#there are some fascinating commonalities between mexican/tejano culture and cajun/creole culture but that's really it

[please-dont-pet-the-okapi]

#(i'm the first generation of my family to be born in texas since that one guy was kidnapped from here in i think the very early 1800s)

since that one guy was what now

It's. a long story.

So my 4th great-grandfather (who I'll call C) was born somewhere in what is now South Texas but was part of Mexico at the time. The story goes that when C was about 15, he was kidnapped in a raid during Comanche-Mexico Wars.

He was eventually bought by an American Indian woman, who pretty much unofficially adopted him. The two left Texas by the time of the Texas Revolution, and they lived out the rest of their lives in southwest Louisiana near Coushatta territory. C ended up learning French, marrying a French woman, and giving himself a French name. His descendants assimilated into Cajun and Creole culture, and came to think of themselves as more French than Mexican.

Fanciful as this whole story may sound, both DNA testing and census records verify that, at the very least, my 4th great-grandfather was from what was at the time Mexico. The oral history of his life is fairly consistent, so there may be some truth to all of this