Wendy Castenell

The portrait of Marianne Célèste Dragon (c. 1796), attributed to an artist from the School of Jose de Salazar calls into question many preconceived assumptions about the role of people of African descent in Louisiana in particular, and early American history in general. In this paper, I will use Dragon’s portrait to unpack the fluidity that defined racial identification in colonial Louisiana, and to explore how the caste of free people of color used this ambiguity to negotiate for increased social mobility, station, wealth, and power.