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Creole peoples facts for kids

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Creole people are ethnic groups which originated during the colonial-era from racial mixing between Europeans and non-European peoples, known as creolisation. Creole peoples vary widely in ethnic background and mixture, and many have since developed distinct ethnic identities. The development of creole languages is sometimes mistakenly attributed to the emergence of creole ethnic identities; however, they are independent developments.

Etymology and overview

The English word creole derives from the French créole, which in turn came from Portuguese crioulo, a diminutive of cria meaning a person (especially a servant) raised in one's house. Cria is derived from criar, meaning "to raise or bring up,", itself derived from the Latin creare, meaning "to make, bring forth, produce, beget"; also the source of the English word "create". Creole is also known by cognates in other languages, such as crioulo, criollo, creolo, créole, kriolu, criol, kreyol, kreol, kriol, krio, and kriyoyo.

The following ethnic groups have been historically characterized as "creole" peoples:

United States

Alaska

People of mixed Alaska Native American and Russian ancestry are Creole, sometimes colloquially spelled "Kriol". The intermingling of promyshlenniki men with Aleut and Alutiiq women in the late 18th century gave rise to a people who assumed a prominent position in the economy of Russian Alaska and the north Pacific rim.

Chesapeake Colonies

Main article: Chesapeake Colonies

During the early settlement of the colonies, children born of immigrants in the colonies were often referred to as "Creole". This is found more often in the Chesapeake Colonies.

Louisiana

Main articles: Louisiana Creole people and Creoles of color

In the United States, the word "Creole" refers to people of any race or mixture thereof who are descended from colonial French La Louisiane and colonial Spanish Louisiana (New Spain) settlers before the Louisiana region became part of the United States in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase. Both the word and the ethnic group derive from a similar usage, which began in the 16th Century, in the Caribbean that distinguished people born in the French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies from the various new arrivals born in their respective, non-Caribbean homelands. Some writers from other parts of the country have mistakenly assumed the term to refer only to people of mixed racial descent, but this is not the traditional Louisiana usage. In Louisiana, originally Creole was only used to describe people of French and then Spanish descent who were born in Louisiana and used the term to distinguish themselves from newly arrived immigrants. Later, the terms were differentiated further after the emergence of a newly mixed-race group that began to share the usage of the identity, as well as newly arriving Anglo-Americans lumping whites, mixed and blacks into a general francophone "Creole" cultural group. The later distinctions were French Creole (European ancestry), Creole of Color (someone of mixed racial ancestry), and sometimes slaves were referred to as Black Creole (meaning someone of primarily African descendant). There were also Spanish Creoles, but most in the city of New Orleans were integrated into the French Creole group as time went on, and ultimately both origins formed an indistinguishable "Latin" combination. However, Spanish Creoles survive today in Louisiana just outside of the city of New Orleans as the Isleños and Malagueños, both found in southern Louisiana. These distinctions were of the various groups in the Creole culture of Louisiana, especially that of New Orleans. Formally, in the early years of New Orleans, whites of French and Spanish descent were defined as the White Creoles and mixed racial people were described as free people of color and slaves were described as Creole slaves, meaning a possession of the Creoles (full European descent). However, all racial categories of Creoles - from Caucasian, mixed racial, African, to Native American - tended to think and refer to themselves solely as Creole, a commonality in many other Francophone and Iberoamerican cultures, who tend to lack strict racial separations common in United States History and other countries with large populations from Northern Europe's various cultures. This more racially neutral quality still persists to modern day as many Creoles do not use race as factor for being a part of the ethno-culture.

Contemporary usage has broadened the meaning of Louisiana Creoles to describe a broad cultural group of people of all races who share a French and Spanish background. Louisianans who identify themselves as "Creole" are most commonly from historically Francophone and Hispanic communities. Some of their ancestors came to Louisiana directly from France, Spain and others came via the French and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and Canada. Many Louisiana Creole families arrived in Louisiana from Saint-Domingue as refugees from the Haitian Revolution, along with other immigrants from Caribbean colonial centers like Santo Domingo and Havana. The center of Creole culture in Louisiana is now focused on a combination between the two European based cultures, along with the Native American and African influences brought on through the centuries.

Spoken Creole is dying with the dissolution of Creole families and continued 'Americanization' in the area. Most remaining Creole lexemes have drifted into popular culture. Traditional French Creole is spoken among those families determined to keep the language alive or in regions below New Orleans around St. James and St. John Parishes where German immigrants originally settled (also known as 'the German Coast', or La Côte des Allemands) and cultivated the land, keeping the ill-equipped French Colonists from starvation during the Colonial Period and adopting commonly spoken French and Creole French (arriving with the exiles) as a language of trade.

Creoles are largely Roman Catholic and influenced by traditional French and Spanish culture left from the first Colonial Period, officially beginning in 1722 with the arrival of the Ursuline Nuns, who were preceded by another order, the sisters of the Sacred Heart, with whom they lived until their first convent could be built with monies from the French Crown. (Both orders still educate girls in 2010). The "fiery Latin temperament" described by early scholars on New Orleans culture made sweeping generalizations to accommodate Creoles of Spanish heritage as well as the original French. The mixed-race Creoles, descendants of mixing of European colonists, slaves and Native Americans or sometimes Gens de Couleur (free men and women of colour), began during the colonial periods with the arrival of slave populations. All Creoles, regardless of race, are a group of collective cultures known as "Creole", though many non-Louisianans do not distinguish between the two groups Creole groups, those of full European descent and those of mixed race. They do not recognize the distinctions made in the New Orleans area between the original white colonists whose offspring were the original first-born Creoles in Louisiana and those that were a mixture of people of European ancestry and slave populations (or free men and women of color).

They were also referred to as criollos, a word from the Spanish language meaning created and used in the post-French governance period to distinguish the two groups of New Orleans area and down river Creoles. Both mixed race and European Creole groups share many traditions and language, but their socio-economic roots differed in the original period of Louisiana history. Actually, the French word Creole is derived from the Portuguese word Crioulo, which described Spaniards born in the Americas as opposed to Spain.

The term is also often used to mean simply "pertaining to the New Orleans area".

Louisianians descended from the French Acadians of Canada are technically creoles in a strict sense but are more commonly referred to as, and identify as, 'Cajuns'—a derivation of the word Acadian, indicating French Canadian settlers as ancestors. The distinction between "Cajuns" and "Creoles" is stronger today than it was in the past because American racial ideologies have strongly influenced the meaning of the word "Creole" to the extent that there is no longer unanimous agreement among Louisianians on the word's precise definition. Today, many assume that any francophone person of European descent is Cajun and any francophone of African descent is Creole—a false assumption that would not have been recognized in the nineteenth century. Some assert that "Creole" refers to aristocratic urbanites whereas "Cajuns" are agrarian members of the francophone working class, but this is another untrue distinction. Creoles may be of any race and live in any area, rural or urban. The Creole culture of Southwest Louisiana is thus more similar to the culture dominant in Acadiana than it is to the Creole culture of New Orleans. Though the land areas overlap around New Orleans and down river, Cajun/Creole culture and language extend westward all along the southern coast of Louisiana, concentrating in areas southwest of New Orleans around Lafayette, and as far as Crowley, Abbeville and into the rice belt of Louisiana nearer Lake Charles and the Texas border.

Mississippi

Mississippi Gulf Coast has a significant population of Creoles—especially in Pass Christian, Gulfport, Biloxi, Pascagoula, and surrounding areas. Here, Creole is used to describe descendants of French or Spanish colonists with a mixed racial heritage—French or Spanish mixed with African American or Native American. The area was first settled by French colonists. In 1720, the capital of French Louisiana was Biloxi, MS. A community known as Creoletown is located in Pascagoula, MS – with its history on record. Many in this location are Catholic and have also used Creole/French and English languages.

Texas

Texas Gulf Coast may have a population of Creole in Southeast Texas areas such as (Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange).

Africa

Portuguese Africa

The crioulos of mixed Portuguese and African descent eventually gave rise to several major ethnic groups in Africa, especially in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe, Equatorial Guinea (especially Annobon Province), Ziguinchor (Casamance), Angola, Mozambique. Only a few of these groups have retained the name crioulo or variations of it:

the dominant ethnic group, called Kriolus or Kriols in the local language; the language itself is also called "Creole";
Crioulos
Crioulos

Former Spanish colonies

In regions that were formerly colonies of Spain, the Spanish word criollo (implying "native" or "local") historically denoted a class in the colonial caste system, comprising people born in the colonies but of totally or at least largely Spanish descent. The word came to refer to things distinctive of the region, as it is used today, in expressions such as "comida criolla" ("country" food from the area).

In the period of initial settlement of Latin America, the Spanish crown often passed over Criollos for the top military, administrative, and religious offices in the colonies in favor of the Spanish-born Peninsulares (literally "born in the Iberian Peninsula").

The word criollo is the origin and cognate of the French word creole.

Spanish America

The racially based caste system was in force throughout the Spanish colonies in the Americas, since the 16th century. By the 19th century, this discrimination and the example of the American Revolution and the ideals of the Enlightenment eventually led the Spanish American Criollo elite to rebel against the Spanish rule. With the support of the lower classes, they engaged Spain in the Spanish American wars of independence (1810–1826), which ended with the break-up of former Spanish Empire in America into a number of independent republics.

Spanish Philippines

Racial mixture in the Spanish Philippines occurred mostly during the Spanish colonial period from the 16th to 19th century. The same Spanish racial caste system imposed in Latin America extended also to the Philippines, with a few major differences.

Persons of pure Spanish descent born in the Spanish Philippines were those to whom the term Filipinos originally applied, though they were also called Insulares ("islanders", i.e. Spaniard born in the Philippine islands) or Criollos ("Creoles", i.e. [Philippine-born Spaniard] "Locals"). Persons of pure Spanish descent, along with many mestizos and castizos, living in the Philippines but born in Spanish America were classified as 'Américanos'. The Philippine-born children of 'Américanos' were classified as 'Filipinos'. During this era, the term "Filipinos" had not yet extended to include the majority indigenous Austronesian population of the Philippines to whom Filipinos has now shifted to imply.

The social stratification based on class that continues to this day in the Philippines has its beginnings in the Spanish colonial era with this caste system. Officially, however, the Spanish colonial caste system based on race was abolished after the Philippines' independence from Spain in 1898, and the word 'Filipino' expanded to include the entire population of the Philippines regardless of racial ancestry.

Caribbean

In many parts of the Southern Caribbean, the term Creole people is used to refer to the mixed-race descendants of Europeans and Africans born in the islands. Over time, there was intermarriage with residents from Asia as well. They eventually formed a common culture based on their experience of living together in islands colonized by the French, Spanish and English.

A typical creole person from the Caribbean has French or Spanish ancestry, mixed with African and Native American. As workers from Asia entered the islands, Creole people of color intermarried with Tamil, Lebanese, Indian and Chinese. The latter combinations were especially common in Guadeloupe. The foods and cultures are the result of a creolization of these influences.

Languages

See also: Languages of the Caribbean and Creole language

Creole, "Kreyòl" or "Kweyol" also refers to the creole languages in the Caribbean, including Antillean Creole, Barbadian Creole, Belizean Creole, Jamaican Patois, Haitian Creole, Bahamian Creole, Trinidadian Creole, Guyanese Creole, and among others.

People speak Antillean Creole on the following islands:

  • St. Lucia
  • Martinique
  • Dominica
  • Guadeloupe
  • St. Martin
  • Saint-Barthélemy
  • French Guiana
  • Trinidad and Tobago

Indian Ocean

Main articles: Mauritian Creole people and Seychellois Creole people
See also: Mauritian Creole, Réunion Creole, and Seychellois Creole

The usage of creole in the islands of the southwest of the Indian Ocean varies according to the island. In Mauritius, the term Creole refers to colored people which have the ancestry of Africans with some French and Indian blood. The term also indicates the same to the people of Réunion and Seychelles.

In all three societies, creole also refers to the new languages derived from French and incorporating other languages.

Images for kids

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Criollo para niños

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