Amy Noblitt

“A Quarter Cup of Cajun”

In my last journal posting I explored the desire of European Americans to know their heritage.  Not many of us are just of one nationality, unless your family has recently immigrated.  So many of us are a “little bit of everything”; kind of like a jambalaya or gumbo.  Being a quarter Cajun I thought that I would explore a people who mostly lay on the immigrant/minority border.  Unlike most immigrants the Cajun people were not forced to assimilate to the dominant culture for 200 years.  It wasn’t until the early 20^th century that Lousiana passed a law forbidding French to be spoken in the schools.  My maternal grandmother was so surprised her first day of school when the teachers were trying to teach her some “strange language”.  I am sure it is because of the demeaning of the French language, that it all but died out with my mother’s generation. 

The Cajun people came to Acadia (Canada) in 1604 and “by 1671, the Acadians had become a distinctive people, a frontier nation” (Brasseaux 2).  My Cajun ancestor, Adrien Quevillon, came to Canada in around the mid-seventeenth century and was married in 1672 to Jeanne Hunault.  Later between 1755 and 1763 the Cajun people left Nova Scotia, Canada because of the English occupation of Canada.  This is known as the Great Upheaval or Le Grand Dérangement (Wikipedia).  Many of the Acadian people ended up in Louisiana, but some also moved to the eastern seaboard, the Caribbean and back to Europe.  The Great Upheaval was when my ancestor, Amable Couvillon came to Louisiana.  It was then that the last name Quevillon became Couvillon. 

Some may wonder how it was that the Cajun French people of Louisiana kept their language for almost 200 years, when other immigrants and minorities had to give up their languages.  I believe it is because of two things: the remoteness of the Cajun people and the fact that they were of European descent.  The Cajun people were named a national minority in July of 1980 by Judge Edwin F. Hunter.  The Cajun people have a strong enough sway in Louisiana politics to elect Edwin Edwards to governor in 1971.  Edwards Cajun background, and the fact that he could speak Cajun French, made him a mascot for the Cajun people in Louisiana.  Edwards is a typical Cajun and is even my grandmother’s third cousin.  Of course, almost all Cajuns are related.  Carl A. Brasseaux says that the Acadians were, “essentially a patriarchal society placing great importance upon the extended family” (4).  This was true for my family up until the Baby Boomer generation, when more and more people moved away from each other and away from Louisiana. 

I am very proud to be part of such a colorful people.  Their culture was rich and strong enough to withstand assimilating into the Dominant Culture.  Although Cajuns have been in the Louisiana for almost 250 years it took the Cajuns 200 years to immigrate to the United States.  I am more of a 4th generation Cajun immigrant than from an established Cajun American family.  I don’t mind, though, because I am able to talk to my great-aunts and uncles and hear about the other world they used to live in and it is just like they lived in another world.

Works Cited

Brasseaux, Carl A.  The Founding of New Acadia: The Beginnings of Acadian Live in Louisiana, 1765-1803.  Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, 1996.

Wikipedia Search-“Cajuns” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajuns