The African American Experience in Louisiana

Louisiana’s population of African descent was composed of a large number of Louisiana-born
people, or Creoles. 10
A significant natural increase can be inferred from the growth of New Orleans’ black
population between the years 1766 and 1785, from 3,971 to 10, 420. 11 This growth cannot be
accounted for by the importation of slaves alone and is but one example of Louisiana’s
burgeoning population of native-born people of African descent in the eighteenth century. A
cross-sectional sample of enslaved persons between the years 1771 and 1800 indicates that
Creoles comprised approximately two-thirds of the population. 12
Thus, Louisiana’s African population was established with a strongly Senegambian
population infused with Bambaras and other African cultural groups. This original population
creolized, mixing their African cultures with elements of the French and Spanish colonial society
and quickly establishing an African-Creole culture that influenced every aspect of the new
colony. 13 Although this group expanded through natural increase and retained a significant
presence in eighteenth century Louisiana, toward the end of the century, increasing slave trading
brought new African diversity to Louisiana’s black population and maintained the dynamic
process of cultural syncretism we know as creolization. 14 “Particularly in the city of New
Orleans, but true to a lesser degree of the surrounding area, the air was heavy with the taste and
smell of African cookery, the out-of-doors was animated by the sound of African music and by
the buoyant sight of Afro-Creole dancing.” 15
The enslaved Africans who came to Louisiana were not mere laborers, but people
possessing valuable skills and technological knowledge. Captains of the first two slave ships to
bring Africans to Louisiana were specifically instructed to purchase people who knew how to
cultivate rice – something French colonists were not familiar with. 16 Some Africans also
understood the cultivation of indigo, which the colony attempted to produce for profit. Enslaved
Africans were carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, cooks, as well as “sophisticated agricultural
laborers.” 17 Every type of work in the colony was performed by Africans; even the militia
benefited from their service. Many Africans were introduced to new skilled trades through
10 The term Creole is used here as it was in Louisiana during the eighteenth century and antebellum nineteenth
century, to refer to someone born in the Americas, most often Louisiana. People born in other colonies were
generally called by a name referencing that place of origin. It was common to specify the place of origin of an
enslaved person and a Creole identity indicated an enslaved person raised in the culture and customs of Louisiana.
Following the Louisiana Purchase, the term also served to distinguish Francophone Louisianans from the newcomer
Americans. The word Creole in these senses was not indicative of race. It could be used to refer to people of any
race. It was only after the Civil War that the phrase Creoles of Color was popularized as a designation for specific
groups of people of mixed-race Louisiana heritage. It is from this usage and the eventual dropping of the words “of
Color” that the word Creole came to connote the possession of some African heritage.
11 Ingersoll, in Vincent, 69.
12 Ibid., 70.
13 Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in Eighteenth
Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992).
14 Creolization in this sense means the development in a new setting “of new traditions, aesthetics, and group
identities out of combinations of formerly separate peoples and cultures.” Nicholas R. Spitzer, “Monde Créole: The
Cultural World of French Louisiana Creoles and the Creolization of World Cultures,” Journal of American Folklore
116 (2003): 58.
15 Fiehrer, in MacDonald, 25.
16 Hall, in
17 Fierher, in MacDonald, 13.
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