|
an ACADIAN EXILE article
Cultures
of Acadiana |
Lafayette (La) Daily Advertiser. March 30,1999
Moutons were among the first Acadians to reach Louisiana
by Jim Bradshaw
According to their family history, three Mouton brothers, Salvador, Louis, and Charles, the sons of Jean-Jacques Mouton, and their nephew Jean-Diogene Mouton, were the first Acadians to reach Louisiana. Others say that only Salvador, Jean-Diogene, and their families arrived first. According to each account, they left Acadie in 1754, during the year of turmoil before the deportation, and were not exiled with their countrymen. Records do show that Salvador, Louis, and nephew Jean were living on the Mississippi River in St. James Parish by 1766. Charles was also there by 1777. Two of Salvador's sons, Jean and Marin, migrated to the Attakapas region in the 1770s or early 1780s. Both of then\m settled along Vermilion Bayou on the Carencro area.
Jean Mouton eventually claimed several tracts of land in that area and even as far as the Mermentau River. His land donation for a church and courthouse formed the basis for creation of Vermilionville, which became Lafayette.
Jean's brother, Marin, in addition to his holdings in the Carencro area, obtained land along the lower Vermilion River in what in now Lafayette and Vermilion parishes.
he first Acadian settlers came to Louisiana by foot and by raft, directly from Canada, walking along the Great Lakes to the upper reaches of the Mississippi River, than hiking and rafting down to Louisiana. They settled on the west bank in the Mississippi River in what is today St. James Parish near the home of Mathais Frederick, a German who was probably the first white settler of the region.
Other Acadian families who followed the Moutons to St. James in the years after the dispersion were named Bergeron, Saunier, LeBlanc, Bourgeois, Guilbeau, Poirier, Roy, Guidry, Cormier, Martin, Arceneaux.
By 1770, the Acadians spread up and down the Mississippi River. The St. James militia roster of that year list 104 names and all but 10 of them were Acadian,
The settlement they formed became known as St. Jaques de Cabahannocer (St. James of Cabonocey), for a church built by Jaques Cantrelle. He was not Acadian. He came to Louisiana directly from France,. But the little church named for him is remembered as the first church of the Cajuns in Louisiana.
When he first came to Louisiana, Cantrelle settled in the Natchez country north of Baton Rouge. But in 1729, an Indian uprising practically wiped out the settlement. Cantrelle escaped by hiding in his corn shed. His wife was killed when he left her hiding in the woods while he returned to their cabin to fetch a few possessions. He was one of only 20 survivors of the massacre.
Cantrelle resettled near New Orleans, in what is now Kenner, married a second time, then moved to New Orleans in 1736, becoming prominent in social and civic affairs. He stayed in the city until 1763, when he and his son-in-law, Nicholas Verret, moved to plantations they had been building in St. James Parish. Cantrelle named his plantation Cabahannocer, from the name given a nearby stream by the Choctow Indians. Linguists say it means "clearing where the ducks land."
At Cabahannocer, Cantrelle developed an indigo plantation and he prospered. He became commandant of the St. James post, made friends with the Indians, welcomed the Acadians, and built a dynasty and a church in which he was eventually buried.
About the time of the Civil War, huge sugar and cotton plantations turned this stretch of the Mississippi River into a prosperous part of what was called the "Golden Coast of Louisiana," the richest stretch of real-estate in ante-bellum America.
But it had simpler beginnings. It was know originally as the Acadian Coast, where the Acadian exiles began to rebuild their lives in a much humbler fashion.