Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Geography & Anthropology

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

In Frontier Louisiana, 1765-1812, two Spanish outposts known as the Opelousas and Attakapas Districts underwent significant and rapid demographic and cultural change with the arrival of Creoles, Acadians, Europeans, Americans, Free People of Color, and enslaved Africans and African Americans. Simultaneously, habitants engaged in the vacher, or ranching, industry, prompting officials to enact branding ordinances beginning in 1770. A collective registry of late 18th and early 19th century brands, known today as the St. Martin Parish Cattle Brands Books, encapsulates thousands of brands registered by these inhabitants, but has been underutilized as a resource and archive. This dissertation examines how pyroglyphics, better known as cattle brands, are overlooked socially embedded artifacts capable of revealing an array of information about the past where traditional archival sources are lacking.

Addressing this gap, this dissertation asks how pyroglyphics function as artifacts for understanding identity formation, kinship networks, and cultural processes such as ethnogenesis and diaspora. Utilizing an iconoglyphical method—an approach that synthesizes Peircean semiotics, Actor-Network Theory, and iconographic analysis—this study interprets pyroglyphs as semiotic actants embedded within broader social relations. Findings show that pyroglyphs became inextricably linked to identity, serving as indicators of social and kinship networks, embodied knowledge, agency, and resistance to dominant power structures.

Pyroglyphs also act as artifacts for tracing ethnogenesis, an anthropological concept that considers how group identities and ethnicities catalyzed in colonial frontiers, and what cultural pathways they preserved, adapted, synthesized, created or even disregarded during this catalyst. In Frontier Louisiana, brands registered by Acadians heavily utilized Mi’kmaq hieroglyphs, prompting a reexamination of their interactions during the Grand Derangement. Free People of Color incorporated diasporic symbols into their brand registries, and pyroglyphs stood as monikers of identity despite ongoing scrutiny and increasing white supremacy leading up to the US Civil War. The repeated use of similar brand motifs, spanning decades and generations, shows that Acadians and Gens de Couleur Libre, interacted earlier and in a greater capacity than traditional scholarship and archives propose.  This suggests an assemblage and an adjacent ethnogenesis of a gulf ranching frontier identity that merits further research.

Date

5-21-2026

Committee Chair

Franzen, Sarah

LSU Acknowledgement

1

LSU Accessibility Acknowledgment

1

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