I am the direct lineal descendant of Indigenous women enslaved in Louisiana, including Marie-Jeanne Elisabeth “Lisette” de l’Isle (Nanatsoho/Nasoni Caddo*), and her daughter, Marie-Louise. In Louisiana, the enslavement of Indigenous peoples was intergenerational, based on the status of the mother. (*Lisette was recorded as being Nanatsoho/Nasoni Caddo, but it is possible she may have been Lipan/Canneci Apache.) Download the certified genealogical report here.
My great-grandmother, Marie-Louise, was emancipated after the death of her enslaver and biological father, Sieur Bertrand dit Dauphine. However, she was then “married” off to Frenchmen at 14 and again at 16. These arrangements were most often forms of bondage. However, dozens of her descendants were born free, some of whom were also descended from another line of enslaved Indigenous women, beginning with Angélique dite Dumont (Hasinai Caddo).
My ancestors married into and were enslaved by the St. Denis family. Jeanne de la Grande Terre (Chitimacha) was my great-aunt’s mother-in-law. Therefore, my Afro-Creole relatives include the Dumont, Davion, Gagné, Bertrand, Prévot, Poirier, Dupart, de l’Isle, and Derbanne lines.
This means that my ancestors were enslaved alongside the young Marie Thérèse Coincoin in the St. Denis and De Soto family homes, all of them kin and founding families of the Cane River Creoles.
Like other descendants of enslaved Africans, Indigenous people, and Free People of Color, I can most easily track my ancestry through land grants, slave schedules, and other documents pertaining to the lines of my European ancestors.
While some of my Indigenous ancestors were bought and sold at St. Jean-Baptiste des Natchitoches and Los Adaes or Nacogdoches, unnamed others (Apache) can be traced to New Orleans and Opelousas at the Attakapas through their enslavers and their families.
Leila K. Blackbird 