I know that Cajuns are French exiles from the Acadia region who settled in Louisiana, and Creoles refer those born in the Louisiana colony rather than Europe (right?).
Does that mean the children of Cajuns would have been Creoles? (i.e. Jean is from Acadia and then settles in Louisiana. He then marries and has a son named Louis who was born in Louisiana. Would Jean be a Cajun and Louis a Creole?).
Is there a "cut-off" date for these two groups? As in, people of French/other European heritage who immigrate to, or are born in Louisiana, are no longer called Cajuns/Creoles after year ____?
I ask because a quarter of my family is French, having come to the U.S. in 1880s (from Marseille). So, I don't know if that would mean we are Cajun, Creole, or neither.
Mostly the Cajuns maintained their own identity as refugees from Acadia. They generally have resisted being called Creoles.
Creoles generally was thus applied as a name for people born in Louisiana of French, Spanish, African, or Native American heritage (or some mixture of the above) but not Cajuns.
The distinction may have been because the two groups spoke different French dialects. The Creoles originally developed a dialect called 'Colonial French', but later the dialect changed and was called 'Louisiana Creole French' which is still a native tongue of a few Creole communities in Louisiana and Texas.
The dialect of French spoken by those Cajuns (and some Creoles) who still speak French in Louisiana is called 'Louisiana French'.
The 2000 US census reports that circa 250,000 Louisianans speak French at home.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Creole_people
Since the term 'Creole' is usually used to refer to people who had a colonial French or Spanish Ancestor, and Louisiana stopped being a colony of Spain or France at the time of the Louisiana purchase in 1803. It may not be strictly correct to call oneself a Creole unless one had a French or Spanish ancestor who was born in Louisiana before 1803?