Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color (Revised)

By Gary B. Mills

Book Overview

Out of colonial Natchitoches, in northwestern Louisiana, emerged a sophisticated and affluent community founded by a family of freed slaves. Their plantations eventually encompassed 18,000 fertile acres, which they tilled alongside hundreds of their own bondsmen. Furnishings of quality and taste graced their homes, and private tutors educated their children. Cultured, deeply religious, and highly capable, Cane River's Creoles of color enjoyed economic privileges but led politically constricted lives. Like their white neighbors, they publicly supported the Confederacy and suffered the same depredations of war and political and social uncertainties of Reconstruction. Unlike white Creoles, however, they did not recover amid cycles of Redeemer and Jim Crow politics.

First published in 1977, The Forgotten People offers a socioeconomic history of this widely publicized but also highly romanticized community--a minority group that fit no stereotypes, refused all outside labels, and still struggles to explain its identity in a world mystified by Creolism.

Now revised and significantly expanded, this time-honored work revisits Cane River's "forgotten people" and incorporates new findings and insight gleaned across thirty-five years of further research. This new edition provides a nuanced portrayal of the lives of Creole slaves and the roles allowed to freed people of color, tackling issues of race, gender, and slave holding by former slaves. The Forgotten People corrects misassumptions about the origin of key properties in the Cane River National Heritage Area and demonstrates how historians reconstruct the lives of the enslaved, the impoverished, and the disenfranchised.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807137138
• ISBN13: 9780807137130
• Release Date: November 2013
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

EXCELLENT HISTORICAL READ

I picked my copy up at a yard sale primarily because it was a genealogy book. I started reading and am now really caught up in the history of these people. There is much we can learn from this society where people had common goals, helped each other, and as a result built a strong society. I find it criminal that their way of life, buildings, etc are destroyed. Reminds us of the stupidity of war, bigotry, and misuse of power.

A people resurected

Cane River has not only captured an era gone by, but has resurrected a legacy. The Metoyer family has multiplied beyond believe and the book has given them a tool to link together their roots and acknowledge their heritage. it also disspells any rumors of their true ethnic background

Eradicating historical stereotypes

Books such as THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE: CANE RIVER'S CREOLES OF COLOR and BLACK MASTERS: A FREE FAMILY OF COLOR IN THE OLD SOUTH go a long way toward correcting the over-simplified views we have of the gens de couleur (people of color) in American history. A slave (the daughter of two black persons brought to the United States as slaves) woman, Marie Thereze Coincoin develops a long-term relationship with the wealthy Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer. She eventually becomes free and gains property (including slaves). Once Metoyer and Marie Thereze go their separate ways (or at least end their intimate, if not their business assocation), Marie Thereze continues to add to her property. Her oldest son, the mulatto, (Nicolas) Augustin Metoyer buys property on Brevel Isle and is soon followed by his siblings, their children, and various other free people of color, forming a colony, which includes some of the wealthies people in the very wealthy surrounding community, including, of course, Augustin Metoyer. Many live in very fine mansions, such as Melrose. The colonists live as well off as the wealthiest whites even when economic stagnation sets in. They side with the Confederacy and, after the war, the community begins to crumble.The book also offers us a tantalizing look at the placeage system, which also has its less official counter-parts in places such as Charleston.

Accurate and Informative on a unknown past in AmericaHistory

This brief history of America's "unknown" Southern minority, "People of Color". This book tells a wonderful story of how the "melting pot" in America works. This is not only an accurate portrayal of Louisiana/American history but, also a romance noval and a story of triumph. This history is not African-American, but Minority-American. Little is known or even spoken of "CREOLE" America, none the less this is part of our history. An EXCELLENT book if you would like to research your roots to the people of CANE RIVER. Better than "ROOTS".