Franco-American Identity, Community, and La Guiannée

By Anna Servaes

French traditions in America do not live solely in Louisiana. Franco-American Identity, Community, and La Guiannée travels to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, and Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, to mark the Franco-American traditions still practiced in both these Midwestern towns. This Franco-American cultural identity has continued for over 250 years, surviving language loss, extreme sociopolitical pressures, and the American Midwest's demands for conformity. Ethnic identity presents itself in many forms, including festivals and traditional celebrations, which take on an even more profound and visible role when language loss occurs.

On New Year's Eve, the guionneurs, revelers who participate in the celebration, disguise themselves in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century costume and travel throughout their town, singing and wishing New Year's greetings to other members of the community. This celebration, like such others as Cajun Mardi Gras in Louisiana, Mumming in Ireland and Newfoundland, as well as the Carnaval de Binche, belongs to a category of begging quest festivals that have endured since the Medieval Age. These festivals may have also adapted or evolved from pre-Christian pagan rituals.

Anna Servaes produces a historical context for both the development of French American culture as well as La Guiannée in order to understand contemporary identity. She analyzes the celebration, which affirms ethnic community, drawing upon theories by influential anthropologist Victor Turner. In addition, Servaes discusses cultural continuity and its relationship to language, revealing contemporary expressions of Franco-American identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Release date: Apr 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781626745551

Anna Servaes

Anna Servaes, Youngsville, Louisiana, teaches French and Spanish at Schools of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. Her work has been published in the journals Études Francophones, Feux Follets, and Rabaska.

Book preview

Franco-American Identity, Community, and La Guiannée

CENTER FOR FRENCH COLONIAL STUDIES, INC.

Centre pour l’Étude du pays des Illinois

William L. Potter Publication Series, No. 11

Series Editor: Benn E. Williams

About the Center for French Colonial Studies:

Founded in 1983, the Center for French Colonial Studies, also known as the Centre pour l’étude du pays des Illinois, promotes and encourages research into the social, political, and material history of the French colonies and French people of the Middle Mississippi Valley and the Midwest, with special focus on the Illinois Country in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. CFCS is organized as a 501(c) (3) corporation for exclusively charitable, literary, scientific, and educational purposes. In now its third decade, the membership continues to consist of historians, archeologists, preservation technologists, architectural historians, genealogists, historic interpreters, and interested laypeople.

About the William L. Potter Publication Series:

The dissemination of knowledge forms an integral part of the organization’s mission. One means to this end is the annual autumnal meeting and conference; another is the publication of the quarterly Le Journal, which emphasizes original research, book reviews, announcements, and news relating to the Center’s mission. Recognizing a publications gap between shorter articles and monograph-length works, CFCS initiated its Extended Publications Series in order to make additional scholarship available to the public. This program publishes essays, monographs, and translations of primary documents that might not otherwise enjoy a place in print owing to their in-between length or esoteric nature. The name of the series was changed in 2011 to honor the memory of longtime series editor, board member, and past president William L. Potter.

Center for French Colonial Studies, Inc.

P.O. Box 482

St. Louis, MO 63006-0482

http://frenchcolonialstudies.org/

Franco-American Identity, Community, and La Guiannée

ANNA SERVAES

CENTER FOR FRENCH COLONIAL STUDIES

St. Louis

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI

Jackson

www.upress.state.ms.us

Designed by Peter D. Halverson

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American

University Presses.

Portions of Part II were published as Le Mardi Gras et la Guianné: Deux représentations du théâtre populaire, Études Francophones 22, nos. 1–2 (2007): 109–119. They have been revised and are reproduced here with permission from Études Francophones.

Copyright © 2015 by Anna Servaes

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2015

∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Servaes, Anna.

Franco-American identity, community, and La Guiannée / Anna Servaes, Center for French Colonial Studies, St. Louis.

pages cm. — (William L. Potter publication series ; No. 11)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-62846-210-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-62674-555-1 (ebook) 1. French Americans—Illinois—Prairie du Rocher—Social life and customs. 2. French Americans—Missouri—Sainte Genevieve—Social life and customs. 3. French Americans—Ethnic identity. 4. New Year—Folklore—Illinois—Prairie du Rocher. 5. New Year—Folklore—Missouri—Sainte Genevieve. 6. Prairie du Rocher (Ill.)—Social life and customs. 7. Sainte Genevieve (Mo.)—Social life and customs. I. Title.

F549.P87S47 2015

977.3’9201—dc23

2014045131

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

For the past, present, and future members of the Guiannée. May the tradition keep traveling.

Le frolic et la fête comme évidence du pays.

Gérald Leblanc,

La fin des années 70

In La Poésie Acadienne

Frolic and celebration as evidence of country (Servaes translation)

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PARTICIPANTS

INTRODUCTION

Part I: Historical Context

CHAPTER ONE: The Development of the French Mentality and Identity in the Illinois Country

CHAPTER TWO: Historical Developments and Influence on French Identity

CHAPTER THREE: La Guiannée and Its Heritage

Part II: Community Affirmation Analysis of the Celebration with Liminal Theory

CHAPTER FOUR: The Season of La Guiannée

CHAPTER FIVE: Analytical Discussion of the Celebration

CHAPTER SIX: Disguise and Mask

CHAPTER SEVEN: Traveling and the Neighborhood

CHAPTER EIGHT: Foodways

CHAPTER NINE: Theatrical Play

Part III: Cultural Continuity Collective Memory and Cultural Identity

CHAPTER TEN: Heritage, History, and Continuity

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Modern Adaptations and Heritage

CHAPTER TWELVE: Linguistic, Material, and Religious Symbols

CONCLUSION

Appendices

Appendix A: Author’s English Translation of the Guiannée Song

Appendix B: Variants of the Guiannée Song

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Acknowledgments

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK BENN WILLIAMS OF THE CENTER FOR FRENCH Colonial Studies in St. Louis, Missouri, and Craig Gill of the University Press of Mississippi for providing excellent guidance throughout the publication process. I appreciate all their work to make this manuscript a reality for publication. I would like to also thank the Center for French Colonial Studies and the University Press of Mississippi for agreeing to copublish this manuscript.

I would like to thank Dr. Barry Jean Ancelet for his guidance during my research, especially for the suggestion to study the native region. I could not have identified the cultural traits of these communities without our numerous conversations about cultural identity. Dr. Ancelet helped me to see the multiple voices of cultural expression. I would also like to thank Dr. Ray Brassieur and Dr. Carl Brasseaux for their guidance. Thanks to Dr. Brassieur, I obtained Guiannée contacts that facilitated the experience of observing the Guiannée and of introducing me into these communities. I would like to thank him also for his guidance and help in the anthropology and ethnology domains, which inspired the basis of the theories for my research. Dr. Brasseaux helped me to construct the historical context that formed the basis of the cultural identity, thanks to his suggestions and his contacts with historians.

In the Department of Modern Languages, Dr. Richard Winters advised me about information on the problematic of language and linguistics. Dr. Monica Wright and I talked about the presence of the Guiannée or its lack thereof in medieval texts. Dr. Caroline Huey helped to find information on the language of the Alsace-Lorraine region. Dr. Tamara Lindner helped me with some articles on Cajun linguistics and the importance of the language in the Francophone culture of Louisiana. My friends like Nadège Dufort; Céline Alis, who helped with converting the bibliography to Chicago style; Anissa Galloubi; and Olivier Chatelain who, among others, offered advice and moments to go out and celebrate life.

Thanks to the members of the Guiannée and the residents of Ste. Genevieve and Prairie du Rocher, I observed a celebration that launched my research. I would like to thank especially Dan Franklin and Terry Yokota, Jackie and Ava Laurent, Mary Laurent, Jim Laurent, Betty and Dave Doiron, Pam Melching, Sarah Wiegard (who provided photos or tracked them down for me), Bill and Alouise Wiegard, Jeremy Volkmar, Ruth Menard, Emily Lyons, and Margaret Brown of Prairie du Rocher, as well as Mike, Art, and Pete Papin and Mickey Koetting of Ste. Genevieve. This study represents their stories and histories, their memories and their sentiments about the Guiannée and their communities. Thanks to Margaret Brown, I obtained portions of interviews that she had done, which illuminated historical details of the Guiannée. Bob Mueller of Ste. Genevieve, the president of the Center for Restoration of Ste. Genevieve, encouraged me to fill out an application for the Center’s educational grant. The grant financed a portion of this study. Emily Lyons of Randolph County in Illinois furnished documents and excerpts of texts for this study. Thanks to her, I obtained documents and texts found in the archives of Randolph County in Chester, Illinois. I graciously thank the members of the Guiannée who gave me copies of their personal collections and photos without which this study would not have been possible.

Thanks to organizations like the Missouri History Museum, Ste. Genevieve Mecker Library, Randolph County Archives, the Louisiana Room at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and the Rare Books Collection at the St. Louis Public Library, I obtained historical documents and descriptions of these communities of the Guiannée and of the Francophone culture in general. Organizations such as the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec provided maps to create a visualization of the region. Contacts at three Missouri and Illinois newspapers, Ste. Genevieve Herald, Randolph County News, and Red Bud’s North County News, provided permission to print pictures.

Finally, I thank my family, especially my mother, Susan Burns; my father, Jay Burns; my stepmother, Jan Altman; my sister and brother-in-law, Katie and Aaron Schmidt; my grandparents, Jay and Betty Burns; and my husband, Luk Servaes. Throughout this process, my family encouraged me and listened to me, certainly during the difficult moments. Luk gave me patience, encouragement, and love so I could continue each day, even if I could not see the end.

And as for the teacher who began this great voyage in French, my former high school French teacher, Madame Rita Cholet White, I thank her for the encouragement in the beginning of my studies. For all the other professors, colleagues, and friends whom I have not mentioned, I thank them for the encouragement, assistance, and guidance throughout this voyage.

Participants*

Prairie du Rocher, Illinois

Dan Franklin and Terry Yokota (Belleville, Illinois). Dan is the leader of the Prairie du Rocher Guiannée along with his brother, Gerry Franklin. His wife, Terry, also participates annually. Dan grew up in Prairie du Rocher and learned the Guiannée from Percy Clerc. Terry and Dan used to live in Prairie du Rocher, but now reside in Belleville, where they live and work as publishers. After Percy’s death, the Guiannée had a competition, and Dan was elected to lead it.

Gerry and Linda Franklin (Prairie du Rocher, Illinois). Gerry leads the Guiannée with his brother, Dan, and Linda accompanies the chorus. Like Dan, Gerry learned the Guiannée from Percy Clerc, who frequently visited the Franklin home. Gerry and Linda currently live in Prairie du Rocher, where Gerry is a carpenter.

John (Jackie) and Ava Laurent (Prairie du Rocher, Illinois). Jackie and Ava are married and have been part of the Guiannée since they were children, having seen it or participated in it. Jackie’s mother, Kathryn Clerc, would take him on the annual performance. Ava is the treasurer for the Guiannée Society. Jackie and Ava learned the Guiannée from their family members, who had participated in it.

Sarah Wiegard (Modoc, Illinois). Sarah recently joined the Guiannée, having learned the song from her violin teacher, who had learned it from Dave Doiron. Her grandmother, Aloise Wiegard, originally from Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, learned the Guiannée from her father, who used to go with the Ste. Genevieve group. Aloise goes to see the Guiannée now that Sarah plays the violin in the performance.

Jeremy Volkmar (Prairie du Rocher, Illinois). Jeremy is originally from Vidalia, Illinois, and teaches at the local school. He also volunteers at Fort de Chartres. Jeremy became involved in the Guiannée when one of Jackie Laurent’s granddaughters was a student in his class. Although new to the Guiannée, he is a very strong voice for the history of the community and the preservation of its traditions.

Margaret Brown (Red Bud, Illinois). Margaret has been a part of the Prairie du Rocher community since the 1970s and has worked on excavations of the forts and the cemetery. Her most recent contribution is the location of the third fort at Fort de Chartres. Margaret goes with the Guiannée every year and has even helped to bring back songs that were once a part of the Guiannée’s song repertoire.

Dave and Betty Doiron (Prairie du Rocher, Illinois). Dave and Betty are married. Betty learned the Guiannée by being a spectator when her grandmother, who could speak French, would bring her to the local tavern on New Year’s Eve to watch the performance. Dave plays the violin in the performance and taught the local violin teacher the melody so that in turn it would be taught to the children of the community. Dave used to be president of the Guiannée Society. Dave’s father and grandfather played the violin in the Guiannée. Currently retired, Dave and Betty enjoy their life in Prairie du Rocher. They used to host a bouillon for the participants at the end of the performance.

Jim (Butch) Laurent (Prairie du Rocher, Illinois). Jim has French ancestry and participates in the Guiannée chorus. He learned the Guiannée from his family, which has always participated in the celebration. Jackie and Jim Laurent are cousins.

Mary Laurent (Belleville, Illinois). At the time of the interview, Mary participated in the Guiannée. Mary learned of the Guiannée through her relationship with Jim Laurent and the Prairie du Rocher community. Her ancestry is German.

Jenna Heidel, the Steibels, and Glenna Wiegard (Prairie du Rocher, Modoc, Illinois). While only mentioned by other members in the study, these individuals perform with the Guiannée. Jenna Heidel plays the violin and recently moved to China to teach English. Rachel Steibel and her two daughters perform with the Guiannée. Rachel and one of her daughters are a part of the chorus and Veronica, her other daughter, plays the violin. The Steibels have a family history with the Guiannée. Glenna Wiegard is Sarah Wiegard’s mother and participates in the Guiannée’s chorus.

Kathryn Clerc (Prairie du Rocher, Illinois). Kathryn was Jackie Laurent’s mother. She taught Jackie the Guiannée through participation. She had passed away the year before I saw the Guiannée in Prairie du Rocher.

Bill and Percy Clerc (Prairie du Rocher, Illinois). After Jackie’s father passed away, his mother, Kathryn, married Bill Clerc. Bill went with the Guiannée and has descendants (including Janeen Clerc) who continue to be a part of the celebration. His brother, Percy, was the leader of the Guiannée until his untimely death. According to interviews, Bill’s and Percy’s temperaments were very different from their Guiannée performances. Bill Clerc was an everyday jokester, while Percy reserved this type of behavior for the Guiannée.

Ruth Menard (Ruma, Illinois). Ruth does not participate in the Guiannée, but she does a great deal of historical work, including research on thirteen families from Prairie du Rocher, which she published in A French Connection II (1997). She volunteers for the Creole House in Prairie du Rocher, and every year along with Emily Lyons, she opens the Creole House for the Guiannée celebration. Ruth also helps to organize the Twelfth Night Ball in Prairie du Rocher.

Emily Lyons (Chester, Illinois). Emily works as a historian in Chester, Illinois. She volunteers for the Creole House in Prairie du Rocher. Emily also helps to organize the Twelfth Night Ball in Prairie du Rocher.

Carla and Smokey Pluff (Cahokia, Illinois). Carla and Smokey Pluff originally went with the Cahokia Guiannée, but when there were no longer enough members to continue the celebration on an annual run, Smokey joined the Prairie du Rocher group to continue being part of a long-standing tradition.

Pam Melching (Prairie du Rocher, Illinois). While Pam is not a current member of the Guiannée, her mother and father went with the Guiannée and were often photographed with Percy Clerc. In June she participates in the Rendezvous.

Sainte-Genevieve, Missouri

Mike Papin (Ste. Genevieve, Missouri). Mike is the current leader of the Guiannée. His family has been part of the tradition since the nineteenth century. His family is one of the oldest French families in Ste. Genevieve.

Pete Papin (Ste. Genevieve, Missouri). Pete, the father of Mike, is currently part of the outer circle. He participates in the chorus part of the group. He is retired and very passionate about continuing the Guiannée tradition in Ste. Genevieve.

Art Papin (Ste. Genevieve, Missouri). Art Papin is Pete’s cousin. He is currently part of the leader group (those who dress in top hat and tails). He is retired and used to volunteer for the Felix Vallé State Historical Site in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. On numerous occasions, he has narrated personal accounts of historical events in Ste. Genevieve.

Michaelene (Mickey) Koetting (Ste. Genevieve, Missouri). Originally from St. Louis, Mickey settled in Ste. Genevieve with her husband. She is the former president of the Foundation for Restoration of Ste. Genevieve and co-organizer for the King’s Ball for Ste. Genevieve.

* This list is not exhaustive for the members who currently participate in the Guiannée, nor were all those mentioned in this list interviewed.

Franco-American Identity, Community, and La Guiannée

Introduction

IT WAS A QUARTER TO SIX IN THE MORNING AND I WAS LEAVING LAFAYETTE. It was the week of Mardi Gras in Louisiana, but I was going upstream to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, to attend the King’s Ball, the second part of La Guiannée.

I left Louisiana with my electronic equipment to record the event, and my iPod helped the hours pass quickly as I followed the route I knew by heart; I had been taking it since 1994, when I arrived to study at Loyola University in New Orleans. As I crossed the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, I met the sunrise, its vibrant colors floating on the water and illuminating the silence.

Soon I would be in Mississippi, the state, not the river, although I have always been near the Mississippi River—I have never lived far from it for very long. I have been afraid of leaving the river because it represents a tangible link to my life. It connects my home state, Missouri, with the state where I have been living, Louisiana. I was following this river to return to a town and a village an hour, more or less, south of St. Louis that are geographical and cultural reflections of one another: Ste. Genevieve on the west bank in Missouri and Prairie du Rocher on the east bank in Illinois. I was returning to the Midwest to explore the history of these two historically French communities and their people via La Guiannée, their New Year’s celebration, and its influence on the contemporary identity of each community’s culture. Historically, La Guiannée, a French derivation of a Celtic word meaning wheat germ, was performed by a group of costumed members to bring together the community to share the harvest during the winter months in rural France. It followed the French settlers to the New World, and today those who celebrate La Guiannée embody this French heritage and symbolism.

Ste. Genevieve has a population of fewer than 5,000 residents. With narrow streets in a grid pattern, it retains its original layout and most of the historical sites are found in the pedestrian–friendly downtown area, where shops, some restaurants, cafés, and bars can also be found. The Grand Champ or Big Field where the farmers plant their crops is to the south of the town. To the north, one can take the French Connection, the ferry, to the other side of the Mississippi to Prairie du Rocher via Modoc.

Arriving at Modoc, follow the gravel levee road to Bluff Road, which—consistent with its name—follows the bluffs. This street goes directly to Prairie du Rocher. Smaller than Ste. Genevieve with approximately 600–650 people, the village is nestled beneath the bluffs and at the bottom of a hill. It is surrounded by farms. Four miles southeast sits the Fort de Chartres. Prairie du Rocher was constructed in the same fashion as Ste. Genevieve: the streets form a grid, and here too, one can walk from place to place.

Traveling these routes to Ste. Genevieve and Prairie du Rocher, I am reminded of the reasons why I wanted to study North American French culture. Similar to their British counterparts, the French colonized and subjected indigenous populations to French sovereignty and governance. However, unlike other Francophone regions in the world, such as North Africa and the Caribbean, French colonies in the United States and Canada became the object of British and American colonialism when the British took control of present-day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, expelling the Acadians in 1755, after the Treaty of Paris ceded land east of the Mississippi to the British in 1763 and when the Americans purchased the Louisiana Territory in 1803. The Francophone populations in these two North American regions found themselves in a colonization circumstance similar to that of the indigenous populations. They were all under the dominance of a foreign government and culture that suppressed the French culture and heritage in addition to the Native American and African American cultures. I was eager to learn how this French identity expressed itself, despite the controlling efforts of the British and then the Americans.

La Guiannée warms the hearts and lives of the communities of Ste. Genevieve and of Prairie du Rocher. The evening of December 31 is illuminated by costumed people, traveling to public and private places to sing for the New Year. These Guiannée travelers live in Missouri or in Illinois and most speak only English,¹ but the words sung this night are in French. When they arrive at a public place, the audience quiets itself while awaiting the performance. Afterward, the Guiannée members relax and socialize with the audience. The guionneurs receive drinks at each place and sometimes food as well. On the night of December 31, all the members of the community listen joyously to the language of their heritage. Together, the audience and La Guiannée share a communal experience and identity.

This festive celebration continues at the King’s Ball and the Twelfth Night Ball, when the community comes together to have fun and to dance the night away. These balls begin the Saturday of the Epiphany and continue until Mardi Gras, a period lasting anywhere from four to eight weeks, depending on when Easter comes. The King’s Ball invites everyone to leave their homes in order to participate in a communal event where they share drinks and food. Everyone is in costume, often colonial, but also in other forms; certainly, contemporary representations, or disguises, appear.

Other celebrations like the Rendezvous at the Fort de Chartres near Prairie du Rocher and the Jour de Fête in Ste. Genevieve are festivals where more participants and tourists come to celebrate the Franco-American identity. Taking place in June and August, respectively, these two festivals feature reenactments, artisan goods for sale, and regional culture, and they attract tourists and participants from outside the community. These celebrations, like La Guiannée, strengthen community ties and reinforce the cultural heritage.

A community identifies with a heritage, a system of values, celebrations or holidays, games, and a cuisine, among other cultural criteria. The celebration, among other creative expressions, comes from the imagination of the community. The imagination gives communities the power … to invent, visualize, and represent themselves in roles they had always been denied.² Through imagination, heritage traditions become transformed into expressions of communication in order to transmit values, norms or ideas.³ This imagination, influenced by generations of heritage, evolves into memories rich in cultural expression, which serve as a tool to regain and reconstruct not just the past but history itself.⁴ Throughout the generations, these memories survive to portray the values, beliefs, and customs necessary for a community to perpetuate its identity.

One works to be able to live, to survive, but the festivals celebrate life. Hence everyone wants to participate, to join actively in the happy motions of celebrations.⁵ They represent the values of the community, the cultural identity, life as a whole. In the case of Ste. Genevieve and Prairie du Rocher, the people identify with their French heritage, epitomized by the La Guiannée celebration. Such public galas demonstrate that festive celebrations promote individual identity by providing scope for ordinary folk to dress up, to be on stage, to take part as individuals in a public event.⁶ These public celebrations integrate their Francophone heritage to their lives and preserve the Franco-American identity in contemporary life even if the language of expression is English glazed with French. In addition, the community participates in certain cultural activities because they represent a way in which the community understands itself and its values. The cultural activities then become the vehicle of transmission of the values and not the end result of these values. They provide a way in which members of the community come to know their value system and their cultural identity.⁷ These cultural activities or creative expressions conceive equilibrium between work and nonwork, or play. In essence, the way in which people express their joy of life reveals more about their culture than how they work, giving access to their ‘heart values.’⁸ Since work is the concrete survival of the community, through collective imagination, creative expression is the concrete survival of its identity. The collective imagination invents ideas, expressions that represent the essence of the community: Collective identity can perceive itself only as a projection on the world and the performance is one of the most important of these projections.⁹ This concrete expression of the imagination provides for the continued existence of this identity in the community.

The consciousness, shaped by experiences, influences this imagination. Our experiences in life form the essence of our consciousness. Through this consciousness, we live and view the world through experiential filters, whether cultural, religious, social, political, or others. As the consciousness develops and forms, a person in one culture will gravitate to experience consciousness in stereotypically different ways from someone in another culture, and to define it in relation to those particular experiences.¹⁰ Thus, the experiences create points of view to see life situations and how to act in life. In fact, identity creates itself through these experiences and the memory of them. Memory continually evolves to create a bond tying us to the eternal present. It is collective, plural, and yet individual and is rooted in the concrete, in spaces, gestures, images, and objects.¹¹ Our experiences and our memory of these experiences constitute our identities. Our self is a trick of memory.¹²

The performance itself is the important social expression for the communities of Missouri and Illinois, since it possesses an historical language for these communities and the players present themselves in colonial costumes. Traveling disguised as their colonial ancestors, the participants of the Guiannée alter their perspective, their filter, in viewing the everyday reality.¹³ Celebrations, like rites, festivals, or rituals, are considered as social customs and the collective memory retains these customs: Social habits are essentially legitimizing performances. And if habit-memory is inherently performative, then social habit-memory must be distinctively social-performative.¹⁴ The performance of customs, like La Guiannée, transforms history from the abstract of the collective memory and establishes it in the contemporary reality of the community.

The social expression made through these celebrations is a way of expressing the joy of life, and because this expression comes from within the community, it is a way of saying ‘who we are as a people.’¹⁵ This way of seeing the culture from within the community, from the insider’s point of view is creole, defined and expressed beyond the gaze of outsiders. At times a ‘secret’ or ‘masked’ culture during periods of conquest and colonization, it is intimate, it is the home culture, the native culture of a people.¹⁶ The creole culture represents particular cultural traits of the individual or of the group that defines them.

La Guiannée is a ceremonial rite that belongs to a category of celebrations, situated in the carnival calendar between All Saints’ Day (November 1) and Easter (somewhere from late March to late April). In North America, urban and rural versions appear in various Francophone communities from the Caribbean to Canada. Mardi Gras or Carnival is celebrated in the Caribbean and Louisiana, and in Canada, La Mi-Carême (Mid-Lent), La Chandeleur (February 2), and La Guignolée (Christmas-New Year’s) are celebrated.¹⁷ In Ireland and Newfoundland, Mummers travel around their villages during Christmas. Most notable about these celebrations is difference between the urban and rural versions. In most Caribbean and American cities, like New Orleans and Mobile, urban versions with costumed and themed parades take precedence. In other Francophone European communities, as in Belgium, for the carnival of Binche, the Gilles—the main carnival figure in Binche—travel in the city on Mardi Gras day.¹⁸ In the rural version, as performed in Ireland, Newfoundland, and rural communities in the United States and Canada, the group of performers is a traveling theater ensemble whose members disguise themselves and sing before other members of the community. The performers travel to houses where they receive portions of food, as payment for their performance, as nourishment for the impoverished of the community, or as provisions for a banquet at a ball. In the Louisiana Mardi Gras, costumed runners travel in the neighborhood to sing for portions of the gumbo, shared at a dance in the evening. Participants in the Guiannée receive food for their performance at each place they stop. These celebrations make it possible for cultural expression to exist in the community, even if the language is no longer spoken.

These communities throughout North America and Europe have their particular celebration to communicate a communal identity, to preserve a tradition, to unite and continue community affirmation as well as cultural continuity. For the communities of Ste. Genevieve and Prairie du Rocher, La Guiannée exists to continue and preserve these same ideas. However, the greatest difference between the midwestern communities and others in North America and those in Europe is language usage. While the other communities in North America and Europe use their local language to communicate the culture through their