Cajuns and their acadian ancestors: a young reader's history - shane k. bernard

Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors: A Young Readers History traces the four-hundred-year history of this distinct American ethnic group.

While written in a format comprehensible to junior-high and high-school students, it will prove appealing and informative as well to adult readers seeking a one-volume exploration of these remarkable people and their predecessors.

The narrative follows the Cajuns early ancestors, the Acadians, from seventeenth-century France to Nova Scotia, where they flourished until British soldiers expelled them in a tragic event called Le Grand Dérangement (The Great Upheaval)--an episode regarded by many historians as an instance of ethnic cleansing or genocide.

Up to one-half of the Acadian population died from disease, starvation, exposure, or outright violence in the expulsion.

Nearly three thousand survivors journeyed through the thirteen American colonies to Spanish-controlled Louisiana.

There they resettled, intermarried with members of the local population, and evolved into the Cajun people, who today number over a half-million.

Since their arrival in Louisiana, the Cajuns have developed an unmistakable identity and a strong sense of ethnic pride.

In recent decades they have contributed their exotic cuisine and accordion-and-fiddle dance music to American popular culture.

Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors: A Young Readers History includes numerous images and over a dozen sidebars on topics ranging from Cajun music to Mardi Gras.