Uncovering Cajun culture

Cajun Country has an adventurous ring to its name, sounding untamed, like the Australian outback or the Alaskan frontier. Indeed, New Acadia was historically swampy terrain, traveled by French settlers in pirogues through bayous where Native Americans lived for centuries before. Both the French and the Attakapas lived off the environment, hunting, fishing and farming, where there were abundant natural resources.

I had eaten gumbo and danced the Zydeco, but never traveled the short distance from New Orleans to learn about Cajuns (aka Acadians) who left France in the early 1600s - even before English colonists arrived in Jamestown - settling in Canada for 150 years before 10,000 were deported by the British during the Great Upheaval in 1755.

The Acadians experienced “derangement” when they were forced to leave and search for a new home. Families were suddenly rounded up, abandoning their livestock and possessions.

Following a decade as refugees, exiled to Boston, a group of 600 led by Joseph “Beausoleil” Broussard chartered ships in 1765 bound for New Orleans. French officials authorized them to travel to the Post des Attakapas near present day St. Martinville where the ruling Spanish government assigned them 400 acres of land.

Isolated for hundreds of years, Cajuns retain a mysterious past - perhaps not really wanting to remember - but academic and author (“Acadian Redemption”) Warren Perrin has made it his life’s work to ferret out the truth about his ancestors.

He established the nonprofit Acadian Heritage & Culture Foundation that runs The

Acadian Museum in the tiny town of Erath where I met volunteer historian Ron Bodin. (Jean-Louis Bodin had a plantation in Erath.) Perrin also wrangled an apology from Queen Elizabeth II in the form of a Royal Proclamation for Britain’s inhumane treatment!)

Perren has been collaborating with University of Louisiana archeologist Dr. Mark Rees and his students through the New Acadia Project to locate the Acadians’ first Louisiana home and grave sites along Bayou Teche. In 2003, an archeological team discovered artifacts, dating from the 1780s near Loreauville, thus identifying that particular spot as the first settlement. Now an historical marker has been placed on the site.

Archeological team from University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Naturally, my curiosity was piqued, so I planned an overnight trip to include a stop at the newly erected monument on Bayou Teche, dinner with Warren Perrin - himself a Cajun - and sleepover in an historic wooden church in St. Martinville. Interestingly, I had seen a film, Schultze Gets the Blues about a German accordionist who also felt the irresistible pull to Acadiana hearing the music on his radio. Then traveling where he encountered musical Cajuns living on the bayous.

St. Martinville was the inspiration for the poem, “Evangeline,” penned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1847. His widely read narrative follows the legend of a betrothed couple separated during the Cajun expulsion from Acadia..

Wordsworth wrote: “...these four days back when as you know, we were all making merry to the tune of Michael’s fiddle at the festivities of a betrothal between our most sought for maid and the son of Basil the blacksmith, we heard the rumble of guns in the harbor and an ominous drumming from the road leading up the beach to the village….It was explicitly told to the soldiery that we were in the midst of a nuptial feast. Father Felician was about to lead the procession of the contracting parties together with the maids in attendance upon the bride, to the church, when she was separated from her lover.”

Monument designating the first Cajun settlement in Louisiana.