BLACK and CREOLE SETTLEMENT ISLE BREVELLE

From: Creoles in the Cane River

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As the area's earliest families, the Creoles of Natchitoches Parish had first choice of farmland and wisely settled in the rich Red River Valley, where the largest plantations flourished through the antebellum period. In southern Natchitoches Parish, the Creole descendants of Marie Thérèse Coincoin, an enslaved woman, and Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer, a French soldier stationed at the Natchitoches Post, established the community of Isle Brevelle. Today's Cane River Creoles form the basis of the Isle Brevelle settlement, which has continued as a Creole community since its late 18th-century beginnings.

Americans, who were latecomers to the area, tended to settle in the piney uplands away from the Creoles. Arriving with the English language, Protestant religion and a new form of representative government, Americans were foreign in almost every way to the Creoles of Natchitoches. Creoles maintained a dominant influence in local society despite the influx of Americans into the area.

Creole History  

Who are Louisiana's Creoles?

Featured Book: Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions

The term Creole has had a number of meanings in the past several hundred years. The core of those meanings centers around the concept of New World products derived from Old World stock. The term today applies to those people of non-American ancestry who were born in Louisiana during its French and Spanish colonial periods and their descendants. From the colonial period on, there has been a significant Creole population in the state. Some Creoles are of French or Spanish descent, while others have a mixed heritage of African, French, Spanish and/or American Indian. When Louisiana became an American territory, the term Creole increasingly came to mean "native born" and was used to distinguish between the land's anciens habitants, or former colonial residents, and incoming Americans. Over time, the French language and the Catholic religion remained as identifying marks of many of Louisiana's Creoles. People sometimes confuse Louisiana's Creole population with French-speaking Acadians, today's Cajuns, who were exiled from Canada by the British and arrived in Louisiana years after the Creoles had established themselves there.