Description
This book is the primary to inspect 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 started to tackle a decidedly Louisiana character, and 1877, the tip 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 may also be derived from alternative historical resources when number one materials such as newspapers, correspondence, and diaries don’t seem to be to be had. Here, Carl A. Brasseaux assembles a composite picture of this huge 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.