The River Between Us

Content Warning: This discussion references sexual violence and racism.

Originating in the French and Spanish colonies, plaçage was purportedly a recognized extralegal system in New Orleans wherein a white man entered into a contractual relationship with a free woman of color. The word plaçage derives from the French verb placer, meaning “to place” or “to find a position for.” This system allowed free women of color to have financial support and protection and gave them opportunities to set up their own businesses or trades. These women often enslaved other people. Historians in the 21st century have begun referring to these contracts as myths because evidence of their existence is minimal, but the authenticity of the system was less questioned at the time of the novel’s writing.

Delphine, a free woman of color in the novel, explains that plaçage originated when women fled uprisings in the Caribbean islands and settled in New Orleans. White men exoticized these women and sought after them. A woman could choose a white man to settle down with, and he would provide for her while also maintaining a legally recognized white family at a different residence.

There is minimal documentation of the plaçage system, but historians speculated that the system started during European colonization. Unlike the colonization of the future US colonies in New England, which frequently included immigration by intact families, European colonizers in the Caribbean were almost entirely men, and these circumstances and racial biases led to high rates of rape of Indigenous women by European men. There are also accounts of marriage and other relationships between colonizers and the African and Indigenous women in the region. These women, and the children who resulted from these encounters, were left behind when the men returned to Europe. The practice of white men having free women of color as their mistresses was a tradition in New Orleans long before Louisiana was purchased by the United States in 1803. When Americans began to move south to this newly acquired land, this tradition shocked them, and they instituted laws to try to control the population of free women of color. These laws prohibited free women of color from holding public office, voting, and marrying white men.

The history of free women of color is murky, particularly after the Civil War. Many free women of color held uncertain positions in social hierarchies, since many of them also enslaved people. Many people believe that some women, like Delphine, traveled North if their skin was light enough to allow them to “pass” as white and avoid racial biases. Others, like Calinda, are believed to have traveled West, where they could pass as Spanish. However, there is little-to-no documentation to prove these theories.

There are many controversies surrounding the understanding of plaçage and what became known as “quadroon balls,” dances that white men purportedly attended to court free women of color. (This term is a racist term that was used to categorize people as being of one-quarter African ancestry.) Some argue that there is not enough documentation to prove that this system existed at all. Those historians argue that the free women of color in New Orleans were among the most devoutly Roman Catholic citizens, and such women would not establish balls designed to allow white men to “shop” for mistresses. They argue that the idea of plaçage and quadroon balls originates from the era’s thinly veiled advertisements for sex workers. Emily Clark, Professor of American Colonial History at Tulane University, says that the myths of plaçage and “quadroon balls” overshadow the true stories of many interracial couples who lived long and happy lives together. She argues that the more likely truth is that the white women of the time refused to accept that their sons and brothers could genuinely love women of color; thus, they twisted the narrative to support their view that white men pursued women of color only as mistresses, not as wives and mothers (“Tripod Mythbusters: Quadroon Balls and Plaçage”, September 22nd, 2016, wwno.org.) The River Between Us takes the controversial existence of plaçage as fact in order to interrogate how racial biases inform notions of identity, family, and heritage.