Acadiana or the story of the Cajuns

Today our adventure turned to learning more LA history.

The story of the Acadians, now known as Cajuns, is a significant one in Louisiana history.  For 150 years French Catholic settlers thrived in Acadia, now Nova Scotia, Canada.  In the mid 1700s, the British expelled them from their lands.  Families were separated, some sent back to France, some south into the British colonies, and some went into hiding.  Those who came to the colonies were not allowed to settle because they were French and/or Catholic.  Many went down the various tributaries of the Mississippi ending at Bayou Teche (snake) in the Spanish territories that are now Louisiana.  They were joined by some of those who went to France and later by some of the Acadians who had hidden.  They started  to farm wheat and corn and to raise sheep, then became cattlemen and then developed the sugar cane industry.

This is a story familiar to American lit students.  Longfellow’s Evangeline is a fictional account of two star-crossed Acadian lovers.  A more factual account was written by Felix Voorhies in Acadian Reminiscence. 

This is the Evangeline oak, which was never seen by Longfellow.

 Acadian history was detailed to us by James, a docent at the St. Martinville Cultural Heritage Center which is located in the midst of the area settled by those early Acadians. 

 The main building has two historical sections, The Museum of the Acadian Memorial and the African American Museum. 

The African American section emphasizes the French role in slavery.  These slaves, converted to Catholicism, were not required to work on Sunday and if they did so, were paid for their labors.  Some were able to buy freedom with these wages.  Those who did were officially known as free persons of color.  

While the term Creole means born in the colony of European descent, it came to identify persons of mixed racial descent.  Many of these people were light skinned.  Most were women who had to wear a figon, a special hat, to distinguish themselves from women who were not part African.  For further distinction, they were forbidden to ride in a carriage.

During the Civil War, The Union recruited free men of color.  Their French names were mangled in spelling by the Northern recruiters.  For examples Broussard became Brusa or Brusan.  There are many other Acadians today who names have been altered during immigration or by non-French speaking Priests during baptism.

In the Acadian Memorial, another building in the Cultural Center, an interactive mural has many of the Acadian settlers (many modeled by their descendants) telling their personal stories of getting to Louisiana.  These are tales of tragedy, bravery and survival.  Of the 10,000 who were driven from Canada, only about 3000 survived to reach Louisiana.

This pirogue is similar to the ones Cajuns used along the bayous.

The model for this small statue of Evangeline was Dolores Del Rio, star of the 1929 film.

The Perpetual Adoration Chapel, officially the St. Martin Catholic Church, was built in 1844 atop a cemetery.  It was built by a Napoleonic engineer in Greek Revival style.

Over the altar hangs a picture of the patron saint of the church, St. Martin who is said to have cut his cloak to share it with a beggar..

Around the walls are the thirteen Stations of the Cross.

The copy of the grotto at Lourdes was built by a former slave and is the only edifice in a Catholic Church in the US that has been built by an African American. 

As per our custom, we enjoyed a large lunch of local cuisine, this time a choice of fried fish or chicken stew followed by a tasty bread pudding.

Then it was back to history.  At the Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site, we toured the Pierre Olivier Duclozel de Vezin Family Homestead.  After an introductory movie, we visited the house. Olivier, a Creole, went from raising cattle to cotton to sugar.  Originally the house consisted of four rooms and was used for working and not for a family dwelling.  These rooms had no doors between them so you had to go outside to get to the next room.  His son Charles Olivier increased the size of the house to hold his family.

This safe requires the solving of a puzzle to open its doors.

The term “good night, sleep tight” comes from the daily need to tighten the woven rope on which the mattress rests.

This churn was made in Louisville by a company now known for making baseball bats.

Our guide demonstrated a rolling pin bed that required the use of the oversized roller to smooth the bedsheets each morning.

 

The kitchen is a CCC reproduction.  Originally it would have been at a safe distance from the main house to protect it from fire.

On the other side of the park was an 1790 Acadian farm.  The buildings consist of a one-room farmhouse, a separate kitchen, and an outhouse. 

 Our guide demonstrated the use of a flint lock carbine.

During these adventures we were warned about two risks, fire ants and these stinging caterpillers.