07/24/2026
Louisiana Identities: Cajun vs. Creole – A Look Back
This 1976 newspaper photo shows a young Dr. Barry Ancelet, who would later become one of Louisiana's most respected folklorists and cultural historians, documenting Louisiana French culture.
What is interesting is not the photograph itself, but the description. It states that Dr. Ancelet collected folklore that was "Acadiana, creole or black." In other words, both Dr. Ancelet and the newspaper treated Cajun (Acadian), Creole, and Black traditions as three distinct cultural groups.
Historically, most Cajuns did not consider themselves Creoles, and most Creoles did not consider Cajuns to be Creole. The modern tendency to group them together is largely a late-20th and 21st-century academic and cultural development.
The 1976 newspaper clipping is actually a very good piece of evidence because Barry Ancelet was documenting the culture as people themselves understood it at the time.
The caption reads:
"...Louisiana French material, whether Acadiana, creole or black."
That wording tells us several things.
• "Acadian" (meaning Cajun French communities)
• "Creole" (meaning the descendants of French and Spanish immigrants Louisiana)
• "Black" (meaning the descendants of both enslaved people of African descent and Free People of Color FPoC)
These groups were being treated as three distinct cultural traditions. That is exactly how many folklorists approached Louisiana in the 1970s.
In places like New Orleans, St. Martinville, Opelousas, and Natchitoches, "Creole" increasingly referred to the descendants of the old colonial French and Spanish population, particularly families that had been in Louisiana before the Acadian migration.
In St. Martin Parish, for instance, the accepted birthplace of Cajun culture, that distinction certainly reflected what many people experienced. Older Creole families and Cajun families often viewed themselves as separate communities. Most Creole families considered themselves descendants of Louisiana's original French and Spanish colonial settlers, while Acadians (later known as Cajuns) were viewed as later arrivals from Canada. Fair or unfair, there was often a social distinction between the two, particularly in places like St. Martinville.
This reflects what many historians have documented. St. Martinville was one of the oldest French settlements in Louisiana. Its leading families—the Delahoussayes, Fournets, Duchamps, Portiers, and many others—were part of an older colonial society. Most considered themselves Creole.
The Acadians largely settled around them rather than within that social elite. As a result, there was often a noticeable social distinction. It wasn't absolute—there were occasional marriages between groups—but socially there could be considerable prestige attached to being "Creole."
Some older Creole residents even used the word "Cajun" almost as a pejorative, or slur, into the mid-20th century.
Outside St. Martin Parish
The distinction varied considerably. In Vermilion, Acadia, Lafayette, and parts of Evangeline Parish, Cajuns became the overwhelming majority. There simply weren't enough old Creole families to maintain a strong separate identity.
There, people often identified simply as French even though they were of predominantly Acadian descent. They were the majority, and there was no need to differentiate from any other group, i.e., Creoles.
Historically, this was not unusual. Throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th century, newspapers, census records, family histories, and even folklorists commonly referred to Cajuns and Creoles as entirely separate groups.
The idea that Cajuns are simply one branch of a broader "Creole" identity is a much more recent interpretation. Beginning in the 1980s and especially during the 1990s and 2000s, many scholars began emphasizing the shared French language, music, cuisine, and centuries of interaction among Louisiana's French-speaking peoples. Rather than focusing on the distinctions, they highlighted the cultural exchange that shaped South Louisiana. An effort began shortly thereafter to merge the two cultures and somehow claim this as historical. Around this time, scholars began to deemphasize the impact of Cajuns upon the Louisiana identity. The Cajuns’ native language, Cajun French, was relabeled as “Louisiana French”, further marginalizing and erasing the Cajuns’ contributions to their unique culture.
This 1976 important article serves as a reminder that only fifty years ago, people—including journalists, historians, and folklorists—still commonly described Cajuns and Creoles as separate cultural identities, with Black Louisianans labeled as a third, separate culture unto itself.
Today you'll often hear phrases like:
"Cajuns are one branch of Louisiana Creole culture."
Historically, however, that is not how most Cajuns or most Creoles described themselves.
In other words, this is largely a modern reinterpretation using the older colonial definition of "Creole" ("native-born Louisianian") rather than the social identity people actually used in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries.
I'd be interested to hear from others:
Do you remember your parents or grandparents distinguishing between Cajuns and Creoles? Did that depend on where in Louisiana they lived?
