Nago people, a Yoruba subgroup. The slaves brought with them their cultural practices, languages, and religious beliefs rooted in spirit and ancestor worship, as well as Roman Catholic Christianity—all of which were key elements of Louisiana Voodoo. In addition, in the early nineteenth century, many Saint Dominicans also settled in Louisiana, both free people of color and slaves, following the Haitian Revolution on Saint-Domingue, contributing to the Voodoo tradition of the state. During the American period (1804–1820), almost half of the slaves came from the Congo. Before the American Civil War (1861–1865), African Americans comprised a significant portion of the state's population, with most being employed on sugar cane and cotton plantations (see history of slavery in Louisiana and Louisiana African American Heritage Trail).
Religion[edit]
The Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist in Lafayette, Louisiana
Religiously, Acadiana differs from much of the American South because a majority of its people are Christians of the Roman Catholic tradition in contrast to the surrounding regions (e.g., Central and Northern Louisiana), which are part of the largely Protestant Bible Belt. This is largely attributed to the region's French, Spanish, and Caribbean influences. Among the Catholic population of Acadiana, the majority are served by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lafayette in Louisiana, though some areas in western and eastern Acadiana belong to the Diocese of Lake Charles, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge in the Florida Parishes.
