From one comes many

Creole heritage and culture is celebrated in Ville Platte as part of the city’s Bastille Day observances
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On July 14, 1789, French peasants stormed La Bastille in Paris, France, that doubled as a military fortress as well as a prison. The day’s events launched the period known as the Reign of Terror that was the French Revolution with its theme of “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” or “liberty, equality, and brotherhood.”
The day is celebrated across the former French colonial areas of the world, and, in Ville Platte, the day is more so used to honor the Creole heritage of Louisiana. “We’re not so celebrating the horror of the French Revolution, but we celebrate the innocent lives of those who fought and died for freedom, equality, and brotherhood,” said Gene Buller.
He continued, “Today, we stand together united in our democratic American French values and our faith in God who will judge all in the end, and we celebrate our 375-year-old Louisiana based Creole culture.”
Buller, along with John LaFleur, II, are organizers of the Creole Families Bastille Day Celebration that was held again this year on Saturday, July 14, at the Ville Platte Northside Civic Center. The day began with the traditional benediction from Chief John Nolan Gobert of the Opelousas Attakapas Prairie Tribe from Elton and concluded with the tribe’s traditional pow-wow dance.
During his speech, LaFleur highlighted the history of the Creole culture and heritage in Louisiana that began in 1689 with France’s King Louis XIV’s desire to have a capital city for La Nouvelle France at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
As LaFleur described, this territory of New France “stretched from the Great Lakes of Michigan to New Orleans and from Pensacola all the way to the current Midwestern States.”
He went on to explain that the area was an undeclared French-Indian nation because of the Choctaw Indians, who laid the “foundation of Creole people and culture” with their gumbo and “viande boucanée.”
LaFleur explained that it was the Canadian LeMoyne Brothers of Iberville and Bienville who were tasked with founding the capital of the Louisiana Territory. The first capital was at Fort Biloxi in 1699 but, as LaFleur said, “failed because of hurricanes, yellow fever, enemy attack, and the constant threat of the British.” He added that the capital was then moved to Fort Louis de la Mobile.
“By 1718, Iberville had died, and his younger brother Bienville was the only one to succeed him and finally would establish the capital city at the mouth of the river in New Orleans,” said LaFleur.
Following the founding of New Orleans, LaFleur explained, “French Creole families such as the Veillons, Devilliers, Perrons along with German and Irish colonials would come up river to the vast Post of the Opelousas bringing with them their French-Indian and African traditions.”
These Creole families arrived in modern day Louisiana with the Creoles who came from the Illinois Territory such as the Ardoins, Vidrines, Catoires, Dupres, and Sauciers. LaFleur said, “The Fontenots, LaFleurs, Guillorys, Doucets, and Landreneaus would then all come to the Opelousas Territory by way of New Roads where many of them met and married.”
This Creole culture in Louisiana, according to LaFleur, was then influenced by Napoleonic soldiers and Saint Domingue Creoles from the modern nation of Haiti in the 18th Century. These families included the Moreins, Brunets, and Michots.
According to LaFleur, the word “Creole” is a Portuguese word for Colonial born. He explained that the Creole people, under King Louis XIV, were all “viewed as a brotherhood.”
“It was only after (the king’s) death that racism started to raise its ugly head,” LaFleur stated. “Thus began the destruction of the unity of our people.”
LaFleur further explained how these divisions in the Creole culture grew in the 20th Century. “Cajunization began in 1968 and added to the Jim Crow separatism of making only white French speaking people Cajun and only black people as Creole,” he stated. “Neither of which were true. The Cajuns were a minority group who married into our culture and learned gumbo and etouffée which had never been known in Canada.”
Even with all of these divisions, LaFleur expressed that the Creole heritage and culture has always been diverse. He stated, “DNA science proves what honest history told us all along before the misrepresentations began.”
Following LaFleur’s speech Fr. Jason Vidrine presided over a mass that was said in a combination of French and English languages unique to the Ville Platte area called “franglais.”
As he began his homily, Fr. Vidrine said, “Creole is a way of life and a culture. It is something that we must be proud of.”
During his homily, he spoke about a recent trip to France where he celebrated the 275th anniversary of the Vidrine family in Louisiana. While in France, the pastor explored several of the Vidrine family’s historic places and went to the Cabanac near Bordeaux.
“I went to offer Mass for the soul of Fr. Bernard Barriere at the last parish that he served as pastor,” said Fr. Vidrine. “Fr. Berriere was a priest in Bordeaux who was deported during the French Revolution. He came to Louisiana and for 30 years served the communities of St. Martinville, Opelousas, and Vermilionville (which is now Lafayette). He was the first priest of St. John, which is now the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Lafayette.”
“There in the church at Cabanac is a plaque near the sacristy door that gives homage to Fr. Berriere as their pastor, and it mentions that he served 30 years here in Louisiana,” continued Fr. Vidrine. “It’s a real living memory there that they have.”
LaFleur ended the day’s remarks by saying we are all Creole regardless if we are French, Spanish, German, Irish, or West African. “We are all one drop,” he concluded.