Haitian History in New Orleans

[havoc]

"From the pots of red beans and rice bubbling in French Quarter restaurants to the amulet bags for sale in neighborhood botanicas, Haitian influence is seen, heard and tasted across this city. French colonists from Saint-Domingue — later renamed Haiti — had traveled to New Orleans since the early 1700s. That connection flourished in 1809 and 1810, when 10,000 refugees arrived in New Orleans from Saint-Domingue. Those numbers were later strengthen with another migration wave of 15,000 in the 1820s. The refugees were a combination of French colonists, their slaves and free people of color who had fled the slave uprisings.The refugees doubled the city's population and infused New Orleans with Franco-Caribbean traditions, including theater companies, elaborate dances and black political activists. Also, as Saint-Domingue's lucrative sugarcane fields burned during the revolution there, New Orleans' sugar industry soared. A lot of the things about New Orleans we view as unique came from those Haitian refugees. New Orleans is the most Haitian city in America, much more than Miami or New York. Essentially all of the surviving whites (along with some of the gens de couleur) became refugees. Approximately 10,000 French refugees came to the Gulf Coast larger than the population of New Orleans and Mobile at the time (8,000 and 810 respectively). These Saint-Dominguens made a significant contribution to the Gulf Coasts creole culture. Saint-Dominguens included John James Audubon, Louis Moreau Gottschalks family, and (likely) Marie Laveau and Jean Laffitte. Black refugees to Louisiana brought with them elements of African and Haitian culture in the form of voodoo/hoodoo practices, shotgun house architecture, and the language, oral traditions, and dance steps of Mardi Gras Indian rites."

 

[havoc]

NOLA History: The New Orleans-Haitian Connection

San Domingue. Hispanolia. Haiti. Three names for one island. First “discovered” by Christopher Columbus in 1492, Haiti’s history is tumultuous but also full of positive contributions to other cities and societies, significantly New Orleans.

While modern Americans usually associate Haiti with Miami and South Florida, there once was a strong connection between the island and New Orleans. European involvement on the island began with Columbus and his ship, the Santa Maria, which ran aground and was abandoned there. The men Columbus left behind established a settlement, beginning the Spanish presence. The island’s natural harbors were attractive to more than merely the Spanish; French pirates used the western side of Hispanolia as a haven. The fertile soil was suitable for growing tobacco, and soon Frenchmen from other colonies migrated to Haiti. The combination of the French in the west and the Spanish in the east was a troubling one; small conflicts regularly erupted. In the grand scheme of European geopolitics, though, Haiti was small potatoes. The conflicts on the island were formally settled in 1697. That year marked the end of the Nine Year’s War (known in North America as King William’s War), which pitted the French against the Dutch, British, and the Holy Roman Empire. The Treaty of Ryswick (named for the Dutch town where it was negotiated) settled many of the disputes of the war, and issues between Spain and France in Haiti were included. France received the western third of the island, Spain the rest.

With the political situation firmed up, the French began colonizing the island in earnest. The colonists expanded farming, adding sugar cane to their crops as well as tobacco. Sugar cane is a labor-intensive crop, however, requiring the white planters to bring in large numbers of slaves from Africa. Conditions for slaves on Haiti were rough. Thousands died of disease, forcing the planters to constantly import new slaves. The number of slaves coming to the island, in proportion to the number of white landowners, became a serious concern for the Spanish colony on the other side of the island, as well as other Spanish outposts in the Caribbean. By the 1760s, the Spanish banned importation of slaves from Haiti into Louisiana. Their concern was that the stories of life on the island would outrage Louisiana’s slave population to the point of rebellion.



By the time of the French Revolution, the free population (whites and free people of color) in Haiti rose to 40,000. The number of slaves in Haiti was more than double that. Revolution is an infectious disease, as contagious as yellow fever or malaria. Thousands of Frenchmen fled to Haiti, escaping the revolution and the “Reign of Terror,” only to find that the harsh treatment of slaves by their countrymen was a fertile breeding ground for revolution. Slaves rose up against their masters and the free people of color. So great was the turmoil that the colonists, their families, and many blacks fled Haiti for Louisiana. The Spanish ban on Haitian slaves in their territories was still in force, so all the refugees brought with them was money and the possessions they could carry. Many were from influential and powerful families, so they assimilated into the Creole population of New Orleans easily. Some stayed in the city, others moved up and down the river, and into the bayous, re-establishing their sugar cane plantations.

This influx of French colonials into New Orleans didn’t really upset the Spanish, mainly for two reasons. First, the city was still reeling from the Great Fire of 1788. Over 80% of the city was destroyed in that fire, so more people willing to pitch in with the reconstruction was a big help. The refugees from Haiti arrived in 1792-93, and they were there to get the city re-built after the second big fire in 1794. It’s after these two fires that we see the huge shifts in architecture in New Orleans. With the original French-style wooden buildings destroyed, the Spanish imposed their building codes, requiring brick buildings. The Spanish built homes centered around small gardens and courtyards. The French colonials brought the style we now know as the “Creole cottage” with them from Haiti. These cottages, found in the rear and downriver sections of the Vieux Carre’, are the forerunners of the shotgun-style we see around the city as expansion continued.

The huge influx of French-speaking people to New Orleans from Haiti all but ensured that French would continue to be the dominant language of the city, in spite of 30 years of Spanish control. When Bonaparte’s strategies shifted ownership of Louisiana from Spain, briefly back to France, and ultimately to the United States, the city looked Spanish and sounded French. The mix of white Europeans with the gens de coleur libres (free people of color) became the foundation, the “roux” for the gumbo that is New Orleans.

New Orleans has never forgotten its Haitian Connection, regularly lending assistance to those who live on the island through good times and bad.

Edward Branley is the author of New Orleans: The Canal Streetcar Line, Brothers of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans, and Maison Blanche Department Stores, in Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series. He is also author of Legendary Locals of New Orleans. Branley’s latest book, New Orleans Jazz, will be available at bookstores and online on April 7th. He is owner of Yatmedia LLC (Social Media for Social Justice), and is @NOLAHistoryGuy on Twitter.

 

[Kooley_High]

I believe there was a thread on this already. But while there were hatians in the city early on, a lot of the culture there that developed is very southern/AA. When it comes to hatian culture in the US i still think of miami

 

[Supper]

This again?

MYTH: Louisiana Creole Language comes from Haitian Creole

MYTH: Louisiana Voodoo comes from Haitian voodoo

MYTH: Red Beans and Rice comes from Haiti/The Caribbean

MYTH: Shotgun houses come from Haiti/The Caribbean

Like I been said before, The few thousand haitian refugee who migrated to Louisiana in the late 18th and early 19th century were mostly free white and mulatto class who they impacted the most, not the enslaved black class, migrated from Cuba, 90 percent of them went to New Orleans and did not have a significant impact on the population anywhere else in southern louisiana, and many of whom were not permanent & returned to the Caribbean, especially at the turn of the US civil war.

Many free black and Creoles would return to Haiti in the late 1859. Many former refugees had kept contact with Haitian relatives since the Haitian Revolution. Other had kept or formed business contacts that they used to help transition out of the increasing racism of the pre-Civil War South.

FEATURE: New Orleans Trade Routes: Path to Riches, Path to Freedom - AFROPUNK

~Facts over feelings~

 

[audemarzz]

Stop this DISRESPECTFUL shyt.

 

[Black Barbie]

Why tf are Haitians obsessed with New Orleans and Louisiana Creole? Y’all stay outta pocket while trying to tell ADOS about ourselves. Stay in y’all’s lane and stop telling stories. SMH.

 

[Secure Da Bag]

I believe there was a thread on this already. But while there were hatians in the city early on, a lot of the culture there that developed is very southern/AA. When it comes to hatian culture in the US i still think of miami

The settling of that region came in waves. There can be Haitian influence, Spanish influence, French influence, and Afram influence. It's not either-or.

And yes, the majority, if not vast majority of Africans in the South were from Africa, not the West Indies. But there were people who came from the West Indies in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The settling of that region came in waves. There can be Haitian influence, Spanish influence, French influence, and Afram influence. It's not either-or.

And yes, the majority, if not vast majority of Africans in the South were from Africa, not the West Indies. But there were people who came from the West Indies in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

I broke this down in another thread:

https://www.thecoli.com/posts/42367900/



There is/was a Haitian refugee influence but what many people fail to mention/understand is that there was nothing Caribbean about the Colonial era (early 1700s) of New Orleans and that the foundation afro-creole population came via african slaves, not haitian refugees. Creole language and Louisiana Voodoo predate that era, so it was pretty much a Southern city, just with Francophone influences

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The Haitian refugee (white and afro) influence came more in the the late Spanish era to early Anglo era (late 1790s to 1810s )

around 1810 is when free people of color/black slave Haitians came in.


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when you look at the demographics from the colonial period (foundational period)--->spanish period (when the haitian influence actually took place)-->anglo period, you'll see just how the Southern-Anglosphere in New Orleans was the dominant influence. Louisiana "blacks" from 1850 to about 1920 came heavy from all over the Anglosphere-Southern USA.

1850

1860

1870

1880

1900

1920

This also held true for the white american anglo population drowning out the white creole population


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According to the records, it's been stablished that by 1840, the Anglo-centric "Americans" (white and black) dominated the Creole "Frenchmen" (white and black)

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a few other notes:

The OG Creole (black and white) population of New Orleans didn't consider the Haitian Refugees/European French who came in during the Spanish period as "Creole" but instead foreigners/"foreign french"

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[havoc]

History of Now

The History of the United States’ First Refugee Crisis
Fleeing the Haitian revolution, whites and free blacks were viewed with suspicion by American slaveholders, including Thomas Jefferson

Nicholas Foreman

January 5, 2016

Illustration of the slave revolt in Haiti, and what slaveholders in the United States feared. Digital Media Lab, University of Virginia
Between 1791 and 1810, more than 25,000 refugees arrived on American shores from the French colony of Saint-Domingue, the modern-day nation of Haiti. Their homes and plantations, which were the engine behind the world’s most profitable colony in 1790, had been consumed by a bloody conflict that began as an appeal for racial equality, and ended in what historian David Geggus has called “the largest and sole fully successful [slave revolt] there has ever been." Disembarking in cities including Philadelphia, Charleston and New Orleans in waves, some with slaves in tow and others with nothing, these supplicants embodied the first refugee crisis in United States history.



The initial wave of emigration from Saint-Domingue began as more than 450,000 slaves took up arms against their masters, setting fire to the island’s plantations and townhomes. Port-au-Prince was reduced to cinders in November of 1791. The revolution’s early leaders had sown the seeds of revolt over months of covert interplantation recruitment, and within the first few weeks of fighting, more than 1,000 slaveowners were killed. In 1793, the capital at Cap Français was razed, Great Britain and Spain entered the conflict and French general Leger Felicite Sonthonax abolished slavery in the hopes of regaining control of the colony. This plan failed, and Sonthonax fled the island before the year's end, leaving a complicated fray behind him. By 1804, Saint-Domingue was no more, and the free, black republic of Haiti reigned in its place.



Consequently, whites, mulattos and free blacks who did not support the end of the plantation regime, along with a few thousand slaves forced to join them, scrambled to board departing vessels. White or black, those who left of their own volition had been planters, artisans, printers, blacksmiths and tailors, but whether they were rich or poor beforehand, all became refugees upon departure.




While some sought asylum nearby in Jamaica and Cuba, thousands began turning up in the harbors of the nascent United States as well. In Philadelphia, for example, what began with 15 refugees aboard a ship called the Charming Sally in 1791 turned into a flood of more than 3,000 refugees by 1794. As events on Saint-Domingue intensified over the next decade, similar influxes occurred at ports in Virginia, South Carolina, Maryland and Louisiana. In 1810 alone, 10,000 refugess arrived in New Orleans; expelled from their first refuge in Cuba, they doubled the city's population in a matter of months.



The newly minted American government’s first response to the crisis was to provide aid to whites still on the island. George Washington’s administration, filled with slaveholders including the chief executive and his secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, extended $726,000 and a modest amount of military support to the colony’s planters. Jefferson, who did not support direct intervention, still opposed the rebellion, stating that "the reestablishment of peace and commerce...and the free exchange of our mutual productions” were vital to the American economy. Sugar and coffee produced in Saint-Domingue were highly valued by American consumers, and the food and finished goods that American merchants furnished in return constituted one of the young nation's most important trade relationships.



For many, however, Saint-Domingue was not only a valuable trading partner, but a symbol of slavery’s legitimacy and merit. The prospect of a successful slave revolt posed challenges to American slaveholders' prevailing notions of racial domination, and even politicians who didn't own slaves voiced concern about the message being sent. Timothy Pickering, who succeeded Jefferson as Secretary of State, was from Massachusetts and supported gradual abolition, yet still expressed a deeply seated fear that “an army of black troops might conquer all the British Isles and put in jeopardy our Southern states.”

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Black refugees to Louisiana brought with them elements of African and Haitian culture in the form of voodoo/hoodoo practices, shotgun house architecture, and the language, oral traditions, and dance steps of Mardi Gras Indian rites."

so many ducktales in this part from that website

Southern american hoodoo is exactly what largely distinguishes the New Orleans variant of Voodoo from the Voodoo you find in Haiti

 

[havoc]

so many ducktales in this part from that website

Southern american hoodoo is exactly what largely distinguishes the New Orleans variant of Voodoo from the Voodoo you find in Haiti

Did you really think I didn't know that ? YouTube is my best friend buddy. I have watch many videos of different belief systems that have stark differences that were created by African descents and Native Africans. I already knew the author was wrong on that part but I still wanted to post the article. History isn't black and white. It always open for debate when new facts arise.

Second, that still doesn't refute the point of the Haitian culture that emerged in the New Orleans in the late 18th century.

Let me clears some things up in this thread. I saw posts making false accusations that Haitians trying to declare Louisiana Creole culture as their own. In my 40 years of breathing on this damn earth, I have never heard Haitians making claims that the Louisiana Creole culture was create by Haitians The contents that are posted specifically making references and details of Haitians' contribution that had an impact in New Orleans.

Carrying on to another point, I said Haitian History in New Orleans without the adjective "Black" on the subject. For whatever reason, a few of the posters assuming the historians are giving all the credits to all the black Haitians for the cultural impact that reshape New Orleans and went on a rant

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Did you really think I didn't know that ? YouTube is my best friend buddy. I have watch many videos of different belief systems that have stark differences that were created by African descents and Native Africans. I already knew the author was wrong on that part but I still wanted to post the article. History isn't black and white. It always open for debate when new facts arise.

I didn't say that YOU said what was in that article, but while posting it, you didn't correct any of the misconceptions/myths in the article that @Supper, subsequently addressed

Second, that still doesn't refute the point of the Haitian culture that emerged in the New Orleans in the late 18th century.

I touch on all that in this post-->Haitian History in New Orleans

Let me clears some things up in this thread. I saw posts making false accusations that Haitians trying to declare Louisiana Creole culture as their own. In my 40 years of breathing on this damn earth, I have never heard Haitians making claims that the Louisiana Creole culture was create by Haitians

Oh, It's out there

The contents that are posted specifically making references and details of Haitians' contribution that had an impact in New Orleans.

Carrying on to another point, I said Haitian History in New Orleans without the adjective "Black" on the subject. For whatever reason, a few of the posters assuming the historians are giving all the credits to all the black Haitians for the cultural impact that reshape New Orleans and went on a rant

The topic/thread has been done before


History of how Haitian immigration transformed and revolutionized Louisiana's AA population

Haiti & New Orleans: Is The Feeling Mutual? (a very long read)


........some things just need(ed) to be cleared up

Always thought this came from Africa or Caribbean ...actually it was New Orleans

Fetishzation & Exotization of US Creoles, Louisiana history & People

 

[Kooley_High]

The settling of that region came in waves. There can be Haitian influence, Spanish influence, French influence, and Afram influence. It's not either-or.

And yes, the majority, if not vast majority of Africans in the South were from Africa, not the West Indies. But there were people who came from the West Indies in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Yes, but when speaking of Haitian influence its always being tied to the black culture that formed there specifically, and thats what i was referencing. I shouldve been more specific.

 

[Secure Da Bag]

Yes, but when speaking of Haitian influence its always being tied to the black culture that formed there specifically, and thats what i was referencing. I shouldve been more specific.

I don't think it's inaccurate to say that the black culture in Louisiana is indeed Afram culture. But there was some influence by West Indies and Haitians blacks. 90-10, 80-20? I don't pretend to know. But it wasn't 0.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

I don't think it's inaccurate to say that the black culture in Louisiana is indeed Afram culture. But there was some influence by West Indies and Haitians blacks. 90-10, 80-20? I don't pretend to know. But it wasn't 0.

IMO, it's easier to find/prove someone notable of Afro-Haitian descent in New Orleans history than to prove/show Afro-Haitian cultural influence. It's a very casually done thing to do in New Orleans/historians of New Orleans for someone to say "_________, came from Haiti" but when you do the knowledge, sh1t don't be adding up Take something like Gumbo for example: If people aren't claiming that it came from Cajuns, they say it came from Choctaw Indians or Haitian refugees; but when you really look into it, you find the real truth

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this is before both Acadians and Haitian refugees arrived

Now some context: This September 4, 1764, document is part of an interrogation of a fifty-year-old female slave named Julia, also known as Comba, whose owner was a certain "Sr. [Sieur] Cantrelle." Comba was being questioned regarding her knowledge of a runaway slave named Louis, also known as Foy, allegedly involved with other slaves, including one named Cezar, in thefts of clothing and a pig.

The significance of this passage is that it pushes back the earliest known reference to gumbo to 1764 — indicating that the dish was known in Louisiana even before the arrival of the Acadian exiles, whose Cajun descendants (unjustly or not) are the ethnic group most often associated with gumbo by the general public. Of course, this finding is perhaps not so surprising to those who maintain that the word "gumbo" came from the African term for "okra," or, as others maintain, from a Native American word for "sassafras." (I have no dog in that fight.)

Bayou Teche Dispatches: Gumbo in 1764?