Tamale-making traditions among three ethnic groups in west central Louisiana

ABSTRACT

The state of Louisiana is widely recognized for the Creole and Cajun cuisines of south Louisiana. Yet several Indo-Spanish foodways have been preserved in northwest Louisiana since the colonial era. In this paper, we explore the tamale-making traditions of three distinct culture groups who reside in the region and how traditions are a source of ethnic identity. Tamales are primarily associated with residents of Indo-Spanish heritage in Sabine Parish, but they are also part of the foodway traditions of the French Creoles and Cane River Creoles of Natchitoches Parish. It is asserted that the tamale-making traditions in these communities resulted from a process of creolization that took place during the eighteenth century with the start of European colonization. We assess the role of tamale-making among contemporary cultural groups to demonstrate how this tradition has survived in the region.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural groups
• creolization
• foodways
• tamales
• west central Louisiana
• Spanish colonial influence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

William F. Manger is a cultural geographer who studies material culture landscapes and foodways with a regional emphasis in Mexico and Hispanic America. He previously taught at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas. He presently works as an independent scholar.

Daniel D. Arreola is a cultural geographer with research interests in cultural landscapes of the Mexico-United States borderlands. His books include The Mexican border cities: landscape anatomy and place personality (University of Arizona Press, 1993), Tejano South Texas: A Mexican American cultural province (University of Texas Press, 2002), Hispanic spaces, Latino places: community and cultural diversity in contemporary America (University of Texas Press, 2004), and Postcards from the Rio Bravo border: picturing place, placing the picture (University of Texas Press, 2013). Arreola is presently working on a book titled The Mexican restaurant in America.

Notes

1. Archival research for this paper was conducted at the Watson Memorial Library, Cammie G. Henry Research Center, and Louisiana Folklife Center Archives at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana and at the Sabine Parish Library in Many, Louisiana.

2. Natchitoches was originally founded on an island in the Red River. The French settled there because it was the farthest north they could navigate the river due to a huge logjam (called the Great Raft) that extended over 100 miles upriver. The obstruction was cleared out in the 1830s and, as a result, the Red River shifted five miles east and left the approximately 32 mile long Cane River Lake in the former main channel of the river. As a result, Natchitoches is now west of the Red River as shown on Figure 1.

3. The free population of Natchitoches, most of whom were Creoles, grew slowly during the first two decades of the colony's existence. While the presidio of Los Adaes contained as many as 100 soldiers at any one time, due to a lack of threat from the French and surrounding Native American tribes it was reduced to some 60 soldiers during the remainder of the French colonial period and, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the civilian population of the Spanish settlement numbered roughly 150 people (Burton and Smith 2008, p. 13).