Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, June 24, 1997

Essayist portrays Vermilion Parish after the Civil War

by Jim Bradshaw

This is part of what he wrote about that visit.

"If the Acadians can anywhere be seen in the prosperity of their primitive simplicity, I fancy it is in the parish of Vermilion, in the vicinity of Abbeville and on the Bayou Tigre. Here, among the intricate bayous that are their highways and supply them with the poorer sort of fish, and the fair meadows on which their cattle pasture, and where they grow nearly everything their simple habits require, they have for over a century enjoyed a quiet existence, practically undisturbed by the agitations of modern life, ignorant of its progress. History makes their departure from the comparatively bleak meadows of Grand Pré a cruel hardship. ...But they made a fortunate exchange. Nowhere else on the continent could they so well have preserved their primitive habits, or found climate and soil so suited to their humor. Others have exhaustively set forth the history and idiosyncrasies of this peculiar people: it is in my way only to tell what I saw on a spring day.

To reach the heart of this abode of contented and perhaps wise ignorance we took boats early one morning at Petite Anse Island (Avery Island) while the dew was still heavy and the birds were at matins, and rowed down the Petite Anse Bayou. A stranger would surely be lost in these winding, branching, interlacing streams. Evangeline and her lover might have passed each other unknown within hail across these marshes. The party of a dozen people occupied two rowboats. Among them were the gentlemen who knew the route, but the reserve of wisdom as to what bayous and cut-offs were navigable was an ancient ex-slave, now a voter, who responded to the name of "Honorable"--a weatherbeaten and weather-wise (man), a redoubtable fisherman, whose memory extended away beyond the war.

From Petite Anse we entered the Carlin Bayou and wound through (many others). In the fresh morning, with the salt air, it was a voyage of delight. Mullet were jumping in the glassy stream, perhaps disturbed by the gar-fish, and alligators lazily slid from the reedy banks into the water at our approach. All the marsh was gay with flowers, vast patches of the blue fleur de lis intermingled with the exquisite white spider-lily, nodding in clusters on long stacks an amaryllis (pancratium), its pure half-disk fringed with white filaments .....

Sometimes the bayou narrowed so that it was impossible to row with the oars and poling was resorted to, and the current was swift and strong. At such passes we saw only the banks with nodding cowers, and the reeds, with the blackbirds singing, against the sky. Again we emerged into placid reaches overhung by gigantic live-oaks and fringed with cypress. It was enchanting. But the way was not quite solitary. Numerous fishing parties were encountered, boats on their way to the bay, and now and then a party of stalwart men drawing a net in the bayou, their clothes being deposited on the banks. Occasionally a large schooner was seen, tied to the bank or slowly working its way, and on one a whole family was domesticated. There is a good deal of queer life hidden in these bayous.

After passing through a narrow artificial canal we came into Bayou Tigre, and landed for breakfast on a greensward, with meadow-land and signs of habitations in the distance, under spreading live-oaks. Under one of the most attractive of these trees, close to the stream, we did not spread our table-cloth and shawls, because a large mouason (sic) snake was seen to glide under the root, and we did not know but that his modesty was assumed, and he might join the breakfast party. Cardinal birds made the woods gay for us while we breakfasted, and we might have added plenty of partridges to our menu if we had been armed.

Resuming our voyage, we presently entered the inhabited part of the bayou, among cultivated fields, and made our first call, on the Thibodeaux.

The home, like all in this region, stands upon blocks of wood, is in appearance a frame home, but the wails between timbers are of concrete mixed with moss, and the same inside as out. It had no glass in the windows, which were closed with solid shutters. Upon the rough walls were hung sacred pictures and other crudely colored prints. The furniture was crude and apparently homemade, and the whole interior was as painfully neat as a Dutch parlor.  Even the beams overhead and ceiling had been scrubbed.

Nothing could exceed the kindly manner of these people. Andonia showed us how they card, weave, and spin the cotton out of which their blankets and the jean for their clothing are made. They used the old fashioned hand-cards, spin on a little wheel with a foot treadle, have the most primitive warping bars, and weave most laboriously on a rude loom. But the cloth they make will wear forever, and the colors they use are all fast. It is a great pleasure, we might almost say shock, to encounter such honest work at these times. The Acadians grow a yellow or nankeen sort of cotton, which without requiring any dye is woven into a handsome yellow stuff ....

Embarking again on the placid stream, we moved along through a land of peace. The homes of the Acadians are scattered along the bayou at considerable distances apart. The voyager seems to be in an unoccupied country, when suddenly the turn of the stream shows him a farm-house, with its lime landing wharf, boats, and perhaps a schooner moored at the bank, and behind it cultivated fields and a fringe of trees. In the blossoming time of the year, when the birds are most active, these scenes are idyllic. At a bend in the bayou, where a tree sent its horizontal trunk had across it, we made our next call, at the home of Mr. Vallet, a large frame home, and evidently the abode of a man of means. The home was ceiled outside and inside with native woods. As usual in this region, the premises were not as orderly as those about some Northern farm-houses, but the interior of the home was spotlessly clean, and in its polish and barrenness of ornament and of appliances of comfort suggested a Brittany home, while its openness and the broad veranda spoke of a genial climate ....

The end of our voyage was the plantation of Simonene LeBlanc, a sturdy old man, a sort of patriarch in this region, the centre of a very large family of sons, daughters, and grandchildren. The residence, a rambling story-and-a-half house, grown by accretions as more room was needed, calls for no comment. It was all very plain, and contained no books, nor any adornments except some family photographs, the poor work of a traveling artist. But in front, on the bayou, Mr. LeBlanc had erected a grand ball-room, which gave an air of distinction to the plan. This hall, which had benches along the wall, and at one end a high dais for the fiddlers, and a little counter were the gombo file (the common refreshment) is served, had an air of gayety by reason of engravings cut from the illustrated papers, and was shown with some pride. Here neighborhood dances take place once in two weeks, and a grand ball was to come off on Easter Sunday night, to which we were urgently invited to come.

Simonette LeBlanc, with several of his sons had returned at midnight from an expedition to Vermilion Bay, where they had been camping for a couple of weeks, fishing and taking oysters. Working the schooner through the bayou at night had been fatiguing, and then there was supper and all the news of the fortnight to be talked over, so that it was four o'clock before the home was at rest, but neither the hale old man nor his stalwart sons seemed the worse for the adventure. Such trips are not uncommon, for these people seem to have leisure for enjoyment, and vary the toil of the plantation with the pleasures of fishing and lazy navigation....

This is a purely domestic and patriarchal community where there are no books to bring in agitating doubts, and few newspapers to disquiet the nerves. The only matter of poetics broached was in regard to an appropriation by Congress to improve a cut-off between two bayous. So far as I could learn, the most indulgent of these people had no other interest in or concern about the government. There is a neighborhood school where English is taught, but no church nearer than Abbeville, six miles away. I should not describe the population as fanatically religious, nor a churchgoing one except on special days. But by all accounts it is moral, orderly, sociable, fond of dancing, thrifty, and conservative."