Isle of Canes facts for kids

Isle of Canes (ISBN: 1-59331-306-3) is a novel written by Elizabeth Shown Mills. It tells the story of an African family, starting from when they were brought to Louisiana as enslaved people in 1735. The book follows four generations as they gain freedom and become part of the Creole community. However, their freedom is challenged again by Jim Crow laws at the end of the 1800s.

The novel explores how this family tried to find their place in a world where race was very important. It also shows the bigger struggle of Louisiana's original French culture (called ancien regime) to keep its traditions. This happened as more English-speaking Protestants moved in after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, leading to a fight for power and social control. A main idea in Isle of Canes is about people who escaped slavery but found it hard to survive as free people without still being involved in the system of slavery.

The family in the novel has been talked about a lot by writers, historians, and their own descendants. Isle of Canes' interpretation of their story comes from the author's own research over thirty years. She looked at old documents in archives from six different countries. Some of these real documents are even included in the novel. The author started her research in 1972 while working to document the history of a famous place called Melrose Plantation.

What Critics Say About the Book

People who have reviewed Isle of Canes often talk about how it challenges old ideas. Contemporary Lit magazine said it's like Gone with the Wind but from a very different and more important view. It's not about plantation owners or poor white people. Instead, it's about free people of color (homme de couleur libre) and enslaved people. The review says the book shows the difficult choices that tore families and communities apart.

Historical Novels Review also noted that the Metoyers, a real family who were both Black and white, make you rethink ideas about race. They said, "You may never look at American History the same way again."

Other Books About the Isle Community

The community in Isle of Canes is also featured in other books. Lalita Tademy's novel, Cane River, was chosen for Oprah's Book Club. Mills's Isle looks at the early history of the community and the experiences of enslaved people who became free before the conflicts between Creole and Anglo cultures in Louisiana.

Tademy's story, which used some of Mills's research for its early enslaved generations, shows the experiences of enslaved families in the mid-1800s and early 1900s. These families sometimes envied, respected, or even resented the free status of the Isle's Creoles de couleur libre (free people of color), even though they sometimes shared family bloodlines.

A much older novel, Children of Strangers by Lyle Saxon, also describes the difficult situation the Islanders faced in the early 1900s. During Saxon's time, the owner of the family's last big house, Melrose Plantation (which became a National Historic Landmark in 1976), was an Anglo woman who supported artists. She encouraged Saxon to visit and observe the community. Saxon's book shows how white people thought during that time. They sometimes used the Islanders for their labor, were attracted to their women, and also saw the mixed-race Creoles as "simple people, but our people."

Historians often try to understand the complicated system of slavery. They especially wonder why some freed American slaves chose to buy other people once they were free. Edward P. Jones explores one possible reason in his novel The Known World. He creates a fictional character, Henry Townsend, a Black man from Virginia, who is driven by his own selfish goals. Isle of Canes rebuilds the world of a real family to show a very different, but equally challenging, way that many former enslaved people survived in a status that many historians describe as "neither slave nor free."

Main Characters in the Novel

Generation 1: François and Fanny

François and Fanny are the first generation. François was a skilled worker and Fanny was a chieftain's daughter from Africa. They were captured and brought to Louisiana as enslaved people in 1735. François accepted their difficult situation and insisted that Fanny do the same.

Generation 2: Coincoin ditte Marie Thérèse Metoyer

Coincoin ditte Marie Thérèse Metoyer is the second generation. She made a promise over her parents' graves that her family would one day be free, rich, and proud. She kept her promise.

Generation 3: Sieur Nicolas Augustin Metoyer

Sieur Nicolas Augustin Metoyer was a free man of color (f.m.c.), half-African and half-French. He cleared land from the wild to create the Isle of Canes. He became the leader of a famous community of creoles de couleur. They lived in grand homes with pillars but worked alongside the 500 enslaved people who farmed their 18,000 acres (about 73 square kilometers) of land.

Generation 4: Perine Metoyer Dupré

Perine (Mme. François Gassion) Metoyer Metoyer Dupré was born into wealth but faced shame as she grew older. She never forgot her family's history or the harsh events that destroyed their way of life. Through the difficult times of Louisiana's Creole-Anglo conflicts and the Jim Crow era after the Civil War, she made a different promise: She would never let her family forget who they were until they could reclaim their Isle. She also kept her promise.