Tuesday, January 31, 2017: Acadiana, Louisiana

I stopped first at the National Park Service museum about the French Canadians who were exiled from Nova Scotia, with many ending up in Louisiana.  Jack and I had visited the reciprocal sites about the Acadians in Nova Scotia when we were there a few years ago, learning the true history behind Longfellow's Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie.

Although some Acadians escaped to the forest and managed to avoid capture by the British and stayed in Nova Scotia, most of the Acadians were deported.  The early deportees were shipped to the American colonies, families split up and dumped ashore at various east coast ports where they spent years living in old warehouses, provided for by local goverments who were fearful to let these French Catholics loose among their populations.  Over the next few years, most were shipped back to Europe and fully one half died on the ships from small pox and typhus.  Eventually, Spain supported giving their fellow Catholics a home in Louisiana where they were given land.  Some settled on rivers living life as farmers, some on the plains as ranchers, and some in the swamps making a living catching alligators for leather and muskrats for fur.  Acadians became known as Cajuns in English and they spoke an old French dialect that was described as the equivalent of someone talking to us in Shakespearean English.  They are known for their food, their music and festivals.

After the museum, I toured a Cajun village called Vermillionville.  Interesting home construction using wood timber framing and then a combination of mud and grasses/spanish moss as packing/plaster.  Chimneys left the wood lathe in place so they could climb up the chimney for repairs.  The upstairs was reached via stairway on the porch and is where the male children slept, while the female children all slept in one room next to the parents.

An early Acadian home.  Note the chimney, the outside staircase, and on the left shows the mud base under the paintings

The Acadians that settled in swamps lived by boat, these were from Native American designs

The Cajuns invented the two on the right. the middle was a stand-up rowboat and the right one was for lots of capacity.

Outside stiarcase to the upstairs bedroom for the male children

Inside of the church

The church

After early house construction, they learned to put the homes up on platforms (initially of cyprus).

Typical Acadian chair, with leather seats, often with the hair left on

Ferry used to cross small bayous

A wall decoration in the home of a well-to-do Cajun.  The outside was made of beads - unusual and beuatiful

Afterwards, I took US Route 90 southeast to New Orleans where I got a campsite a few miles north of downtown.  Weather continues to be gorgeous, 75 and sunny.