A Future for the French Language in Missouri
by Henry Greenstein
The Louisiana Purchase (and Ensuing Fall of Missouri French)
While the revolution in Haiti was a boon to Louisiana French, it effectively destroyed any possibility of French sticking around in Upper Louisiana. The sale of the territory to the young United States was a death blow to the struggling Ste. Genevieve, a city in which boats could moor. And moor they did; Germans became a force to be reckoned with in modern-day Missouri, and they were the majority in Ste. Genevieve by the start of the American Civil War, only about sixty years later. Even in Old Mines, where the Ozarks served as a protective shield around the Francophone community, Missouri's Paw-Paw French was doomed. The dialect was quite literally beaten out of its speakers; as is the case with so many minority dialects, the oldest speakers recall being "rapped on the knuckles" for speaking their distinctive language variety in school. Paw-Paw French, formerly a badge of honor (even named after a local fruit tree!), was newly associated with ignorance, backwardness, and for some reason, blackness, which was particularly problematic in the era of Jim Crow. 1939's visit from Jean-MĂ©dard CarriĂšre, at which point there were 600 families speaking the dialect, was the last major linguistic study of the region (and even then it dwelt mostly on folklore), whereas high vowels in New Orleans French were the subject of a research paper as recently as last year.
Philippe Gustin, one-time director of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana, once said that teaching dialect French would be like teaching Black English in schools. Now, with a more tolerant sociolinguistic mindset, we may be able to see the merits in both, but these dismissive attitudes led to the near-extinct dialect we see today in Old Mines, spoken by only 30 or so. But as I myself learned when I traveled to Old Mines for their annual celebration of the culture, those 30 and their descendants are still, in spite of it all, quite enthusiastic about their culture.
The Rise of New Orleans:
The Haitians
The French and Indian War resulted in a bizarre late-eighteenth-century Spanish reign over Louisiana that lasted about thirty-seven years. In an uncharacteristic turn of events for the typically domineering Spanish (just ask the Native Americans of California), these leaders actually assimilated to the existing culture of the territory they inherited. This was far more characteristic of the French with their own colonial culture of coureurs de bois and cordial relationships with native peoples. (In any case, this Spanish passivity is one of the main reasons why modern-day Louisiana, Missouri, and the like almost exclusively lack Spanish-language place names.) The Spanish silently bowed out of Louisiana upon ceding the territory back to France in the 1800 Treaty of San Ildefonso, but shortly afterward, Toussaint L'Ouverture overthrew the French colonialists of Haiti. This time, ten thousand white Haitians (presumably Francophones) displaced by the slave revolt, many of whom were quite wealthy, emigrated to New Orleans, cementing the position of the French language there as one of social prestige. However, the actual French governmental presence would not last much longer. Napoleon had seen enough; it was time to get out of the Americas.
The Rise of New Orleans:
The Acadians
The lead mines alone would not be enough to sustain the clinging-to-life Illinois Country, where the French never did find the excesses of silver they had coveted. In the meantime, Kaskaskia was destroyed by floods (due to an immense shift in the course of the Mississippi River), and its successor Vandalia, though it obtained some prominence, never occupied as central of a role in French colonization, largely due to the rise of a highly influential shipping outpost to the south in New Orleans. In addition to its opportune location on the water, the fledgling Big Easy was bolstered by a pair of earth-shaking events that increased its reputation as a Francophone and Catholic cultural center. For one, in 1754, the peaceful Acadian peoples of French Canada found themselves caught in yet another conflict between the French and the British; this was to be their last. When British governing official Charles Lawrence demanded that the Acadians swear a loyalty oath to the Crown and forsake Catholicism, they abjectly refused, but could not possibly have foreseen that this would result in the mass burning of their homes and businesses, followed by deportation by the thousands. Three thousand migrated to New Orleans, not to Illinois Country, which had been retitled "Upper Louisiana" to account for the southward power shift. The Acadians were initially outcasts in Louisiana society, but as they assimilated â that is, as "Acadian" transitioned to "Cajun" â they became an integral part of the nascent French Creole elite.
Illinois Country(Le pays des Illinois)
So named was the collection of early settlements established in the wake of Marquette and Joliet's expeditions. These towns in modern-day Illinois, Missouri, and Indiana served as the nexus of the French presence in the Midwest in the early eighteenth century. Chief among them were Kaskaskia, for a time the capital of the region, and Ste. Genevieve, its sister city across the river, which still stands to this day (though its Francophone voices have been silenced due to an influx of English and German immigration; more on that later). However, neither one of these cities was destined for long-term success, and one of the primary reasons for their eventual downward spiral into mediocrity was a pivotal, unfortunate decision by the French government. Slavery sustained many a colonial economy in this era, but harsh price ceilings on grain imposed by French superiors in Kaskaskia prevented the system from flourishing as it did in the South and the Caribbean. Instead, settlers journeyed west into Missouri, where, in and around the Ozarks, they were thrilled to discover deposits of lead in addition to galena, the latter of which had previously led the Spanish to hit the motherlode: the Cerro de PotosĂ. Hence the names of Potosi and Old Mines, Missouri, where thanks to relative geographic isolation, the Missouri French dialect remains, albeit on its last legs, to this day.
Sailing South to Sail Northwest
Though Marquette and Joliet's expedition would turn out to be remarkably influential in shaping the French presence in the Americas for decades to come, it was actually an objective failure based purely on its original goals. Like their fellow European explorers, many of whom had obliterated sizable native populations in the process, the French duo was in search of a fabled "Northwest Passage" â a water route slicing through the continent, connecting Atlantic to Pacific â and hoped against hope that the Mississippi River would suddenly and inexplicably wind west. Around Arkansas, the pair realized that they were continuing to drift south and resolved to turn back instead, leaving far less devastation in their wake then some of their predecessors in the quest for the fabled â and ultimately fictional â Passage. In the process, they covered a great deal of ground, traversing much of the "Illinois Country" that would become France's domain.
Early French Settlement
The French, like countless other colonialist nations of the past several centuries, left widespread remnants of their distinctive language and culture everywhere they traveled. Indeed, French dialects have risen to prominence throughout North Africa, Southeast Asia, and, perhaps most recognizably to an American audience, North America (particularly in Canada, where QuĂ©bĂ©cois French has risen to official status). The French settlement in Quebec, established in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain, provided the growing nation with a highly convenient home base from which to explore the rest of the New World. While their English rivals were sequestered across the Appalachian Mountains and would largely struggle to move further westward, the French were instead poised to use what they called la grande riviĂšre â the modern-day Mississippi River â to traverse much of the American Midwest, and so Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet were sent on a southward expedition toward what eventually became the French colony of Louisiana.
Introduction
As one of the earliest sites of French settlement in the modern-day United States, Missouri has long been home to a vibrant Franco-American culture. But due to years of stigmatization throughout the American educational system in the early 20th century, plus decades of scholars' disinterest, that culture and the distinctive Paw-Paw French dialect that characterizes it are on the verge of extinction. My goal is to increase awareness of the dialect by synthesizing the numerous bits of scattered information about its past, present, and future in order to create a comprehensive resource for introducing the unique language variety to a broader audience.