The Acadians are descendants of a group of French-speaking settlers who migrated from the French coast in the late sixteenth century to establish a French colony called Acadia in the maritime province of Canada and part of what is now the state of Maine.
Forced out by the British in the mid-16th century, some settlers remained in Maine, but most resettled south of Louisiana and became known as Cajuns.
Culture of Acadians - History
In 1628, famine and pestilence followed the end of a series of religious wars between Catholics and Protestants. As social tensions mounted on the French coast, more than 10,000 people left for the colony founded by Samuel Champlain in 1604, known as "La Cadie" or Acadia. The area, which included what is now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and part of Maine, was one of the first European colonies in North America.
The New France Company recruited colonists from the French coast as indentured servants. Fishermen, farmers and trappers work for five years to repay the company with their labor for the transportation and materials it has provided. In the New World, the colonists allied with the local Indians, who generally preferred the French settlers over the English because, unlike the English, who took all the land they could, the coastal French in Acadia did not raid the hunting grounds of the Indians inland.
When French Acadian landowners tried to collect seignorial rents from settlers who farmed, many Acadians simply moved away from the colonial centres. While the French tried legally to control their profits from the fur or grain trade, the Acadians traded illegally; they even traded with New England while France and England were at war.
The Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, which failed to establish realistic boundaries for French and British territories after Queen Anne's War, turned most of the peninsula into a British colony. Despite British attempts to impose their language and culture, Acadian culture has survived.
The extended family increased their numbers and the new settlers spoke French. The British tried to locate Scottish and other Protestant colonies in Acadia to change the area's French-Catholic culture to an Anglo-Protestant one. However, the French-speaking Acadians maintained their own culture.
To dominate the region militarily, culturally, and agriculturally without interference, the British expelled the Acadians, dispersing them into colonies such as Georgia and South Carolina. This eventually led to the British deporting the Acadians in what became known as Le Grand Dèrangement, or the Expulsion of 1755.
At that time, the Acadians numbered around 15,000, but the Expulsion killed nearly half the population. Some of the survivors and those who escaped expulsion returned to the region, while others drifted through France, England, the Caribbean, and other colonies.
However, most made it down the Mississippi River to Louisiana. In New Orleans and other southern Louisiana ports, some 2,400 Academia arrived between 1763 and 1776 from the American colony, the West Indies, and the St. Louis Islands. Pierre and Miquelon, and Acadia/Nova Scotia.
Perrin was not seeking monetary compensation. Instead, he wanted the British government to formally apologize for the suffering caused to the Acadians and build a memorial in their honor. The British Foreign Office is fighting the suit, arguing it cannot be held responsible for something that happened more than two centuries ago.
When they arrived in Louisiana in 1785, the colonial strongholds resumed Spanish service to the Acadian pioneers (which formally began with the proclamation by Governor Galvez in February 1778). The fort hired and sponsored settlers to start their new lives by providing tools, corn seeds, livestock, weapons, medical services, and a church.
Like other peoples, such as Mexicans living in the annexed territories of the United States, Cajuns and other Louisiana people became citizens when the United States acquired Louisiana from Napoleon through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
SETTLEMENT PATTERN
French settlers in Louisiana adapted to the subtropics. Local Indians taught them, as did slaves brought from Africa by settlers to work on their plantations. As French settlers raised generations of sons and daughters who grew up knowing the ways of the region—unlike immigrants—Louisians called these locally adapted native-born people "Creoles." Louisians also categorize slaves—those born locally are also "Creoles." By the time the Acadians arrived, the Creoles had become economically and socially established.
People settled along the waterways, as they did in Acadia/Nova Scotia. Their houses were on a narrow strip of land stretched from the river bank to the marshes. Settlers sailed from house to house and then built roads parallel to the swamp, extending the dikes for 150 miles. The settlements also spread out into prairies, marshes, and the Gulf Coast. However, there was still a small colony of Acadians in the Valley of St. John's in northeastern Maine.
DEEP MIGRATION
In early 1780, the Cajuns headed west to the frontier lands and befriended the Indians that others feared. By the end of the nineteenth century, Cajuns had established settlements in the Louisiana-Texas border region. Texans called the triangular Acadian colonies of Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange Cajun Lapland because that's where Louisiana "turned around" to Texas.
The arrival of the Midwesterners again displaced many Cajuns; however, some remained on the prairie in small farming groups. The third area of the Cajun settlement, south of the prairie and waterway, is a coastal wetland — one of the most distinctive regions in North America and one central to Cajun imagery. This Cajun cultural and seafood cuisine has represented Cajuns to the world.
CAMP
It was a strong tradition for the Acadians, many of whom were hunters and trappers. At first, the camp was just a temporary place to live for money. Finally, Cajuns did not need to live in camps,as they could commute daily from home by car or motorboat. At the time, however, the Cajuns enjoyed and appreciated their camp. As settlements expanded, so did the desire to go hunting and fishing; today, many Cajun families maintain camp for recreational purposes.
Acculturation and Assimilation
Acadians brought solidarity with them to Louisiana. As one of the first groups to cross the Atlantic and adopt a new identity, they feel connected through their shared experiences. Differences in background separate the Acadians from more affluent Americans. With many years of an established community in Louisiana, Creole Louisianans often looked down on the Acadians as farmers.
Some Cajuns leave their rural Cajun communities and find acceptance, either as Cajuns or passing as another ethnicity. Some Cajuns became male cultivators, rejecting their origins and joining the upper-class (white) Creoles. Others learn the ways of the local Indians, as the Creoles before they did, and as the Cajuns before them in Acadia/Nova Scotia.
Because Cajuns usually marry among themselves, as a group they don't have many surnames; however, the native population of Acadian exiles in Louisiana grew, mainly by incorporating others into their ranks. Colonists of Spanish, German, and Italian origin and British-Scottish-Irish Americans became highly acculturated and now claim Acadian descent. Black Creoles and white Cajuns blend their lineages and cultures; more recently, Louisiana Cajuns included Yugoslavia and the Philippines.
Economics helps the Cajuns stay somewhat apart. Most Cajuns farm, hunt, and or fish; their livelihood barely required them to assimilate. Additionally, until the early 20th century, US corporate culture had relatively little impact on southern Louisiana. Most Cajuns started becoming American at the turn of the 20th century when several factors combined to quicken the pace.
These factors included the nationalist fervor of the early 1900s, followed by World War I. Perhaps the most substantial change for the Cajuns came when big business came to extract and sell southern Louisiana's oil. The discovery of oil in 1901 at Jennings, Louisiana, brought in outsiders and created salaried jobs. Although the oil industry is the region's main employer, it is also a source of economic and ecological concern as it is a major polluter of the region, threatening fragile ecosystems and limited resources.
While speaking Cajun French is essential to the continuity of the Cajun tradition, it also represents a rejection of assimilation. Whereas Cajuns in the oil fields spoke French to each other at work (and still do), Cajuns in public schools were forced to abandon French because the Compulsory Education Act of 1922 prohibited speaking any language other than English at school or on school grounds.
While some teachers labeled Cajun French as low-class and stupid, other Louisians derided Cajuns as uneducated. As late as 1939, reports called the Cajun "the last unassimilated [white] minority in North America;" Cajuns referred to themselves, even into World War II, as "le français" and all English-speaking outsiders as "les Americains".
The 1930s and 1940s saw Cajun education and acculturation into mainstream America. Other factors influencing Cajun assimilation were improvements in transportation, the leveling effect of the Great Depression, and the development of radio and film, which introduced young Cajuns to other cultures. But Cajun culture survived and revived.
After World War II, Cajun culture thrived as soldiers returned home and danced to Cajun bands, thus renewing the Cajun identity. Cajuns rallied around their traditional music in the 1950s. In the 1960s, this music gained attention and acceptance from mainstream America. Overall, though, the 1950s and 1960s were a period of further mainstreaming for Cajun. As network television and other mass media came to dominate American culture, the country's ethnic and regional cultures began to weaken.
Since the 1970s, Cajuns have shown renewed pride in their heritage and consider themselves a national resource. In the 1980s, ethnicity first marginalized by mainstream America became prized as a regional flavor; yet, while Cajuns may be proud of the place their versions of music and food occupy the mainstream, they—especially swamp Cajuns—are also proud of their physical and social marginality.
TRADITION, CUSTOMS, AND BELIEFS
Cajun society is tightly knit together with family members and neighbors who tend to be socially and economically interdependent, and this cooperation helps sustain their culture. According to the Cajun Country, "The survival—indeed the dominance—of Acadian culture is a direct result of the strength of traditional social institutions and agricultural practices that promote economic self-sufficiency and group solidarity." Cajuns developed a habit of keeping themselves together.
For example, before the highway, people visited by boat; before the amplification of electricity and telephones, people sang loudly in the great hall and spread the word by shouting from house to house. And while the Cajuns followed their custom, their culture focused inward on the group and defended itself.
Cajun retains the distinctive values that predate the industrial age. Most important among these, perhaps, is the traditional rejection of the protocols of social hierarchies. When speaking Cajun French, for example, Cajuns use the familiar form of address in French, tu instead of vous (unless in jest) and don't address anyone as monsieur. Their joie de vivre is legendary (manifested in spicy food and lively dancing), as is their fighting prowess.
Cajun traditions help make Cajuns formidable and mobile opponents when fighting, trapping, hunting or fishing. Cajun sailors invented flatboats, called bateaus, for crossing shallow marshes. They also built European-style luggers, skiffs, and pirogues based on Indian canoes. Cajuns often race pirogs; or, two competitors stand at opposite ends on one side and try to get the other to fall into the water first.
Fishermen hold their own competitions, sometimes called "fishing rodeos". Cajuns also value horses. American cowboy culture developed partly from one of the earliest cattle ranching frontiers in the Cajun prairies of Louisiana. Cajun ranchers developed a tradition called the barrel or buddy pickup, which developed into the event rodeo. Today, Cajuns enjoy horse racing, equestrian clubs, and Mardi Gras processions, called courses, on horseback.
Cajuns also love to tell stories and jokes while socializing. White Cajuns share much of the folklore with black Creoles — stories of hidden treasure abound in Louisiana, for example. One of the reasons for this proliferation was Louisiana's early and close relationship with the Caribbean, where piracy was rampant. Plus, lots of people actually buried treasure in Louisiana to protect it from banks or—during the Civil War—from Yankee invasions. Usually, the stories describe buried treasure guarded by ghosts. Cajun loves to tell stories about moonshiners, smugglers, and contraband runners who manage to trick and evade federal agents.
Many Cajun beliefs fall into the category of superstitious mainstream, such as incantations (gris-gris, for Cajun and Creole) and faith healing. In legend, Madame Grandsdoigts uses her long fingers to tug at the toes of naughty children at night, and werewolves, known as loup Garou, search for prey. Omens appear in the form of blackbirds, cows, and moons. For example, Cajun Country says, "When the end of the crescent points up, [the weather] should be dry for a week. A halo around a full moon should mean a few days of clear weather there. Whether the stars are visible within the ring."
CUISINE
Cajun cuisine, perhaps best known for its hot spices of red chilies, is a mix of styles. The Acadians brought with them provincial cooking styles from France. The availability of ingredients determines much of Cajun cooking. Frontier Cajuns borrowed or invented recipes for cooking turtles, alligators, raccoons, possums, and armadillos, which some people still eat.
The basic ingredients of Louisiana bean and rice dishes—milled rice, dried beans, and cured ham or smoked sausage—are easy to store for relatively long periods. Legumes and rice, such as gumbo and crawfish, have become fashionable. They are still often served with cornbread, thus emulating a poor nineteenth-century Southern specialty. The cultural cuisines of the French, Acadian, German, Spanish, Afro-Caribbean, Anglo-American, and Native Americans influence Cajun cuisine.
Gumbo, a staple Cajun dish, is a prime metaphor for creolization because it draws on several cultures. Its main ingredient, okra, also gives the dish its name; a vegetable called "guingombo" was first imported from west Africa. Cayenne, a hot spice used in subtropical cuisine, represents Spanish and Afro-Caribbean influences.
Today Louisians who eat gumbo with rice typically call gumbo made with okra gumbo fèvi, to distinguish it from gumbo filè, which refers to French culinary traditions as its base ingredient, a roux. Just before serving, gumbo filè (also called filè gumbo) is thickened with powdered sassafras leaves, one of the Native American contributions to Louisiana cuisine.
Cajuns sparingly make use of a variety of animals in their cooking. Gratons, also known as cracklings, is made from pork skin. Internal organs are used in sausages and boudin. White boudin is spicy rice and pork sausage; Red boudin, made from the same rice seasoning but flavored and tinged with blood, can still be found in nearby boucheries.
Edible pork intestines that are not made into boudin are cooked in piquant de de bris sauce or stewed entrails. The intestines are cleaned and used for sausage casings. The meat is carefully removed from the head and frozen for a spicy Fromage de tête de cochon (hogshead cheese). The brain is cooked in a pungent brown sauce. Other Cajun specialties include:
- Tasso.
- A spicy Cajun version of beef jerky.
- Smoked beef and pork sausages (like andouille made from large intestines).
- Chourice (made from small intestines).
- Chaudin (stuffed stomachs).
Perhaps the most representative food of the Cajun culture is crawfish or mudbug. Its popularity is a relatively recent tradition. In the mid-1950s, when commercial processing began to make crawfish available, they gained popularity.
However, they retain a certain aura of exoticism. Locals like to play on the disgust of outsiders who are confronted for the first time with the possibility of eating these delicious but unusual creatures by encouraging outsiders to suck the "head" (technically, the chest). Like lobsters, crawfish have become a prized delicacy. The crawfish industry, a major economic force in southern Louisiana, exports internationally.
However, nearly 85 percent of the annual crawfish harvest is consumed locally. Other versions of Cajun food, such as blackened fish and meat, have become ubiquitous. Chef Paul Prudhomme helped bring Cajun cuisine to national prominence.
Cooking is considered a show, and invited guests often gather around the kitchen stove or around the barbecue pit (more recently, the butane grill) to observe the cooking and comment on it. Guests help too, telling jokes and stories, and singing songs at events such as outdoor crayfish, crab and shrimp boils in spring and summer, and indoor gumbo in winter.
MUSIC
The history of Cajun music goes back to Acadia/Nova Scotia and to France. The Acadian exiles, who lack instruments like those of Santo Domingo, dance to the rolls of the á bouche, wordless dance music created with only their voices at a stop on their way to Louisiana. After they arrived in Louisiana, Anglo-American immigrants to Louisiana contributed new violin songs and dances, such as reels, jigs, and hoedowns.
Singer also translates English songs into French and composes his own. Accordi to Cajun Country, "Native Americans contribute a wailing and storied singing style in which the vocal line drops gradually." In addition, Cajun music owes much to black Creole music, which contributed to Cajun music as they developed their own similar sound, which became zydeco. Since the 19th century, black Cajuns and Creoles have performed together.
Not only the song, the instrument is also a cross-cultural gumbo. Traditional Cajun and Creole instruments are the French violin, German accordion, Spanish guitar and various percussion instruments (triangles, washboards and spoons), originating in Europe and the Afro-Caribbean. German-American Jewish merchants imported the diatonic accordion (not long after its invention in Austria in the early nineteenth century), which soon assumed the principal instrumental role of the violin. The Cajuns first improvised and improved the instrument by bending rake tines, replacing the grooved rasps and gourds used in Afro-Caribbean music with washboards, and eventually producing their own masterful accordions.
During the revival of the record industry, to sell record players in southern Louisiana, companies released Cajun music records. Her high-pitched, expressive singing style evolved so that border ballroom noise is permeable, filling the airwaves. Cajun music influences country music; also, string band Harry Choates defined Western swing for a period.
In 1948, Iry Lejeune recorded country music and performed the Creole blues song Amèe Ardoin, which Ardoin recorded in the late 1920s. Lejeune encouraged a "new wave of old music" and a postwar revival of Cajun culture. South Louisiana's music influenced Hank Williams— whose own music, in turn, was very influential. "Jambalaya" is one of his most successful recordings and is based on a lively but simple Cajun two-step called "Grand Texas" or "L'Anse Couche-Couche." In the 1950s, "swamp pop" evolved primarily as Cajun rhythm and blues or rock and roll. In the 1960s, national organizations began trying to preserve traditional Cajun music.
HOLIDAY
Mardi Gras, which occurs the day before Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, is the carnival that precedes the renunciation of Lent. French for "Fat Tuesday", Mardi Gras (pre-Christian European New Year's Eve) is based on medieval European adaptations of even older rituals, notably those involving the reversal of social order, in which the lower class parodied the elite. Men dress like women, women like men; the poor dress richly, the rich are poor; old and young, young and old; black white, black white.
While most Americans know Mardi Gras as the city of New Orleans celebrates it, rural Cajun Mardi Gras originates from medieval European processions in which revelers traveled through the countryside to exchange gifts. Those in Cajun processions, called courses (which traditionally excluded women so openly), disguised themselves across lines of gender, age, race, and class.
They also played across lines of life and death with a ritual skit, The Dead Man Revived, in which a fallen fellow actor revives him by dripping wine or beer into his mouth. Participants in the Cajun Mardi Gras course waded from house to house, storming into the yard in mock looting of the residents' food. Like the trick-or-treating gang, they traveled from house to house. Usually, they got an array of chickens, from which their cook would make the evening's communal gumbo. The celebration continues as a rite of passage in many communities.
Carnival, as celebrated by Afro-Caribbeans (and as a ritual of ethnic impersonation in which Euro- and Afro-Caribbean Americans in New Orleans sing, dance, call themselves, and dress as Indians), also influenced Mardi Gras like which is celebrated in the south. Louisiana. On the one hand, the mainstream Mardi Gras celebration retains some elements of Cajun folklore, but New Orleans influences have always superseded rural customs.
In contrast, the Mardi Gras of white rural Cajuns differ in their geographical origin from the Mardi Gras of Creole New Orleans; some Cajun Mardi Gras organizers try to maintain their cultural specificity.
Cajun Mardi Gras participants traditionally wear masks, whose anonymity allows the wearer to cross social boundaries; at one time, masks also provided an opportunity for vengeance with impunity. Course riders, who may be accompanied by musicians driving their own vehicles, may circle one's front yard, dismount and begin ritual songs and dances.
Lent's silent regrets, however, follow the boisterous transgression of Mardi Gras. A masked ball, as Cajun Country describes it, "marked the final hours of revelry before the start of Lent the following day. All celebrations abruptly stopped at midnight, and many of Tuesday's rowdy motorists could be found kneeling, receiving the ashes of regret on their foreheads." on Wednesday."
Good Friday, which marks the approach of the end of Lent, is celebrated with a traditional procession called the "Way of the Cross" between the cities of Catahoula and St. Paul's. Martinville. The stations of the cross, which are usually hung on the walls of churches, are fixed in the large oak tree between the two cities.
On Christmas Eve, bonfires decorate the embankments along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The celebration, according to the Cajun State, has European roots: "The great bonfire ... is descended from the bonfires kindled by ancient European civilizations, particularly along the Rhine and Seine rivers, to encourage and strengthen the sun on the winter solstice, it's the 'weakest' moment." The other holiday is Cajun which is unique and reflects the Catholic church's involvement in the harvest. Priests bless the sugar cane fields and fleets of ornamental shrimp boats by reciting prayers and sprinkling holy water over them.
HEALTH PROBLEMS
Professional doctors were rare in rural Louisiana and they treated only the most serious conditions. Although professional medical care is prohibitively expensive even when available, rural Cajun residents prefer to use traditional medicine and administer it themselves or rely on someone skilled in it. These healers, who do not make a living healing other Cajuns, are called traitors or healers and are found in every community.
They also believe that folk practitioners, unlike their professional counterparts, address individuals' spiritual and emotional — not just physiological — needs. Each traitor usually specializes in only a few types of treatment and has his own healing, which may involve the laying on of hands or the making of the cross sign and the recitation of prayers taken from Bible passages.
Their practices are legitimized today as holistic medicine; some are pre-Christian, some Christian, and some modern. Remains of pre-Christian tradition include the full moon's role in healing and the healers' left-handedness. The Christian component of Cajun healing draws on faith by using Catholic prayers, candles, prayer beads, and crucifixes. Cajun herbal medicine originates from post-medieval French homeopathic medicine. The newer category of Cajun drugs consists of certain patent drugs and other commercial products.
Several Cajun remedies were learned from the Indians, such as applying chewing tobacco poultices to bee stings, snake bites, boils, and headaches. Other treatments came from French doctors or traditional medicine, such as treating colic by placing a warm plate on the stomach, treating ringworm with vinegar, and treating headaches with healing prayers. Some Cajun cures are unique to Louisiana: for example, holding an infection over a burnt cane reed or placing a garlic necklace on a baby with intestinal worms.
Cajuns have a higher-than-average incidence of cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, albinism, and other inherited disorders, possibly due to interbreeding with relatives who share the same recessive gene. Other problems commonly associated with a high-fat diet and inadequate medical care, include diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), obesity, stroke and heart disease.
Language
Cajun French is, for the most part, a spoken and unwritten language filled with colloquialisms and slang. Although the French spoken by Cajuns in different parts of Louisiana varies slightly, it differs from standard Parisian French and Quebec French and from white and black Creole French.
Cajun French speakers hold their lips looser than Parisians. They tend to shorten phrases, words, and names and simplify some verb conjugations. Nicknames are all over the place, such as "'tit joe" or "'tit black", where "'tit" is slang for "tiny" or "small". Cajun French simplifies the verb form by making it more regular. This forms the present participle of the verb—for example, "is singing"—in a way that would be translated directly as "after singing." So, "Marie is singing", in Cajun French is "Marie est apres chanter".
Another distinguishing feature of Cajun French is that it retains a nautical usage, reflecting the Acadians history as seafarers. For example, the word for tying your shoes is amerrer (to anchor [the boat]), and the phrase for turning around in a car is virer de bord (to happen [on a sailboat]).
In general, Cajun French shows its specific historical influence in Louisiana and Acadia/Nova Scotia, as well as its roots on the French coast. Because Brittany, on the north coast of France, is heavily Celtic, Cajun French has "grammar and other linguistic evidence of Celtic influence". A few scattered Indian words survive in Cajun French, such as "bayou," which came from the Muskhogean Indian word, "bay-uk," through Cajun French, and into English.
Louisiana, which had made school attendance mandatory, implemented laws in the 1920s that constitutionally prohibited the use of French in public schools and on school grounds. The state expects Cajuns to come to school and leave their language at home. These attempts to assimilate the Cajuns met with some success; Young Cajuns seem to be losing their language.
To remedy this situation, the French Language Development Council in Louisiana (CODOFIL) recently reintroduced French to many schools in Louisiana. However, French is standard Parisian French, not Cajun. Although French is generally not spoken by the younger generation in Maine, New England schools are beginning to emphasize it and efforts to repeal laws that made English the only language in Maine schools have been successful. Additionally, high schools began offering Acadian and French history classes.
In 1976, Revon Reed wrote in a mix of Cajun and French standards for his book on Louisiana Cajuns, Lâche pas la patate, which translates as, "Don't drop the potato" (the Cajun idiom for "Don't neglect passing on tradition"). Anthologies of stories and a series of other writings have been published since Reed's book. However, Cajun French was primarily a spoken language until the publication of Randall Whatley's Cajun French textbook (Conversational Cajun French I [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978]).
In the oil fields, on fishing boats, and other places where Cajuns work together, they continue to speak Cajun French. Storytellers, storytellers, and singers use Cajun French for its expression and for its value as a communication group. Cajun businessmen and politicians find that speaking their constituents' and patrons' language helps them identify themselves as fellow insiders.
Family and Community Dynamics
Cajuns learn to rely on their families and communities when they have nothing left. Traditionally they live close to their families and villages. Daily visits were common, as were frequent parties and dancing, including a traditional Cajun house party called fais-dodo, which is Cajun baby talk for "sleep", as in "put all the little ones in the back bedroom to sleep" during party. Traditionally, almost everyone who came to the party was a neighbor from the same community or a family member. Cajuns of all ages and abilities participate in music-making and dancing because nearly everyone is a dancer or performer.
In the 1970s, 76 percent of surnames made up 86 percent of all Cajuns; each last name reflects an extended family that historically functioned as a Cajun subcommunity. As well as socializing together, communities come together to do work for someone in need, such as building a house or harvesting fields. Members of the Cajun community traditionally take turns slaughtering animals and sharing portions of the meat.
Although a bouchery is primarily a social event, it is a useful way to get fresh meat for the families participating. Today, bouchery is unnecessary due to modern refrigeration methods and the advent of supermarkets. However, some families still hold bouchery for fun, and some local festivals feature bouchery as a folk craft. This cooperation, called coup de main (literally, "hand punch"), was essential in an era before workers' compensation, welfare, social security, and the like. Such cooperation is still important today, especially because it ties community members together.
However, the challenge to group cohesiveness is conflict. Fighting can divide communities, but on the other hand, as a sporting spectacle, it brings communities together for an activity. The bataille au mouchoir, as described in Cajun Country, is a ritual fight "in which the challenger offers the opponent a corner of his handkerchief and both attack the other with fists or knives, each holding the corner, until one surrender." Organized hand-to-hand fights persist.
At least until the late 1960s. Recently, many Cajuns have joined the boxing team. Neighboring communities maintain rivalries where violence has historically been common. A practice called casser le bal ("breaking up the dance") or prendre la place ("taking over the place") involves gangs starting fights with others or among themselves to end the dance. Threats of violence and other travel hardships barely kept Cajuns at home. According to Cajun State, "Until 1932, Saturday night dances were attended by families within a fifty-mile radius, even though less than a third of families owned cars at the time."
Traditionally, Cajun family relationships are important to all members of the family. Cajun fathers, uncles, and grandparents join mothers, aunts, and grandmothers in raising children, and children participate in family affairs. Godfathers and godmothers are still very important in Cajun country. Even youths who don't speak French usually refer to their godparents as parrain and marraine, and consider them family.
However, traditionally, the mother has passed on the values and culture to her children. Cajuns often belittle formal education, seeing it as a function of the Catholic church—not of the state. Families need children's labor; and until the oil boom, few jobs awaited educated Cajuns. During the 1920s, many Cajuns attended school not only because the law required it and jobs awaited them but also because the decline in agriculture made agriculture less successful.
COURTSHIP
Although today Cajuns tend to date like other Americans, historically, pre-modern traditions were the rule. Women usually marry before the age of 20 or risk being labeled as "old maids". A young girl needs a companion — usually a parent or older brother or uncle, to protect her honor and prevent an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, which could result in expulsion until her marriage. Suppose the courtship appears to be extended indefinitely. In that case, the suitor may receive an envelope from her intent containing a mantle, indicating that the engagement has ended. The proposal was formally made Thursday night to the parents, not to his own fiancé. Couples who want to get married don't make the final decision; instead, it often requires the approval of the entire extended family.
Because Cajuns have traditionally married within their own community, where most of the population is related to one another, marriage between cousins is not uncommon. Sibling pairs often marry pairs of siblings from other families. Although prohibited by law, first-cousin marriages also occur. Financial worries influence such choices because intermarriage preserves property within family groupings. One result of such marriages is that a few surnames may dominate a city.
WEDDING
Cajun wedding customs are often similar to those of other Europeans. Typically, older, unmarried siblings may be required to dance barefoot, often in a bathtub, at a reception or wedding dance. This was probably to remind them of the poverty that awaited them in old age if they did not start their own family. Guests contributed to the new household by pinning money onto the bride's veil in exchange for dancing with her or kissing her. Before the wedding dance is over, the bride will often wear a headdress made of money. Today, wedding guests have also extended this practice to the groom, covering his suit with banknotes.
One rural custom involves holding the wedding reception in a commercial dance hall and giving the newlyweds an entry fee. Another Cajun wedding custom, the "bride flock", involves community women bringing a chick from each of their flock so the newlyweds can start a brood of their own. These gifts help brides build a bit of independence, where the wives can sell their excess eggs for extra money that their husbands have no control over.
Religion
Cajun culture and history are heavily influenced by Roman Catholicism. Several pre-Christian traditions seem to have influenced or lived on in Cajun Catholicism. Some historians explain Cajun Catholicism's variation from the Roman edict by noting that historically Acadians often lacked contact with orthodox clergy.
Baptism of Cajun children occurs in infancy. Cajun homes often feature altars or shrines with grass effigies, such as Our Lady of the Assumption — whom Pope Pius XI declared in 1938 the patroness of Acadians worldwide — in a self-built cave cut out of a bathtub or oil drum. Some Cajun communal customs are also based on Catholicism. For decades, it was customary for men to gallop their horses around the church during sermons. Bangun calls for mourners to accompany each other around the deceased so that the body is never left alone.
The school's restaurants and cafeteria cater to Cajuns by providing alternatives to meat for Louisiana's predominantly Catholic students during Ash Wednesday and Friday of Lent. Several unique Cajun beliefs surround their Catholic religion. For example, legend has it that "The Virgin would slap children who whistled at the dinner table;" another taboo forbade any digging on Good Friday, which, on the other hand, was believed to be the best day for planting parsley.
Labor and Economic Traditions
The Louisiana coast is home to one of the largest wetlands in America, where trapping and hunting are important occupations. In the 1910s, extensive alligator hunting allowed for a large increase in the musquè (muskrat) rat population. Overgrazing of muskrats promotes swamp erosion. At first muskrats were trapped primarily to reduce their numbers, but cheap Louisiana muskrat skins accelerated the capture of the American fur industry in New York from St. Louis. Louis, and sparked outrage with the muskrat and raccoon coats that were so characteristic of the 1920s. Cajuns helped Louisiana achieve a longstanding reputation as America's premier fur producer. Since the 1960s, Cajuns in the fur business have mostly raised nutria.
The original Acadians and Cajuns were farmers, herders, and ranchers, but they also worked as carpenters, fishermen, barrelers, blacksmiths, shipbuilders, trappers, and tailors. They learned trapping, trading and other skills to survive from regional Indians. The industrialization has not ended such traditions. Workers in the oil field and on oil rigs have schedules where they work for a week or two and then are off the job for the same amount of time, which gives them time to pursue traditional jobs such as trapping and fishing.
Because current laws prohibit commercial hunting, this activity remains recreational but very popular. Louisiana is located at the southern tip of one of the world's major air routes, providing many migratory birds, such as pigeons, woodcocks, and various types of ducks and geese. Various folk practices are associated with hunting — how to make blinds, how to call a game, how to handle, call, and direct packs of hounds, and how to make bait. Cajun custom dictates that if you hunt or fish in a certain area, you have a clear folk right to defend it from intruders. Shooting offenders is "trap justice". Certain animals are always illegal to hunt, and some are illegal to hunt during the off season. Cajuns sometimes circumvent restrictions on hunting illegal animals, a practice known as "banning."
According to some claims, the modern American cattle industry began on the Cajun prairies almost a full century before the Anglo-Americans even started moving to Texas. Learning from the Spaniards and Indians, black Cajuns and Creoles were among America's first cowboys, and they participated in some of the country's earliest cattle herding. Cattle farming remains a part of Cajun prairie life today, but the spread of agriculture, especially rice, has diminished its economic importance and largely its flamboyant ways.
However, in non-agricultural coastal swamps, much of the old style of livestock raising remains. Cajuns catch most of America's seafood. In addition to catching their own food, many Cajuns are employees of shrimp companies, which own boats and factories, under their own brand names. Some fishermen and frogmen catch large catfish, turtles and frogs by hand, thus preserving the ancient art. And the family often went fishing together in the spring.
The collection and preservation of Spanish moss, which was widely used in stuffing mattresses and car seats until after World War II, is an industry found only in the area. Cajun fishermen invented or modified various devices: nets and trawls, crab traps, shrimp boxes, bait boxes, trotlines and frog catches. Moss picking, which was once an important part-time job for many Cajun wetlands, is waning with the loss of natural resources and technological change. Dried moss is being replaced by synthetic materials that fill car upholstery and furniture. There is now a mild revival in tradition as the lichen returns from the viruses that once threatened it and as catfish and crayfish cultivators have discovered that it makes the perfect breeding nest.
Cajuns learned to be economically independent, if not completely self-sufficient. They learned much of the ways of southern Louisiana from local Indians, who taught them about native edibles and cultivating a variety of squash, melons, and tubers. French and black Creoles taught Cajuns how to grow sugarcane, cotton, and okra; they learned rice and soybean production from Anglo-Americans. As a result, the Cajuns were able to establish small farms and produce a variety of vegetables and livestock. Such crops also provided the cash they needed to buy goods such as flour, coffee, salt and tobacco, as well as cloth and farm equipment. The result of the success of Cajun agriculture is that today Cajuns and Creoles still make a living by farming.
Cajuns trade with whoever they want to trade with, regardless of legal restrictions. Soon after their arrival in Louisiana, the government directed them to sell their surplus crops to the government. Many Cajuns became bootleggers. One of their proudest historical roles was assisting pirate smuggler Jean Lafitte in an early and successful smuggling operation.
In the 20th century, the Cajun trading system had declined as many Cajuns worked for wages in the oil industry. What's more, in the view of some Cajuns, the outside oil workers from Texas—or "Takesus"—had usurped their control of their own territory's resources, by literally taking them from under them and making a fortune. Some Cajun traders took advantage of the changing economy by selling what resources they could control to outside markets: for example, fur trappers had done so, as had fishermen, and farmers like them who sold their rice to the Budweiser brewery in Houston.
Politics and Governance
Cajuns, many of whom are conservative Democrats by now, have been involved at all levels of Louisiana politics. Louisiana's first elected governor, as well as the state's first Cajun governor, was Alexander Mouton, who served in 1843. But perhaps the most famous Louisiana politician was Cajun Governor Edwin Edwards (1927-), who served four terms during that time. . office—the first French-speaking Catholic to do so in nearly half a century. In recent decades, more Cajuns have entered electoral politics to regain control of the powerful oil companies.
MILITARY
Historically, Cajuns have been drafted and named for their symbolic role in important North American fights. In the mid-1700s in Acadia/Nova Scotia, when the French colonial army recruited Acadians, they weakened the Acadians' identity to the British as "French Neutrals", and prompted the British to try to expel all Acadians from the region. In 1778, when the French joined the American Revolutionary War against the British, the Marquis de Lafayette stated that the suffering of the Acadians helped bring the French into battle.
The following year, 600 Cajun volunteers joined Galvez and fought the British. In 1815, the Cajuns joined Andrew Jackson in preventing the British from retaking the United States. Cajuns were also active in the American Civil War; General Alfred Mouton in 1829–1864, son of Alexander Mouton, commanded the 18th Louisiana Regiment in the Battle of the Pittsburgh Landings in 1862, Battle of Shiloh in 1863, and Battle of Mansfield in 1864, where a sniper's bullet killed him.
Individual and Group Contributions
Academia
Thomas J. Arceneaux, who is Dean Emeritus of the School of Agriculture at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, conducts extensive research in weed control, training many rice farmers and Cajun cattle in the process. A descendant of Louis Arceneaux, who modeled the hero in Longfellow's Evangeline, Arceneaux also designed the Louisiana Cajun flag.
Tulane University of Louisiana Professor Alcè Fortier was Louisiana's first scholar of folklore and one of the founders of the American Folklore Society (AFS). Author of Lâche pas la patate (1976), a book describing the life of Louisiana Cajuns, Revon Reed also launched a small Cajun newspaper called Mamou Prairie.
Art
Lulu Olivier's "Acadian Exhibition" of Cajun weaving tours led to the Council for French Development in Louisiana (CODOFIL) founding, and generally fostered Cajun cultural pride.
Culinary Aarts
Chef Paul Prudhomme's name graces a line of Cajun-style supermarket fare, "Chef Paul's."
Music
Dewey Balfa (1927– ), Gladius Thibodeaux, and Louis Vinesse Lejeune performed at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival and inspired a new pride in Cajun music. Dennis McGee performed and regularly recorded with an accordion player and black Creole singer Amèdè Ardoin in the 1920s and 1930s; together, they improvised much of what would become the core repertoire of Cajun music.
Sports
Cajun jockeys Kent Desormeaux and Eddie Delahoussaye became well known, as did Ron Guidry, the fastballer who led the New York Yankees to win the 1978 World Series, and that year won the Cy Young Award for his pitching. Guidry's nicknames are "Louisiana Lightnin" and "The Ragin' Cajun."