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a ACADIAN REBIRTH article
Cultures
of Acadiana |
Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, April 27, 1999
Fletcher speech describes modern Acadians
SLI president memorialized Cajuns at 'Evangeline' centennial celebration
by Jim Bradshaw
In October 1947 the president of Southwestern Louisiana Institute (USL today) was a featured speaker at an celebration by the Cambridge Historical Society marking the centennial of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Evangeline."
The theme of Fletcher's talk was "The Acadians in Louisiana Today." Here are excerpts from that address.
In that Eden of Louisiana where dwell the sons and daughters of the Acadian exiles, the name of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow has become an established part of their most cherished heritage.
The chronicler of the wanderings of their fathers after their deportation for Nova Scotia until they reached a haven among their kith and kin in French Louisiana has been adopted by them as not only their favorite poet, but also one of their greatest historians.
I hope that each ... of you will ... visit the Acadians in Louisiana. I know that you would make every effort to come to their land if I had the words today to describe properly the beauty and charm of my native state. I am sure that if you made such a visit you would realize that the Acadian wanderers have now been amply rewarded for the trials of their deportation and the long journey southward with all of the hardships which they endured.
Nearly 200 years have elapsed since the Acadians came to Louisiana. ... Yet today the descendants of that group live in Southwest Louisiana much the same as their fathers did in Nova Scotia, adhering still to many of the old customs and traditions and holding to their quaint language.
Today is harvest time in the fertile fields along the bayous and among the prairies of Southwest Louisiana. If you were to ride along one of the highways in the bayou country tonight, you would smell the sweet odor of freshly cut sugar can and in countless factories you would see the lights gleam as the cane is crushed and its juice boiled to make sugar.
There are a few of the primitive syrup mills left in which horse-drawn crushers are used, but the greater part of the cane is processed in modern sugar factories which have equipment that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In the western part of the Acadian country where grazed great herds of cattle during the early days of Basil, the blacksmith (in Longfellow's poem), and his fellow Acadians, there today thrives the valuable Louisiana rice crop. While the cane crop was developed altogether by the French in the alluvial regions, the rice crop was first grown commercially about 1884 on the prairies of Southwest Louisiana by emigrants from the midwest.
At first the Acadians resented the breaking up of grazing land, but today these same Acadians have become the leaders in rice growing, and in the rice territory many persons who bear the Anglo-Saxon names of the Yankee emigrants of 60 years ago are as Acadian as the natives.
There women are as fair as Longfellow describes the Acadian maiden of 17 summers, an where the men are well-favored, gentle and kind, it is impossible for a staid Yankee farmer, whether he be of English, Scotch, or Irish stock to rear his children in the Acadian section and not have grandchildren that are true Acadians.
The Acadian girl is not only fair to look upon and sweet to be around, but is also superior as a wife and as a mother. However gay during girlhood, she becomes at marriage the most decorous of wives, with her entire attention centered upon her home and family.
In the land of the Acadians, big families are still in vogue, and what real happiness and joy is it to be found in the Acadian home where, with few exceptions, the children are like that stairs in a great staircase, one following right after the other.
Holidays and feast days, which are numerous, are times of family reunions and rejoicing, and how these fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and even distant cousins love one another and with joy they gather around festive board on such gala occasions.
There are few drunkards among the Acadians, but wine is an integral part of all such holiday feasts. The Acadian does not gulp his liquor as the Anglo-Saxon for the effect, but sips and laughs gaily chats with his kinsmen and his friends, one small glass lasting for an hour or more of such festivities.
The wine for merry occasions may be purchased, but in many cases it is made in the home. Blackberries, the flower of the elderberries, dewberries, and many other native fruits are used for this purpose. A favorite drink for winter is cherry bounce, which is made by soaking the small native wild cherry in sugar and later thinning this thick syrup with bourbon.
The Acadian, like all people of French descent, in a connoisseur of good food and tends to be a rather heavy meat eater. The Acadian woman, however, is very thrifty and able to make much from little. During the winter the main dish may be a heavy soup which can be made from a soup bone or a small piece of a cheap cut of meat with a so-called soup bunch consisting of only a carrot, onion or leek, and a few leaves of some green vegetable.
On feast days, mutton, pork, beef, chicken, goose, or duck may be the main dish. In some of the more prosperous homes three or more kinds of meat may be served at one meal. On Friday and fast days, shrimp, fish, both fresh water and salt, crabs, and oysters form the source of the main dish.
These fishes, delicately flavored, as only an Acadian cook can season, with bay leaves, garlic, and the different types of onion and pepper which form an integral part of every Acadian pantry, will compare favorably with the cooking of any of the world's finest cooks.
The Acadian men are usually as skillful cooks as the women and enjoy nothing so much as preparing their specialties over a camp fire. One who has not enjoyed a Good Friday fish dinner prepared and served by an Acadian man along one of the numerous bayous of French Louisiana has missed the finest in the way of food.
The dish may be courtboullion, a fish soup prepared with a roux of flour and water gravy as its base, or the more sophisticated bouillabaisse in which special cuts of fish are prepared and placed in a cast iron vessel, together with a layer of green pepper, another of fish, a third perhaps of tomatoes, and so on until the pot is filled. This is then covered and placed upon a fire of coals where the contents are cooked for hours in their own juices. It is delightful to sit on a sward of green clover in early spring and smell the delicate odor while the pot is boiling for some two or three hours. One can enjoy no finer meal than a dish of bouillabaisse, with a crusty loaf of French bread toasted brown with a glass of red wine, and even though the Acadian who serves it may never have been out of his native parish ... he has enjoyed a way of life that few others know.
In Louisiana ... as a group, the Acadians are an influence for good. Where people have not been educated, where ignorance is still too prevalent, especially in the older generation, demagogues are prone to rule. However, the average Acadian is a man of high ideals and, when properly informed, will choose the way of right and honor.
If one were to list the leaders of the state who have been the most honorable in their public service, men who have had integrity to stand for right and the courage to carry out their convictions, one would find the names of the Acadian leaders in the forefront.
It has been my good fortune to serve as a teacher for 28 years in the state college which is located in the Acadian section of Louisiana. I have come to know and respect and love the Acadian citizens of my state. A large majority of the students of that college, which today has an enrollment of 3,500, are descendants of the Acadian exiles.
On that beautiful Louisiana campus dotted with live oaks, pines, camellias, and azaleas, one may occasionally hear the patois as it was spoken in far-off Nova Scotia, and there abides still among these children the gracious courtesy and genuine friendliness of old Acadia. On that campus everyone speaks to everyone else when passing and strangers coming there for the first timer are impressed with the friendliness and graciousness of the people.
During his early days in Louisiana the Acadian youth was taught by French teachers, textbooks in French being used. All books and newspapers of the people too, were in that same language. By the time of the Civil War, however, the ties with the mother country had been severed to such an extent that it was impossible to secure the French publications. There was a long period from about 1861 to the beginning of the present century when education of any kind was lacking in the South.
Even after the Anglo-Saxon peoples had begun to recover form the poverty and ignorance of the post civil war period, Southern Louisiana made a little or no effort to develop public education. Today, however, that section is making greater progress educationally than any other part of the state.
Those of use who are in educational work realize that much, much more progress is needed., but if one of you had visited Acadian Louisiana 25 years ago and had not returned until today I believe that you too would be greatly impressed.
Those of us who are responsible for the training of the Acadians are eager for them to have as excellent an opportunity for education as the children of any section. We don not, however, feel that standardization of these people into an accepted mold for Americans if good either for them or for the nation.
There are those of us who are working through the schools, through the colleges, and through civic clubs to retain the beautiful Acadian language and the delightful Acadian customs. We feel that it would be a tragedy indeed to allow Heberts to become Herberts, LeBlancs to become Leblanks, or Sonniers, Swinneys. WE know that in Acadian Louisiana exists a basic culture and patriotism which is today found in too few places and is genuinely needed in our nation.