Cajun country
March 10-11th
Our morning began with a visit to St. Martinville, a village that lies on the Bayou Teche in the heart of Cajun country. The journey to get there from the park involved following the levee back to a crossroads that took us through some grassy pastures. St. Martinville is famous because it was the location of a fictional account by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of a young Acadian girl, Evangeline who had been separated from her love, Gabriel when the Acadians were expelled from their lands in Canada. In the story, they were reunited under an oak tree in St. Martinville. As this story and the silent film that was made much later made the Acadian saga known to the world, St. Martinville has become a center of Acadian history and culture. Through the exhibits at the Longfellow-Evangeline historical site and at the the Acadian museum in the village, we learned about the amazing story of this displaced people who we know now as Cajuns.
The Acadians were French settlers in what is now Nova Scotia. When the British gained the territory from the French, they expelled the Acadians from their lands sending them into exile. Some were sent to the American colonies, some to Britain and some to France. They weren’t accepted in any of these places and dreamed of getting back their lands in Acadia. Eventually Louisiana, which was under Spanish control at the time agreed to let them have land and gave them tools. There was a mutual interest for the Spanish who wanted to populate the land. The Acadians, with help from the Native Americans, cultivated the land and raised cattle. They soon developed a successful community and other displaced Acadians joined them. Over time, they became known as the “Cajuns”- the English translation/pronunciation of the original French name. They continued speaking the French language, to which they added Native American words they learned to better describe their new environment and foods. Of course they also developed their famous twangy music (heavy on the fiddle and accordion.)
Everywhere we traveled in Cajun country, people were happy when Fabien told them he was from France. When we tried to speak French with the locals, we both had a difficult time with the accent and some of the strange expressions and grammar that they used. We listened to the Cajun music station for several days and would work together to try to understand the lyrics…admittingly, I didn’t always understand the English lyrics either.
We also had some interesting culinary adventures- we visited the McIlhenny Tobasco Factory which we could smell from about a mile away and the Konriko Rice Mill, the oldest working Rice mill in the country. The rice mill was fascinating. Since it’s on the register of historic places, they cannot replace any of the machinery, so they are using machinery from the beginning of the 20th century and using a sewing machine to sew the bags together.
The following morning before checking out of the campground, we decided to go explore the bayou by kayak. We spent a couple of hours exploring – we saw a few turtles and a blue heron, but probably the most interesting sighting was not of the natural kind- it was of equipment used to drill for oil.
Next stop: Lafayette and Cajun music
Tags: BIG TRIP 2011, In English 2005-2006, Louisiana
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