HISTORY AND BACKGROUND OF THE PEOPLE OF THE LOUISIANA GULF COAST

By Pat Hartinger

Over the past 7,000 years the Mississippi River built a series of deltas
along the Louisiana Gulf coast. The river drained forty percent of the
continental United States and, with the sediment it brought south, new
land was constantly building up along the "ragged sole of the Louisiana
boot, an area the size of Connecticut --- three million acres." (p.6)

![](media/image1.pct){width="2.0in" height="1.875in"}

![](media/image2.jpeg){width="2.5in" height="1.7958333333333334in"}Due
to the containment of the Mississippi River by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers in the 1950s, the building of canals and navigation channels,
as well as the offshore rigs, platforms, and on and off-shore dumping by
the oil companies, the geography of the Louisiana coast is changing
radically every hour - fifty acres of land is washing away daily. In
addition, to the effect that this has on the state and national economy,
the people of Louisiana depend upon these wetlands and barrier islands
as their buffer against hurricane damage. "For New Orleans alone hemmed
in by levees and already on average eight feet below sea level, the
apron of wetlands between it and the closest Gulf shore was,
cumulatively, about 50 miles a century ago. Today, that distance is
perhaps 20 miles and shrinking fast." Already, entire towns, Leeville,
Chauvin, and Golden Meadow, for example, have disappeared.As one shrimp
fisherman told the author, Mike Tidwell, "Dere won't be no more nothin'
left anymore, forever." (p.200)

This world of sky, marsh, and wildlife contains twenty-five percent of
America's coastal wetlands. Who are the people living in these wetlands?
How did they come to choose this area to work, build their homes, and
raise their families?

The Houma Indian people were originally a part of the Chakchiuma tribe
in central Mississippi. They were village-type mound dwellers dependent
on agriculture for their sustenance. In 1682, they separated to become
an independent people, but were gradually pushed southwest of the New
Orleans area, and this is where the modern day descendants live.
Epidemics and the brutality of non-Native settlers, as well as losses
due to the tribe's exodus and individuals marrying out of the tribe,
reduced the numbers of the Houma from the original 3,000 people who
separated from the Chakchiumaa to a band of only sixty members

At present, there are probably 16,000 members of the tribe, but, because
the Houma never waged a sustained war against white settlers, the U.S.
government never entered into a formal treaty with them. In 1931, the
U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs said that the Houma were too mixed with
white trappers and Cajun peoples to be considered Indian. Although they
are the largest Indian tribe living in Louisiana, there is no
reservation land set aside for them, and, hence, there are no casinos,
visitor's centers, or indigenous craft stores. At present, the Houma
Nation is trying to have the Federal decision over-turned. The have
united as a nation, writing a constitution and electing leaders.

Because of illiteracy in the past, the Elders, unwittingly, signed away
lands first to trappers, then land speculators with the discovery of gas
and oil in the 1930s. (Today, the natives are often required to pay fees
to hunt and trap on what was ''their'' land.)

Illiteracy is still present among the adults and, in some villages,
there are no telephones, electricity, or roads. Socially, and physically
isolated in the bayous, many of their old ways have been retained:
fishermen casting nets from flat--- bottom pirogues, cockfighting,
traiteurs (healers), palmetto baskets, Spanish-moss dolls, and the
Indian children growing up learning French. Many of the adults make
their living off the land as trappers, alligator hunters, fin fishermen,
shrimpers, crabbers, and oystermen.

![](media/image3.pct){width="3.75in" height="2.1243055555555554in"}

These same bayou livelihoods are the main source of income for the Cajun
people of south Louisiana. The Cajuns of today identify strongly with
their French forebearers. Their story goes back to 1524, when an Italian
explorer, Verrazano, applied the name "Arcadia" to the north Atlantic
coast. (Later maps show the name changing to Acadie and designated as to
what is now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and parts of Quebec and Maine.)

French explorations in 1604, with Samuel Champlain as the cartographer,
searched for trading sites to meet with the Native Americans. Champlain
mapped and named sites along the coasts of present---day Maine, New
Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.

During this same era, fighting between Protestants and Catholics existed
in Europe. In Loudun, France, 170 miles southwest of Paris, the
upheavals were particularly savage, compounded by foraging mercenaries,
famine, epidemics, and even witch---hunts. In 1632, some three hundred
Catholic peasants from Loudun left for a new life in North America. They
settled in present-day Nova Scotia, and their colony was named La Cadie,
from the Micmac tribal word for "Land of Plenty." (Had Verrazano
received this word from the Natives in 1524?) The descendants of these
settlers became known as Acadians. (Today, several million people can
say that they are descended from these original pilgrims.) The word
later became Acadia because it was so similar to Arcadia, the Greek land
of milk and honey.

These French settlers were successful as farmers and fishermen for more
than a century. Their population increased from around 400 in 1670, to
nearly 900 in 1686. Their agricultural economy was based on cultivation
of tidal marshlands reclaimed by an extensive system of dikes.
Unfortunately, the Acadians of the expanding area were caught in the
middle of a colonial power struggle.

In 1713, by the Treaty of Utrecht, Acadia became a British possession
and was named Nova Scotia. The Treaty allowed the Acadians the option of
moving or remaining on their land as British subjects. Problems arose
when the Acadians refused to swear to an oath of allegiance to the
British crown unless it recognized their freedom of religion, their
neutrality in case of war, and their right to emigrate. The qualified
oaths were accepted by Governor Philipps, and thirty years of peace
followed. However, the French were still present in the area, holding
Cape Breton Island and Prince Edward Island. Added to this was the
wariness of New England Protestants toward the nearby Acadian Catholics.

After the French and Indian War, England decided to settle the "problem"
of the Acadians once and for all. Because they would not sign an
unqualified oath of allegiance to Great Britain, they were to be
expelled from Nova Scotia and dispersed among the British colonies to
the south. On September 5, 1755, all Acadian men and boys were
imprisoned in the church at Grand--- Pre and told that all but their
personal goods were to be forfeited to the Crown and that they, and
their families, were to be loaded onto ships. Homes and crops were
burned, while cattle were confiscated or killed.

![](media/image4.jpeg){width="3.6590277777777778in"
height="2.4090277777777778in"}

Aboard the barely seaworthy ships transporting the Acadians, the
hardships included disease and poor nutrition. (As an example, one ship
started with 417 Acadians, but arrived in South Carolina with 210
alive.) The Grand Derangement dispersed the Acadians to some East Coast
colonies, the Caribbean, Britain, and France. The small group reaching
New Orleans found a rich land welcoming French speaking, Roman Catholic
settlers. During the following years, word about this new homeland
spread among the scattered refugees. As time passed they were still
welcomed by the Spanish, who saw them as a buffer against British
encroachment. By 1790, more than 4,000 Acadians occupied the Louisiana
wetlands. Some Acadians expanded beyond the Atchafalaya Basin onto the
prairies, which were well suited to cattle raising, rice farming, and
other cash crops. Today, nearly a million descendants of those first
arrivals call themselves Cajuns. However, they mainly live in a triangle
of twenty-two parishes, with the Gulf as the base, and the apex in
central Louisiana near Alexandria.

![](media/image5.pct){width="3.0in" height="2.275in"}

As the decades passed, the Indian and French speaking cultures of South
Louisiana integrated with other groups of Spanish, German, "Kaintucks"
from up the Mississippi River, West Africans (arriving as slaves), and
free people of color from the Caribbean. Today's Cajun culture resulted
from the blending of these many immigrants and Native Americans into the
dominant French culture.

The most recent addition of immigrants to Southwest Louisiana is the
thousands of Vietnamese fishing people. Soon after the end of the
Vietnam War, refugee families began to settle along the state's coast,
and they were followed by a second group in the late 1970s. When the
first refugees had reached the West coast of the United States, they had
heard about fishing opportunities in the bayous of South Louisiana,
where many of the residents were Catholic and spoke French.

More than twenty-five years of hard work has brought increasing
prosperity to the Vietnamese fishermen, but it has brought little
comradeship with the Cajun fishermen and their families. Although
arriving two hundred years apart, both groups had fled savage wars in
colonial occupied lands. Today, it is as if they "inhabit a parallel
universe." (p. 201)

Unlike the Houma Indians and the Cajuns, this area has not become a
"home" for the Vietnamese people. It is their hope that their hard work
will give their children educational opportunities that will lead them
to "white-collar salaries and status."(p. 298) This will give the older
generation the opportunity to leave the hard work of fishing and to be
cared for by their children, or to return to Vietnam with the fruits of
their labor.

This is in direct contrast to the attitudes of the many Cajun residents
for whom it has been home for centuries. They are aware of the shrinking
wetlands, "But where are we gonna go? Dis is where we belong. Right
here. We'll stay till de land's all gone and den maybe dat'll be de end
of us too." (p. 200)

With the loss of 25 to 35 square miles of Louisiana wetlands per year,
this wonderful area must be saved, or America might lose up to forty
percent of its total seafood catch. Cities, towns, and farmland will be
at the mercy of increasing hurricane damage, and the multifaceted Cajun
culture will need to leave its homeland.

**Websites for more information:**

Acadian and Cajun Genealogy and History

<http://www.acadian-cajun.com/>

Who were the Houma Indians

<http://sdsd.essortment.com/houmaindiansna_rmrv.htm>

Louisiana History-Internet materials for the classroom

<http://www.louisiana101.com/hotlinks.html>

All quotations are from [Bayou Farewell]{.underline} by Mike Tidwell.
New York, Vintage Departures, 2003.

Use of graphics in this document complies with educational Fair Use
provisions of U. S. Copyright laws. Graphics added by Will Shaw

## Addendum: LANGUAGE AND FOLKLORE

Close to one-half of the almost one million Cajun (a corruption of
Acadian) people in South Louisiana still speak, or can understand, Cajun
French. This is a distinct dialect based on Old French with additions
from the Indian, Spanish, English, and several West African languages.

When the Acadians arrived in Louisiana, they had only their clothes,
tools, and cooking utensils, but they possessed a determination to
survive in this new land. There were many adjustments to be made --- the
subtropical climate, new plants and animals as a food source, as well as
strange customs and superstitions. As a result, their language was
challenged.

After all that they had endured to reach their new home, the Cajuns had
become adaptive and ingenious. If the old ways worked, they were
retained. If not, they were changed or abandoned. New words were added
to their vocabulary, customs, and the themes of their stories. All of
these elements combined with their Acadian traditions to create a
dialect and folklore that is a unique part of American culture.

An example of this adaptation is found in the story of "Bouki, Rabbit,
and Possum," and its similarity to "The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story"
collected by Joel Chandler Harris in [Uncle Remus. His Songs and His
Sayings]{.underline}. In the Louisiana variant, the trickster rabbit
steals water from a well that he has not helped to dig.

Ghost stories, animal tales fairy tales, and comic folk tales are all a
part of Cajun folklore. Now-a-days, young people usually tell their
stories in English with a smattering of Cajun French.

Words often encountered in the stories might include:

beaucoup - a lot diable - devil

bon - good fais-dodo -- all night dance

Carencro - buzzard mon -- my

More words and phrases may be found in the glossary o\~
[Calun]{.underline} [Folktales]{.underline} by J.J. Reneaux. Published
in Little Rock by August House Publishers, Inc., 1992