Unrestricted by the social code
of the French, the quadroons could be coquettish and flirtatious
in the streets and cabarets. As early as 1786 a law was passed
in an effort to subdue them; any woman of color appearing in
a hat on the streets of the city was subject to arrest and imprisonment.
As a woman had to have her head covered in public, the free
women of color were reduced to wearing a tignon- also called
chignon, a scarf wrapped about their heads in the style of the
slave women. Not to be outdone, the free women of color soon
devised bright madras cloths that they wrapped high on their
heads and decorated with jewels and flowers.
The children born of the first
generation of placage were called mulattoes, those of the
second quadroons, of the octoroons and so on, according to
the fraction of black blood. They did not consider themselves
black but Creoles of color, they spoke French, had French
names and developed their own customs. For some reason the
word "quadroon" became the term applied to light-skinned
mistresses in general.
The first quadroon ball to introduce
Frenchmen to available young ladies was held in 1805. It became
a tradition for the mother to chaperone her daughter to the
ball; the Frenchmen, after making his pick, negotiated with
the young woman's mother as to how he was going to support
her daughter, and then given permission to claim her as his
mistress. Many of these balls it is believed were held at
717 Orleans in the Quadroon Ballroom which today is part of
Because marriage between white
Creole men and women was often arranged to keep the blood
lines pure and the fortunes within the family, real romance
for the man was sometimes experienced only with his quadroon
mistress, who knew of each other's existence, can only be
The quadroons have been the
subject of many novels, stories and anecdotes about New Orleans,
but no written history has survived regarding the names and
the lives of these women. It is known how many could read
or write. Mementos from them that might have been kept by
their white lovers would have been destroyed upon the man's
death so as to hide his liaison from future generations of
his wife family. During the Civil War the quadroons, along
with the community of Creoles of color, lost their identity
as a separate group and had to survive as best they could.
Many are believe to have gone north where in some cases they
passed for white.
The Creoles of color surfaced
again in New Orleans at the turn of the century with many
of their French customs and language intact. They figured
strongly in the civil rights movement of the 1060s
the men were generally well educated, they have become political
and social leaders of the city. Sybil Kein, a Creole of color
today, still writes poetry in the Creole language, and her
brother, musician Deacon John, performs Creole songs.
Not all daughters of quadroons became mistresses. Some exceptions
are Marie Laveau, Rose Nicaud and Henriette Delille who appear
elsewhere in this book.
Novels dealing with the quadroons include Feast of All Saints
by Anne Rice, Old Creole Days by George Washington Cable,
and Toucoutou by Edward Larocque Tinker.
"Women and New Orleans"
by Mary Gehman and Nancy Ries