Cajuns are the descendants of 17th-century French colonists who settled along the shores of Canada's Bay of Fundy in a region they called Acadie. Expelled by the British in a series of deportations beginning in 1755, more than 2,500 Acadians eventually found refuge in Louisiana. As the years passed, their neighbors softened the edges of the French "Acadien" into "Cadien" and finally "Cajun." Many neighbors, including those of German and Spanish descent, were gradually absorbed by intermarriage into the Cajun milieu.