Democracy and Public Space in Louisiana’s Creole Trail Rides

While much attention has focused on Louisiana’s Cajun communities, comparatively few academics have studied the traditions of Louisiana’s Creole community, a mixed-race group in the state’s rural Southwest prairie and bayou regions. Discrepancies in the value accorded to Cajun and Creole traditions have played out in recent debates about limiting or banning Creole trail rides from certain Louisiana municipalities. Trail rides—organized outings on horseback or a wagon, featuring participants in the hundreds—are one of the most visible manifestations of the Creole peoples’ rural heritage; however, a recent surge in popularity has led to increasing restrictions on the practice and vociferous public debates about the value of the practice from within the community and without. Using archival sources and ethnographic methods, this research engages with literature on public space, democracy, and festival to explore how cultural performances by those who identify as Creole create a space of belonging and site of cultural identity within the racialized context of the South.