A Creole Lexicon: Architecture, Landscape, People

Voorkant

Throughout Louisiana's colonial and postcolonial periods, there evolved a highly specialized vocabulary for describing the region's buildings, people, and cultural landscapes. This creolized language -- a unique combination of localisms and words borrowed from French, Spanish, English, Indian, and Caribbean sources -- developed to suit the multiethnic needs of settlers, planters, explorers, builders, surveyors, and government officials. Today, this historic vernacular is often opaque to historians, architects, attorneys, geographers, scholars, and the general public who need to understand its meanings. With A Creole Lexicon, Jay Edwards and Nicolas Kariouk provide a highly organized resource for its recovery. Here are definitions for thousands of previously lost or misapplied terms, including watercraft and land vehicles, furniture, housetypes unique to Louisiana, people, and social categories.
Drawn directly from travelers' accounts, historic maps, and legal documents, the volume's copious entries document what would actually have been heard and seen by the peoples of the Louisiana territory. Newly produced diagrams and drawings as well as reproductions of original eighteenth- and nineteenth-century documents and Historic American Buildings Surveys enhance understanding. Sixteen subject indexes list equivalent English words for easy access to appropriate Creole translations. A Creole Lexicon is an invaluable resource for exploring and preserving Louisiana's cultural heritage.

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Inhoudsopgave

Topical Indexes
207
A Componential Analysis of New Orleans Vernacular Core Modules
253
Bibliography
255
Copyright

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Veelvoorkomende woorden en zinsdelen

Populaire passages

Pagina 39 - ... then bent in the same direction, and bound down to the others; after which they make a mortar of mud mixed with Spanish beard, with which they fill up all the chinks, leaving no opening but the door, and the mud they cover both outside and inside with mats made of the splits of cane. The roof is thatched with turf and straw intermixed, and over all is laid a mat of canes, which is fastened to the tops of the walls by the creeping plant. These huts will last twenty years without any repairs.
Pagina 41 - ... mentioned by various authors. Butel-Dumont speaks of a raft made of poles and canes, and Du Pratz, writing of the Louisiana Indians, says : The conveniences for passing rivers would soon be suggested to them by the floating of wood upon the water. Accordingly one of their methods of crossing rivers is upon floats of canes, which are called by them Cajeu, and are formed iu this manner.
Pagina 261 - FROGER. — Relation d'un voyage fait en 1695, 1696 et 1697 aux Côtes d'Afrique, Détroit de Magellan. Brésil, Cayenne et Isles Antilles, par une escadre des vaisseaux du Roi, commandée par M. de Gennes. Faite par le sieur Froger, ingénieur volontaire sur le vaisseau le Faucon anglais.
Pagina 39 - ... about four inches in diameter, and thirteen or twenty feet high; they plant the strongest of these in the four corners, and the others fifteen inches from each other in straight lines, for the sides of the building; a pole is then laid horizontally along the sides in the inside, and all the poles are strongly fastened to it by split canes. Then the four corner poles are bent inwards till they all meet in the centre, where they are strongly fastened together; the...
Pagina 92 - Each duct leading from these is two empans, or two spans wide, a span being the distance from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger...
Pagina xiv - The masters of this are paid by the king. They teach the Spanish language only. There are a few private schools for children. Not more than half of the inhabitants are supposed to be able to read and write, of whom not more than two hundred perhaps are able to do it well.
Pagina 107 - ... etc.1 In the same letter of May 25, 1732, Father Mercier reports that "several savages wish to become christians, which makes me forget almost entirely all the trouble we have had with them up to the present. . . . "The house [lumber for house at Cahokia], which I had cut sixty by thirty-two feet, because it is all walnut and can carry that length and width, may be raised about the beginning of July. The two long sides have two galleries, which are not for the beauty of the building, but for...
Pagina 39 - They erect these huts in the following manner: they bring from the woods several young walnut-trees, about four inches in diameter, and thirteen or twenty feet high; they plant the strongest of these in the four corners, and the others fifteen inches from each other in straight lines, for the sides of the building; a pole is then laid horizontally along the sides in the inside, and all the poles are strongly fastened to it by split canes. Then the four corner poles are bent inwards till they all...
Pagina 39 - To defend themselves against the inclemencies of the weather, they built huts of wood, which were close and strong enough to resist the impetuosity of the wind. These huts are each a perfect square; none of them are less than fifteen feet square, and some of them are more than thirty feet in each of their fronts. They erect these huts in the following manner: they bring from the woods several young walnut-trees, about four inches in diameter, and thirteen or twenty feet high; they plant the strongest...
Pagina 6 - The alcaldes ordinarios sat individually on their own courts and heard both criminal and civil cases. Criminal cases ranged widely from libel, contempt of court, and perjury to runaway slaves, assault and battery, treason, and murder. Civil cases concerned debt, probate succession, disputed property, and slave emancipation, and sometimes involved large sums of money. Cases came from throughout Louisiana, not just New Orleans and its immediate district.

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