Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1898 — What Is a Creole? [ARTICLE]

What Is a Creole?

What is- a creole? A creole properly and in strict sense is the child of any foreign parents who is born on American soil. The accepted use of the term, however, Is one who is born of French parents in the Franco-Latln States of the South,' especially Louisiana, Alabama and Florida. In those States the creole is the high-caste native, |»ut the term has been misused to designate the mixed mulatto races, descended from French or Spanish fathers ami Indian or other native mothers; blit this use is incorrect in toto. The word comes from the Spanish “crillo,” or the word “criada,” signifying “born hero.” In the gulf coast region the generic term “Daygo” (a corruption of the Sjanish name “Diego”), is used to cover all the mixed races except the Creole proper. He is the very Hidalgo of the coast country—the F. F. V. of the South, as it were. He is ever proud of his blue-blooded descent, and not infrequently comes from an old And titled family. He is proud, gracious, fond of cigarettes and sometimes absinthe, and lias inborn boycott on labor. The creole woineu have a languid and sinuous beauty and grace of their own, tardy equaled by those of colder blood and skies, It is a fad with the old creole families of New Orleans not to mix socially with the American society. A type of the class Is Madame Latour, in De Leon’s novel, “Creole and Puritan,” a grand dame of eighty, who knows no word of English and has never crossed Canal street.—Atlanta Journal.