Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, July 29, 1997

Atchafalaya Basin is a world set apart

Wetland covers nearly a million acres

by Jim Bradshaw

The verdant wetland stretches nearly 100 miles from north to south. It holds nearly a million acres of hardwood swamp, thousands of little lakes, mile upon mile of bayou and canal. All of them are fed by the Atchafalaya River, one of the deepest and swiftest rivers in the world. It was named in the Choctaw tongue, hacha (river) falaia (long).

Like everything else in Acadiana's landscape, it is a relatively new river basin. It first began to form around 900 A.D., when the ancient Mississippi River moved from one channel to another. Natural levees formed along the river to trap its yearly overflow and create a densely forested place with a large lake in the middle. The river's flow, or lack of it, has built and reshaped the place since.

It is a rugged, rich, isolated place, not so very different from when William Darby saw it in 1815. He described its "awful lonesomeness," the "windings and intricate bendings" of its waterways, the "rich green of forest trees ...rendered venerable by ...long trains of...Spanish moss." It is a place, he said, where "the imagination fleets back towards the birth of nature, when a new creation started..."

An anonymous writer described it in 1842:

"The huge trunks of the cypress trees, which stand four or five feet asunder, shot up to a height of fifty feet, entirely free from branches, which then, however, spread out at right angles to the stem, making the trees appear like gigantic umbrellas, and covering the whole morass with an impenetrable roof, through which not even a sunbeam could find passage. Within this realm could be found thousands, tens of thousands, of birds and reptiles, alligators, enormous bullfrogs, night owls, anhingas, herons (all of whose dwellings were in the mud of the swamp or its leaky roof, (and) now lifted up their voices bellowing, hooting, shrieking, and groaning. Bursting forth from the obscene retreat in which they had hitherto lain hidden, the alligators raised their hideous snouts of the green coating of the swamp, gnashing their teeth, and straining toward us, while the owls and other birds circled round our heads, flapping and striking us with their wings as they passed."

There are at least 300 species of birds in this swamp. The nation's largest colony of American woodcock winters here, next to 50,000 egrets, huge flocks of ibises, anhingas, and herons. Some say the ivory-bilied woodpecker, which many people believe to be extinct, may still live in the basin's farthest reaches. Bald eagles nest here, and other endangered species: Bachman's warbler, the Florida panther, the peregrine falcon. And others, not endangered: black bear, bobcat, nutria, mink, fox, muskrat, beaver, otter, raccoon. Alligators abound. So do 65 other species of reptiles and amphibians: salamanders, frogs, lizards, snakes, turtles. There are 90 sorts of fish...crawfish, crabs, shrimp.

Native Americans lived in the basin a long time before Europeans got here, but were nearly all gone by the time white men wandered in.

In 1789, two unnamed Spanish explorers met only two hunting parties. Fifty years later, in 1819, James Cathcart. who traveled extensively in the area, found only one small settlement on the fringe of the basin. There are accounts of roving groups in the area as late as 1850, and several Chitimacha families lived above Bayou Chene even later.

As few in numbers and as dispersed as these Native Americans were, the history they left on the ground helped the first Europeans. Old farm lands used by the Chitimacha showed that there were some relatively dry areas that could be planted. Indian mounds and middens were used as homesites, and as cemeteries (the one at Bayou Sorrel as late as 1960).

Not so long ago, travelers crossed the Atchafalaya Basin only through a maze of waterways that stretched the route from Plaquemine to St. Martinville to 150 miles or more. Bayou Jacob, a small bayou paralleling Bayou Plaquemine for much of its length, was the first route used. In 1770, Bayou Plaquemine was cleared and deepened and it became the major route. It was the best way at the time, but it was still slow and treacherous.

It took Thomas Nicholls five days to travel the 100 miles from New Orleans to Plaquemine in 1805. From there he took a boat to Butte la Rose, and went from there by ox wagon to Bayou Teche near St. Martinville. In all, he traveled 200 miles.

Another anonymous writer crossed the basin by steamboat in 1830, and recorded this:

"As we passed up the Mississippi... to (Plaquemine) bayou, our steamer edged along... a huge drift of stuff, lodged at the junction... and, above this... was another ...raft...threatening as a nest of snakes. Between these two rafts the water draws in from the Mississippi with great force... Our boat... passed...until her bows were nearly opposite... the upper raft, when all of a sudden...she turned her...snout towards the opening between the rafts, and in a few moments...plunged into one of the most crooked, uncivilized bayous that nature ever invented. It is so crooked that a water snake would be likely to lose the...channel and run into the woods... At some point one would suppose the boat...was bound to run straight into the woods, when, suddenly, the channel takes a short crook, and the waters roll around a point, and the steamboat saves her bacon and moves on."

Neither Nicholls' trip nor the steamboat's could be recreated today. The basin is constantly changing. There's too much water between Butte la Rose and Bayou Teche for an ox cart. When Nicholls made his trip, the Atchafalaya was not nearly the powerful river it is today. It was held back by a huge log jam until just before the Civil War. When the jam was cleared it became dangerous in high water, barely passable when the water was low.

Settlement of the swamp by greater numbers of French speakers and Anglo Americans begun shortly after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The two groups moved into the swampland about the same time, but for different reasons, in different places, and had little to do with each other.

The sale of Louisiana to the fledgling United States quickly filled up the good "front lands" on the east side of the basin in the vicinity of the Mississippi River with ambitious Americans who pushed the small Cajun farmers from good lands, forcing them to retreat into the swamp to make a living.

The Acadians didn't resist that much. They couldn't afford to build the levees and roads required by the law from frontholders. Also, they hated debt and sold their land to get out of it . And, third, the poor but independent Acadians were considered a bad influence on the plantation slaves, and plantation owners were willing to buy their land at almost any price, just to move the Acadians out.

Most of the French-speaking swamp dwellers lived as subsistence farmers on higher, dryer natural levees of the Atchafalaya River and on the brule (places cleared by burning) and coteaux (high places) of the swamp. French-speakers settled at Stephensville, Butte la Rose, Bayou Pigeon, Pierre Part, and along Bayou Plaquemines and Grand River. English-speakers dominated the vicinity of Bayou Chene.

In the wetter areas, a settlement in the swamo was little more than a group of elevated homes and outbuildings set close to the bayou. There were usually small gardens behind the homes to supply enough produce for the family. Communities of any size usually had a general store which was important for the staples it could provide (travel to the outside world being difficult and dangerous) and as the social center of the community.

The swamp dwellers (petits habitants de marecage) made their living as fishermen, trappers, hunters, moss gatherers, frog giggers, beekeepers, and in any other way they could pluck the basin's bounty.

There were some crude trails and roads along ridges and through higher parts of the basin during the early settlement days, but floods began to fill the wetland more regularly after the clearing of the Atchafalaya River log jam, so that most of them were wiped out. Some fixed settlements remained, accessible by boat, but the floods also brought about an era of houseboat communities of fishermen who moved with the waters and the season.

Until the flooding got too bad, the Atchafalaya was much more widely used for agriculture than one might think. There were plantations raising cotton, then sugar, along the upper Atchafalaya River, Bayou Maringouin, Bayou Grosse Tete, and near the Bayou Chene village. Most of the plantations were relatively small in comparison to the ones on the Mississippi River, but they nonetheless turned a good profit for their owners. Until the Civil War, these plantations -- like those on the Mississippi--relied on slave labor. When the war came, the workers left --never to return. High water also became a problem about then.

As the plantations began to grow along the river, their owners began to push for removal of the 10-mile accumulation of driftwood choking the Atchafalaya and blocking easy commerce with New Orleans. Clearing of the raft and navigational improvements to the river between 1830 and 1870 at first brought more people into the basin. But the clearing of the river also made it start to get bigger, deeper, stronger. It had been little more than a bayou until it was cleared. Now it was a river pulling more and more water from the Mississippi, dredging itself wider and deeper, overflowing more often and more deeply into agricultural lands. Farmers had to become fishermen, or move on. The flood of 1874 was particularly disastrous to agriculture in the basin and forced many farmers to give up and get out. Lesser floods before and after played varying amounts of havoc.

Still some stayed, Frenchmen mostly on the Atchafalaya River north of Butte La Rose, English-speakers still at Bayou Chene. But the Flood of 1927 would change all of that.

It was the worst flood ever, wiping out not only farmlands but whole communities. It changed the face and character of the basin forever.

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