Creole-Speaking Areas of the Gulf Coast

This map shows current and former speakers of Creole, a variety of French descended from the maritime settlers of the Louisiana colony and Gulf coast, and for which the agglomerate ethnicities resulting were named. Creole originally referred to both the native-born slaves who were better acclimated to working conditions than their imported counterparts, and to the slave owners themselves, though they quickly dropped this categorization due to the stigma of the racial connotations that developed. The rural "coonass" population of fishermen dispersed after their refusal to bear arms for England after its acquisition of Acadia, who became known as Cajuns, became both the more popular choice in nomenclature and the more wealthy of the two groups after the oil and tourism industries picked up earlier this century. Their language was almost totally wiped out in the last generation due to mandatory public schooling in English.