The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-08-29
Printed sy Special arrangement Copyrighted 1856. /
LOUP- GAROU
A Story of the Gulf Swamps.
BY MAURICE rHoMpsoN,
dathor o. Legend Of the Sdlila = "Hodsons Hide
Out, 'Hoosier Mosaics, - At Lore's
Ertremes.'' ETC.

Secrets of which naturalists have not dreamed
Turk IN the great dark swamps Of the South.
Mystery Is always fascinating, and never more
30 than when it is hedged with physical barriers.
De Soto and Ponce De Leon were not the first
men to feelthe strange influence of those gloomy.
vine-tangled and moss matted forests, whose
trees stand ankle-deep in stagnant water. and
whose very sounds are like audible expressions
Of silence. The red men had their legends from
the remotest sources, connecting the swamps
with the most picturesque creations OF
their fancy and imagination In fact,
1t is doubtful if any person who has
spent much time in the low-country of the
South has quite escaped a very definite impress
sion of the weird influence exerted by the gloom,
the solemnity, the silence and the tangled in
tricacy of those plashy and dismal jungles of
live-oak. magnolia, cypress, cane and Spanish
MOSS The effect on the imagination Is not ele-
waiting, nor is it, exactly speaking. depressing
At first one Is repealed by the fat, heavy mo-
notony, then follows recognition of the awful
sketch of mystery outlined in the shadows, the
bewilderiug tangles and the funereal depths Of
those oss-hung asles. and finally ones magma
ton begins to find the stuff of which strange
dreams are made. material as insubstantial and
airy as the blue film on the mountain. but as
gloomy and dismal as the swamps themselves.
found it very interesting to study with minute
care the effect this swamp influence has had
upon persons who have been born and reared
within the shadows of those iungles. There is
marked difference between the cracker of
the pine woods and the man Of the swamps.
The latter shows in his hollow cheeks in his
Ballow withered skin and in his pathetically
melancholy eyes the strain of lifelong fear
the worry of gloomy anticipation. am quite
sure, however, that the swamp-denizen is but
Dbscurely conscious, if conscious at all, in most
dread; and yet even the children, playing in
cotton slipped freedom on the 'knees" of the
cypress trees carry unmistakable traces of tie
hereditary swamp gloom in their bloodlass
faces
But it was upon the negro slave under the old
regime that those scowlng and malefcent swamp
jungles wrought their most peculiar effects, and
che so-called creole negroes were the especial
victims of superstition which, like some sub
tie malaria, crept by night out of those damp
and almost impenetrable meshes OF trees, vines,
moss water-weeds and suffocating cane-brakes
to hover about the plantation cabins. 1t is true
enough to say that those negroes were sunny
natured and merry-hearted; but it is quite as
true to record the prevailing and persistent
huskiness and desolateness, so to speak, of their
superstition. Their songs were light, the laugh
ter as gay as it was unrestrained; but song and
laughter died on the edge of the swamp. The
quill blower that Pan of the African race, was
upon every low-country plantation, and his
''quills," as the cane-joints were called
came from the brakes along the slug
gish swamp rivers; bpt the crude syrinx was
never able to quite whistle away the fear of the
jungle by night, Notwithstanding the mad love
of music, of even that simple Sort burning in
the half-savage breasts of the slaves. This Pan
pipe Of the plantation gave peculiar semi
classical touch to negro lie. 1t was, too, sing
nlarly constant element wnere every other guam
tity was variable. The same melody-sketches
were f1uted from Bayou Teche to the bottoms"
Of the Savannah; but each plantation had its
separate and sacred swamp superstition, if
within the great swamp-belt of the coast and
especially had each Creole plantation its legend
lin patois musical and picturesque of some
local prsternatural phenomenon connected with
buS OdEk0BJ bduRlcS VI tuo uodE6SC SWdmpt anu,
TO my mind. att east, this patois, along with the
touch Of French realism it always bears, sug
gests charming departure from the broader
and coarser negro nature. Still, on the
other hand, it is true that the creole
low-country negro is in many ways the inferior
of the up-country one. He is less civilized more
savage in his appetite. possessed of coarser pas
sions more easily influenced by external things.
Perhaps it was the influence Of the swamps that
wrought this difference between the up-country
negro and his cousin of the low country. This
must have been the case, for all the slaves sent
znto the far south at last came to the same level,
either in themselves or in their offspring. The
shadows of the swamps got into their magma
tons. The masters, especially those of pro-
vencal origin, were touched with the same faint
of superstition Indeed, the slaves may have
caught it from their owners, in q certain degree,
ar the reverse may have been the case, for
even the speech of the negro had begun to
rerceptby effect the purity Of that of his
master, before the advent of freedom. I
mention provencal planters, because there were
a few OF them all around the gulf coast. and es-
pecially was their number noticeable in the
southeastern angle Of the Mississippi In the palm
lest days of slavery. or about the time when the
feud between the CoupcourtS and the DE Bleus,
two old and mighty families, at the highest
pitch of bitterness and deadliness. Since the
close of the war many of the old plantations in
that great swamp region have been wholly de-
serted. and nothing remains to tell whore they
once were save young growth of close-set trees
and the scattered ruins of mansions and negro
quarters. The De Blieu and Coupcourt feud
ended in the year 1866, just the great storm OF
war had at last ceased in the up-country. It
ended very strangely and, as befitted the predca-
snent, with a singularly dramatic coup &c main
In the very heart of the swamp known as the
Eerre Aux Loups Garous
II.
It does not matter SO far as this story goes,
when, or Why, or how the Coupcourt-De Blieu
feud began. Suffice 1t to say that during the de-
cade Immediately preceding the one crisis that
abr dascriha no YEAR rassad rzitho..4