Louisiana Creole Culture

Section I

The Louisiana Creole Culture

When Creoles die, they go to Paris.

-An old Creole proverb.

The Feast of All Saints

My first interaction with the Louisiana Creole culture occurred in November of 1999, when my friend Christina from Puerto Rico invited with to spend a few days with her in New Orleans while she visited some old friends she had made while attending Tulane University. What she failed to mention was that we would be staying in an antebellum mansion in LaFourche Parish with an eccentric family of afranchi socialites who adhered to a code of social etiquette long since disregarded by even the most nostalgic of aristocrats in Europe. The day of our arrival coincided with the Feast of All Saints, the day on which the Roman Catholic Church celebrates all those who have gained entrance into the exclusive club known as sainthood. I was soon to learn that New Orleans is a city watched over by a thousand saints and lesser spirits on whose intercessory powers many people rely, but on that particular day I was more concerned with getting though the dinner without embarrassing myself too badly.

Our dinner hostess, Cecilia LaBranche, was a stately middle aged woman of French extraction who held court from the head of the table in this massive, gherishly decorated Versailles-on-the-Bayou style dinning room. The guests included a Portuguese count, a monsignor, a book publisher from New York, Mme LaBranche's elderly grandmother, Christina and myself. The table was set with several odd utensils that I had never seen before, such as individual salt bowls, finger washing trays, marrow spoons and enough forks per person that could serve an entire household. It was truly a scene out of a Tennessee Williams play, and I was the outsider, country bumpkin who had stumbled into this lavish world of ritual and tradition.

As course after course filed passed, and we went from an appetizer of Russian blini smeared with sour cream and topped with a dollop of caviar to a classic Creole gumbo, made with a dark roux base and laced with the smoky flavor that only filé powder, a traditional Louisiana condiment made from ground sassafras leaves, can proved. These two ingredients are an absolute necessity if any soup is to be called a gumbo, as our hostess pointed out by saying, "sans la base au roux brun et le poudre file, ce n'est qu'une soupe vulgaire." After the gumbo, a tray of cold, jellied meats was passed around and then we were served shrimp creole on mound of white rice. Shrimp creole is another classic New Orleans dish and it consists of heavily spiced shrimp served in a tomato based sauce which includes the Holy Trinity of Creole cuisine: green bell pepper, onions and celery. For dessert, another classic: Bananas Fosters, a spicy sweet concoction of rum soaked bananas set ablaze at the table and served over iced cream, which was invented in the 1950's by the proprietor of Antoine's Restaurant in the French Quarter as a special dish for a regular patron. I have taken the time to describe the dishes served, because over time I have learned how valuable traditional cuisine is to any given culture. In fact, I believe that the three elements that best embody a culture are: language, belief system and cuisine. Since the majority of this work will deal with the popular religious practices of the Louisiana Creole people, I thought it import to briefly mention the traditional cuisine and language aspects of the Creole people in this section. Curiously, I've noticed that in the United States, a county where almost everybody is descended from immigrants, the last aspect or native culture to fall victim to the process of assimilation is the food of the ancestral homeland.

As the dinner progressed, I began to feel more at ease, observing the motions of those around me and imitating their refined table manners. I also heard Mme LaBranche speak of her ancestors who had arrived from France, after having sold all their property in Normandy to start an indigo plantation in the Louisiana colony and about how her ancestor, whose portrait stared down at us from the dining room wall, had fathered a male child out of wedlock with his slave mistress and his wife decided to raise the child as her own to atone for the sins of her husband, and the slave out of anger and jealously poisoned the Frenchwoman with roots she had taken from the forest. According to family legend, the slave girl made a paste from the venomous roots and smeared it on a specially prepared dish of breakfast crêpes and the plantation mistress died an agonizing death right there on the dinning room floor. As Mme LaBranche told the story, she made a motion in my direction and added, "elle est morte exactement là où tu es assis, Jamie." All the guests looked at me and laughed. Three days after the wife was found dead, her ghost returned to settle scores. The slave girl was found dead of fright, with her eyes wide open and her once jet black hair turned white. That same night, the vengeful ghost appeared to her unfaithful husband and said that she would spare him if he promised to raise the little boy as if he were his legitimate son and he must have masses said and pray daily for the repose of her soul. If he did this, she promised the family would always be prosperous, but if not, they would fade away into a cursed oblivion. The man did as late wife's ghost had instructed and the family's plantation did indeed prosper and all their business ventures from that day on have been blessed.

"C'est absoluement la verité," commented Mme LaBranche's mother who sat by my side. "It's just like my daughter says. "That woman watches over us to this day. I've seen her three times, you know. She appeared to me the day I arrived at this house after I married Cecilia's daddy and she scared me half to death, just staring at me with cold dark eyes. I called the priest to come bless the house, since I was sure we had some kind of spook living with us, but now I think she just wanted to make sure I was talking care of her family. The second time I saw her was in 1970, when my son Lance was in Vietnam. I was so worried that I don't think I slept the whole night through for the first six months he was gone. One night, while my husband was sound asleep next to me, I woke to see a blue light glowing in the hall. When I got there, I found the woman standing at the top of the stair, but this time she was smiling and she spoke to me in elegant French, saying, "soingez-vous bien, ma soeur, notre fils reviendra sauf et sain." I could sleep peacefully after