[LINK] "French speakers in California, Past and Present"

[rfmcdonald]

Geocurrents' Asya Pereltsvaig wrote about the history of the French language in California, strongly associated with a long history of immigration and cultural prestige.

While today fewer than 1% of Californians speak French, some 150 years ago this language played a prominent role statewide, especially in northern California. The first Frenchman whose presence in California is documented is Pierre (Pedro) Prat, a doctor in the 1769 expedition headed by Gaspar de Portolà and Junípero Serra. Not long after, in 1782, a French-speaking sailor from Brittany, Pierre Roy, shows up at the new mission at San Buenaventura. [. . .] There must have been some French Canadian merchants and trappers who made it to Alta California in those early years, but there is no documented information about their visits. Additional settlers must have come from the French-speaking Midwest.

In the first half of the 19th century, California, then under Spanish and subsequently Mexican control, established trade relations with the rest of Spanish-speaking America and New England, as well as with many European countries, including Russia and France. French-speaking immigrants continue to arrive in this period, coming chiefly from western regions of France (Normandy, Brittany, southwestern regions), as well as from Belgium and Quebec. Each regional group typically filled an occupational niche: people from the southwestern regions of France were often winemakers and carpenters, those from the Pyrenees were mainly merchants and teachers, while immigrants from Brittany and Normandy were often sailors. They settled in Monterey, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and elsewhere. Many of the French-speaking immigrants learned Spanish and some married Mexicans, but typically they continued to speak French at home and even outside the French-speaking community (Foucrier 2005: 236). In multilingual early 19th century California, each tongue occupied its own niche: Spanish as the official language, English as the chief language of trade, and French—which was at the time the international diplomatic language—as an important political and cultural vehicle. Being able to speak French helped talented and ambitious young men like Victor Prudon and José María Covarrubias to became personal secretaries of influential men and thus to serve as intermediaries in the complex politics of the era. In May 1843, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo wrote to the governor Manuel Micheltorena suggesting that Victor Prudon be named prefect of the newly created Sonoma prefecture, pointing out that the young man had an advantage of speaking three languages: Spanish, English, and French. Vallejo himself is characterized by a Swedish traveler who visits him in 1842-1843 as “speaking good French and passable English” (Van Sicklen ed. 1945: 84).

[. . .]

The Gold Rush, which started with the discovery of rich gold deposits in 1848, changed the demographics of northern California. Masses of hopefuls began to arrive in 1849; among them were no fewer than 25,000 French speakers from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and Louisiana. Unlike earlier French immigrants, many of those attracted by the prospects of finding gold came from Paris. While many of these newly arrived francophones looked for fortunes at the gold mines, many settled in the cities as well, including San Francisco. French neighborhoods were established, as were French social organizations and clubs. Unlike earlier French immigrants, those of the Gold Rush era typically did not speak English, nor were they motivated to learn it as they hoped to get rich and to return home within several months. Most were happy to get by with only one member of a group speaking (or perhaps only thinking that he spoke) English. The others would turn to such “designated interpreter” with Qu’est-ce qu’il dit? [‘What did he say?’]. As a result, the French prospectors got a nickname keskydees. In later years, as the gold mines were exhausted and xenophobic attitudes started to surface, obstinate refusals on the part of the francophone gold-seekers to learn English provoked distrust and hostility, on occasion even violence (Foucrier 2005: 239).

But the Gold Rush era was also the golden era of the French community in San Francisco. Cafes and restaurants in the City’s French quarter prospered. Several institutions were established to aid French-speakers in need. In 1851 a mutual aid society was founded to help sick francophones who did not speak English; hospital visits of such patients by French-speaking doctors were arranged. Two years later a French speaking volunteer fire brigade, the Compagnie Lafayette, was organized to combat the frequent fires and to insure proper communication during such emergencies. San Francisco’s French community also had its own church, numerous newspapers, and theaters. The most important French-language newspaper was the Echo du Pacifique, which, beginning in June 1852, came out three times a week on four pages: three in French and one in Spanish. In December 1855, it became a daily. For a few years, French theater flourished as actors and directors—fleeing economic and social turmoil in France in the wake of the 1848 revolution—brought the best and the latest of Parisian comedies, vaudevilles, and operas. This golden age of French theater in the City by the Bay was short-lived, however, as the fires that ravaged the city in May and June 1851 destroyed a number of theater buildings. But already in July of that year, the rebuilt Adelphi theater opened its doors to the public; sometimes its facilities were used for balls and other special events in the French-speaking community. All in all, life in California for the French immigrants of the mid-19th century must have been rather good. In fact, so many Frenchmen were leaving for the United States at the time that some politicians in France and French Canada feared a mass exodus. As a result, negative representations in newspapers and novels proliferated (Lemire 1987, Lamontagne 2002).</