|
a ACADIAN REBIRTH article
Cultures
of Acadiana |
Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, April 27, 1999
Planters didn't like Acadian Influence on Slaves
Cajun land commanded high price just to get them to move away
by Jim Bradshaw
In 1853, when Fredrick Law Olmstead traveled through Louisiana, many of the Acadian farmers had been bought out or pushed out of lands along the Mississippi River by sugar planters. Olmstead gave a brief account of planters' attitudes in his book "A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States," published in 1856.
Olmstead, who distinguished himself both as a journalist and landscape architect, made a point of contrasting the quiet manners and apparent gentleness of the rural French with the blustery behavior of the Anglos.
He recorded: "At one corner of Mr. R's plantation, there was a hamlet of Acadians... about a dozen small houses or huts, built of wood or clay in the old French peasant style. The residents owned small farms on which they raised a little corn and rice, but Mr. R described them as lazy vagabonds doing time but little work, and spending much time in shooting, fishing, and play. He wanted very much to buy all their land and get them to move away. He had already bought out some of them, and had made arrangements to get hold of some of the rest. He was willing to pay them two or three times as much as their property was actually worth, to get them to move off. As fast as he got possession, he destroyed their houses and gardens, removed their fences and trees, and brought all their land into his cane plantation.
"Some of them were mechanics. One was a very good mason, and he employed them in building his sugar works and refinery; but he would be glad to get rid of them all, and should then depend entirely slave mechanics - to these he had several already and he could buy more when he needed them.
"Why did he so dislike to have these poor people living near him?" Olmstead asked. "Because, he said, they demoralized his negroes. The slave seeing then living in apparent comfort, without much poverty and without steady labor, could not help thinking that it was not necessary for men to work so hard as they themselves were obliged to; that if they were free they would not need work. Besides, the intercourse of these people with the negroes was not favorable to good discipline. They would get the negroes to do them little services, and would pay them with luxuries which he did not wish them to have. It was better that negroes never saw anybody off their own plantation; that they had no intercourse with other white men than their owner or overseer; especially, it was best that they should not see white men who did not command respect, and whom they did not always feel to be superior to themselves, and able to command them."
When he moved to the Teche country to the west, Olmstead found that the contrast in lifestyles extended not only between the Acadians and les Americans, but also between the Acadians and the wealthier French Creole planters.
"The lowest class lives much from hand to mouth, and are often in extreme destitution," he wrote. "This was more particularly the case with those who lived on the river; those who resided on the prairie were seldom so much reduced. The former now live only on those parts of the river to which the backswamp approached nearest; this is, where there is but little valuable land, that can be appropriated for plantation purposes. They almost all reside in communities, very closely housed in poor cabins. If there is any considerable number of them, there is to be always found, among the cluster of their cabins, a church, and a billiard and gambling room - and the latter is always occupied and play going on.
"The women were often handsome, stately, and graceful, and ordinarily, exceedingly kind; but languid, and incredibly indolent, unless there was a bal, or some excitement to engage them. Under excitement, there were splendidly animated, impetuous, and eccentric. One moment they seemed possessed by a devil, and the next by an angel.
"The Creoles are inveterate gamblers - rich and poor alike. The majority of the wealthy Creoles... do nothing to improve their estate; and are very apt to live beyond their income. They borrow and play, and keeping borrowing to play, as long as they can; but they will not part with their land, and especially their home, as long as they can help it, by any sacrifice."