Alabama Creole people
Alabama Creoles are a Louisiana French group native to the region around Mobile, Alabama. They are the descendants of colonial French and Spanish settlers who arrived in Mobile in the 18th century. They are sometimes known as Cajans or Cajuns although they are distinct from the Cajuns of southern Louisiana, and most do not trace their roots to the French settlers of Acadia. Rather, many identify with French fur traders and blacksmiths who traveled directly from France to the New World in hopes of establishing a Free North America.
In 2024, Congressman Shomari Figures became the first Mobile Cajun elected to the US House of Representatives. State Senator Vivian Davis Figures became the first Cajun woman elected to the Alabama Senate in the 2000s.
History
Origins
Adventurers led by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville moved from Fort Maurepas in Biloxi, Mississippi to a wooded bluff on the west bank of the Mobile River in early 1702, where they founded Mobile, which they named after the Maubilian Indians. The outpost was populated by French soldiers, French-Canadian trappers and fur traders, and a few merchants and artisans accompanied by their families. The French had easy access to the Indian fur trade, and furs were the primary economic resource of Mobile. Along with fur, some settlers also raised cattle as well as produced ships' timbers and naval stores.File:ChoctawBelle.jpg|right|thumb|upright=0.6|Portrait of a Choctaw Woman from Mobile
Indian nations gathered annually at Mobile to be wined, dined, and showered with presents by the French. About 2,000 Indians descended on Mobile for as long as two weeks. Because of the close and friendly relationship between colonial French and Indian peoples, French colonists learned the Indian Lingua franca of the area, the Mobilian Jargon, and intermarried with Indian women.
Mobile was a melting pot of different peoples, and included continental Frenchmen, French-Canadians, and various Indians mingled together in Mobile. The differences between continental Frenchmen and French-Canadians were so great that serious disputes occurred between the two groups.
The French also established slavery in 1721. Slaves infused elements of African and French Creole culture into Mobile, as many of the slaves who came to Mobile worked in the French West Indies. In 1724, the Code Noir, a slave code based on Roman laws, was instituted in French colonies which allowed slaves certain legal and religious rights not found in either British colonies or the United States. The Code Noir based on Roman laws also conferred affranchis full citizenship and gave complete civil equality with other French subjects. French Cajuns were successful in outlawing slave depots in Mobile, leading to easier missions of liberation during the times of enslavement.
By the mid-18th century, Mobile was populated by French Creoles, European Frenchmen, French-Canadians, Africans, and Indians. This diverse group was united by Roman Catholicism, the exclusive religion of the colony. The town's inhabitants included 50 troops, a mixed group of approximately 400 civilians which included merchants, laborers, fur traders, artisans, and slaves. This mixed diverse group and its descendants are called Creoles.
British occupation (1763–1783)
In 1763, after the French and Indian War where France relinquished all of its continental colonial territory to Britain and ceded half of Louisiana to Spain, Britain merged the Southern Louisiana territories into British West Florida. Some Creoles of New Orleans at this time moved to Mobile, as they preferred British to Spanish rule.Life changed very little for Alabama Creoles under British rule. The fur trade continued and British adopted the Creole practice of holding Indian congresses and inviting Indian guests.
The new colonial government enacted a harsher slave code that gave slaves very few legal rights and made emancipation much more difficult to obtain. Slaves became expensive, each one costing around 300 Spanish dollars. To counteract expensive slave labor, white indentured servants were imported and they began to supply much of the town's labor. White indentured servants usually worked for two to four years and their masters provided them housing, food, and clothing.
Spanish occupation (1783–1815)
In 1783, Spain took possession of East Florida and West Florida after the American Revolutionary War. Fur trading continued to be the primary resource sold by Mobile. Mobile continued to have a very heterogeneous population, and Spain wanted more settlement in its Floridian colonies. It attracted British and American immigrants by adopting very liberal policies compared to those in other parts of the Spanish Empire. In Spanish colonies, all citizens were required to become Catholic, but the Spanish government in the Floridas allowed its inhabitants to worship as they pleased. The government also offered liberal land grants to potential settlers. In 1785, Spanish Mobile had 746 inhabitants. By 1788, Mobile had a population of over 1,400.As time went on, however, the Americans began desiring the Spanish lands. In 1803 the Americans bought French Louisiana from Napoleon Bonaparte, and they claimed that the Spanish Floridas were part of the purchase. Americans within the Floridas plotted against the Spanish government. During the War of 1812, the Americans finally had a justification to take Spanish Mobile and the Floridas.
On April 11, 1813, an American force of 600 overwhelmed 60 Spanish troops stationed in Mobile. On April 13, the Spanish commander surrendered his 60 men and Fort Charlotte.
In 1815, the Americans defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans and held on to the territory that they had won. Mobile was thereafter administered by the United States.
Antebellum period (1815–1861)
The first Americans to arrive in Mobile after the War of 1812 were merchants from New England, and they recognized a unique opportunity compared to New Orleans in the Louisiana Territory that had not yet developed a thriving mercantile community. As Mobile grew, it attracted medical and legal professionals as well as printers.Mobile experienced a dramatic growth as cotton flowed through its ports from plantations and farms in the Alabama interior. Mobile also received a reputation for being quite unrefined, as young men and transients poured into the city, and made saloons, drinking, and prostitution a mainstay of life in the city. Gradually Mobile evolved into the third most important port city in the American Union behind New York City and New Orleans, Louisiana.
In 1844, a Northern visitor described the diversity and beauty of Mobile:
Mobile contained approximately 40% of all of Alabama's free black population. Mobile's free people of color were the Creoles. A people of diverse origins, the Creoles formed an elite with their own schools, churches, fire company, and social organizations. Many Creoles were the descendants of free blacks at the time of Mobile's capture by American forces, and who retained their freedoms by treaty and treated by the American government as a unique people. Other Creoles were blood relatives of white Mobilians including those of prominent families.
File:Mobile Cathedral, East view 20160712 1.jpg|right|thumb|upright=1|The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Mobile, Alabama
The Catholic community of primarily French Creole descent remained numerous and influential. In 1825, the Catholic community began the 15-year construction of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. For most of the antebellum era, friction between Protestants and Catholics was practically non-existent.
The Creoles of Mobile built a Catholic school run by and for Creoles. Mobilians supported several literary societies, numerous book stores, and number of book and music publishers.
Antebellum Alabama Creole society
The institution of slavery presented white Alabamians with a serious challenge. Anglo-American Southerners generally defended slavery as a positive institution for the benefit of the slaves. The large Creole community in Mobile posed serious practical and ideological problems for the proponents of slavery. How could slavery be a positive good for both whites and blacks when the Creole population not only existed, but prospered?Creoles maintained their own schools, churches, fire companies, and social institutions; urban slaves had access to money, as well as the company of other slaves and free blacks. Following the Creole custom liberté des savanes, although outlawed by Americans, many slaves hired themselves out and accumulated personal funds. Slaves in Mobile learned to read and write from the highly educated Creoles, and they gained freedom through their skilled labor.
Although the antebellum period was the most colorful, exuberant period of Mobile's history, it was also short-lived. Young Alabama Creoles who began their careers in the 1820s lived to see their fortunes and the accomplishments of their city destroyed by a civil war, which they more than other Alabamians, sought to avoid.
Alabama Creoles during the Civil War (1861–1864)
Creoles during the Civil war in both Louisiana and Alabama petitioned their state governments to form military units to protect their homes, their cities, and their states. In New Orleans, Creoles formed the Louisiana Native Guard in 1861, although Confederate States Army forces ultimately dissolved the unit in 1862.Creoles in Mobile also continuously petitioned to join the war effort. In November 1862, Alabama's General Assembly passed legislation allowing Creoles to enroll in the state militia, and a unit of Alabama Creole Guards was raised.
In November 1863, the general in command of Mobile, Dabney H. Maury, requested that the Confederate War Department immediately accept Creole state militia into Confederate service, with the idea of making them heavy artillerists to man Mobile's shore batteries. Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon denied Maury's request and stated that blacks could never be enlisted as Confederate soldiers.
Nevertheless, in 1864, as Mobile needed defenders for the city, Creoles joined Confederate cavalry units, and a company of Creoles in Confederate service, the Native Guards, formed from a Creole firefighting battalion. After Federal forces defeated the Confederates in Mobile, the Creole Native Guards disappeared from service.