te, a little bit of everything, making a
whole, delightfully flavored, quite distinctive, and wholly unique.

From 1724 to the present time, frequent discussions as to the proper name
by which to designate this very important portion of the population of
Louisiana waged more or less acrimoniously.[20] It was this Creole element
who in 1763 obtained a decision from Louis XV that all mixed bloods who
could claim descent from an Indian ancestor in addition to a white
outranked those mixed bloods who had only white and African ancestors.[21]
In Jamaica, in 1733, there was passed a law that every person who could
show that he was three degrees removed from a Negro ancestor should be
regarded as belonging to the white race, and could sit as a member of the
Jamaica Assembly.[22] In Barbadoes, any person who had a white ancestor
could vote. These laws were quoted in Louisiana and influenced legislation
there.[23]

Gov. Perier succeeded Bienville as Governor of Louisiana. His task was not
a light one; the colony staggered under "terror of attack from the Indians,
sudden alarms, false hopes, anxious suspense, militia levies, colonial
paper, instead of good money, industrial stagnation, the care of homeless
refugees, and worst of all, the restiveness of the slaves. The bad effects
of slave-holding began to show themselves." Many of the slaves had been
taken in war, and were fierce and implacable. Some were of that fiercest of
African tribes, the Banbaras. A friendliness, born of common hatred and
despair, began to show itself between the colored people and the fierce
Choctaw Indians surrounding the colony, when Gov. Perier planned a
master-stroke of diplomacy. Just above New Orleans lived a small tribe of
Indians, the Chouchas, who, not particularly harmful in themselves, had
succeeded in inspiring the nervous inhabitants of the city with abject
fear. Perier armed a band of slaves in 1729 and sent them to the Chouchas
with instructions to exterminate the tribe. They did their work with an
ease and dispatch that should have been a warning to their white masters.
In reporting the success of his plan Perier said: "The Negroes executed
their mission with as much promptitude as secrecy. This lesson taught them
by our Negroes, kept in check all the nations higher up the river."[24]
Thus, by one stroke the wily Governor had intimidated the tribes of
Indians, allayed the nervous fears of New Orleans, and effected a state of
hostility betw