Was he REALLY Native American? Race and the origins of Léandre Pitre- A Louisiana Creole
Race is a social construct, a product of a cultural ideology based on how human beings interpret the physical features of others living in hierarchical societies. Racial classifications are subjective. Someone can be African-American in Georgia and be seen as mulatto in Brazil and colored in South Africa.
Léandre Pouponne PITRE[c.1847–1930), a Louisiana Creole born in the small St. Landry Parish town of Grand Prairie, lived in a world where two distinctive racial ideologies collided. The Creoles saw their kinsmen through a continuum of color that ranged from negre(very dark to dark-skinned with coarse hair)to blanc( Fair, European, ). Their worldview was a legacy of the colonial French and Spanish who colonized the U.S. gulf coast in the 18th century. This Latin ideology stood in contrast to the binary racial classification system brought by the influx of Americans into Louisiana after the territory was sold and annexed to the United States in 1803. In the United States, the “one drop rule” predominated where anyone with any known West African ancestry was classified as Black regardless of their actual ancestry. Culture trumped color in the Creole world while Race became the primary marker of identity in the Anglo-American world.
The Blood quantum laws devised by the U.S. government determined who was Native or not Native by using a mathematical formulae that quantified the amount of Native ancestry one had. Sometimes,Native Americans were described as mulatto, white and even Black depending on the recorder, the place and time period. The Anglo-American bindery racial classification system lacked the flexibility of classification of the Latin system. It is notable that the concept of “Passing” is unique to the United States, while ,historically, people in the Latin world merely assimilated into the greater White(Blanc and Blanco) population.
This brings me to Léon Pitre. According to family lore and the historical record, Léon “LeAndre” Pitre was my 3rd great-grandfather’s(Lozelle Eugene Pitre) paternal half-brother. Their father was LeAndre Pouponne Pitre, a White Creole. Léon’s maternity was a mystery. I searched for references to Léon in the historical record in hopes of learning more details about his background.
Léandre Pouponne Pitre married his first wife Susan Fisher on the 10th of July 1867 in Opelousas, Louisiana according to a marriage license abstracted from the Parish courthouse. They were enumerated in the 1870 census of St. Landry Parish and several things jumped out at me:
Everyone is listed as White. I also took a mental note of the 55-year-old Elizabeth Butches(sic) living with uncle Léon. She would have been old enough to be his mother. Now, considering Léon’s phenotype in the above photo, I’m not surprised the census taker would have described him as White. It wasn’t unusual for people of mixed ancestry to be physically indistinguishable from Whites. I didn’t find Léon in the 1880 census, but I knew from reading through the Southwest Louisiana Catholic abstracts, he began fathering children with a woman named Armantine Lede by the 1880s.
I located him in the 1900 census of St. Landry Parish and was floored by what I read. Everyone in the household was listed as Indian! I noticed the Jean-Baptiste DOMINIQUE listed as being his brother was of the same age to be the Jean-Baptiste in 1870. Could Léon have been partially Native American? As always with genealogy, answers lead to more questions.
I decided to search digitized Louisiana newspapers online and discovered an interesting little tidbit from the November 7th 1891 issue of the “Opelousas Courier” mentioning the formation of a colored Racquetball club in the local community.
Leandre is called the “Indian Chief” and suggests that he was seen as Native American by the people of color locally. I would also like to mention that Leandre being a cook and bottle washer indicates he may not have been much of an athlete either Ha. But, I digress. Tax notices published in later years of the Opelousas Courier show Léon being taxed as an Indian. But, the 1910 Indian census confirmed my uncle was partially Native American:
According to the 1910 Indian census, Léon gives his mother’s birthplace as Texas instead of Louisiana. He is also described as being 3/4 White which indicates one Native American grandparent according to the Blood quantum laws of the time and means his mother was partially European in ancestry like him. If the Elizabeth Butches(sic) enumerated in the 1870 census was his mother, her being described as “White” isn’t all that surprising considering her origins. Unfortunately, the tribal affiliation of Léon and his mother is unknown. Several bands of Native American groups settled in Texas by this time.
Léon Pouponne Pitre is curiously described as “mulatto” in the 1920 census and “Black” in the 1930 census. He died on the 5th of July of that year classified as “colored” by the recorder on his death certificate. I wonder if the fact of him and his children living and being assimilated into a community of Creoles of color for a long time factored in the census enumerator reclassifying Léon as “Black”? The instructions for the 1930 census in defining someone as Indian begs the question.
My uncle’s life reveals the complexity of race within the United States and further reveals how Race is a product of culture and not a biological reality.
The fact that someone of mostly European ancestry with no known African forebears could die “colored” says a lot about the fallacious nature of Racial classification in America.
