Acadiana

Acadiana or Cajun Country is the centuries-old home of the Cajuns, the French-born population in the south of the U.S. state of Louisiana. The main town is Lafayette.

Acadiana extends west of the city of New Orleans along the Gulf of Mexico to the Texas border to the east and about 100 miles inland to the town of Marksville. The 22 districts of the region are: Acadia, Ascension, Assumption, Avoyelles, Calcasieu, Cameron, Evangeline, Iberia, Iberville, Jeff Davis, Lafayette, Lafourche, Pointe Coupee, St. Charles, St. James, St. John The Baptist, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary, Terrebonne, Vermilion and West Baton Rouge. The region has its own flag, which is reminiscent of their origin: three silver lilies on a blue field for France, a golden castle on a red field for Spain (Castile ), and a gold star on a white field for their patron saint Mary.

History

The Cajuns are the descendants of the 18th century displaced from the Atlantic provinces of Canada Acadian French. Their ancestors came from the eastern Canadian province of Acadie (hence the name ' Acadiens ', the English-speaking North Americans later on " Acadians " to " Cajuns " botched ) brutally, from where in 1755 by the British after their victory in the British -Prussian War were expelled.

Many survivors settled after several years of wandering in the 1760s in what was then sold by the French to the Spanish Louisiana, which had maintained its French governor, and was glad of any immigration. Later the territory was French again and came by Napoléon Bonaparte's sale, the Louisiana Purchase, in 1803, finally, to the United States.

Language and Culture

The Cajuns lived up to the beginning of the 20th century untouched by the U.S. Environmental and retained their culture including their music, Cajun music, their peculiar old western French dialect, Cajun French and the famous Cajun cuisine. With the melting pot of New Orleans culture has little to do.

Only in the 1930s, when oil was found in Louisiana, the Cajuns came into contact with the Americans, their Anglicization were forced into the episode in the course to learn English and speak. Children, you spoke Cajun French at school were punished, regarded as backwoods and laughed at because of their faulty hard Englischs and despised. Only in the 1970s it was realized after long efforts by the Cajuns to the value of their culture and French was second in Louisiana state language.

The Cajuns are very self-confident, and a private organization committed to the protection of their culture. According to Census of the southwest is up to 61% French-speaking in a total of not quite 4.5 million inhabitants of Louisiana.

• Louisiana