Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors: A Young Reader's History

Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors

Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors A Young Reader’s History

Shane K. Bernard University Press of Mississippi / Jackson

www.upress.state.ms.us The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Copyright © 2008 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Todd Lape First printing 2008 ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

“Contre Vents, Contre Marées,” paroles et musique Zachary Richard, Les Editions du Marais Bouleur, from the Audiogram recording Coeur Fidèle © 2000.

Bernard, Shane K. Cajuns and their Acadian ancestors : a young reader’s history / Shane K. Bernard. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-934110-78-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Cajuns—Louisiana—History—Juvenile literature. 2. Cajuns—Social life and customs—Juvenile literature. 3. Cajuns—Ethnic identity—Juvenile literature. 4. Acadians—History—Juvenile literature. 5. Acadians—Migrations—History— Juvenile literature. I. Title. F380.A2B47 2008 305.84’10763—dc22 2007033462

Sieur de Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal in Acadia or New France, trans. Mrs. Clarence Webster (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1933). Published with permission of the Champlain Society.

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Jean-François Mouhot, ed., “Letter by Jean-Baptiste Semer, an Acadian in New Orleans, to His Father in Le Havre, April 20, 1766,” trans. Bey Grieve, Louisiana History 48 (Spring 2007): 219–26. Published with permission of Jean-François Mouhot and the Louisiana Historical Association. The Dennis McGee quotation in the Cajun surname sidebar is from Carl Lindahl, “‘It’s Only Folklore . . .’: Folklore and the Historian,” Louisiana History 26 (Spring 1985): 141.

To Colette and Alexandre

Contents Preface ix Chapter One Chapter Two

The Acadians

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The Expulsion

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Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five

Louisiana

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Birth of the Cajuns

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“Americanized” Cajuns

Chapter Six

The Cajun Revival

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Conclusion 73 Timeline 77 A Note on Historic French Names 81 Sources and Suggested Readings 83 Acknowledgments 85 Index 87

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Preface

I first became interested in Cajun history as a teenager, when I spent countless hours at my local public library researching my Cajun and Acadian ancestry. At the time, historians had written few serious books about these two intertwined peoples (or ethnic groups). They had written fewer still that young readers could easily understand. In fact, none had been written expressly for young readers. Decades later, I became a professional historian as well as a father. I wanted my two children to read about and study their heritage, but even after so many years, no book on the subject had been written for young readers. I decided to resolve this problem by writing the first history of the Cajuns and their Acadian ancestors for readers on the junior high and high school levels. In the following pages, I present the sweep of Cajun and Acadian history from 1604 to present in a concise, reader-friendly style. The first half of the book covers the Cajuns’ ancestors, the Acadians, who in the 1600s migrated from France to Nova Scotia, in eastern Canada. This section examines the most important event in Acadian history, the forced expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia beginning in 1755, an upheaval that resulted

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Preface

in roughly three thousand Acadian exiles seeking refuge in south Louisiana. The second half of the book examines the Cajuns, a new people who arose in the mid- to late 1800s through the mixing (or intermarriage) of these Acadian exiles with other ethnic groups in south Louisiana. Although a new people, they preserved many connections to their Acadian heritage. This section traces the Cajuns through the century and a half since their origin, showing how events such as World War II and even the rise of television and rock ’n’ roll music have influenced the modern Cajun people. I hope that this book will help young readers to understand the Cajuns and their Acadian ancestors and, in its own small way, contribute to the survival of Cajun culture. —Shane K. Bernard New Iberia, Louisiana

Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors

Chapter One

The Acadians

T

he Cajuns’ ancestors came to Louisiana from a land called Acadia, or Acadie in French. Acadia covered a vaguely defined area that largely equals the present-day maritime provinces of Canada—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. (See map.) Some historians believe that European explorers named Acadia after a region of ancient Greece called Arcadia, celebrated by poets for its quiet country life and rich farmland. Other historians argue that explorers named Acadia after the local Indian word akadie, meaning “place of abundance.” As this idea suggests, Indians inhabited Acadia long before Europeans came to the region. The Indians in Acadia called themselves the Micmacs (sometimes spelled Mi’kmaqs or Míkmaqs). The Micmacs were a nomadic people, moving their camps with the seasons. In the spring, the Micmacs lived near the sea, where they caught fish and lobsters, hunted seals and walruses, and gathered clams and oysters. In the fall, they lived in the forest, where they hunted caribou, moose, deer, beaver, otter, and wildfowl and fished lakes and streams for herring, salmon, and sturgeon. The Micmacs shared their knowledge of the wilderness with the early Acadian settlers. These skills permitted the settlers to survive in their new, often hostile surroundings.

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The Acadians

But the Acadians were not the first Europeans to make contact with these Indians. Many Europeans came to Acadia in the 1500s, when fishermen from France, Spain, England, and Portugal sailed to the region in search of cod, a major source of food in Europe. These fishermen eventually went ashore in Acadia to cure their catches so that the fish would not spoil on the voyage back across the Atlantic. Some fishermen camped in Acadia over the harsh winters to guard their curing operations and to prepare for the next fishing season. In 1604, Europeans established their first colony (permanent settlement) in Acadia. They did so to obtain not only cod but also a more valuable product—fur. A French nobleman, Pierre de Monts, founded this first permanent European settlement, having received from the king of France, Henri IV, a seigneurie (royal land grant) in Acadia. As a seigneur (royal landholder), de Monts was permitted to rent small parcels of his land to French colonists. De Monts and his party of seventy-five men (no women or children accompanied the expedition) explored the Bay of Fundy for a suitable colony site and chose an island at the mouth of the Saint Croix River in present-day Maine. Left by themselves to face the unknown, thirty-five of de Monts’s men died that winter of scurvy, a disease caused by poor nutrition. When ships arrived from France the next summer carrying more men and supplies, de Monts moved the colony across the Bay of Fundy to a more hospitable site. He chose a spot on the western shore of present-day Nova Scotia and called the place Port Royal—“the most beautiful earthly habitation that God has ever made,” as one colonist described it. It proved an ideal location, for the seeds brought by the settlers from Europe grew impressively in the area’s rich soil. “The rye was as tall as the tallest man,” an eyewitness recorded, and the wheat “grew up in as fair perfection as the fairest wheat in France.”

The Acadians

Map of Port Royal Basin with a close-up of the fort at Port Royal as it appeared in the early 1600s. From Samuel de Champlain, The Voyages (1613), 23, 99.

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The region also teemed with wildlife. A colonist noted, “We eat lobsters as big as little children, plenty of salmons and salmon trouts, birds of strange and diverse kinds, hawks of all sorts, doves, turtles, pheasants, partridges, black birds, a kind also of hens, wild turkeys, cranes, herons, infinite store of geese, and three or four kinds of ducks, snipes, cormorants, and many sea fowls, whales, seals, castors, otters.” At Port Royal, de Monts’s men built dwellings and a small protective fort. They cleared the nearby forest to make fields and they sowed wheat, rye, barley, oats, beans, and peas. They raised farm animals brought over from Europe, such as pigs, sheep, and chickens. They constructed a forge for shaping metal into axes, hoes, and spades, which they used to tend their crops. They built a water-powered mill for crushing grain so that they could make their wheat into bread. And they set up a kiln (oven) for heating

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The Acadians

limestone rocks to make quicklime, a substance used to cement bricks and stones together and to fill cracks in cabin walls. When these early Acadians were not busy in the fields or at the forge, kiln, or mill, they hunted, fished, and gathered shellfish for their tables. They also traded with the Micmacs, who lived in a nearby village. The Acadians gave the Indians iron pots, kettles, knives, and axes from France and eventually firearms. In return, the Micmacs provided the settlers with fur—beaver, otter, deer, and seal pelts—which the colonists sold at a sizable profit in Europe. Although de Monts’s colony thrived, his personal enemies back in France convinced the king to take away his rights to the colony. This forced de Monts and his settlers to abandon Port Royal in 1607, ending what had been the longest continuous European settlement in North America outside Florida (occupied by Spain since 1565). For three years, Port Royal sat deserted. In 1610, however, a seigneur named Jean Poutrincourt returned to Acadia with permission to revive Port Royal. Poutrincourt and his settlers, who numbered about twenty-five men, planted new crops and resumed the fur trade with the Micmacs. Again the colony prospered, but in 1613 misfortune revisited Port Royal when the British governor of Virginia, a rival colony to the south, ordered ruthless sea marauder Samuel Argall to destroy Port Royal. Argall—best known as kidnapper of the Indian maiden Pocahontas—drove off Poutrincourt’s men, stole their possessions, butchered their livestock, and burned Port Royal to the ground. His colony in ruins, Poutrincourt returned to France in despair, leaving his son, Charles Biencourt, to abandon Port Royal for the safety of Cape Sable on the peninsula’s southern tip. From there Biencourt revived the colony. Three years after Argall’s raid, Biencourt managed to ship twenty-five thousand pelts to France. In 1628, however, Scottish settlers threatened France’s claim to

The Acadians

A French-Canadian fur trapper of the 1600s greets an Indian. From Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, February 1892, 383.

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Acadia by occupying the abandoned Port Royal site. The Scottish renamed Acadia, calling it Nova Scotia (Latin for “New Scotland”), a name that did not become official for many years. In 1632, the British gave Acadia back to France through the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The Scottish invaders withdrew, and Port Royal again became the capital of French-speaking Acadia. At this time the French government established the Company of New France to manage the colony more effectively. The company planned to increase fur trade in Acadia by populating the colony with settlers called engagés, the French term for “indentured servants” (temporary contract laborers). Engagés agreed to work for the company as fur traders and trappers in exchange for passage

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The Acadians

to America and their own farmland. After five years’ service to the company, engagés became free to pursue their own interests in the colony. Acadia’s new governor, Isaac de Razilly, obtained engagés from the vicinity of La Chausée, a town in the poor, rural Centre-Ouest (Center-West) region of France. (See map.) These colonists left France because of natural and man-made disasters that crippled Centre-Ouest. Severe droughts, for example, spawned famines and epidemics such as the Plague of 1631, one of the worst in French history. Religious violence between Catholics and Protestants devastated the countryside and created a lawless society teeming with thieves and mercenaries. Finally, high taxes reduced the already low quality of life among the region’s inhabitants. Desperate but adventurous peasants from Centre-Ouest made up the majority of Razilly’s engagés. They sought a new life in Acadia as well as something they never had in France and considered vital to liberty and happiness—their own land. The engagés shared several cultural traits because of their common place of origin. These traits included their French language, their Roman Catholic religion, and their peasant background. These similarities helped the engagés pull together to create a tight frontier community. This sense of unity fostered their rapid change into a new people who thought of themselves not as French but as Acadian. The “first families” of Acadia—numbering about three hundred settlers—arrived in 1632 with Razilly. Many of them had surnames that are common among present-day Cajuns: Boudreaux (Boudrot), Bourgeois, Breaux (Breau, Brault), Comeaux (Comeau), Cormier, Doucet, Girouard, Hebert, LeBlanc, Theriot (Terriot, Terriault), and Thibodeaux (Thibodeau), among others. These pioneer families brought livestock, seeds, tools, weapons, and other supplies to help them survive in the wilderness. They built their homes in Port Royal either by stacking logs in the style

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The Acadians

of a traditional log cabin (a method called pièce sur pièce) or by driving upright posts or planks side by side into the ground (known as the piquet method but also as poteaux en terre if posts were used and planche debout en terre if planks were used). In recent years, however, archaeologists have turned up evidence that some Acadians built their houses in a third style, charpente, that relied on stone foundations to support dwellings constructed of sturdy posts and beams. The Acadians built rectangular homes containing one or two rooms, which they furnished sparsely with a table, beds, hide-covered chairs, and trunks for storing clothes. Sometimes a loft under the roof served as a boys’ bedroom called a garçonnière. Besides giving the Acadians land in Port Royal on which to build their homes, the Company of New France provided them with farmland just outside the settlement. But the Acadians’ best farmland literally came from the sea: They used dikes (dams) to reclaim coastal marshland that regularly flooded at high tide. The Acadians built these dikes by driving parallel rows of logs into the ground and filling the spaces between them with additional logs and thick clay, or by digging up clumps of sod (grass and soil) and stacking them on top of each other. Standing about five feet high and ten feet thick, the resulting walls blocked salty seawater from washing over the marshland, which the Acadians could now use to grow their crops. Diking provided such a wealth of fertile new farmland that the Acadians continued the practice almost everywhere they settled in the colony. Acadians were subsistence farmers, meaning that they consumed their own crops for survival and harvested only a small surplus for trading. Their farms produced grain, peas, beans, cabbage, corn, and turnips; in addition, they planted orchards with apples, pears, plums, and cherries. Their barnyards abounded with cattle, goats, chickens, pigs, and sheep, from which the Acadians obtained milk, butter, eggs, and meat. They tapped the region’s

Runninghead

Acadian Dike Building In 1699, a French surgeon known to history only as the Sieur de Dièreville arrived in Port Royal. He remained in the colony for about a year before returning to France, where he published a chronicle of his experiences, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal in Acadia or New France (1708), that included a description of dike building in Acadia: It costs a great deal to prepare the lands which they wish to cultivate. Those called uplands, which must be cleared in the forest, are not good and the seed does not come up well in them. It makes no difference how much trouble is taken to bring them into condition with manure, which is very scarce. There is almost no harvest and sometimes they have to be abandoned. To grow wheat, the marshes that are inundated by the sea at high tide must be drained. These are called lowlands and they are quite good—but what labor is needed to make them fit for cultivation! The ebb and flow of the sea cannot easily be stopped, but the Acadians succeed in doing so by means of great dykes . . . and it is done in this way: Five or six rows of large logs are driven whole into the ground at the points where the tide enters the marsh, and between each row other logs are laid, one on top of the other, and all the spaces between them are so carefully filled with well-pounded clay, that the water can no longer get through. In the center of this construction, a sluice [hinged door called an aboiteau] is contrived in such a manner that the water on the marshes flows out of its own accord, while that of the sea is prevented from coming in. An undertaking of this nature, which can only be carried on at certain seasons when the tides do not rise so high, costs a great deal and takes many days, but the abundant crop that is harvested in the second year, after the soil has been washed by rain water [and cleansed of sea salt], compensates for all the expense. As these lands are owned by several men, the work upon them is done in common. If they belonged to an individual, he would have to pay the others or give to the men who had worked for him an equal number of days devoted to some other employment. That is the manner in which it is customary for them to adjust such matters among themselves.

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The Acadians

plentiful maple trees for syrup, brewed spruce tree buds to make beer, and fermented apple juice to produce cider. The Acadians made not only their foodstuffs but also their household belongings. Acadian men, for example, fabricated rough-hewn wooden furniture as well as metal tools for farming. Acadian women produced homemade linen from flax plants and obtained wool from sheep. From these materials came the colony’s shirts, pants, dresses, hats, and stockings. For shoes, the Acadians made moccasins from cattle or moose hide. Sometimes they carved wooden shoes to wear in damp surroundings. In addition to farming, some Acadians worked as tradesmen in specialized fields. These included carpenters, coopers, gunsmiths, masons, and blacksmiths. Acadians also did seasonal work away from their farms, such as hunting, fishing, and trapping the allimportant fur for the Company of New France. Greed over fur eventually led the Acadians to fight among themselves. When Razilly died in 1635, two rival seigneurs claimed Acadia and its trapping rights. One of these rivals, Charles d’Aulnay, claimed that he controlled the colony because he had succeeded Razilly as the colony’s governor. The other rival, Charles La Tour, argued that he should have become governor on Razilly’s death but had been cheated of the position by d’Aulnay. The French government might have settled the dispute peacefully, but it regarded events in distant Acadia as too unimportant. Having few soldiers of their own, d’Aulnay and La Tour forced the usually peaceful Acadians to fight each other on behalf of the two seigneurs. Fifteen years of bloody frontier skirmishes passed before d’Aulnay drove La Tour into exile. But when d’Aulnay drowned in a boating accident, La Tour hurried back to the colony, married d’Aulnay’s widow, and proclaimed himself governor of Acadia. This petty civil war shaped Acadian history by squandering lives and resources and by leaving the colony vulnerable to attack from outside. In 1654, the British took advantage of Acadia’s weakness by seizing it once again from France. The occupation

The Acadians

A view of the Minas Basin in Acadia. From Margaret Avery Johnston, comp. and ed., In Acadia (New Orleans: Hansell, 1893), 13.

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lasted more than fifteen years and had one positive outcome: It spurred Acadians to forget the conflict over seigneurs and trapping rights and instead to unite against a common enemy—the detested British. By the time France regained control of the colony in 1670, the Acadians had developed into a distinct people. They regarded the Acadian frontier, not France, as their homeland. Similarly, they viewed themselves as Acadians, not Frenchmen. A census taken during this period counted about four hundred colonists in Acadia, most of them living near Port Royal. A shortage of new farmland around the capital, however, encouraged young Acadians to carve out new communities elsewhere in the colony. In 1671, for example, Acadians founded Beaubassin; in 1682 they settled Grand Pré; in 1689 they established Cobequid; and in 1698 they founded Chepody.* This string of settlements lay northeast of Port Royal and extended in an arc from the inlet called the Minas Basin, along the Chignecto Isthmus that con* Three of these communities were founded by Acadians with surnames common in present-day south Louisiana: Jacques Bourgeois, who established Beaubassin; Mathieu Martin, who settled Cobequid; and Pierre Melanson, who founded Grand Pré.

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The Acadians

nected Acadia to mainland Canada, to the southern coast of present-day New Brunswick. These outposts grew rapidly, and each soon supported between one hundred and three hundred colonists. Cousins in these isolated settlements frequently married, a practice that created large, closely allied extended families or clans, which, like the rugged frontier life, further instilled a sense of distinct identity among the Acadians.

Chapter Two

The Expulsion

A

fter forty years of continuous French rule, turmoil returned to the colony in 1710 when the British reoccupied Acadia. Three years later, France permanently surrendered the colony to England through the Treaty of Utrecht. This treaty permitted the Acadians to choose whether to leave the colony with their movable property or to remain on their cherished farms. It also required the British to grant freedom of religion to Acadians who remained in the colony, now officially renamed Nova Scotia. Furthermore, a 1713 British decree, Queen Anne’s Proclamation, ensured full property rights to Acadians who remained in Nova Scotia. Despite this apparent generosity, the colony’s new Englishspeaking rulers immediately pressed an issue that would frustrate both the Acadians and the British for decades to come: an unconditional oath of allegiance to the British Crown. After much haggling, the Acadians agreed in 1717 to swear an oath of allegiance, but not unconditionally. Rather, the Acadians offered allegiance in return for neutrality during wartime. As the Acadians themselves phrased this provision, “We will take up arms neither against his Britannic Majesty, nor against France, nor against any of their subjects or allies.” The Acadians considered

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The Expulsion

this a vital requirement, for loyalty to England during wartime would invite attacks by marauding French and Indian forces. The issue dragged on for more than a decade as the British continued to demand an unconditional oath and the Acadians refused to comply without a guarantee of wartime neutrality. Finally, the two sides reached a compromise known as the Conventions of 1730. (Conventions means “agreements.”) This compromise gave the Acadians exactly what they wanted—wartime neutrality in exchange for the oath of allegiance to the British Crown. But the British administrators lied—both to the Acadians and to their own superiors in London. To the Acadians they falsely reported that London had accepted their demand for wartime neutrality, while to London they untruthfully stated that the Acadians had dropped their demand for wartime neutrality. This deception brought twenty years of peace to Nova Scotia, during which the Acadians quietly lived under the illusion that they had settled the issue of an unconditional oath. Meanwhile, the British took advantage of this tranquility to strengthen their hold on Nova Scotia. They established a new, fortified capital, Halifax, and populated it with loyal English-speaking settlers. They also constructed forts on the Chignecto Isthmus, sealing the colony’s border with French-held mainland Canada. Firmly in control of Nova Scotia, the British—much to the Acadians’ surprise—again demanded an unconditional oath of allegiance in 1749. The Acadians pointed to the Conventions of 1730, which they still regarded as binding, and even offered to renew the twenty-year-old agreement. But with English-speaking settlers and imported goods flowing into Nova Scotia through Halifax, British administrators felt they no longer needed the problematic Acadians as a major source of supplies. Instead, the British now viewed the Acadians as expendable and plotted their expulsion—the forced removal of every

The Expulsion

British officer Charles Lawrence, planner of the expulsion of the Acadians. From Tobias George Smollett, Continuation of the Complete History of England (London: Baldwin, 1760), vol. 1, n.p. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

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Acadian man, woman, and child from their North American homeland. In 1754, Major Charles Lawrence became lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia. But in the absence of the colony’s actual governor, who had returned to England for health reasons, Lawrence ran Nova Scotia as though he were its supreme authority. He brought to his position an intense hatred of the French and anyone he thought sympathetic to them. Among those sympathizers he included the Acadians—after all, they spoke French, and their ancestors had come from France. In addition to viewing the Acadians as potential wartime enemies, Lawrence dreaded their rapidly increasing population. By 1755, about fifteen thousand Acadians inhabited Nova Scotia, a figure far exceeding the number of British troops in the colony. He also wanted the prime farmland that the Acadians had claimed from the sea through generations of diking. “As they possess the best and largest tracts of land in this province,” wrote Lawrence, “it cannot be settled with any effect while they remain. . . . I cannot help being of opinion that it would be much better, if they refuse the oaths, that they were away.” Lawrence decided to rid the colony of the Acadians by forcibly expelling the entire Acadian population. As Lawrence explained to Nova Scotia’s Colonial Council, which administered the region in the name of the British Crown, he intended to “rid ourselves of a set of people who would forever have been an obstruction to the intention of settling this colony.” Furthermore, he would scatter the Acadians in small groups throughout the British colo-

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The Expulsion

nies of North America, where the larger English-speaking culture would swallow them up. Divided “among the colonies,” Lawrence wrote, the Acadians “may be of some use, as most of them are healthy strong people. And as they cannot easily collect themselves together again, it will be out of their power to do any mischief.” The Acadians would cease to exist as a people, he wagered, and thus would never return to Nova Scotia to reclaim their lands. Lawrence planned the expulsion with allies in the nearby New England colonies. One of these allies, Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts, commanded a large, well-armed force of British soldiers. Lawrence massed Shirley’s troops in Nova Scotia and used them to capture Fort Beauséjour, an important French stronghold on the Chignecto Isthmus. This would prevent the Acadians from fleeing to mainland Canada, where he feared they would plot their eventual return to Nova Scotia. Lawrence also used these New England troops to seize the Acadians’ firearms, despite pleas from the colonists that they needed the weapons “to defend our cattle when attacked by the wild beasts, or for the protection of our children and of ourselves.” Without firearms, the Acadians would be defenseless against the impending British aggression. Supported by Nova Scotia’s Colonial Council, Lawrence began the expulsion in the summer of 1755 by calling Acadian men from throughout the colony to Halifax, supposedly to discuss the return of their firearms. When the Acadians arrived, however, Lawrence commanded them to swear the unconditional oath of allegiance. The Acadians protested, reminding Lawrence that they had sworn loyalty years earlier in exchange for wartime neutrality. Dismissing this explanation, Lawrence ordered his soldiers to arrest the Acadians. As one of the prisoners recorded, “We found ourselves at once deprived of our estates and liberties, without any judicial process, or even without any accusers appearing against us, and this solely grounded on mistaken jealousies and false suspicions.”

The Expulsion

Acadian men arrested by British soldiers. From William Cullen Bryant, Sidney Howard Gay, and Noah Brooks, Scribner’s Popular History of the United States (New York: Scribner’s, 1896), 3:279.

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Meanwhile, British troops used similar deceptions to seize Acadians elsewhere in the colony. At Grand Pré, for example, they lured more than four hundred Acadian men and boys to the local church, where they were imprisoned. The British then ordered Grand Pré’s women and children to prepare for deportation. Dividing their prisoners by age and sex, the British marched

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The Expulsion

the Acadians at gunpoint to the nearby Bay of Fundy. The British soldier in charge at Grand Pré described in his diary “the women in great distress carrying off their children in their arms. Others carrying their decrepit parents in their carts and all their goods moving in great confusion.” It appeared to him “a scene of woe and distress.” The British then loaded the Acadians aboard ships. “We were so crowded in the transport vessels,” remembered an exile, “that we had not room even for all our bodies to lay down at once, and consequently were prevented from carrying with us proper necessaries, especially for the support of the aged and weak, many of whom quickly ended their misery with their lives.” Although the British tried to keep families together, many were broken apart during the turmoil of the expulsion. One exile recalled, “Parents were separated from children and husbands from wives, some of whom have not to this day met again.” Another lamented, “The loss which we have suffered from being deprived of our farms . . . and from being separated from each other, is nothing in comparison to that which we are now bearing in having our children torn from us before our eyes.” “You must proceed by the most vigorous measures possible,” Lawrence ordered one of his officers, “not only in compelling them to embark, but in depriving those who shall escape of all means of shelter or support, by burning their houses and destroying everything that may afford them the means of subsistence in the country.” As commanded, British soldiers torched the Acadians’ homes and looted their property, including furniture, tools, and livestock, which were sold to pay for the expulsion. And, as Lawrence devised, British ships, mostly from Massachusetts, scattered the Acadians throughout the thirteen British colonies of North America, soon to become the original thirteen American states. After landing in the colonies, the Acadian exiles suffered from abuse, neglect, poverty, and disease. “Nobody knows what to do,”

Runninghead

The Expulsion Order As ordered by the British soldiers occupying their village, 418 Acadian males aged ten and older entered the Catholic church at Grand Pré on September 5, 1755, for what they were told was an important meeting. Once the group was inside the church, soldiers locked the doors and surrounded the building. Flanked by two captains and an interpreter, Colonel John Winslow of the British military read a statement he had composed to the stunned crowd of Acadian men and boys imprisoned in their own house of worship: Gentlemen, I have received from his Excellency, Governor Lawrence, the King’s Commission, which I have in my hand, and by whose orders you are convened together to manifest to you His Majesty’s final resolution to the French inhabitants of this His Province of Nova-Scotia, who for almost half a century have had more indulgences granted them than any of his subjects in any part of his dominions. What use you have made of them, you yourselves best know. The part of duty I am now upon is what, though necessary, is very disagreeable to my natural make and temper, as I know it must be grievous to you, who are of the same species; but it is not my business to animadvert [comment critically], but to obey such orders as I receive. And therefore, without hesitation, I shall deliver you His Majesty’s orders and instructions: That your lands and tenements, cattle of all kinds, and livestock of all sorts are forfeited to the Crown with all other [of] your effects, saving your money and household goods. And that you yourselves are to be removed from this province. Thus it is peremptorily [decisively] His Majesty’s order that the whole French inhabitants of these districts be removed; and I am, through his Majesty’s goodness, directed to allow you liberty to carry off your money and household goods, as many as you can without discommoding the vessels you go in. I shall do everything in my power that all those goods be secured to you, and that you are not molested in carrying them off, and also that whole families shall go in the same vessel, and make this remove, which I am sensible must give you a great deal of trouble, as easy as his Majesty’s service will admit, and hope that in whatever part of the world you may fall you may be faithful subjects, a peaceable and happy people. I must also inform you, that it is His Majesty’s pleasure that you remain in security under the inspection and direction of the troops I have the honor to command.

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Runninghead

The Expulsion: Myth versus Reality Several myths surround the expulsion and wanderings of the Acadians. By examining these myths, we can separate fact from fiction and develop a better understanding of the Acadians’ tragic ordeal.

Myth:

The British expelled the entire Acadian population in 1755.

R e a l i t y:

The British expelled at most about half the Acadian population in 1755. The remainder

avoided capture and escaped to regions controlled by the French or their Indian allies, such as mainland Canada. Some would be captured years later and then deported. Like many who were captured, thousands who escaped deportation died of disease, starvation, and exposure brought about by the expulsion.

Myth:

Only troops and ships from England were involved in the expulsion.

R e a l i t y:

Although in service to the British Crown, many of the officials who planned the expulsion

and most of the foot soldiers who carried it out hailed from colonial New England—present-day Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Furthermore, most of the ships used to carry away the Acadian exiles came from New England and had been hired by a Boston trading firm.

Myth:

All the Acadian exiles eventually made their way to Louisiana.

R e a l i t y:

Fewer than half the Acadian exiles settled in Louisiana. Most either died before reaching

Louisiana or landed elsewhere—France, Haiti, and the British colonies of North America.

Myth:

The Acadians who came to Louisiana traveled there directly from Nova Scotia.

R e a l i t y:

All of the Acadians who settled in Louisiana first landed somewhere else. For example, those

who came to Louisiana in 1765 with Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil first landed in Haiti and only later decided to settle in Louisiana. Similarly, others who came to Louisiana traveled first to the British colonies of North America, to France, or to the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, near Newfoundland.

Myth:

Some Acadians traveled overland to Louisiana.

R e a l i t y:

All known historical evidence indicates that the Acadian exiles came to Louisiana solely by

ship. Claims to the contrary stem largely from the work of Saint Martinville writer Judge Felix Voorhies, whose 1907 fictional account of the expulsion, Acadian Reminiscences, described a “perilous and weary journey overland.”

23

24

The Expulsion

noted an observer, “and few have charity on them. . . . There’s a number of them now about me in tears, craving relief for their sick.” Another eyewitness added, “They cannot find homes, clothing, and other comforts . . . without going from home to home begging.” Commented another, “They are overwhelmed by misery.” Lawrence deported more than seven hundred Acadians to Massachusetts, where many died from smallpox. The Massachusetts government authorized public beatings of exiles who left designated areas and forced Acadian children into indentured servitude. More than four hundred exiles were sent to Pennsylvania, where many died aboard prison ships in Philadelphia’s harbor. Lawrence shipped other Acadians to Maryland, where the government ordered frontier guards to shoot escaping exiles on sight. Similar treatment occurred in Connecticut, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, where English-speaking “hosts” viewed their French-speaking “guests” with a mixture of fear and hatred. Lawrence deported other Acadians much farther away than the British colonies of North America. More than three thousand exiles, for example, ended up as prisoners in England or refugees in coastal France, where they wasted away in urban slums or labored for meager wages on ill-fated farming projects. Other Acadian exiles wound up on the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue (modern-day Haiti). There they died by the hundreds from disease while building a jungle military base for the French. Some exiles landed on Martinique, another Caribbean island, and in the South American colony of French Guiana, where disease again claimed many lives. A few even ended up in the Falkland Islands, located in the South Atlantic off Argentina, about seven thousand miles from Nova Scotia. Acadians who evaded capture by the British sought refuge closer to home, such as on Prince Edward Island (previously called Île Saint-Jean), just north of Nova Scotia, or on the tiny islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, northeast of Nova Scotia,

The Expulsion

Acadians await their deportation at the hands of the British. From William Cullen Bryant, Sidney Howard Gay, and Noah Brooks, Scribner’s Popular History of the United States (New York: Scribner’s, 1896), vol. 3, n.p.

25

off Newfoundland. Most who avoided capture fled to mainland Canada and settled in what is present-day New Brunswick. Their descendants still live there today in large numbers and make up the core of modern Acadian society in Canada. By 1756, the British had expelled more than half of the roughly fifteen thousand Acadians who had resided in Nova Scotia. According to some estimates, up to ten thousand Acadians died from disease, starvation, neglect, and exposure to the elements during the expulsion as well as from violence by the British. And violence did occur: In 1759, for example, British troops stormed an Acadian community in coastal New Brunswick, torching the village and murdering anyone who resisted, including women and children. The expulsion came to be known as Le Grand Dérangement (The Great Upheaval). Modern historians regard this tragedy

26

The Expulsion

The Acadians are carried away on British ships. From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline (New York: Alden, 1892), 55.

as an example of ethnic cleansing (the removal of one people by another from a geographic region through violence and terror). Other historians also regard the expulsion as an example of genocide (the destruction of one people by another, as occurred most infamously during World War II, when Nazi Germans and their allies murdered more than six million Jews and other peoples during the Holocaust). The expulsion marked the most important event in the Acadians’ history. It would shape the identity of the Acadian people and their descendants for centuries to come. And Lawrence, the man who planned, ordered, and directed the expulsion? In 1760 he caught a cold—according to some sources, as a result of overeating at a banquet—and died.

Chapter Three

Louisiana

A

bout three thousand Acadian exiles eventually made their way to a semitropical Spanish colony called Louisiana. During the colonial era, the name Louisiana actually applied to a huge section of North America—from the presentday states of Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota in the north down through South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana to the Gulf of Mexico. After the expulsion, the Acadians resettled in the southernmost part of this vast region, in present-day south Louisiana. In this book, Louisiana refers to this Southernmost region. The Acadians, however, were hardly the first people to inhabit south Louisiana. Just as Indians had been the earliest people in Acadia, so, too, had they been the earliest in Louisiana. Archaeologists believe that Indians may have settled in Louisiana as early as twelve thousand years ago. No one knows what these very early Indians called themselves, but those who lived in Louisiana when the first Europeans arrived called themselves the Natchez, the Tunica, the Opelousas, the Chitimacha, the Houma, and the Attakapas, who gave their name to the region settled by many Acadian exiles. These later tribes sometimes clashed with the Europeans, primarily over territory. Sometimes, however, they allied with the Europeans, trading with them and teaching them vital skills needed to survive in their new environment. 27

28

Louisiana

The Acadians were not even among the earliest Europeans to reach Louisiana. In 1541—more than two hundred years before the Acadians’ arrival—Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto became the first European to see the Mississippi River, which flows through Louisiana on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly a century and a half later, in 1682, a Frenchman, René La Salle, became the first European to locate the mouth of the Mississippi. La Salle claimed the river, all connecting waterways, and all bordering lands for Louis XIV, the king of France, after whom he named the territory La Louisiane (Louisiana). In 1699 another Frenchman, Pierre d’Iberville, established the first colony in Louisiana. He and his brother, Jean-Baptiste Bienville, recruited settlers from France, Germany, and Germanspeaking regions of Switzerland. These recruits included French prisoners and vagrants as well as hardworking German farmers. Between 1717 and 1721, for example, about seven thousand European colonists settled in Louisiana. Significantly, these colonists brought with them about one thousand African slaves as well as a small number of free, mixed-race colonists called gens du couleur libre (free persons of color). Both slaves and free persons of color profoundly influenced the sweep of Louisiana’s history, shaping the region’s distinctive food, music, language, and religious customs. Although depicted in fiction and poetry as a tropical paradise, colonial Louisiana struck many colonists as a nightmare. It was unbearably hot and humid in summer and vulnerable to fierce hurricanes that lashed its coast with heavy winds, rains, and floods. It crawled with snakes, alligators, and other vermin, including bloodthirsty mosquitoes that pestered both colonists and livestock while spreading diseases such as malaria and yellow fever. Pirates made sea travel unsafe, and slaves and Indians constantly threatened to rise up in violent revolt. In addition, the colony produced little of value and wallowed in poverty.

Louisiana

Acadian exiles arrive in Louisiana. From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline (New York: Alden, 1892), 60.

29

Acadian exiles first came to this unforgiving place in 1764, shortly after France gave the unprofitable colony to Spain at the close of the Seven Years’ War. At first only twenty Acadians made their way to the colony from New York and settled on the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The next year, a group of about three hundred exiles arrived in Louisiana under the guidance of a daring Acadian leader named Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil.* Unlike most Acadians, Broussard had resisted the expulsion from Nova Scotia, organizing a band of freedom fighters that used unconventional tactics to outwit vastly superior British forces. His militants raided deep inside Nova Scotia and even manned a warship on the Bay of Fundy. Dit Beausoleil means “called Beausoleil.” In other words, Beausoleil (French for “Beautiful Sun”) was his nickname. Acadians often added nicknames to their regular names in this manner.

*

A Letter from Exile

30

In 1766, a young Acadian exile in Louisiana, Jean-Baptiste Semer, thought to be around age twenty-two, sent a letter to his father in France. Once believed to have been lost, Semer’s letter recently reappeared in a French archive and serves as a rare example of how the exiles communicated with each other over long distances and spread the word of an enticing new home in Louisiana. My very dear father, . . . I arrived here in the month of February 1765 with 202 Acadian persons, including Joseph Bro[u]ssard, called [Beausoleil], and all of his family, . . . all coming from Halifax and having passed by [Haiti]. Beausoleil led [the group] and paid the passage for those who didn’t have the means. After us, there arrived yet another 105 in another ship and then eighty, forty, [and] some twenty or thirty, in three or four others. I believe there are about 500–600 of us Acadians, counting women and children. We the first ones have been sent seven or eight men to look over the land and locations in order to find a suitable site, and we were told that at Attakapas there were magnificent grasslands with the finest soil in the world. . . .

We went to Attakapas with guns, powder, and shot, but as it was already the month of May, the heat

being so intense, we started to work in too harsh conditions. There were six plows that worked; we had to break in the oxen [and] travel fifteen leagues to get horses. Finally, we had the finest harvest, and everybody contracted fevers at the same time and, nobody being in a state to help anyone else, thirty-three or thirty-four died, including the children. . . . [We are] hoping for a very fine harvest this year, with God’s help, having cleared a great deal [of land]. We have only to sow, and we already have oxen, cows, sheep, horses and the finest hunting in the world, deer, such fat turkey, bears and ducks and all kinds of game. . . .

The land here brings forth a good yield of everything anyone wants to sow. Wheat from France, corn

and rice, sweet potatoes, giraumont [a kind of zucchini], pistachios, all kinds of vegetables, flax, cotton. We lack only people to cultivate it. We produce indigo, sugar, [and] oranges, and peaches here grow like apples in France. They have granted us six arpents [similar to acres] to married people and four and five [arpents] to young men, so we have the advantage, my dear father, of being sure of our land [ownership], and of saying I have a place of my own. . . . A person who wants to devote himself to property and make an effort will be comfortably off in a few years. It is an immense country; you can come here boldly with my dear mother and all the other Acadian families. They will always be better off than in France.

Like so many Acadian exiles, however, Semer never saw his father again. Unable to obtain permission to

move to Louisiana, the elder Semer died in 1782, three years before France permitted the mass migration of its Acadian exiles to Louisiana.

Louisiana

31

Hardships such as food shortages and severe cold eventually forced Broussard and his men to surrender. The British deported him, his family, and his followers to the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue (Haiti). There they heard that Spanish administrators wanted non-English settlers for Louisiana, where they would serve as buffers against infiltration by English settlers from the eastern seaboard. Eager to settle in a land that welcomed them, Broussard’s group sailed to Louisiana, where the Spanish gave them provisions, tools, and farmland in a south Louisiana region called Attakapas. (See map.)

32

Louisiana

The Spanish sent the Acadians to Attakapas because New Orleans needed a reliable source of beef for its growing population. An Attakapas landowner, Antoine Bernard Dauterive, agreed to give the exiles cattle (and more land) in exchange for tending his valuable herds. This agreement, known as the Dauterive Compact, soon fell apart, but Broussard and his followers nonetheless decided to remain in Attakapas, a region that eventually became the center of Acadian culture in south Louisiana. Other Acadian exiles in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Nova Scotia learned through letters about the arrival of Broussard’s group in Louisiana. Over the next several years, these scattered Acadians made their way to the Spanish colony, hoping to reunite with friends and family and to create a new homeland in the Attakapas region. When these later Acadian exiles arrived in Louisiana, however, Spanish governor Antonio de Ulloa forced them to settle on the Mississippi River near present-day Natchez, Mississippi, far from the Broussard group in Attakapas. The Acadians never forgave Ulloa for keeping them apart from their fellow exiles. In 1768, they marched on New Orleans with other unhappy colonists and overthrew the Spanish governor, an event regarded as the first rebellion for independence in America. Several months later, however, two thousand soldiers arrived to restore Spanish rule and to punish the revolt’s organizers. Ulloa’s successor permitted the Acadians to settle wherever they chose. (The Acadian exiles showed their fighting spirit again during the American Revolution, when they joined with Louisiana’s Spanish governor, Bernardo de Gálvez, to attack British strongholds at Baton Rouge, Mobile, and Pensacola. This campaign ended British rule on the Gulf Coast and contributed to the ultimate victory of Spain’s new ally, the fledgling United States of America. It also permitted the Acadians to exact a degree of revenge against the British military for the expulsion.)

Evangeline Evangeline is a fictional character invented by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who wrote an epic poem by that title that described the exile and wandering of an Acadian maiden patiently devoted to finding her lost love, Gabriel. Published in 1847, Longfellow’s poem enjoyed such popularity that American students were required to memorize and recite lines from the poem (usually its opening stanzas) well into the twentieth century.

Although most ordinary Cajuns never read Evangeline, upper- and middle-class Cajuns held the work in

extremely high regard. Many believed that Evangeline actually existed, while others claimed that she was based on an Acadian exile named Emmeline Labiche. Like Evangeline, however, Emmeline Labiche was a fictional character, invented by Saint Martinville writer Judge Felix Voorhies in his 1907 book, Acadian Reminiscences. (Although fictional, Acadian Reminiscences bore the subtitle The True Story of Evangeline, which understandably caused much confusion among its readers.) The fictional stories of Evangeline and Emmeline Labiche take place against a backdrop of actual historical events and remain important literary interpretations of Acadian history.

Longfellow’s Evangeline begins, This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman? Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers— Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands, Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven? Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed! Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o’er the ocean. Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand Pré. Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest; List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

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Louisiana

In 1785, another group of more than fifteen hundred Acadian exiles arrived in Louisiana aboard seven ships from France, where they had lived for many years in coastal slums. These exiles soon occupied lands along the lower Mississippi River as well as along Bayous Terrebonne and Lafourche. They were followed in 1788 by one more group of nineteen exiles who traveled to Louisiana from Saint Pierre Island, off Newfoundland. In south Louisiana, the Acadian exiles learned important survival skills from the local Indians, particularly the Opelousas, Chitimacha, Houma, and Attakapas tribes. These tribes taught the Acadians to treat illnesses with local plants, to weave dried leaves

A palmetto hut in south Louisiana, similar to those used by early Acadian exiles. From Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, November 1887, 917.

Louisiana

An Acadian home at Acadian Village, Lafayette, Louisiana, with inset showing bousillage (mud and moss mixture used to insulate walls). Photographs by the author.

35

into hats and fans, and to cultivate native fruits and vegetables such as corn, melons, squash, and pumpkins. Acadians also copied the Indians’ palmetto-leaf houses, which the earliest exiles used as temporary shelters. The Acadians soon constructed more permanent structures, however, using the poteaux-en-terre style perfected by their ancestors in Nova Scotia. But south Louisiana’s steamy climate quickly wore away these dwellings, whose sunken posts became infested with termites and rotted in the moist ground. In addition, poteaux-en-terre houses were too hot for south Louisiana, and their low floors tended to flood during the region’s frequent heavy rainstorms.

36

Louisiana

The Acadian exiles solved these problems by developing a new style of dwelling called poteaux sur sol (posts on sill). Houses built in this style sat off the ground on cypress blocks, which protected the structures against high water, rot, and termites. Square or rectangular in shape, these dwellings had between one and three rooms (usually a large room with smaller side rooms) and had tall, wide doors and windows to cool the interiors in summer. Bousillage, a moss and mud mixture, insulated the walls, keeping out heat in summer and cold in winter. Stairs on shady front porches led to a second-story garçonnière (room for boys). These simple rustic houses became the most common form of dwellings among the Acadian exiles and their descendants. As with their homes, the Acadian exiles adapted their clothing to south Louisiana’s climate. In Nova Scotia, the Acadians had often used wool to make their clothes, but south Louisiana had few sheep, and the region was far too hot to wear wool. So the exiles began to make their clothes from cotton, which was not only cooler but grew abundantly in their new homeland. And although they continued to wear Indian-style moccasins, as they had in Acadia, many exiles learned to go barefoot in the region’s almost year-round warm weather. The Acadian exiles also changed their diet to reflect the realities of frontier life in south Louisiana. Barley, oats, and wheat had formed the core of the Acadian diet in Nova Scotia. These crops grew poorly in the semitropics, so the exiles substituted corn, peas, beans, squash, and rice. And instead of the apples that had grown so abundantly in Nova Scotia, the exiles learned to cultivate orchards of figs, apricots, and peaches. For meat they relied on cattle, hogs, and poultry as well as on south Louisiana’s plentiful wildlife, which included deer, rabbits, squirrels, ducks, and fish. (Ironically, shrimp, oysters, and crawfish—shellfish associated strongly with south Louisiana cuisine—never became a major part of the exiles’ diet.)

Louisiana

37

While the Acadians in south Louisiana hunted, farmed, and increased in numbers, world leaders in distant places were negotiating treaties that involved the unsuspecting exiles. In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte of France took Louisiana back from Spain and offered it for sale to the United States, which at the time consisted of only seventeen states. Eager to expand his young country, President Thomas Jefferson accepted the offer and in 1803 the sweep of Louisiana—from the Rocky Mountains in the West to the Mississippi River in the East, from Canada in the North to the Gulf of Mexico in the South—became part of the United States. As Louisiana residents, the Acadians suddenly became Americans, at least in a legal sense. Culturally, they would remain a distinct people for many more generations. But this did not mean that Acadian society remained unchanged. Although the Acadians had traditionally been subsistence farmers, many younger Acadians found it impossible to resist the opportunity for wealth offered by Louisiana’s plantation system of agriculture and its brutal institution of slavery (which had been introduced to the region a century earlier). Some Acadians embraced the plantation system and slavery and acquired significant fortunes. Because of this development, by the 1810s Acadian society had evolved from a single group of poor subsistence farmers into three distinct groups: a small upper class of wealthy cotton and sugar planters who owned many slaves and who because of their aristocratic behavior are sometimes called “genteel Acadians”; a larger middle class of small farmers and skilled workers such as carpenters, blacksmiths, and bricklayers who might have owned a few slaves; and a very large lower class of ordinary Acadians who owned no slaves and who continued to live as subsistence farmers. Acadians who made up these upper and middle classes typically rejected their pioneer heritage, and many even stopped calling themselves Acadians. Instead, they imitated the region’s wealthy French Creole planters, whose ancestors had come

38

Louisiana

Alexandre Mouton, Acadian governor of Louisiana. From Alcée Fortier, A History of Louisiana (Paris: Goupil, 1904), n.p.

directly to Louisiana from France and who embraced the cosmopolitan French-speaking cultures of cities such as New Orleans and Paris. Later, these upper- and middle-class Acadians mimicked the prosperous Anglo-Americans who moved into the region in everincreasing numbers. Perhaps no other historical figure embodied the genteel Acadian more than Alexandre Mouton. Born in 1804 to wealthy French-speaking parents of Acadian ancestry, Mouton attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and made his fortune as a sugar planter. Entering politics, he served in the Louisiana state legislature and the U.S. Senate before becoming Louisiana’s governor in 1842. A proslavery activist, Mouton led the state’s secession (withdrawal) from the United States on the eve of the Civil War. Despite his French heritage, he preferred to use English when conducting business and even when communicating with his children. And although he struggled to secure voting rights for all adult white males—including numerous Acadians barred from voting because of their poverty—Mouton had little in common with the mass of poor, rural French-speaking Acadians. Because upper- and middle-class Acadians abandoned their heritage in favor of French Creole and later Anglo-American

Louisiana

The interior of a typical Acadian home in Louisiana. From Margaret Avery Johnston, comp. and ed., In Acadia (New Orleans: Hansell, 1893), 67.

39

society, the poor, rural French-speaking Acadians preserved the values and traditions of their pioneer ancestors. These values stressed self-reliance, closeness to the earth, respect for community elders, rejection of material wealth, and the importance of large, extended families. In the early 1800s, many poor Acadian subsistence farmers, particularly those along the lower Mississippi River, responded to pressures caused by population growth and a shortage of farmable property by migrating to the winding, murky bayous of southeastern Louisiana and the vast, open prairies of the southwestern part of the state. In these isolated areas they and their descendants would become the modern Cajun people.

Chapter Four

Birth of the Cajuns

J

ust as conflict resulted in the arrival of the Acadian exiles in Louisiana, conflict transformed the Acadians into Cajuns. From 1861 to 1865, the American Civil War divided the United States, pitting the antislavery North against the proslavery South. This bloody struggle caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in places such as Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. The South ultimately lost the conflict and sank into stagnation during Reconstruction, a sometimes harsh political and economic program geared toward readmitting the South into the Union. Although far from most major battlefields, south Louisiana experienced its share of Civil War action. After capturing New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and the entire lower Mississippi River, northern troops landed at Donaldsonville and marched down Bayou Lafourche. At Labadieville, these troops defeated southern forces under General Alfred Mouton, son of “genteel Acadian” Alexandre Mouton. From there northern soldiers advanced on Thibodaux, Houma, and Brashear City (present-day Morgan City), then swung northwest along Bayou Teche, clashing with southern troops at the Battles of Bisland and Irish Bend before capturing New Iberia, Vermilionville (present-day Lafayette), and Opelousas, all in the heart of the Acadian region.

40

Birth of the Cajuns

The Battle of Bayou Bourbeux, near Grand Coteau, during the Civil War. From Leslie’s Illustrated, 1863.

41

Despite the fighting that raged around them, Acadians generally expressed little interest in the Civil War. Most of them owned few if any slaves and did not identify with the English-speaking southerners whose war they considered it—la guerre des Confédérés, the Acadians called it, “the Confederates’ war.” Acadians forced into military service during the war frequently deserted their posts, running off at first opportunity to rejoin their families on the bayous and prairies. As one Northern soldier observed, “The Acadian has great power of endurance, but not much stomach for fight. Of the herd at Camp Pratt [near New Iberia], desertions were frequent, sometimes as many as thirty or forty stampeding in a single night.” After the war, the economic downturn that struck the entire South fell particularly hard on south Louisiana. Most formerly

42

Birth of the Cajuns

An Acadian soldier chained to a tree to prevent him from deserting. From Leslie’s Illustrated, 1863.

wealthy residents of the area spiraled into poverty, and many lost everything. “I very much fear the whole [population] will starve,” noted a Northern officer in south Louisiana after the war. “Want is staring so many . . . in the face.” The newly poor included not only genteel Acadian sugar planters but persons of Spanish, German, and French Creole heritage. Confronted by starvation, they put aside their pride and took jobs as day laborers, tending someone else’s land for low wages, or as tenant farmers, also known as sharecroppers, who paid a portion of their harvests to landlords. Suddenly, most people in south Louisiana were as penniless as the Acadian subsistence farmers—the same Acadians whom Spanish, German, and French Creole neighbors had once seen as lazy and ignorant. When members of the different groups began working together in the fields, however, barriers crumbled, and young people began to intermarry. By the 1870s, Acadians were more likely to marry non-Acadians than fellow Acadians. This meant that large numbers of persons with Acadian surnames such as Broussard, Dugas, Guidry, LeBlanc, and Theriot married per-

Runninghead

Cajun versus Creole Much confusion surrounds the meaning of the words Cajun and Creole. Reduced to the simplest terms, a Cajun is a person who descends from Acadian exiles banished from Nova Scotia in the mid-1700s and all the ethnic groups with whom those exiles and their offspring intermarried in Louisiana (for example, French, German, and Spanish settlers). A Creole, however, is a non-Cajun black, white, or mixed-race Louisianian, usually of Roman Catholic, French-speaking heritage.

The word Creole derived from the Latin creare, meaning “to beget” or “to create.”

Historians believe that Portuguese explorers coined the term and used it originally to refer to African slaves born in the New World. Spanish settlers soon introduced the word to Louisiana, where it evolved to mean persons of either African or European heritage born in the New World.

By the 1800s, black, white, and mixed-race Louisianians were widely using

Creole to distinguish themselves from foreign-born or English-speaking (AngloAmerican) settlers. Complicating the subject, however, is the existence of terms such as Creole of color, which prior to the Civil War denoted a mixed-race Louisianian occupying a middle ground between whites and enslaved blacks, and black Creole, which referred to a Louisianian solely or largely of African descent. Add to this terms such as Creole tomato, Creole pony, and Creole cuisine, and the subject becomes even murkier.

The word Creole ultimately remains a complex, sometimes controversial term. The

noted Encyclopedia of Southern Culture therefore wisely states that a Creole is perhaps “anyone who says he is one.”

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Birth of the Cajuns

Cajun women making homespun cloth in the late 1800s. Courtesy E. A. McIlhenny Enterprises Inc., Avery Island, La.

sons with Spanish, German, and French Creole surnames such as Romero, Dartez, Schexnayder, Huval, Dubois, and Soileau. Historians regard the intermarriage that took place between Acadians and non-Acadians after the Civil War as a pivotal event, because it created a new people called the Cajuns. Although the word Cajun comes from the word Acadian, the terms do not have the same meaning. Historically, the Acadians are the colonists who inhabited Nova Scotia as well as their descendants, including those who settled in south Louisiana. The Cajuns, however, are a people who descend from those Acadian exiles and all the other peoples with whom they intermarried in south Louisiana after the Civil War, such as the Germans, the Spanish, and the French Creoles. Cajuns, therefore, are a people who originated in south Louisiana from a mixture of several different peoples over whom the core Acadian culture exerted the strongest influence (explaining why the German and Spanish languages ceased to be spoken in Cajun country while French became the primary language of the region until the mid-twentieth century).

Runninghead

Cajun French Cajun French derives primarily from a mixture of Acadian French, Creole French, standard nineteenth-century French (Parisian French), and even English. Some Cajun French words, however, are of African, American Indian, or Spanish origin. Although generally the same throughout south Louisiana, Cajun French varies slightly from one location to another, with some areas possessing unique words and pronunciations.

During the nineteenth century, most Cajuns spoke only Cajun French, which frequently

irritated English-speaking observers. As one New Yorker noted on a visit to south Louisiana during the 1860s, the Cajuns were “unable to speak the English language, or convey an intelligent idea in the national tongue.” Even those who appreciated standard French frowned on Cajun French as an inferior dialect. For example, in 1880 a Chicago Times reporter visiting Iberia Parish stated that “the educated people speak the bona fide Parisian, but the ‘Cagin’ patois [dialect] is deemed good enough for ‘the low-down folks.’”

Census data indicate that about 85 percent of Cajuns born shortly after 1900 spoke

French as their primary language. In 1916, the state of Louisiana declared that all children must attend school, and in 1921 the state’s new constitution made English the only language of the classroom. As a result, many educators subjected Cajun students to humiliating punishments for speaking their traditional language at school. In addition, twentieth-century Cajuns were increasingly exposed to powerful Americanizing forces such as compulsory military service, radio and television, and the coming of the interstate highway system (to name a few), all of which broke down physical and cultural barriers separating south Louisiana from English-speaking America.

Because of these factors, the number of Cajuns who spoke French as their first language

dropped considerably, particularly after 1940. Today few young Cajuns speak French, and overall less than one-third of present-day Cajuns speak French as their primary language. Regardless, groups such as the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), Action Cadienne, and Les Amis des Immersion continue to fight to save Cajun French from extinction, primarily by stressing bilingual education programs such as French immersion, in which children study various subjects in French for about two-thirds of each school day.

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Birth of the Cajuns

What is often thought of today as “traditional,” “authentic,” or “old-time” Cajun culture—as popularly depicted, for example, by noted south Louisiana artists such as Floyd Sonnier and George Rodrigue—originated during this crucial period after the Civil War. Cajun music, for example, first appeared in recognizable form at this time. Although generations of the Cajuns’ ancestors had played the fiddle, only in the 1800s did they adopt the accordion. It soon joined the fiddle, guitar, and petit fer (iron triangle) as the major instruments of Cajun music. By 1928, when Cajuns made their first musical recordings, classics such as “Allons Danser Colinda,” “Hip et Taïaut,” “Jolie Blonde,” and “Allons à Lafayette” already existed, having been passed down for years through live performances. Traditional Cajun cuisine also emerged during this period, drawing on the “holy trinity” of Cajun cooking—bell peppers, onions, and celery. Cajuns used these ingredients, for example, in gumbo, a dark, thick stew made with roux (flour browned in oil or fat) and served with rice, which grew abundantly in south Louisiana. Gumbo aptly demonstrates how Cajun cooking drew on a variety of influences, including French, Spanish, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean sources. Cajuns borrowed the word gumbo from a West African term meaning “okra,” a vegetable introduced to south Louisiana by African slaves and regarded by many as an essential gumbo ingredient. Cajuns obtained filé (powdered leaves of the sassafras tree) from Native Americans, using it to thicken and season gumbo. They adopted red peppers such as cayenne, which gave gumbo its spicy flavor, from the Spanish. And the roux came from the Cajuns’ own French heritage. Cajuns frequently enjoyed homemade meat products such as andouille (smoked pork sausage), tasso (dried smoked meat), and boudin (seasoned rice and meat in a sausage casing). They also ate crawfish, but primarily during Lent, when as Catholics they gave up red meat as a symbolic sacrifice. (Contrary to popular belief,

Cajun Music

Runninghead

Cajun music has a long and complex history that extends back many centuries. Acadians in Nova Scotia drew on a musical heritage deeply rooted in medieval France. After the expulsion, Acadian exiles in Louisiana performed not only old compositions but new ones that frequently concerned themes of death, loneliness, and ill-fated love, reflecting their harsh exile and rough frontier experience.

The various influences that would form Cajun music gradually came together in south Louisiana—

folk songs from France, the guitar from Spain, the accordion from Europe, and rhythms from the Afro-Caribbean world. Indeed, Creoles of African heritage exerted a major influence on Cajun music. For example, the popular Cajun song “Allons Danser Colinda” derived from the kalinda, an AfroCaribbean slave dance known for its infectious rhythms.

By 1928, when the first Cajun music recordings were made, classics like “Allons à Lafayette,”

“Hip et Taïaut” and “Jolie Blonde” already existed in the Cajun music repertoire.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the discovery of oil in south Louisiana and the building of high-

ways created an influx of Anglo-American workers to the region, particularly from Texas. At the same time, many Cajuns migrated to southeast Texas to work in Beaumont–Port Arthur–Orange oilfields and refineries. Contact with English-speaking Texans exposed Cajun musicians for the first time to country and western music. This influence gave rise to Cajun “western swing”–style string bands, which featured the guitar and fiddle as well as the steel guitar, bass, drums, and even banjos and mandolins. As a result, the accordion practically disappeared from Cajun music during the string-band era.

In the late 1940s, however, the accordion made a comeback, resurrected by master accordionists

such as Iry LeJeune, Lawrence Walker, and Nathan Abshire. Meanwhile, the guitar and fiddle receded to backing roles, but Cajun bands kept the steel guitar, bass, and drums of the string-band era.

But the accordion’s return to Cajun music corresponded with the arrival of two increasingly popu-

lar national musical sounds—rhythm and blues and rock ’n’ roll, which were represented locally by the “swamp pop” sound. As young Cajuns put aside their traditional music in favor of the more appealing sounds of Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, and Little Richard, among others, Cajun music seemed to many observers to be on the verge of extinction.

Then, in 1964, Cajun musicians appeared to critical acclaim at Rhode Island’s Newport Folk

Festival. This helped to trigger a Cajun music revival, which reached a milestone in 1974 with the first Tribute to Cajun Music festival (now part of Festivals Acadiens) in Lafayette. At the same time, young musicians such as Michael Doucet and Zachary Richard were pushing the limits of Cajun music, combining it with other sounds while remaining faithful to the core tradition. During the 1980s, Cajun music as well as its black Creole sister genre, zydeco, experienced a worldwide boom in popularity that continues to the present.

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Birth of the Cajuns

crawfish did not become common fare among Cajuns until the mid–twentieth century, when the crustacean received a boost from the creation of an extremely popular dish called crawfish étouffée as well as from the founding of the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival.) Other Cajun traditions that thrived during this period included the bal de maison (communal house dance), otherwise known as the fais do-do (from the French for “go to sleep,” because parents put young children to sleep in rooms adjoining the nighttime dance). The bal de maison provided not only entertainment but a way for young men and women to meet under adult supervision. A smaller version of the bal de maison, called the veillée, brought together neighbors and relatives for an evening of food, music, and conversation. Another tradition was the boucherie (communal

Cajuns fish along Bayou Teche in the 1800s. From Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, February 1887, 349.

Birth of the Cajuns

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butchering of farm animals), a vital event in the age before refrigerators and supermarkets. Other traditions included the ramasserie (communal harvest), the coup de main (communal house or barn raising), and the course de Mardi Gras, also called the courir du Mardi Gras (running of the Mardi Gras), in which masked riders on horseback traveled from one rural household to another scavenging ingredients for a massive communal gumbo.

Chapter Five

“Americanized” Cajuns

C

hange came slowly, but it came nevertheless to Cajun country. In the 1880s the railroad cut through south Louisiana, making it easier for outsiders to enter the region as well as for locals to leave for new places beyond the French-speaking swamps, bayous, and prairies. The automobile arrived in the early 1900s, and eventually came highways, many of them built in the 1920s and 1930s under the administration of colorful Louisiana politician Huey P. Long. Like the railroad, highways knocked down barriers that once isolated Cajun country from the rest of America. Another change that swept through south Louisiana was compulsory education. In 1916, the state of Louisiana passed legislation that forbade parents from keeping their children out of school to work around the house or farm. Children must attend school, asserted the state, and they did so by the tens of thousands. These included Cajun children who spoke little or no English, which the 1921 state constitution declared the only language of the classroom. To teach French-speaking Cajun children English, educators resorted to a practice that signaled the coming decline of French in south Louisiana: the widespread punishment of Cajun children for speaking French at school. Between around 1920 and

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51

In a sign of rising literacy, a bookmobile visits rural Cajuns around World War II. Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration.

1960, this practice subjected three generations of young Cajuns to humiliating penalties for daring to speak their native tongue. They were whipped, slapped, and rapped on the hands with rulers. They had their ears pinched, their collars pulled, their mouths washed out with soap. They wrote lines, over and over again: “I will not speak French on the school grounds.” Punishment and the ridicule that accompanied it taught Cajun children to be ashamed of their native language and of their heritage in general. When these children grew up, they refused to teach their own children to speak French. They came to regard the language as worthless in the modern, English-speaking world. World events soon brought more change to Cajun country. Although World War I (1914–18) and the Great Depression (1929–41) had little impact on south Louisiana—few Cajuns served in the military during World War I, and most Cajuns were too poor to notice the Great Depression—World War II brought

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Runninghead

Cajun Surnames Some Cajun surnames are quite distinctive, while others resemble surnames found anywhere in America. Those most easily distinguishable as Cajun are generally Acadian in origin, having come to Louisiana with the Acadian exiles between 1765 and 1785. These surnames include (to name only a few) Allain, Arceneau/ Arceneaux, Aucoin, Babin, Babineau/Babineaux, Benoit/Benoît, Bergeron, Bernard, Blanchard, Boudreau/Boudreaux, Bourg/Bourque, Bourgeois, Brasseaux/ Brasseux, Braud/Breau/Breaux, Broussard, Brun, Castille, Chiasson, Comeau/ Comeaux, Cormier, Cyr, Daigle, David, Doucet, Dugas/Dugat, Dupuis/Dupuy, Foret/Forêt, Gaudet, Gautreau/Gautreaux, Giroir, Granger, Gravois, Guédry/ Guidry, Guilbeau, Hebert/Hébert, Jeansonne, LaBauve, Landry, Langlinais, LeBlanc, Leger, LeJeune, Martin, Melancon, Mouton, Naquin, Orillon, Pellerin, Pitre, Poirier, Prejean, Richard, Robichaud/Robichaux, Rodrigue, Roy, Savoie/ Savoy, Sonnier/Saunier, Thériot, Thibodeau/Thibodeaux, Trahan, and Vincent.

In Louisiana, the Acadians intermarried with other ethnic groups on the

semitropical frontier. In the process, they became the Cajuns, who as a result of this intermarriage possessed many non-Acadian surnames. These include French Creole names such as Fontenot, François, Picard, or Soileau; Spanish names such as Castille (also an Acadian surname), Dartez, Migues/Miguez, and Romero; German names such as Folse, Himel/Hymel, Schexnayder/Schexnaider, and Stelly; and Anglo and Scots-Irish names such as McGee, Miller, and Walker.

Despite the various origins of Cajun names, the traditional language of the

Cajuns remained French. As Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee, whose surname was Scots-Irish in origin, once explained, “McGee, that’s a French name. I don’t know anyone named McGee who doesn’t speak French.”

“Americanized” Cajuns

Cajun sailor Ralph “Frenchie” LeBlanc of Breaux Bridge stands next to a wounded comrade during the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration.

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sweeping changes to the Cajun people. A conflict greater than any other in history, World War II raged between 1939 and 1945 across Europe, Asia, North Africa, and the Pacific as the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and others combated the brutal military dictatorships of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The United States entered World War II in December 1941, when Japan launched a surprise attack on the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Americans immediately mobilized to support the country’s war effort. Among them were the Cajun people, about twenty-five thousand of whom served in the military dur-

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ing the conflict. Most of these “Cajun GIs” had never left south Louisiana before joining the military but suddenly found themselves in boot camps, foxholes, jeeps, tanks, ships, and airplanes thousands of miles from home. There they came into contact with other American soldiers and sailors who spoke English—a language the Cajuns had to master quickly to survive in combat. Military service introduced Cajun troops to a world beyond south Louisiana, opening their eyes to people, places, and customs unknown back in their homeland. This wartime experience quickly “Americanized” Cajun troops—that is, they became more like English-speaking Americans found throughout the United States. Some Cajun soldiers, for example, came home from the war mispronouncing their own French surnames, a habit picked up from English-speaking U.S. soldiers. Some Cajun soldiers even temporarily forgot how to speak French, even though it had been their first if not only language before joining the military. Cajuns who did not serve in the military also became Americanized during World War II. Nearly every Cajun man, woman, and child knew someone in the military, perhaps an uncle, brother, or cousin. This drew “home front Cajuns” into the conflict and for the first time made them deeply aware of their American nationality. Like other Americans, they purchased war bonds to help the U.S. government buy airplanes, ships, and tanks. They collected scrap metal to be made into shells and bullets. They planted “victory gardens” in their backyards to lessen wartime food shortages. They became auxiliary policemen, firemen, and nurses; they watched the skies as plane spotters; and they patrolled the coastline on horseback or in pirogues (narrow, flat-bottomed boats), looking for enemy submarines. Like Cajun GIs, home front Cajuns came out of the war with a newfound pride in their American nationality.

Runninghead

Mardi Gras Although most people associate Mardi Gras with New Orleans, several communities in the Cajun homeland sponsor Mardi Gras celebrations. Literally meaning “Fat Tuesday” in French, Mardi Gras occurs annually on the day before Ash Wednesday, when Roman Catholics observe a time of sacrifice called Lent.

Although a large, modern Mardi Gras celebration occurs in urban Lafayette,

several rural, more traditional Mardi Gras celebrations occur in Mamou, Church Point, Basile, Iota, Kinder, and Eunice. There, groups of Mardi Gras revelers ride on horseback throughout the countryside, visiting houses and begging for ingredients to add to a large communal gumbo. Cajun musicians accompany the revelers on their trek across the countryside. This tradition is called la course de Mardi Gras (or la courir du Mardi Gras)—“the running of the Mardi Gras.” For young Cajuns, the course serves as a rite of passage into adulthood; for older Cajuns, it promotes ritual bonding.

The course’s roots lie in the medieval fête de la quémande, a ritual begging

festival. Remnants of this medieval tradition include the wearing of pointed hats, miters, and mortarboards to mock the wealthy, the ordained, and the well educated. Most costumes are homemade and extremely colorful, and they allow individuals to poke fun at the usual social order. Despite its disorderliness, the course is governed by rules enforced by the riders’ leader, la capitaine. For example, riders cannot enter private property without permission of the capitaine.

In recent years, these rural Mardi Gras celebrations have become important

tourist attractions (to the dismay of some cultural preservationists, who express concern that tourists will soon outnumber locals).

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After the war, Cajuns continued to adopt mainstream values. Like other Americans, for example, they embraced an intense patriotism during the Cold War, the global struggle between democracy and communism that erupted between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies beginning in the mid-1940s. Cajuns fought against communist forces during the Korean War and later the Vietnam War, and they helped to uncover suspected communist agents at home. (The 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the following “War on Terror” would have a similar effect on the Cajuns, who, like Americans elsewhere, experienced a renewed sense of patriotism.) At the same time, Cajuns who had served in World War II and the Korean War took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights to advance themselves and their new families. Passed by the U.S. Congress as a way to reward veterans for wartime sacrifices, the GI Bill paid veterans to finish high school and attend college and provided them with affordable loans to buy houses and open businesses. Because of these opportunities, Cajun veterans were able to obtain educations, secure decent-paying jobs, and abandon their legacy as poor subsistence farmers. Instead of working as tenant farmers or day laborers, they became plumbers, carpenters, and electricians as well as doctors, attorneys, and engineers. The booming oil industry also helped to move Cajuns off the farm and into modern America. After World War II, south Louisiana’s rich coastal and offshore petroleum deposits transformed Cajun country into a dynamic center of oil exploration. The region soon supported hundreds of oil-related businesses and thousands of oilfield workers, many of whom were Cajuns—from roustabouts and roughnecks on dangerous deepwater rigs to draftsmen and engineers in modern office buildings. Thanks to oil and education, Cajuns embraced the “American dream,” using their prosperity to buy a host of luxury items, including new homes, automobiles, and modern appliances such as air

Next page: A crowd of Cajun teenagers listens to a swamp pop band in New Iberia around 1963. Courtesy Huey Darby.

Swamp Pop Music Runninghead

A distinct rock ’n’ roll sound, swamp pop combines rhythm and blues, country and western, and Cajun and black Creole music; it is found in south Louisiana and east Texas. Swamp pop appeared during the mid- to late 1950s, when teenaged Cajun and black Creole musicians experimented with modern pop music elements. In doing so, they fused the sounds of mainstream artists with south Louisiana’s folk music traditions. The swamp pop sound is typified by highly emotional vocals, simple (and occasionally bilingual) lyrics, honky-tonk pianos, bellowing sax sections, and a strong rhythm and blues backbeat. Upbeat compositions often possess the bouncy rhythms of Cajun and black Creole two-steps, and their lyrics frequently convey the local color and joie de vivre (joy of living) spirit that pervades south Louisiana. Slow, usually melancholic swamp pop ballads, however—with their heavy, tripleting pianos, undulating bass lines, climactic turnarounds, and dramatic breaks—exhibit the heartbroken, what’s-the-use-of-living laments common to many traditional Cajun and black Creole compositions. Classics of the swamp pop genre include Dale and Grace’s “I’m Leaving It Up To You,” Johnny Preston’s “Running Bear,” Freddy Fender’s “Before the Next Teardrop Falls,” Phil Phillips’s “Sea of Love,” and Jimmy Clanton’s “Just a Dream,” all national Top 10 hits. Of these, the first three reached No. 1 on the national charts. More than twenty swamp pop recordings have broken into the Billboard Hot 100 since 1958. In south Louisiana, however, fans and artists regard many songs that were less popular nationally as essential to the basic swamp pop repertoire. These standards include regional hits such as Cookie and the Cupcakes’ “Mathilda,” Rod Bernard’s “This Should Go on Forever,” Clint West’s “Big Blue Diamonds,” Tommy McLain’s “Sweet Dreams,” Randy and the Rockets’ “Let’s Do the Cajun Twist,” T. K. Hulin’s “Graduation Night,” Rufus Jagneaux’s “Opelousas Sostan,” and Johnnie Allan’s “South to Louisiana.”

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conditioners, refrigerators, and clothes washers and dryers. Cajuns also bought televisions, a new invention that more than any other drew south Louisiana into mainstream America. Television introduced Cajuns to a seemingly magical world populated by intriguing people from distant places such as New York and Hollywood. It tempted them with flashy commercials for products that promised to improve their workaday lives. It encouraged them to remain at home instead of joining in more traditional folk activities, like the veillée or fais do-do. And because national and most local programs aired in English, television further convinced Cajuns that speaking French was unimportant. Cajun teenagers in the 1950s embraced mainstream American culture even more rapidly than their parents. Like teenagers elsewhere, young Cajuns hung out at malt shops, played baseball, and enjoyed dances and movies. They also listened with fascination to such new musical artists as Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley, and they even invented their own rock ’n’ roll style. Known as swamp pop, this south Louisiana sound combined early rock ’n’ roll melodies with country and western and Cajun and black Creole influences. Swamp pop became so popular that during its heyday (1958–64), it far surpassed more traditional Cajun and zydeco music in number of fans and record sales. By the 1960s, Cajun children no longer had reason to fear punishment at school for speaking French—because so few of them spoke French. Among Cajuns born in the mid- to late 1960s, for example, only about one in eight used French as their first language. Few even used it as a second language. And the numbers fell rapidly for Cajuns born after 1970. “The younger generation is so lacking in French,” noted a visiting journalist in 1968, “that the unique bilingual character of south Louisiana may soon die out.” Americanization had finally resulted in Cajun children who were practically identical to those found elsewhere in the

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United States. They played with GI Joes and Barbies, watched Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, and often spoke with neutral Midwestern accents or Texan twangs picked up on the playground from Anglo-American children. Many were unaware of their heritage or simply did not care. When a New York Times reporter came to south Louisiana in 1968 to interview Cajun college students, he found long-haired youths dancing to psychedelic music under flashing, whirling lights. They could have been at any university in the country, he noted with a hint of disappointment. A headline in a south Louisiana newspaper summed up the situation: “Young in Cajun Country Don’t Dig French Language.” By the late 1960s, many observers were predicting the complete extinction of traditional Cajun culture.

Chapter Six

The Cajun Revival

T

he 1960s saw the birth of a variety of ethnic pride and empowerment movements in which people of all backgrounds, including Cajuns, became openly proud of their distinct ancestries and heritages. This trend grew out of the black civil rights movement, which inspired Hispanics, Indians, and other ethnic groups to organize for the preservation and promotion of their own heritages. Because of this ethnic pride and empowerment movement, many Americans took up genealogy as a hobby, traveled to ancestral homelands, wore traditional clothing, or gave their children ethnic names. Scholars founded academic centers to examine minority cultures, while colleges offered courses in ethnic history, art, and literature. The federal government embraced the general public’s call for a more multicultural society. For example, the Bilingual Education Act (1968) funded classroom instruction for minority students in their native languages and the Ethnic Heritage Studies Act (1972) provided grants for academic research into American minority groups and cultures. The U.S. Census Bureau began to question Americans about their ethnic origins, while political candidates running for office increasingly appealed to minority voters.

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As part of this national trend, Cajuns launched their own pride and empowerment movement. In 1968, the Louisiana state legislature passed a measure that required public elementary and high schools to offer French-language courses, a revolution from the earlier policy that had punished Cajun children for speaking French at school. In addition, Cajuns persuaded Louisiana universities to train college students to become French-language instructors and convinced the state to publish legal notices and other public documents in French. Cajun civic leaders developed commercial ties between south Louisiana and other French-speaking regions. Cajun children benefited from student exchange programs that permitted them to live with French-speaking families in Quebec, while Cajun families opened their homes to French Canadian children. Cajun activists symbolically paired their communities with towns and villages in France, Belgium, and Quebec in what became known as jumelages (twinnings). The most important event to occur during this dynamic period of Cajun pride and empowerment was the establishment of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL). Created by the Louisiana state legislature in 1968 and funded by sizable government grants, CODOFIL had a clear purpose: “To do any and all things necessary to accomplish the development, utilization, and preservation of the French language as found in the State of Louisiana for the cultural, economic, and tourist benefit of the State.” CODOFIL would achieve these goals primarily by teaching French to the state’s children, whom organization leaders viewed as the key to saving French in Louisiana. Louisiana governor John McKeithen chose a genteel Acadian, James Domengeaux, to chair CODOFIL. Born in 1907 to a wealthy south Louisiana family, Jimmy Domengeaux graduated from Tulane University with a law degree and entered political life. He

Acadiana and Its Flag: Symbols of Cajun Pride

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Runninghead

As early as 1956, a newspaper in Acadia Parish, the Crowley Daily Signal, coined the term Acadiana, using it as the title of a column that reported local social events. In 1963, however, a new television station, KATC-TV 3 of Lafayette, rediscovered the word when someone mistyped the name of its parent company, the Acadian Television Corporation, adding an extra a to form Acadiana. Noting the typographical error, the station’s manager found the new word catchy, particularly because it seemed to combine the words Acadian and Louisiana. KATC began using the new word on the air to describe the region covered by its broadcast signal. The word quickly took on a life of its own and evolved to describe most of south Louisiana. A recent survey of a phone directory covering south-central Louisiana revealed that more than 450 businesses and other organizations presently use the word Acadiana in their names—from Acadiana High School to the Zoo of Acadiana. In 1971 the Louisiana state legislature officially recognized Acadiana as a distinct cultural region consisting of twenty-two parishes: Acadia, Ascension, Assumption, Avoyelles, Calcasieu, Cameron, Evangeline, Iberia, Iberville, Jefferson Davis, Lafayette, Lafourche, Pointe Coupee, Saint Charles, Saint James, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Landry, Saint Martin, Saint Mary, Terrebonne, Vermilion, and West Baton Rouge. Three years later, the state legislature officially adopted a flag for the Acadiana region. Known as “the flag of the Louisiana Acadians” (in other words, the Cajuns), it had been designed in 1965 by Dr. Thomas Arceneaux of the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette). A symbol of ethnic pride, the flag displayed a golden star on a white field, which, Arceneaux explained, represented the service of Acadian exiles in the American Revolution under Spanish governor Bernardo de Gálvez as well as the Acadians’ Roman Catholic heritage. A silver fleur-de-lis on a blue field stood for the Acadians’ French ancestry, while a golden castle on a red field symbolized Spain’s colonial rule of Louisiana, during which the Acadians arrived in their new homeland. Today the Acadian flag is flown throughout the Acadiana region, usually just below the Louisiana and American flags.

The Cajun Revival

Previous page: The Acadian flag is unfurled in Lafayette around 1968. Fourth from right is CODOFIL leader Jimmy Domengeaux. Courtesy Raymond Rodgers.

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served in the state legislature and in Congress until 1949, when he left office to run a private law practice. In 1968, he could have retired comfortably; instead, he took on the biggest challenge of his career—saving French in Louisiana. “The preservation movement has come to life,” he explained shortly after CODOFIL’s founding, “because of the belief in the necessity of doing what must be done to save the French language.” The typical south Louisiana family, Domengeaux asserted, was losing the Cajun way of life. It was giving up its traditional customs and, most alarmingly, its ability to speak French. As a result, he argued, CODOFIL had to “create interest in the children, also the parents; teach them that it is ‘chic’ to know French. And above all, we must interest our educators; they must lead the movement.” Domengeaux wasted no time mobilizing the organization. He vowed to make French instruction available to all public school students in Louisiana, whether or not they were of French-speaking heritage. The task would be difficult, Domengeaux knew, because he would have to create the program from scratch. Some Cajuns, however, disapproved of CODOFIL’s emphasis on Parisian French instead of Louisiana French. They also criticized the organization’s heavy use of foreign teachers instead of native-born educators. But CODOFIL expanded French education in public schools. It also strengthened cultural and economic ties with France, Belgium, Quebec, and other French-speaking regions. It promoted south Louisiana—now known as Acadiana, in reference to the Cajuns’ origins—as an intriguing tourist destination, and it generated positive media attention for the region. Finally, CODOFIL served as an effective Cajun watchdog group, speaking out against perceived ethnic slurs and insults—for example, when movies or television programs depicted Cajuns negatively or inaccurately. These achievements helped to renew the French language in Louisiana and to increase Cajun pride and empowerment.

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Fiddler Dewey Balfa, center, performs Cajun music with his brothers in the early 1970s. Courtesy Christine Balfa.

Around the time of CODOFIL’s founding, a new phrase, “Cajun Power,” gained popularity in south Louisiana. Flamboyant politician Edwin W. Edwards used the slogan as part of his successful 1972 run for the state’s highest office. Edwards, the first Cajun governor, emphasized his French heritage in public speeches and delighted supporters by taking his oath of office bilingually, first in French, then in English.* During his term in office, Edwards oversaw the passage of a new 1974 state constitution that protected civil rights and reduced government bureaucracy. Significantly, this constitution also protected the right of Louisianians “to preserve, foster, and promote” their traditional languages and heritages, Some historians regard Alexandre Mouton and Paul O. Hébert as the state’s first Cajun governors. However, they were born before the Cajuns came into existence after the Civil War and are therefore more properly considered Acadians, not Cajuns.

*

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including French. (This state right would eventually clash with the national “English-only” movement that developed in the 1980s.) While many Cajuns regarded powerful politicians such as Edwards and Domengeaux as cultural leaders, others looked to working-class Cajuns such as Dewey Balfa. A modest insurance salesman from the small rural town of Basile, Balfa excelled as a fiddler, vocalist, and composer. On nights and weekends he and his band, the Balfa Brothers, played traditional Cajun music in dance halls throughout south Louisiana, just as they had since the 1920s. In 1964, however, Balfa and two other Cajun musicians appeared by invitation at the acclaimed Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. The experience changed Balfa’s life: Amazed by the northern audience’s zeal for his homegrown music, Balfa returned to south Louisiana a cultural activist dedicated to preserving and promoting his heritage. Balfa inspired other Cajun musicians, including Dennis McGee, Nathan Abshire, and Aldus Roger, to record nearly forgotten Cajun music and to include it in their live performances. He convinced local record producer Floyd Soileau to release albums of traditional Cajun music. Balfa conceived the Tribute to Cajun Music, a milestone in the Cajun pride and empowerment movement. Sponsored by CODOFIL and the esteemed Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the first Tribute to Cajun Music took place in 1974 in Lafayette, the self-described capital of Cajun Louisiana. This music festival brought together for the first time the most accomplished Cajun (and black Creole) musicians. The event occurred not in a smoky barroom or dance hall but in a modern civic arena filled to capacity by thousands of enthusiasts. Never before had Cajun music received such respect. The tribute demonstrated that Cajun music could be appreciated seriously—that it was more than barroom “chanky chank,” a phrase sometimes used by critics to imply that Cajun music was crude, noisy, and unimportant. The festival not only elevated

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Cajun music but converted Cajun musicians into cultural heroes. Electrified by the experience, these musicians became cultural ambassadors who in coming years would introduce Cajun music and traditions to audiences worldwide. But musicians were not the only Cajun cultural ambassadors. Chefs, including Paul Prudhomme, also served this purpose. Around 1980, Prudhomme invented a new dish, blackened redfish, that called for cooking a highly seasoned fish on a superheated skillet. The spicy recipe quickly became an international

The first Tribute to Cajun Music, Lafayette, 1974. Courtesy Elemore Morgan Jr.

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phenomenon, spreading in popularity from south Louisiana to major cities on the East and West Coasts and beyond. The widespread fascination with Prudhomme’s exotic cooking prompted fast-food chains and grocery manufacturers to cash in on the Cajun craze. Consumers across America soon had their choice of “Cajun” hamburgers, pizzas, tacos, pasta, salads, sandwiches, and potato chips—none of which were authentic. McDonald’s, for example, offered the Cajun Crispy Chicken Deluxe, Cajun McChicken Sandwich, and Cajun Biscuits. Its chief rival, Burger King, countered with the Cajun Whaler, Cajun Chick’n Crisp, and Cajun Cheeseburger. Meanwhile, Popeye’s Fried Chicken made billions of dollars promoting itself as a Cajun restaurant. The Cajun mania soon spread beyond the culinary world. Hollywood took advantage of the trend by making movies and television programs that featured Cajun characters, most of whom were depicted as ignorant, violent swamp dwellers. These included the films Southern Comfort, in which Cajuns hunt down and murder a platoon of National Guardsmen training in the swamps, and The Big Easy, which inaccurately depicted rural Cajun culture as native to urban New Orleans. (New Orleans actually sits outside Cajun Louisiana and boasts very few Cajuns compared to other parts of the state.) While the Cajun craze swept the nation, south Louisiana experienced economic disaster as the price of oil collapsed. This “oil glut” forced thousands of Cajuns into unemployment. Many left their homeland in search of job opportunities, migrating to Atlanta, Nashville, Orlando, Denver, Austin, Seattle, and other distant places, where they were submerged in mainstream American culture. Removed from their south Louisiana roots, they became even more like people found anywhere in the country. This was particularly true for the children of transplanted Cajuns, growing

“Contre Vents, Contre Marées”

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Runninghead

A south Louisiana native, Zachary Richard has explored the limits of Cajun music, mixing it with rock music elements and attracting a considerable following in Louisiana, Quebec, and France. Richard has released numerous albums as well as books of Cajun French poetry. A cultural activist, Richard often uses song lyrics and poetry to examine Cajun and Acadian history and identity as well as the place of the Cajun in the modern world. The lyrics to Richard’s song “Contre Vents, Contre Marées” (“Against the Wind, Against the Tide”) convey the bitter emotions that an Acadian exile might have felt during the long journey from Acadia to Louisiana. But the lyrics no doubt also reflect Richard’s feelings as a Cajun activist who works to save his culture from extinction.

CONtRe VeNtS, CONtRe MaRÉeS

aGaiNSt the WiND, aGaiNSt the tiDe

J’ai marché,

I walked,

J’ai prié,

I prayed,

J’ai ramé,

I rowed,

J’ai crié,

I cried,

Contre vents,

Against the wind,

Contre marées.

Against the tide.

De Chignectou,

From Chignectou,

Au Bayou Teche.

To Bayou Teche.

De Grand Pré,

From Grand Pré,

À Grand Mamou,

To Grand Mamou,

J’ai marché,

I walked,

J’ai prié,

I prayed,

Et je n’ai jamais oublier.

And I never forgot.

Combien de temps

How much time

Ça prendrait

Will it take

Les pardonner,

To forgive them,

Les arrêter.

To stop them.

J’ai ramé,

I rowed,

J’ai crié,

I cried,

Et je n’ai jamais oublier.

And I never forgot.

The Cajun Revival

Previous page: Cajun activist Zachary Richard (at center with raised fist) calls on fellow Cajuns to be proud of their heritage. The flags behind him read “Solidarité” (Solidarity) and “Fierte” (Pride). Courtesy Elemore Morgan Jr.

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up in a world completely devoid of meaningful Cajun influences, such as nearby French-speaking family elders. By the mid-1980s, Cajun culture once more seemed on the brink of extinction, but a surge of Cajun pride again came to the rescue. This renewal of ethnic pride came from young Cajun parents who as children in the 1960s had witnessed the original Cajun pride movement but who nonetheless could not speak the Cajun French dialect. Their parents had refused to teach it to them and they had been too old to benefit from CODOFIL’s early programs. These Cajun parents wanted for their children what they themselves did not have: the ability to speak French. Unfortunately, elementary school children in CODOFIL programs received only thirty minutes of French instruction daily, hardly enough to permit mastery of the language. Admitting the weaknesses of these programs, CODOFIL looked for new ways to bring French to Louisiana’s public schools. It finally found the answer in bilingual Canada, where teachers immersed children in a second language for most of the school day. Math, science, reading, social studies, and other subjects were all taught in the second language, which students learned rapidly. Still presided over by Jimmy Domengeaux, CODOFIL and the Louisiana Department of Education introduced French immersion to the state’s public school system in 1981. As CODOFIL hoped, the Canadian teaching method worked in Louisiana, and demand for immersion among parents, teachers, and children spread gradually from one parish (county) to another. Louisiana eventually operated more than twenty French immersion schools teaching about three thousand students statewide. “Words which take a high schooler a week to master are acquired by first- and second-graders in a day or so,” noted one teacher enthusiastically. “The same is true for language structures and for accent.” Added another teacher, “Now my students can do anything in French, whereas with the other program, the children might just learn a few basic words.”

The Queen’s Proclamation 70

Runninghead

On December 9, 2003, Elizabeth II, queen of England, signed a royal proclamation acknowledging the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia nearly 250 years earlier. Although a largely symbolic event, the proclamation represented the first admission by the British government that the expulsion had been a tragic mistake.

Warren Perrin, a Cajun attorney from Erath, spearheaded the drive for an official acknowledgment. The Louisiana

state legislature voted to support Perrin’s quest, as did the U.S. Congress. Perrin also found strong support in the Frenchspeaking provinces of Canada. After thirteen years of negotiations, Elizabeth II signed this proclamation not in her role as queen of England but rather as queen of Canada, a former British colony over which she continues to reign. Whereas the Acadian people, through the vitality of their community, have made a remarkable contribution to Canadian society for almost 400 years;

Whereas on July 28, 1755, the Crown, in the course of administering the affairs of the British colony of Nova

Scotia, made the decision to deport the Acadian people;

Whereas the deportation of the Acadian people, commonly known as the Great Upheaval, continued until

1763 and had tragic consequences, including the deaths of many thousands of Acadians—from disease, in shipwrecks, in their places of refuge and in prison camps in Nova Scotia and England as well as in the British colonies in America;

Whereas We acknowledge these historical facts and the trials and suffering experienced by the Acadian

people during the Great Upheaval;

Whereas We hope that the Acadian people can turn the page on this dark chapter of their history;



Whereas Canada is no longer a British colony but a sovereign state, by and under the Constitution of

Canada;

Whereas when Canada became a sovereign state, with regard to Canada, the Crown in right of Canada and

of the provinces succeeded to the powers and prerogatives of the Crown in right of the United Kingdom;

Whereas We, in Our role as Queen of Canada, exercise the executive power by and under the Constitution

of Canada;

Whereas this Our present Proclamation does not, under any circumstances, constitute a recognition of legal or

financial responsibility by the Crown in right of Canada and of the provinces and is not, under any circumstances, a recognition of, and does not have any effect upon, any right or obligation of any person or group of persons;

And whereas, by Order in Council P.C. 2003-1967 of December 6, 2003, the Governor in Council has

directed that a proclamation do issue designating July 28 of every year as “A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval,” commencing on July 28, 2005;

Now know you that we, by and with the advice of Our Privy Council for Canada, do by this Our

Proclamation, effective on September 5, 2004, designate July 28 of every year as “A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval,” commencing on July 28, 2005.

Of all which Our Loving Subjects and all others whom these Presents may concern are hereby required to take

notice and to govern themselves accordingly. In testimony whereof, We have caused this Our Proclamation to be published and the Great Seal of Canada to be hereunto affixed.

The Cajun Revival

71

During that same period, an event occurred that changed the way the U.S. government and others viewed the Cajun people. In 1980 a Cajun, Calvin J. Roach (originally spelled Roche in French), filed a federal lawsuit against his former employer, an oilfield equipment company. Roach claimed that he had been fired for protesting his boss’s repeated use of the word coonass, a term regarded by some as an amusing synonym for “Cajun” but by others as a serious insult implying stupidity, ignorance, and backwardness. Domengeaux, for example, regarded coonass as extremely offensive and campaigned against its use, even by Cajuns in reference to themselves. In his lawsuit, Roach asserted that his former employer had violated his civil rights by calling him a coonass. The judge agreed, ruling that the Cajuns were a genuine ethnic group protected by federal law from discrimination in the workplace. This decision marked the first time the federal government recognized the Cajuns as an ethnic group, a view soon reinforced by genetic scientists, who found that Cajuns possessed a common genotype (genetic trait) that set them apart from other peoples. Like Roach, cultural activist Warren A. Perrin used the legal system to correct an injustice, but in this instance the injustice had occurred more than two centuries earlier. In 1990, Perrin, a Cajun lawyer from the small town of Erath, Louisiana, threatened to file a lawsuit against England if it refused to acknowledge the tragedy of the expulsion. In 2003, after thirteen years of negotiations—by which time Perrin had succeeded the late Jimmy Domengeaux as CODOFIL’s president—Elizabeth II, queen of England, issued a royal proclamation expressing regret over the expulsion. The royal proclamation admitted the “tragic consequences” of the expulsion, “including the deaths of many thousands of Acadians—from disease, in shipwrecks, in their places of refuge and in prison camps in Nova Scotia and England as well as in the British colonies in America. . . . We acknowledge these histori-

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The Cajun Revival

cal facts and the trials and suffering experienced by the Acadian people during the Great Upheaval.” In his 1849 epic poem Evangeline, American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow referred to the expulsion as an “exile without end.” Perrin aptly noted, however, that “with the signing of the Royal Proclamation, an end has been symbolically declared.” Nearly 250 years after their deportation from Nova Scotia, the Acadians and their Cajun descendants were no longer a people in exile.

Conclusion

Four hundred years after their ancestors first arrived in North America, the Cajuns have entered the twenty-first century as a distinct people. They have not been swallowed up, for example, by the information age. On the contrary, they have in typical fashion adapted themselves to the digital revolution, creating CD-ROMs and Internet Web sites to promote their history and culture. Entering the term Cajun on one popular search engine results in more than twenty-eight million hits (positive responses), reflecting a growing Cajun presence on the Internet. One historian even coined the term cybercajun in reference to the inhabitants of this virtual Cajun community. Cajuns now occupy positions in practically every field of human endeavor—from agriculture to law to medicine to space exploration. Some have achieved fame, including chef Paul Prudhomme, painter George Rodrigue, musicians Zachary Richard and Sammy Kershaw, U.S. senator John Breaux, human rights activist Sister Helen Prejean, baseball pitcher Ron Guidry, football quarterbacks Bobby Hebert and Jake Delhomme, and model and actress Ali Landry. Although the Cajuns have found a place for themselves in the modern world, their future remains unclear. Will they save their French dialect from extinction? If not, can they exist as an

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Cajuns in Sports When sociologists conducted a study of rural Cajun teenagers in the early 1950s, they found that many not only enjoyed pop music, movies, and hanging out with friends at malt shops, but also sports. Americanizing influences such as public schools and radio and television had introduced these young Cajuns to distinctly non-Cajun pastimes like baseball, football, basketball, and boxing, among others.

As a result, it was only a matter of time before Cajuns began to distinguish themselves as

professional athletes. Among the first to do so were brothers Jay and Lionel Hebert, who from the 1950s to the 1970s reached the highest ranks of the golfing world. Lionel won the PGA championship in 1957, and Jay won it in 1960—becoming the only brothers in history to win national golf titles.

In baseball, Ron Guidry, nicknamed “Louisiana Lightning,” excelled in the 1970s and 1980s

as a New York Yankees pitcher. In 1978, for example, he received the American League’s Cy Young Award, played on the American League All-Star team, was voted Major League Player of the Year, and won his second World Series. Likewise, Gil Meche came out of Cajun country in the late 1990s to pitch for the Seattle Mariners and the Kansas City Royals, and in 2007 he was selected for the American League All-Star team.

In football, Bobby Hebert and Jake Delhomme made names for themselves as NFL quarter-

backs. Known as the “Cajun Cannon,” Hebert played for the New Orleans Saints and the Atlanta Falcons in the 1980s and 1990s, leading the Saints to their first playoff spot in the team’s history. Delhomme quarterbacked for the Saints and the Carolina Panthers, taking the Panthers to Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004.

But the sport at which Cajuns have excelled as an ethnic group is horseracing, which they

mastered long before football, baseball, and other mainstream American pastimes came to south Louisiana. Horseracing in the region goes back well into the 19th century, when Cajuns competed on straight dirt tracks scattered throughout the countryside. Out of this tradition sprang several noteworthy Cajun jockeys, including Eddie Delahoussaye, Kent Desormeaux, and Calvin Borel, who together won the Kentucky Derby five times between 1982 and 2007. Similarly, Delahoussaye, Desormeaux, and fellow Cajun jockey Robby Albarado have each won the prestigious Preakness Stakes between 1988 and 2007.

Conclusion

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English-speaking ethnic group? In coming years, Cajuns will have to answer for themselves these and other difficult questions. But no matter their language or where they find themselves, future generations of Cajuns will do well to remember the inscription near the Acadian Memorial’s eternal flame, which burns along the Bayou Teche in Saint Martinville: “Un peuple sans passé est un peuple sans futur” (A people without a past are a people without a future).

Timeline

1604—Acadia founded by French explorer Pierre de Monts. 1613—Acadian settlement at Port Royal abandoned after British marauders ransack it. 1629—Scottish settlers occupy site of Port Royal. 1632—France reclaims Port Royal from Scottish settlers; Company of New France brings Acadian “first families” to colony. 1635–50—Acadians caught in bloody civil war between two rival seigneurs, Charles d’Aulnay and Charles La Tour. 1654—British seize Acadia from France. 1670—France reclaims Acadia from British; Acadians have developed into distinct people whose population is expanding throughout colony. 1710—British seize Acadia from France and rename colony Nova Scotia. 1713—France permanently surrenders Acadia to British; Queen Anne’s Proclamation ensures property rights of Acadians choosing to remain in Nova Scotia. 1730—Through agreement known as Conventions of 1730, Acadians swear oath of allegiance to British Crown in exchange for British recognition of Acadian wartime neutrality.

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Timeline

1754—Major Charles Lawrence becomes lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia and plans expulsion of entire Acadian population. 1755—British troops under Lawrence begin expulsion of Acadian men, women, and children. 1764—First group of Acadian exiles arrives in Spanish colony of Louisiana in search of new homeland. 1765—Acadian freedom fighter Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil guides first large group of Acadian exiles to Louisiana; Dauterive Compact draws Acadian exiles to Attakapas region of Louisiana, where they and their descendants remain permanently. 1768—Acadian exiles join others to overthrow Spanish governor of Louisiana in America’s first rebellion for independence. 1779–81—Acadian exiles under Spanish governor Bernardo de Gálvez help to defeat British troops in American Revolution. 1785—Large group of Acadian exiles from France arrives in Louisiana. 1803—Acadian exiles in Louisiana become U.S. citizens when Napoleon Bonaparte sells the territory to United States. 1810s—Acadian exiles and their offspring have spread throughout south Louisiana and have developed small upper and middle classes; larger mass of poor Acadian subsistence farmers preserves traditional heritage. 1861–65—U.S. Civil War ravages south Louisiana, reducing all Acadians to extreme poverty. 1865–77—During Reconstruction, Acadians intermarry with other impoverished south Louisiana ethnic groups, becoming the Cajuns. 1877–1941—Origin and development of traditional Cajun culture, including Cajun food and music. 1916—Thousands of Cajun children enter school after Louisiana enacts compulsory education law.

Timeline

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1921—Louisiana’s new state constitution makes classrooms English-only, giving rise to punishment of Cajun children for speaking French at school. 1941–45—U.S. involvement in World War II sweeps up Cajuns in global events, sparking their Americanization. 1944—U.S. Congress passes GI Bill of Rights, which allows veterans, including thousands of Cajuns, to finish school and to buy new houses and businesses. 1950s—Age of prosperity for many Americans, including Cajuns, who, helped by education and well-paying oilfield jobs, embrace “American dream” by acquiring luxury items such as automobiles and televisions. 1960s—French language almost extinct among young Cajuns. 1964—Cajun musician Dewey Balfa performs to enthusiastic crowds at Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, converting him into cultural activist. 1968—Stirred by national ethnic pride and empowerment movement, Cajuns organize to save their heritage; Council for Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) founded to promote French education in public schools. 1972—Edwin Edwards wins election as first Cajun governor of Louisiana using “Cajun Power” slogan. 1974—First Tribute to Cajun Music elevates study of traditional Cajun music and converts Cajun musicians into cultural ambassadors; state of Louisiana adopts new constitution protecting French language. 1980s—An oil glut ruins south Louisiana’s economy, driving many people away from their homeland in search of jobs; popularity of Cajun food sparks national craze; Cajun culture misrepresented for commercial profit. 1980—Calvin J. Roach sues his employer for using ethnic slur coonass in workplace, leading to federal government’s recognition of Cajuns as an ethnic group.

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Timeline

1981—CODOFIL introduces French immersion to Louisiana’s public school system. 2003—Queen of England acknowledges expulsion of Cajuns’ ancestors from Nova Scotia.

A Note on Historic French Names

For ease of reading, I have shortened the imposing names of some historical French personalities. For example, Pierre Duguay, Sieur de Monts, became Pierre de Monts; Jean de Biencourt de Poutrincourt became Jean Poutrincourt; Charles de Biencourt de Saint-Just became Charles Biencourt; Charles de Saint-Étienne de La Tour became Charles La Tour; Charles Menou d’Aulnay became Charles d’Aulnay; René-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, became René La Salle; Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, became Jean-Baptiste Bienville; and his brother, Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville, became Pierre Iberville.

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Sources and Suggested Readings Younger readers may find these books too advanced; however, older readers will find them essential to a deeper appreciation of Cajun history and culture. Ancelet, Barry Jean. Cajun Music: Its Origins and Development. Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1989. Ancelet, Barry Jean, Jay Edwards, and Glen Pitre. Cajun Country. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991. Ancelet, Barry Jean, and Elemore Morgan Jr. Cajun and Creole Music Makers: Musiciens Cadiens et Créoles. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999. Previously published as The Makers of Cajun Music/Musiciens Cadiens et Créoles. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984. Bernard, Shane K. The Cajuns: Americanization of a People. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. ———. Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993. Brasseaux, Carl A. Acadian to Cajun: Transformation of a People, 1803–1877. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992. ———. The Founding of New Acadia: The Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiana, 1765– 1803. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987. ———. “Scattered to the Wind”: Dispersal and Wanderings of the Acadians, 1755–1809. Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1991. Brasseaux, Carl A., Marcelle Bienvenu, and Ryan A. Brasseaux. Stir the Pot: The History of Cajun Cuisine. New York: Hippocrene, 2005. Clark, Andrew Hill. Acadia: The Geography of Early Nova Scotia to 1760. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.

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Sources and Suggested Readings

Faragher, John Mack. A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland. New York: Norton, 2005. Jobb, Dean W. The Cajuns: A People’s Story of Exile and Triumph. New York: Wiley, 2005. Also published as The Acadians: A People’s Story of Exile and Triumph. New York: Wiley, 2005. Perrin, Warren A. Acadian Redemption: From Beausoleil Broussard to the Queen’s Royal Proclamation. Erath, La.: Acadian Heritage and Cultural Foundation, 2004.

Acknowledgments

I thank Warren A. Perrin and Dr. David J. Cheramie of CODOFIL for proofreading the manuscript; Professor Carl A. Brasseaux of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for advice and images; Professor Barry Jean Ancelet of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for advice; and Seetha Srinivasan, Walter Biggins, and Steven B. Yates of the University Press of Mississippi, as well as my copyeditor Ellen D. Goldlust-Gingrich, for helping me to publish the best possible manuscript. I also acknowledge Christina Becker of the Champlain Society, Toronto, Canada, for permitting me to quote the society’s translation of Dièreville’s Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal in Acadia or New France; Jean-François Mouhot and the Louisiana Historical Association for permitting me to quote the translation of JeanBaptiste Semer’s letter; Elemore Morgan Jr. for licensing historically important photographs; and Zachary Richard for permitting me to quote the lyrics to his song “Contre Vents, Contre Marées.”

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Index

A

population of, 13; reasons for leaving France, 8; in Rebellion of 1768, 32; settlement patterns in Louisiana, 31–32, 34, 39; slavery and, 37; surnames and, 42, 51; unconditional oath of allegiance, 15, 16, 18; wartime neutrality issue, 15, 16. See also Cajuns Action Cadienne, 45 African slaves, 28, 37, 40, 41, 43, 46, 47 African Americans, and civil rights movement, 60 Albarado, Robby, 74 Allan, Johnnie, 57 “Allons à Lafayette,” 46 “Allons Danser Colinda,” 46, 47 American Revolution, Acadians in, 32, 62 Americanization. See Cajuns Andouille, 46 Anglo-Americans, 38, 43, 47 Arceneaux, Thomas, 62 Argall, Samuel, 6 Ascension Parish, Louisiana, 62 Assumption Parish, Louisiana, 62 Attakapas, region of Louisiana, 30, 31, 32

Abshire, Nathan, 47, 65 Acadia: agriculture in, 5, 10, 12; colonization of, 4, 5, 13–14; defined, 3; founded, 4, 5; manufacturing in, 5–6; population of, 13; possible origins of name, 3; renamed Nova Scotia, 7; seized by Britain, 6–7, 12, 15; surrendered permanently to Britain, 15; trade, 4, 6 Acadia Parish, Louisiana, 62 Acadiana, region of Louisiana, 62, 63 Acadians: agriculture of, 10, 12, 36; architecture of, 8, 10, 36; arrival in Louisiana, 29; Civil War and, 38, 40–41; clothing of, 12, 36; defined, 44; as a distinct people, 13; during Reconstruction, 40, 41–42; economic classes of, 37; exiled (see Expulsion, the); “first families,” 8; genteel, 37, 40, 61; intermarriage with non-Acadians, 42, 43; manufacturing among, 5–6; nicknames among, 29; number that settled in Louisiana, 27; occupations of, 12, 37; origins in France, 8;

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88 Attakapas Indians. See Indian tribes Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, 62

B Balfa, Dewey, 65 Balfa Brothers, 65 Bals de maison, 48–49 Basile, Louisiana, 55, 65 Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 29, 32, 40 Battle of Bisland, 40 Battle of Irish Bend, 40 Bay of Fundy, 4, 10, 29 Bayou Lafourche, 34, 40 Bayou Teche, 40, 75 Bayou Terrebonne, 34 Beaubassin, Acadia, 13 Beaumont, Texas, 47 Belgium, 61, 63 Bernard, Rod, 57 Biencourt, Charles, 6 Bienville, Jean-Baptiste, 28 Bilingual Education Act, 60 Black Creoles, 43, 65 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 37 Borel, Calvin, 74 Boucherie, 48–49 Boudin, 46 Bousillage, 36 Brashear City (Morgan City), Louisiana, 40 Breaux, John, 73, 75 Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, 48 British Colonies of North America, 17–18, 20, 23, 24 Broussard dit Beausoleil, Joseph, 23, 29, 31, 32

C Cajun food. See Cajuns Cajun French. See French language Cajun music. See Cajuns “Cajun Power,” 64

Index Cajuns: Americanization of, 45, 54, 56, 58–59; Cold War and, 56; consumerism and, 56; cuisine (food), 46, 66–67; defined, 43, 44; music, 46, 47, 65–66, 68; occupations of, 56, 74, 75; oil industry and, 56, 67; origin of, 39, 40, 42, 44; punished for speaking French, 45, 50–51, 58, 61; recognized by federal government as ethnic group, 71; surnames and, 42, 51; teenagers among, 58, 59; World War II and, 51, 53–54, 56 Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, 62 Cameron Parish, Louisiana, 62 Canada, 14, 16, 23, 25, 69, 70 Cape Sable, Acadia, 6 Catholicism. See Roman Catholicism Centre-Ouest, region of France, 8 Chepody, Acadia, 13 Chignecto Isthmus, Acadia, 13, 16, 18 Chitimacha Indians. See Indian tribes Church Point, Louisiana, 55 Civil rights movement, 60 Civil War, 38, 40–41, 43, 44 Clanton, Jimmy, 57 Cobequid, Acadia, 13 Cod, importance of, 4 CODOFIL. See Council for the Development of French in Louisiana Cold War, 56 Colonial Council, of Nova Scotia, 17, 18 Commercialization, of Cajun culture, 67 Company of New France, 7, 10, 12 Connecticut, Acadian exiles in, 24 Consumerism, 56 “Contre Vents, Contre Marées,” 68 Conventions of 1730, 16 Cookie and the Cupcakes, 57 Coonass, 71

Index Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), 45, 61, 63, 64, 65, 69, 71 Coup de main, 49 Course de Mardi Gras (courir du Mardi Gras), 49, 55 Crawfish, 36, 46, 47–48 Creoles, defined, 43 Creoles of Color, 43

D Dale and Grace, 57 D’Aulnay, Charles, 12 Dauterive, Antoine Bernard, 32 Dauterive Compact, 32 De Dièreville, Sieur, 11 De Monts, Pierre, 4–6 De Razilly, Isaac, 8, 12 De Soto, Hernando, 28 Delahoussaye, Eddie, 74 Delhomme, Jake, 74, 75 Desormeaux, Kent, 74 D’Iberville, Pierre, 28 Dikes, 10, 11 Domengeaux, James ( Jimmy), 61, 63, 65, 69, 71 Donaldsonville, Louisiana, 40 Doucet, Michael, 47

E Education, 60: compulsory, 50; French courses, 61, 63, 69; French immersion, 69; GI Bill of Rights and, 56; punishment of Cajun students for speaking French, 50–51, 58, 61 Edwards, Edwin W., 64, 65 Elizabeth II, Queen of England and Canada, and Royal Proclamation of 2003, 70, 71–72 Engagés, 7, 8 England, Acadian exiles in, 24

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English-only movement, 65 Erath, Louisiana, 70, 71 Ethnic cleansing, 26 Ethnic Heritage Studies Act, 60 Ethnic pride and empowerment movements, 60, 61 Eunice, Louisiana, 55 Evangeline, 33, 72 Evangeline Parish, Louisiana, 62 Expulsion, the: acknowledgement of, 70, 71–72; beginning of, 18; deaths caused by, 20, 23, 24, 25; destruction of Acadian property, 20; division of families, 20; as ethnic cleansing and genocide, 26; myths about, 23; order for, 21; reasons for, 17

F Fais do-dos, 48–49, 58 Falkland Islands, Acadian exiles in, 24 Fender, Freddy, 57 Festivals Acadiens, 47 Filé, 46 Florida, 6 Fort Beauséjour, 18 France, 61, 62, 63, 68; Acadian exiles in, 23, 24, 30, 34; origin of Acadians in, 8 Free persons of color, 28 French Creoles, 37, 38, 42, 43, 44 French Guiana, Acadian exiles in, 24 French immersion, 69 French language: among Cajuns, 45, 54, 58, 59, 61, 64–65, 69, 75; among early Acadians, 8 Fur, importance of, 4, 6

G Gálvez, Bernardo de, 32, 62 Genocide, 26 Gens du couleur libre (free persons of color), 28

90 “Genteel Acadians,” 37, 40, 61 German settlers, in Louisiana, 28, 42, 43, 44 GI Bill of Rights, 56 Grand Pré, Acadia, 13, 19–20, 21 Great Depression, the, 51 Guidry, Ron, 73, 74, 75 Gumbo, 46, 49, 55

H Haiti, Acadian exiles in, 23, 24, 31 Halifax, Nova Scotia, 16 Hebert, Bobby, 73, 74, 75 Hebert, Jay, 74 Hebert, Lionel, 74 Hébert, Paul O., 64 Henri IV, King of France, 4 “Hip et Taïaut,” 46, 47 Hispanics, 60 Horseracing, 74 Houma, Louisiana, 40 Houma Indians. See Indian tribes Hulin, T. K., 57

I Iberia Parish, Louisiana, 62 Iberville Parish, Louisiana, 62 Île Saint-Jean, Acadia. See Prince Edward Island, Canada Indian tribes, 46, 60; Attakapas, 27, 34; Chitimacha, 27, 34; Houma, 27, 34; Micmac, 3, 6; Natchez, 27; Opelousas, 27, 34; Tunica, 27 Internet, 73 Iota, Louisiana, 55

J Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana, 62 “Jolie Blonde,” 46, 47 Jumelages, 61

Index

K KATC-TV 3, 62 Kershaw, Sammy, 73, 75 Kinder, Louisiana, 55 Korean War, 56

L La Chausée, France, 8 La Salle, René, 28 La Tour, Charles, 12 Labadieville, Louisiana, 40 Labiche, Emmeline, 33 Lafayette, Louisiana, 40, 65 Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, 62 Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, 62 Landry, Ali, 73, 75 Lawrence, Charles, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 26 Le Grand Dérangement. See Expulsion, the LeJeune, Iry, 47 Les Amis des Immersion, 45 Long, Huey P., 50 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 33, 72 Louis XVI, King of France, 28 Louisiana: arrival of Acadians in, 27, 29, 30, 31; colonized, 28; conditions in, 28; defined, 27; Indians in (see Indian tribes); sold by France to United States, 37 Louisiana Department of Education, 69 Louisiana Purchase, 37

M Mamou, Louisiana, 55 Mardi Gras, 49, 55 Martinique, Acadian exiles in, 24 Maryland, Acadian exiles in, 24, 32 Massachusetts, 18, 20; Acadian exiles in, 24

Index McGee, Dennis, 52, 65 McKeithen, John, 61 McLain, Tommy, 57 Meche, Gil, 74 Micmac Indians. See Indian tribes Minas Basin, Acadia, 13 Mississippi River, 28, 29, 32, 34, 37, 39, 40 Mobile, Alabama, 32 Morgan City, Louisiana, 40 Mouton, Alexandre, 38, 40, 64 Mouton, Alfred, 40 Movies, depictions of Cajuns in, 67

Petroleum industry. See Oil industry Phillips, Phil, 57 Plantations, 37 Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, 62 Port Arthur, Texas, 47 Port Royal, Acadia: abandoned, 6; architecture of, 8, 10; destroyed, 6; founding of, 4, 5; reestablished, 6, 7 Poutrincourt, Jean, 6 Prejean, Helen, 73, 75 Preston, Johnny, 57 Prince Edward Island, Canada, Acadian exiles in, 24 Prudhomme, Paul, 66, 73

N Natchez Indians. See Indian tribes New Brunswick, Canada: Acadian exiles in, 25; as center of present-day Acadian culture in Canada, 25 New England, 18, 23 New Iberia, Louisiana, 40, 41 New Orleans, Louisiana, 29, 32, 38, 40, 67 New York, Acadian exiles in, 24, 29, 32 Newfoundland, Canada, 23, 25, 34 Newport Folk Festival (Rhode Island), 47, 65 9/11 attacks, 56 North Carolina, Acadian exiles in, 24 Nova Scotia. See Acadia

O Oil industry, 56, 67 Opelousas, Louisiana, 40 Opelousas Indians. See Indian tribes Orange, Texas, 47

P Pennsylvania, Acadian exiles in, 24, 32 Pensacola, Florida, 32 Perrin, Warren A., 70, 71, 72

91

Q Quebec, Canada, 61, 63, 68 Queen Anne’s Proclamation, 15

R Ramaserie, 49 Randy and the Rockets, 57 Rebellion of 1768, 32 Reconstruction, 40, 41–42 Religion. See Roman Catholicism Rhythm and blues music, 47, 57, 58 Richard, Zachary, 47, 68, 73 Roach, Calvin J., 71 Rock ’n’ roll music, 47, 57, 58 Rodrigue, George, 46, 73 Roman Catholicism, 8, 43, 46, 62 Rufus Jagneaux, 57

S Saint Charles Parish, Louisiana, 62 Saint Croix River, Maine, 4 Saint Domingue, Acadian exiles in, 24, 31 Saint James Parish, Louisiana, 62 Saint John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, 62

92

Index

Saint Landry Parish, Louisiana, 62 Saint Martin Parish, Louisiana, 62 Saint Martinville, Louisiana, 23, 33, 75 Saint Mary Parish, Louisiana, 62 Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Acadian exiles in, 23, 24, 34 Scottish colonists, 6–7 Seigneur, defined, 4 Seigneurie, defined, 4 Semer, Jean-Baptiste, 30 Seven Years’ War, 29 Shirley, William, 18 Slavery, 28, 37, 40, 41, 43, 46, 47 Soileau, Floyd, 65 Sonnier, Floyd, 46 South Carolina, Acadian exiles in, 24 Spain, 6, 27, 29, 31, 32, 37, 46, 47, 62 Spanish settlers, in Louisiana, 42, 43, 44 Sports, Cajuns in, 58, 74, 75 Swamp pop music, 47, 57, 58

T Tasso, 46 Teenagers, 58, 59 Television: as Americanizing influence, 58, 59; depictions of Cajuns on, 67 Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, 62 Thibodaux, Louisiana, 40 Tourism, 55 Trapping, importance of, 4

Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 7 Treaty of Utrecht, 15 Tribute to Cajun Music, 47, 65–66 Tunica Indians. See Indian tribes

U Ulloa, Antonio de, 32 United States of America, 32, 37

V Veillée, 48, 58 Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, 62 Vermilionville (Lafayette), Louisiana, 40 Vietnam War, 56 Virginia, 6; Acadian exiles in, 24 Voorhies, Felix, 23, 33

W Walker, Lawrence, 47 “War on Terror,” 56 Web sites, 73 West, Clint, 57 West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, 62 Winslow, John, 21 World War I, 51 World War II, 51, 53–54, 56

Z Zydeco music, 47, 65