Eating and being French in Old Mines, Missouri.

The legacy of French Creole culture in Missouri is particularly remarkable in the community of Old Mines, located in the North Eastern section of the Ozark Mountains. More isolated than the larger French village of Ste. Genevieve on the Mississippi River, this historically mining community has until recently retained a strong collective identity founded on the use of the French Creole language and specific cultural practices. Based on ethnographic and archival research, this article explores the role played by food and foodways in the perpetuation of this French Creole identity. I suggest that as the French language became prohibited at school and as the nearby populations increasingly stigmatized this culturally distinct population, socio-culinary practices allowed French Creoles to continue enacting symbolic boundaries between surrounding English-speaking communities and themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]