Redbone (ethnicity)

Redbone is a term historically used in much of the Southern United States to denote a multiracial individual or culture. In Louisiana, the term Redbones refers to specific geographically and ethnically distinct groups.

In Louisiana, the Redbone cultural group consists mainly of the families of migrants to the state following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The term Redbone became disfavored as it was a pejorative nickname applied by others; however, starting around 1990, the term has begun to be used as the preferred description for some groups, including the Louisiana Redbones.

The Louisiana Redbones historically lived in geographically and socially isolated communities in the southwestern Louisiana parishes, ranging from Sabine Parish in the northwest and Rapides Parish near the center of the state down to Calcasieu Parish in the southwest, including parts of Orange County, Texas and Newton County, Texas. This area is roughly coextensive with what was once known as the Neutral Ground or Sabine Free State, an area of disputed sovereignty from 1806 to 1821 that was primarily bound on the east by the Calcasieu River and the Sabine River on the west. Academically, the group has been termed "under-researched."

The ancestral families of the Redbones descended from free African-Americans originating in the Jamestown Colony, who were of Angolan origin. They came from South Carolina, migrating soon after the United States acquired Louisiana in 1803, although some families came from other Southeastern states. The Ashworth, Dial, Perkins, Sweat, and Bunch families of the Redbones migrated from the Pendleton District of South Carolina to the Neutral Ground in Louisiana. The Dyal families of the Redbones are direct descendants of Benjamin Doll, and the Redbone Bunch family descends from John Bunch, a man who petitioned the Virginia Council requesting the right to marry a white woman.