The Primeaux family has a very long history in America, one that dates back to the late 1600s. The movement of my family from their mother country of France to North America can be traced back to my ninth great-grandfather, François Primeau. François was a native of Normandy, France, who at some point in the later half of the 17th century, travelled and settled in the southern part of Québec. Although the exact date of immigration is unknown, there is documentation that states François was married on October 19, 1687 in Laprairie, Québec, to Marie Deniau. François and Marie had ten children together, all of which lived in the southern section of Québec.
It is difficult to determine exactly what François did in terms of work after he arrived in the providence of Quebec. There is evidence that he was contracted in 1688 and again in 1692 to go west, which usually meant the person was to go and trade with the natives wherever it was considered most beneficial. However, François later changed his profession to agriculture and can be found by 1694 in St. Paul living the life of a farmer.
It was not until the mid 1700s
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that François’s grandson, Pierre Primeau, moved to Maryland, possibly becoming the first Primeau to travel into the British American colonies. It is here that Pierre met and married Susanne Plante, a native of Maryland, sometime around 1768. Together the two joined a group of Acadian exiles and Germans, on a ship named the Britain, which set sail on January 5, 1769 from Maryland bound for the Louisiana coast. Their journey, however, was not a smooth one. Due to problems with navigation, the ship missed the mouth of the Mississippi, causing them to continue to drift towards Texas, and almost starve to death before finally landing on the Texas coast. Their troubles did not end here, the passengers and crew of the Britain ended up being detained by Spanish officials at La Bahia presidio until August 11, when orders were received from the Governor of Texas, to bring the passengers to Natchitoches (now located in Northern Louisiana). They arrived in Natchitoches on October 24, 1769, but since the Acadians initially traveled to Louisiana to join their relatives, they continued on, with the Primeaus also following. They ended their travels in Opelousas where many Acadians were settled. It is here that Pierre and Susanne settled, gained land, and had their children. Although the family of François Primeau was of French Canadian origin, their descendants were “Acadianized” by intermarriage in Louisiana.
This being said, my family belongs to the group known as Cajuns, the name given to Acadian descendants in Louisiana. Both Acadians and Cajuns have a long history of discrimination. While still in L’Acadie, Acadians were discriminated by the British settlers and colonialist after the area was taken over by Britain. Part of the issue of discrimination came from the fact that the Acadians were Catholic and refused to abandon their religion or swear allegiance to Britain. There was also the issue that the lands of L’Acadie were very fertile and prosperous. These issues combined made British officials want to remove the Acadians and place British settlers in their place, leading to the famous expulsions of the
Acadians. Cajuns in Louisiana have almost always had a strong sense of pride for their culture and heritage. However in the early 20th century state laws were passed in Louisiana, which stated that all children of school age must attend state approved schools and that these schools must only be taught in English. This resulted in children of Cajun families not being able to speak Cajun-French while at school, which was more often than not the only language they had been exposed to up until that point. If children were caught speaking French at school, teachers would threaten and sometimes even beat the children as punishment. It was not until the late 1960s that movements were made to preserve the French language of Louisiana. Some Cajuns also overcame prejudice during World War II, by serving as interpreters for American armed forces in France. Other than the reason listed above, my family does not seem to have experienced much discrimination after arriving in Louisiana. The reason for this most likely has to do with them being surrounded by other people from their culture.
After his exploration, he was known as “The Father of New France”. He is called that because he found Quebec City in the year 1608. He had 3 daughters, Hope, Charity, and Faith de
Champlain’s first voyage trip was with his uncle-in-law, Saint Julien, a great navigator and sea voyageur. Julien was transporting Spanish soldiers to Cadiz in the pursuit of a treaty with the Vervins. Champlain got an opportunity to accompany his uncle for his first navigation trip. He made another voyage to West Indies and Mexico. In any navigation he made, he took notes, learnt new things and submitted a report to King Henry. He legally acquired the voyage ship and property after his uncle died leaving Champlain financially stable to make further exploration works. He served in the king’s court as a geographer. His first trip to the Northern America was to observer trade expedition that the King had assented to him. He met François Grave, a great navigator and ship captain who taught him what navigation in the North America entailed. Champlain drew Saint Lawrence on a map after his trip. Champlain established many settlements such as Acadia and P...
“Tracing a single Native American family from the 1780’s through the 1920’s posed a number of challenges,” for Claudio Saunt, author of Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family. (pg. 217) A family tree is comprised of genealogical data that has many branches that take form by twisting, turning, and attempting to accurately represent descendants from the oldest to the youngest. “The Grayson family of the Creek Nation traces its origins to the late 1700’s, when Robert Grierson, a Scotsman, and Sinnugee, a Creek woman, settled down together in what is now north-central Alabama. Today, their descendants number in the thousands and have scores of surnames.” (pg. 3)
Jeanne's immediate family before the war consisted of twelve members. She had a mother, father, and nine older siblings, as well as her mother's mother who lived with them. The rest of the family on her father’s side lived in Japan. However, the relatives on her mother’s side lived in a different part of the U.S. Her father’s family is from a long line of samurais, which are just below the ranking level of nobility and above farmers. Farmers, in turn, are higher on the ranking scale than merchants in old Japan. Around the 1800’s the country began to no longer need the samurai, yet her father’s family still owned a vast amount of land and were very rich. Before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Jeanne’s father worked as a fisherman, her mother at a cannery. They lived in Ocean Park, which is near Santa Monica in California.
When the French arrived there were no intentions of enslaving the Huron or Iroquois for farming or mining. Jacques Cartier was the first French colonists to interact with the Huron in 1534. The French exploited the relationship the Huron had with other tribes to establish trade from the St. Lawrence River to further inland towards the Great Lakes. The French colonists relationship revolved around the Huron when it came to hunting, skinning and trading for furs. The Huron would do most of the work when came to the fur trading, however, for their work they would receive weapons and metal goods for trade. Like many other Native American tribes, the Huron became
people of different ethnicities. Such harm is observed in the history of North America when the Europeans were establishing settlements on the North American continent. Because of European expansion on the North American continent, the first nations already established on the continent were forced to leave their homes by the Europeans, violating the rights and freedoms of the first nations and targeting them with discrimination; furthermore, in the history of the United States of America, dark skinned individuals were used as slaves for manual labour and were stripped of their rights and freedoms by the Americans because of the racist attitudes that were present in America. Although racist and prejudice attitudes have weakened over the decades, they persist in modern societies. To examine a modern perspective of prejudice and racism, Wayson Choy’s “I’m a Banana and Proud of it” and Drew Hayden Taylor’s “Pretty Like a White Boy: The Adventures of a Blue-Eye Ojibway” both address the issues of prejudice and racism; however, the authors extend each others thoughts about the issues because of their different definitions, perspectives, experiences and realities.
The Cajuns are considered to be descendants of Acadian exiles who live mostly within the state of Louisiana. The French colonized the region of Acadia which is now Nova Scotia and the Acadians were the French colonists who lived in the area. However there were also English colonists in the area and the groups didn’t get along well. The French lost Nova Scotia to the British in a war which led to the Treaty of Utrecht (signed in 1713) which formally named Acadia as a British territory (Dormon, 39). The treaty forced the Acadians to swear an oath of allegiance to the British crown which they refused because this would require them to renounce their Catholic religion for that of the Anglican church, because of this the likelihood of another war with the French was high. The Acadians refusal to swear an oath to the British caused the British to order a deportation of the Acadians who then fled with whatever they could carry. In 1784, the King of Spain consented to allowing the Acadians to settle in Southern Louisiana. However when the Acadians arrived they had some issues with the French aristocracy who didn’t rea...
The larger of the two subgroups, Cajun French, is more properly known in today’s society as Louisiana French. Cajuns are an ethic group that is comprised of the Acadian exiles. The Acadians are a group of French speaking people who travelled from Canada to Louisiana in the late eighteenth century. The reason they wore forced to leave Acadia is because of the British Conquest. The language of the Acadians originated from the French of seventeenth century France. Once they arrived and settl...
.... White settlers began to resent the Cherokees. Pressure was put on the tribe to voluntarily move, but their homeland, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama they have lived here for generations and they did not want to move.
Louis XIV controlled France’s economy. He began to heavily tax to support the military reforms. Louis agreed not to tax the nobility, therefore taking away the right for the upper class to have a say in where the taxation money was spent. This gave more and more power to the king. He could spend the money that he was getting from the poor and middle class in any way he pleased without upsetting the nobility. Unfortunately for Louis, the poor could not provide the money he needed. Soon, with the help of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis introduced mercantilism in Europe. He regulated the flow of trade, making sure that France was exporting more than it was importing. To accomplish this, he raised the taxes on imports and lowered those on goods made in France. He encouraged skilled workers and craftsmen to immigrate to France, offering them goods and privileges.
European settlers have a long history of mistreating Native Americans. The most famous example is the Trail of Tears in which President Van Buren and the federal government forcibly and violently removed Cherokee Indians in 1838 from their native land. Over 18 thousand Cherokee women, men and children were forced to walk 1,000 miles from Georgia to Oklahoma. Of these people, 4,000 died from harsh weather, starvation and exposure to illnesses. European settlers during this time viewed Native Americans as uncivilized savage and used this perception to justify violently removing the Native Americans from their land. Native Americans initially accepted the European settlements but pleaded against being removed. The status of African-Americans in this time has generated debate among historians but there is enough evidence to show they were perceived similar to Native Americans; as not equal to European settlers. European settlers justified this by denying their natural rights. African-Americans, however, were seen as useful resources and they remained on their land and were used as slaves. In return African-Americans responded by attempting to escape to their freedom.
The French and the English had coexisted relatively peacefully in North America for nearly a century. But by the 1750's, as both English and French settlements expanded, religious and commercial tensions began to produce new frictions and new conflicts. The French had explored and claimed a vast region of the continental interior, ranging from Louisiana in the South to the Great Lakes in the North. To secure their hold on these enourmous claims, they founded a whole string of communities, missions, trading posts, and fortresses. The region was enclosed by the four major cities: Montreal, Detroit, New Orleans, and Quebec, the center of the French empire in North America.
The history of the relationship between Indigenous Peoples of the North America and European settlers represents a doubtlessly tragic succession of events, which resulted in a drastic decline in Indigenous population leading to the complete annihilation of some Native groups, and bringing others to the brink of extinction. This disastrous development left the Indigenous community devastated, shaking their society to its very pillars. From the 1492 Incident and up to the 19th century the European invasion to the North America heavily impacted the social development of the Indigenous civilization: apart from contributing to their physical extermination by waging incessant war on the Indian tribes, Anglo-Americans irreversibly changed the Native lifestyle discrediting their entire set of moral guidelines. Using the most disreputable inventions of the European diplomacy, the colonizers and later the United States’ government not only turned separate Indigenous tribes against each other but have also sown discord among the members of the same tribe. One of the most vivid examples of the Anglo-American detrimental influence on the Native groups is the history of the Cherokee Nation and the U.S. Indian Removal Policy. The Cherokee removal from Georgia (along with many other Indian nations) was definitely an on-going conflict that did not start at any moment in time, but developed in layers of history between the Native Americans, settlers of various cultures, and the early U.S. government. This rich and intricate history does not allow for easy and quick judgments as to who was responsible for the near demise of the Cherokee Nation. In 1838, eight thousand Cherokees perished on a forced march out of Georgia, which came to be called the T...
Looking back at the history of the United States, there are many instances and issues concerning race and ethnicity that shape the social classes that make up the United States today. There are many stories concerning the American Indian that are filled with betrayal, but there is probably none more cruel and shameful as the removal of the Cherokee Indians in 1838. Blood thirsty for money and property, the white settlers would soon use dirty methods to drive the Cherokee out of their home- lands. The United States government played a critical role in the removal of the Cherokee. “Soon the state governments insisted on the removal of the native peoples, who were already out numbered by the white settlers and considered to be uncivilized “heathens,” not worthy of the land they held” (Sherman 126). This was the attitude of the white settlers. Because of the color of their skin, they spoke a different language, and they were not accustomed to the white mans’ way of life, the Cherokee people suffered many great afflictions even unto death.
This story represents the importance of how serious discrimination and slavery was in southern Louisiana.