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The Creoles of Louisiana
Originally published in 1884, Creoles of Louisiana builds on earlier explorations of the lives of the white descendants of early French and Spanish immigrants during the transitory post-Civil War period. Cable wrote faithful portrayals of the Creoles, with a pioneering ear for the dialect that earned him an acclaimed place as a leader of the local colorist movement. From the early settlement of Louisiana, to the trials of the War Between the States, to the yellow fever epidemic, and on to "Brighter Skies," the chapters chronicle the Creoles' experience in the Pelican state. New Orleans emerges as a town carved out of the wilderness of the bayou, and together, city and citizens flourished.
Contents
I. WHO ARE THE CREOLES?
II. FRENCH FOUNDERS.
III. THE CREOLES' CITY.
IV. AFRICAN SLAVES AND INDIAN WARS.
V. THE NEW GENERATION.
VI. THE FIRST CREOLES.
VII. PRAYING TO THE KING.
VIII. TJLLOA, ATJBEY, AND THE SUPERIOR COUNCIL.
IX. The Insurrection.
X. THE PRICE OF HALF-CONVICTIONS.
XI. COUNT O'REILLY AND SPANISH LAWS.
XII. SPANISH CONCILIATION.
XIII. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ON THE GULF SIDE.
XIV. SPANISH NEW ORLEANS.
XV. HOW BORE MADE SUGAR.
XVI. THE CREOLES SING THE MARSEILLAISE.
XVII. THE AMERICANS.
XVIII. SPAIN AGAINST FATE.
XIX. NEW ORLEANS SOUGHT—LOUISIANA BOUGHT.
XX. NEW ORLEANS IN 1803.
XXI. FROM SUBJECTS TO CITIZENS.
XXII. BUER'S CONSPIRACY.
XXIII. THE WEST INDIAN COUSIN.
XXIV. THE PIRATES OF BARATARIA.
XXV. BARATARIA DESTROYED.
XXVI. THE BRITISH INVASION.
XXVII. THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.
XXVIII. THE END OF THE PIRATES.
XXIX. FAUBOURG STE. MARIE.
XXX. A HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE.
Contents
I. WHO ARE THE CREOLES?
II. FRENCH FOUNDERS.
III. THE CREOLES' CITY.
IV. AFRICAN SLAVES AND INDIAN WARS.
V. THE NEW GENERATION.
VI. THE FIRST CREOLES.
VII. PRAYING TO THE KING.
VIII. TJLLOA, ATJBEY, AND THE SUPERIOR COUNCIL.
IX. The Insurrection.
X. THE PRICE OF HALF-CONVICTIONS.
XI. COUNT O'REILLY AND SPANISH LAWS.
XII. SPANISH CONCILIATION.
XIII. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ON THE GULF SIDE.
XIV. SPANISH NEW ORLEANS.
XV. HOW BORE MADE SUGAR.
XVI. THE CREOLES SING THE MARSEILLAISE.
XVII. THE AMERICANS.
XVIII. SPAIN AGAINST FATE.
XIX. NEW ORLEANS SOUGHT—LOUISIANA BOUGHT.
XX. NEW ORLEANS IN 1803.
XXI. FROM SUBJECTS TO CITIZENS.
XXII. BUER'S CONSPIRACY.
XXIII. THE WEST INDIAN COUSIN.
XXIV. THE PIRATES OF BARATARIA.
XXV. BARATARIA DESTROYED.
XXVI. THE BRITISH INVASION.
XXVII. THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.
XXVIII. THE END OF THE PIRATES.
XXIX. FAUBOURG STE. MARIE.
XXX. A HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE.
- GenresHistory
320 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1884
About the author
George Washington Cable
112 books30 followersGeorge Washington Cable was an American novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native Louisiana.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 12, 2025
The Creoles, in the context of Louisiana’s early history, are the people who were the descendants of the original French and Spanish settlers of what is now the Pelican State. They imparted, and still impart, a unique and distinctive quality to Louisiana life; and the New Orleans writer George Washington Cable, though not a Creole himself, made his name and garnered his literary reputation writing about the Creoles, in the short-story collection Old Creole Days (1879) and the novel The Grandissimes (1880). And readers – and particularly Louisiana readers – who are interested in Cable’s depictions of Louisiana Creoles would do well to take up Cable’s historical/nonfiction study The Creoles of Louisiana.
To call the Creoles’ history colourful would be an understatement, as Cable makes clear in the early chapters of The Creoles of Louisiana. Their history in New Orleans and its surroundings began with the establishment of the city in 1718. Louisiana had been named for King Louis XIV of France, and the Creoles were passionately proud of their Gallic heritage. But their early time in New Orleans and Louisiana was characterized by a number of challenges – fires and outbreaks of disease prominent among them – and political instability further complicated the picture.
France, via a secret treaty, ceded Louisiana to Spain in 1762, enraging many Creoles (and ensuring that much of the historic architecture of the “French Quarter” would in fact be Spanish). Through another secret treaty, Napoleon Bonaparte regained Louisiana for France in 1800; but just three years later, Napoleon sold New Orleans and all of Louisiana to the United States of America for a cool $15 million. To have gone from French to Spanish to French to American so quickly – it is, perhaps, no wonder if many of the Creoles were exceptionally anxious to hold on to as many of their cultural traditions as they possibly could.
“Outwardly, the Creoles of the Delta had become a graceful, well-knit race” (p. 137), Cable writes, but he’s got some pretty harsh animadversions in store. Not for the women, mind you: Cable expatiates at some length on the beauty, grace, and allure of Creole women, in a way that might have sometimes made Mrs. Cable just a bit jealous. But the Creole men? Cable is unsparing.
They are said to have been coarse, boastful, vain; and they were, also, deficient in energy and application, without well-directed ambition, unskillful in community feeling which begets the study of reciprocal rights and obligations….Hence, the Creoles were fonder of pleasant fictions regarding the salubrity, beauty, good order, and advantages of their town, than of measures to justify their assumptions. With African slavery they were, of course, licentious, and they were always ready for the duelling ground….Easily inflamed, they were as easily discouraged, thrown into confusion, and overpowered, and they expended the best of their energies in trivial pleasures, especially the masque and the dance… (p. 139)
Well, sacre bleu! It’s easy to see why some prominent Creoles – the historian Charles Gayarré, for example – felt that Cable had been unfair to them. That Cable closes this passage by writing that the Creoles “were kind parents, affectionate wives, tractable children, and enthusiastic patriots” (p. 139) would probably not have been enough of a spoonful of sugar to help the preceding medicine go down.
Louisiana, soon after becoming part of the U.S.A., found that the country of which Louisiana was now a part was now at war with France’s traditional adversary, Great Britain. Cable is at his best in describing Andrew Jackson’s heroic defence of the city at the Battle of New Orleans (8 January 1815), with a little help from the notorious Creole pirate Jean Lafitte.
In the years after the War of 1812 and the economic panic of 1819, Cable emphasizes how “the Creole was still powerful, and jealous of everything that hinted of American absorption.” In Cable’s view, the Creoles suffered from their reluctance to follow the example of the restless and ever-enterprising Americans. Sometimes, however, the Creoles saw merit in what their American neighbours were doing, and followed their example:
Gravier Street, between Tchoupitoulas and Magazine, was paved with cobblestones. The Creoles laughed outright. “A stone pavement in New Orleans soil? It will sink out of sight!” But it bore not only their ridicule, but an uproar and gorge of wagons and drays. There was an avalanche of trade. It crammed the whole harbor front – old town and new – with river and ocean fleets. It choked the streets. The cry was for room and facilities. The Creoles heeded it. Up came their wooden sidewalks and curbs, brick and stone went down in their place… (p. 214)
Over the course of The Creoles of Louisiana, Cable does not cover all aspects of the life of the region as thoroughly as he treated that battle at Chalmette Plantation in 1815. He largely skips both the Civil War and Reconstruction – and I suppose one can understand why. The Civil War had ended just twenty years before, and memories of the war – including the abolition of slavery and the military occupation of New Orleans by Union forces – were bitter for many in New Orleans and Louisiana, whether their heritage was Creole or not. And the Reconstruction period in Louisiana was characterized by frequent outbreaks of violence, right up through the “Compromise of 1877” that effectively ended Reconstruction, removed Union troops from the Southern states, and enabled Southern political leaders to establish a segregation system. Cable would write more forthrightly about the Civil War and Reconstruction in later works.
Toward the end of The Creoles of Louisiana, Cable offers measured praise of the progress that he has seen among the Creoles, writing that “as his town has expanded and improved, so has he. As the improvements of the age draw the great world nearer and nearer to him, he becomes more and more open to cosmopolitan thought” (p. 305). We are assured that Creoles are not as hostile to “Americans” as they once were, that “Sometimes, with the old Gallic intrepidity of conviction, [the Creole] moves ahead of the American in progressive thought” (p. 307).
The colourful qualities of Creole culture unquestionably draw Cable’s attention, as when Cable describes a typical Creole planter of the parishes outside New Orleans as “a strong, manly figure in neat, spurred boots, a refined blood flushing through his bronzed but delicate skin, making him at times even florid” (p. 307). Amidst the welter and turmoil of post-Civil War, post-Reconstruction politics in Louisiana, Cable praises the more progressive element among the Creoles, commenting that “The candor with which [the progressive Creole] grasps the new turn of affairs resulting from the Civil War is worthy of imitation by many an Anglo-American Southern community” (p. 308).
The outlook for Creoles who fail to embrace change is not nearly so favourable, in Cable’s view:
In such case he bows his head to fate. His fences are broken; his levee is dangerous; the plastering is falling in his parlor; his garden has become a wild, damp grove, weed-grown and untrodden; his sugar is dark, his thin linen coat is home-made; he has transferred his hopes to rice and made his home sickly with irrigation; he doesn’t care who you are, and will not sell a foot of his land – no, not for price that man can name! – till the red flag hangs out for him on the courthouse square and the man with one drumstick drums him out of house and home. (p. 312)
The Creoles of Louisiana is a fine work of history, and it signals the beginning of a sea change in the career and life of George Washington Cable. When he published this book in 1884, he was still living in New Orleans, and his writings on the evils of slavery did not elicit too much comment in a land where slavery had been gone for twenty years. But his growing sense that African Americans in the post-Civil War South continued to face injustice caused him, one year after the publication of this book, to publish The Silent South (1885), a book that openly denounced segregation and post-Civil War racism. In response, Cable’s life was threatened, lifelong friends shunned him, and he ultimately decided to move his family and himself all the way to Northampton, Massachusetts. The Creoles of Louisiana, in a way, represents George Washington Cable’s farewell to the region that he loved, and with which he would forever be identified.
To call the Creoles’ history colourful would be an understatement, as Cable makes clear in the early chapters of The Creoles of Louisiana. Their history in New Orleans and its surroundings began with the establishment of the city in 1718. Louisiana had been named for King Louis XIV of France, and the Creoles were passionately proud of their Gallic heritage. But their early time in New Orleans and Louisiana was characterized by a number of challenges – fires and outbreaks of disease prominent among them – and political instability further complicated the picture.
France, via a secret treaty, ceded Louisiana to Spain in 1762, enraging many Creoles (and ensuring that much of the historic architecture of the “French Quarter” would in fact be Spanish). Through another secret treaty, Napoleon Bonaparte regained Louisiana for France in 1800; but just three years later, Napoleon sold New Orleans and all of Louisiana to the United States of America for a cool $15 million. To have gone from French to Spanish to French to American so quickly – it is, perhaps, no wonder if many of the Creoles were exceptionally anxious to hold on to as many of their cultural traditions as they possibly could.
“Outwardly, the Creoles of the Delta had become a graceful, well-knit race” (p. 137), Cable writes, but he’s got some pretty harsh animadversions in store. Not for the women, mind you: Cable expatiates at some length on the beauty, grace, and allure of Creole women, in a way that might have sometimes made Mrs. Cable just a bit jealous. But the Creole men? Cable is unsparing.
They are said to have been coarse, boastful, vain; and they were, also, deficient in energy and application, without well-directed ambition, unskillful in community feeling which begets the study of reciprocal rights and obligations….Hence, the Creoles were fonder of pleasant fictions regarding the salubrity, beauty, good order, and advantages of their town, than of measures to justify their assumptions. With African slavery they were, of course, licentious, and they were always ready for the duelling ground….Easily inflamed, they were as easily discouraged, thrown into confusion, and overpowered, and they expended the best of their energies in trivial pleasures, especially the masque and the dance… (p. 139)
Well, sacre bleu! It’s easy to see why some prominent Creoles – the historian Charles Gayarré, for example – felt that Cable had been unfair to them. That Cable closes this passage by writing that the Creoles “were kind parents, affectionate wives, tractable children, and enthusiastic patriots” (p. 139) would probably not have been enough of a spoonful of sugar to help the preceding medicine go down.
Louisiana, soon after becoming part of the U.S.A., found that the country of which Louisiana was now a part was now at war with France’s traditional adversary, Great Britain. Cable is at his best in describing Andrew Jackson’s heroic defence of the city at the Battle of New Orleans (8 January 1815), with a little help from the notorious Creole pirate Jean Lafitte.
In the years after the War of 1812 and the economic panic of 1819, Cable emphasizes how “the Creole was still powerful, and jealous of everything that hinted of American absorption.” In Cable’s view, the Creoles suffered from their reluctance to follow the example of the restless and ever-enterprising Americans. Sometimes, however, the Creoles saw merit in what their American neighbours were doing, and followed their example:
Gravier Street, between Tchoupitoulas and Magazine, was paved with cobblestones. The Creoles laughed outright. “A stone pavement in New Orleans soil? It will sink out of sight!” But it bore not only their ridicule, but an uproar and gorge of wagons and drays. There was an avalanche of trade. It crammed the whole harbor front – old town and new – with river and ocean fleets. It choked the streets. The cry was for room and facilities. The Creoles heeded it. Up came their wooden sidewalks and curbs, brick and stone went down in their place… (p. 214)
Over the course of The Creoles of Louisiana, Cable does not cover all aspects of the life of the region as thoroughly as he treated that battle at Chalmette Plantation in 1815. He largely skips both the Civil War and Reconstruction – and I suppose one can understand why. The Civil War had ended just twenty years before, and memories of the war – including the abolition of slavery and the military occupation of New Orleans by Union forces – were bitter for many in New Orleans and Louisiana, whether their heritage was Creole or not. And the Reconstruction period in Louisiana was characterized by frequent outbreaks of violence, right up through the “Compromise of 1877” that effectively ended Reconstruction, removed Union troops from the Southern states, and enabled Southern political leaders to establish a segregation system. Cable would write more forthrightly about the Civil War and Reconstruction in later works.
Toward the end of The Creoles of Louisiana, Cable offers measured praise of the progress that he has seen among the Creoles, writing that “as his town has expanded and improved, so has he. As the improvements of the age draw the great world nearer and nearer to him, he becomes more and more open to cosmopolitan thought” (p. 305). We are assured that Creoles are not as hostile to “Americans” as they once were, that “Sometimes, with the old Gallic intrepidity of conviction, [the Creole] moves ahead of the American in progressive thought” (p. 307).
The colourful qualities of Creole culture unquestionably draw Cable’s attention, as when Cable describes a typical Creole planter of the parishes outside New Orleans as “a strong, manly figure in neat, spurred boots, a refined blood flushing through his bronzed but delicate skin, making him at times even florid” (p. 307). Amidst the welter and turmoil of post-Civil War, post-Reconstruction politics in Louisiana, Cable praises the more progressive element among the Creoles, commenting that “The candor with which [the progressive Creole] grasps the new turn of affairs resulting from the Civil War is worthy of imitation by many an Anglo-American Southern community” (p. 308).
The outlook for Creoles who fail to embrace change is not nearly so favourable, in Cable’s view:
In such case he bows his head to fate. His fences are broken; his levee is dangerous; the plastering is falling in his parlor; his garden has become a wild, damp grove, weed-grown and untrodden; his sugar is dark, his thin linen coat is home-made; he has transferred his hopes to rice and made his home sickly with irrigation; he doesn’t care who you are, and will not sell a foot of his land – no, not for price that man can name! – till the red flag hangs out for him on the courthouse square and the man with one drumstick drums him out of house and home. (p. 312)
The Creoles of Louisiana is a fine work of history, and it signals the beginning of a sea change in the career and life of George Washington Cable. When he published this book in 1884, he was still living in New Orleans, and his writings on the evils of slavery did not elicit too much comment in a land where slavery had been gone for twenty years. But his growing sense that African Americans in the post-Civil War South continued to face injustice caused him, one year after the publication of this book, to publish The Silent South (1885), a book that openly denounced segregation and post-Civil War racism. In response, Cable’s life was threatened, lifelong friends shunned him, and he ultimately decided to move his family and himself all the way to Northampton, Massachusetts. The Creoles of Louisiana, in a way, represents George Washington Cable’s farewell to the region that he loved, and with which he would forever be identified.
July 17, 2012
If you're a History Buff...then this is a good read.First published in 1884,it is a real journey about Louisiana's beginnings.Amazingly,some of the same mistakes made regarding flooding problem ,still remain today.The floods and pestilence took it's toll on the area.The denial portrayed by the forefathers then is still evident today.The fact that this state was the most European in North America was amazing_changing hands from France,Spain,America & others was like musical chairs.The Culture created from these interchanges made Louisiana what it is today_it's culture,art,food and people...unlike any other state in America.
I enjoyed reading this book _in conjunction with "The Feast Of All Saints"by Anne Rice.These two paired together was the essence of a "symbiotic relationship" that lead to a greater understanding of both books.
These readings enhance a journey I started in February 2012 on my Blog_to discover more about this
"Third Race"(gen de couleur)& the relationship with "The Creoles".
http://sagebookwhisperer.blogspot.com...
Great Reads!
I enjoyed reading this book _in conjunction with "The Feast Of All Saints"by Anne Rice.These two paired together was the essence of a "symbiotic relationship" that lead to a greater understanding of both books.
These readings enhance a journey I started in February 2012 on my Blog_to discover more about this
"Third Race"(gen de couleur)& the relationship with "The Creoles".
http://sagebookwhisperer.blogspot.com...
Great Reads!
June 28, 2012
just finished this book. It is more about the character of the people who settled New Orleans in particular than historical events like the Civil War. It gives a sense of what it was like to live back then.
January 31, 2010
Here is one view of the nature and uniqueness of the Creole culture in Louisiana. It delves into Creole history from a nineteenth century perspective. Written by one of the late 1800s most prominent writers.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews