The one is no more intelligible to a Frenchman than the other
to a Londoner. The ignorant Creole negro wishing to say "I do not
understand," would not say "moi je ne comprends pas," but "mo pas
connais"; similarly for "I am going away," he does not say, "je m'en
vais," but "ma pe couri"; while for "I have a horse," instead of "j'ai
un cheval," he will put the statement, "me ganye choue." It is a dialect
lacking mood, tense, and grammar.
To this day one may occasionally see in New Orleans and in other lower
river towns an old "mammy" wearing the bandanna headdress called a
_tignon_, which, toward the end of the eighteenth century, was made
compulsory for colored women in Louisiana. The need for some such
distinguishing racial badge was, it is said, twofold. Yellow sirens from
the French West Indies, flocking to New Orleans, were becoming
exceedingly conspicuous in dress and adornment; furthermore one hears
stories of wealthy white men, fathers of octoroon or quadroon girls, who
sent these illegitimate daughters abroad to be educated. The latter, one
learns from many sources, were very often beautiful in the extreme, as
were also the Domingan girls, and history is full of the tales of the
curious, wild, fashionably caparisoned, declasse circle of society,
which came to exist in New Orleans through the presence there of so many
alluring women of light color and equally light character.
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