Isleños () are a Spanish ethnic group living in the state of Louisiana in the United States, consisting of people primarily from the Canary Islands. Isleños are descendants of colonists who settled in Spanish Louisiana between 1778 and 1783 and intermarried with other communities such as French, Acadians, Creoles, Hispanic Americans, Filipinos, and other groups, mainly through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In Louisiana, the Isleños originally settled in four communities which included Galveztown, Valenzuela, Barataria, and San Bernardo. Of those settlements, Valenzuela and San Bernardo were the most successful as the other two were plagued with both disease and flooding. The large migration of Acadian refugees to Bayou Lafourche led to the rapid gallicization of the Valenzuela community while San Bernardo was able to preserve much of its unique culture and language into the twenty-first century. However, the transmission of Spanish and other customs has completely halted in St. Bernard Parish, with those having competency in Spanish being octogenarians.
Regardless, these communities have garnered attention from notable academics like Alcée Fortier, Samuel G. Armistead, and Manuel Alvar. In recent years, heritage groups have been formed for the Isleños and their descendants to help preserve their ways of life. The success of the Isleños in Louisiana in preserving their culture has led some historians and anthropologists to consider the Isleño community as part of the national heritage of the United States and the Canary Islands.
Names and etymology In general, individuals belonging to the community are referred to with the meaning 'Islanders', an archaic term for a person from the Canary Islands. Other terms include Canarian, Canary Islander, Canarian descendant, or Canary Islander descendant.
In St. Bernard Parish, the Canary Islanders were referred to as both by themselves and others into the modern day. Occasionally, this term was also translated into the .
Prior to the American Civil War, the Canary Islanders and their descendants in Ascension and Assumption Parishes sold their properties and moved into interior marsh. The local francophone population began referring to them as the dwellers (sometimes represented by Spanish pronunciation ) due to their practice of clearing land with fire. This term originates from the meaning 'to burn'.
Ethnic and national origins Isleños are descendants of emigrants from the Canary Islands who arrived in Louisiana between 1778 and 1783. The exact number of Canary Islanders that were settled in the territory is unknown but it estimated to be about 2,000 individuals. Since settling in Louisiana, the communities have developed independently with two of the original communities falling into ruin not long after their establishment. Following significant flooding of the Mississippi River in 1782, the Barataria settlement was abandoned and the survivors were relocated to San Bernardo and Valenzuela with some settling in West Florida. Galveztown suffered similarly with repeated floods of the Amite River and deplorable conditions. It was not long after the beginning of the 19th century that the settlement was abandoned.
San Bernardo
The settlement along Bayou Terre-aux-Boeufs was rather isolated, with the Isleño population being larger than any other community. The original Canary Islander recruits came mainly from the islands of Tenerife and Gran Canaria with the remainder from Lanzarote, La Gomera, and La Palma. St. Bernard Parish Historian William de Marigny Hyland has located the origin of many descendants to the single location of Icod de los Vinos on the island of Tenerife.
Early in the establishment of this community, a minority of Acadians were present as well as Filipinos from Saint Malo which intermarried with the Canarian colonists. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the community was reinforced by immigration from Spanish regions such as Andalusia, Austurias, Catalonia, Galicia, Santander, and Valencia, and from the Canary Islands and other Spanish-speaking countries. A survey conducted in 1850 found at least 63 natives of Spain, 7 Canary Islanders, 7 Cubans, and 7 Mexicans in the community. Individuals from other countries, including France, Germany, and Ireland also emigrated and intermarried with the community during this period.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina displaced many Isleños from their original communities. Those who returned to St. Bernard Parish have retreated behind the St. Bernard Flood Wall and now live in the unincorporated communities of Toca, Saint Bernard, Poydras, and into New Orleans.
Valenzuela Originally, the Canary Islanders were settled along land grants with frontage to Bayou Lafourche, near to what is today Donaldsonville. A census performed in 1784 found that 174 individuals belonging to 46 families were living along Bayou Lafourche, of which 154 were Isleños in 40 families. In the following two years, more than 800 Acadians were settled in the area with the population of region reaching 1,500 in 1788. Many of the Isleño families intermarried with the Acadians, gallicized their names, and assimilated into the larger Acadian community.
Following the Louisiana Purchase, many Isleños sold their land grants and moved into inland swamps and woods which they burned to create farmland. In this isolation, the community preserved its language and other customs into the late twentieth century before it was eventually absorbed into the larger Cajun and ultimately American cultural identity. Isleños and their descendants can still be found in the Donaldsonville area and along Bayou Lafourche into Palo Alto, McCall, Plattenville, Belle Alliance, Labadieville, Napoleonville, and Paincourtville.
History Prior to European colonization, the Canary Islands were populated by the native Guanches which are thought to be distant relatives to the Berbers of North Africa. At the start of the 15th century, the Guanches faced conquest by the Normans, Portuguese, and Castilians, and were pressed into slavery. By the end of the century, the Canarian Archipelago had become part of the newly emerging Spanish Empire. During the 1490s to 1520s, immigrants from Galicia, Castile, Catalonia, Basque Country, Portugal, and Italy helped to populate the Canary Islands. By the late 16th century, the island of Tenerife was covered in vineyards, and already by the mid-17th century, export of its wines to England (including its colonies in North America) and Spanish America had become crucial to the economy of the Canary Islands.
Crisis tended to occasion the Canarians as in the 18th century the collapse of the malvasia wine trade created significant poverty. Most of the affected people were farmers and laborers who were forced to marginal occupations like selling coal, mining, begging, etc. The lack of employment opportunities and a policy of inadequate land distribution led to popular uprisings. The mobilization of the Spanish Army for service in Europe and America impinged negatively on the Canary Islanders as well.
Governor Bernardo de Gálvez, desiring to populate the newly acquired territory of Louisiana as a means to defend against an English invasion, sought recruits from the Canary Islands with families to join the Army and be sent to Louisiana. Recruits were offered an opportunity to escape mere subsistence and improve their situation with grants of land, rations, and supplies in the New World.
Colonization
At the request of Governor Gálvez, the Spanish authorities authorized the transportation of Canary Islander soldiers and their families to the colony in 1778. Between November 1778 and July 1779, around 1600 Isleños arrived in New Orleans, and another group of about 300 came in 1783. By 1780, the four Isleño communities were already founded. About four hundred of the immigrants were sent to the new settlement of Galveztown, two hundred other colonists were settled at Valenzuela, and a third group settled in . This colony was augmented by the 300 settlers who arrived in 1783.
In 1782, during the American Revolution, Bernardo de Gálvez recruited Isleños from these settlements to join the war. They participated in the three major military campaigns of Baton Rouge, Mobile, and Pensacola, which expelled the British from the Gulf Coast.
War of 1812
Even before the arrival of the Isleños, the various administrations of Louisiana always feared an invasion by the British. It seems that this invasion came to pass the morning of 23 December 1814 as the British landed downriver from New Orleans at the plantation of Jacques Villeré. Previously, forces were ready to meet the British invasion, and that night, the Isleños and other soldiers engaged the British. The shocked British hesitated and regrouped the following day, allowing Major General Andrew Jackson to develop his line of defense at the Chalmette plantation. The British retreated through the Isleño settlement along Bayou Terre-aux-Boeufs in January 1815, and the community sustained perhaps the greatest losses of property and hardships resulting from the British invasion.
Settlements
San Bernardo (Bayou Terre-aux-Boeufs) The settlement, which founded what is today St. Bernard Parish, was referred to by many names near its inception. The first name under the Spanish reign was simply Tierra de Bueyes or 'Land of Oxen' as a direct translation from its French designation. This began a long string of names for the settlement starting with (La) Concepción, then Nueva Gálvez, San Bernardo de Nueva Gálvez, and San Bernardo del Torno. By the end of the 1780s, the simple name San Bernardo or 'Saint Bernard', the patron saint of Bernardo de Gálvez, was being used for the settlement in documents describing the area.
The entire settlement was referred to as the Población de San Bernardo, eventually as the Parroquia de San Bernardo, and was composed of various establecimientos (establishments) or puestos (posts), which were smaller communities. These establecimientos ran along Bayou Terre-aux-Boeufs starting just past the western limit of Saint Bernard and extending to Delacroix Island. One of the larger communities was the Quinto Establecimiento, which was called "Bencheque" after the Montaña de Bencheque near Icod de los Vinos. The name "Reggio" is a more recent colloquialism that refers to a much larger area. The origin of this name comes from the Reggio plantation that was just north of this settlement. Original land records still show that properties in this area are part of Bencheque; likewise, those who still know Spanish refer to the community as Bencheque. This makes the community perhaps the only one in the United States that carries a name of Guanche origin.
Upon the colonists' arrival, the Spanish government gave land to each family according to their size, and a four-room house insulated by bousillage. The Spanish Crown supplied money, food, tools, and clothing annually to the Isleños until 1785, when the settlement was declared to be self-sufficient. The Isleños were almost entirely farmers who harvested vegetables for subsistence and for sale in New Orleans. The colonists from Tenerife brought with them their tradition of cattle training, their expertise in which was highly valued. It was not uncommon for ranchers from Louisiana and eastern Texas to bring their herds to St. Bernard to be domesticated by the Isleños living there.Balbuena Castellano, José Manuel. "La odisea de los canarios en Texas y Luisiana" (The Odyssey of the Canarians in Texas and Louisiana). Pages 137, 138, 150 and 152. (ed) 2007, editorial: Anroart Ediciones.