Bears Get Around: Acadiana

This is my good friend Blanche. She is here to tell you a bit about the area around the city of Lafayette, in the American state of Louisiana. Lafayette is the biggest city in a region of Louisiana known as Acadiana. Lafayette is called “The Heart of French Louisiana.”

The flag of Acadiana

Acadiana is made up of 22 parishes in southwestern Louisiana. A parish there is like a county or municipality. There are a total of 64 parishes in all of Louisiana.

You'll find a lot of French-language culture and heritage in Louisiana.

The state is named after Louis XIV, who was the King of France in the seventeenth century, when this region was first visited by French explorers. Louisiana was governed by France from 1682 to 1763, and again from 1800 to 1803.

Between 1755 and 1763, French-speaking Acadians, or Acadiens, were forced out of what are now the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island by British soldiers. The British wanted the Acadians’ farms for English-speaking settlers. It was a very sad time for the Acadians. Many of them eventually settled in Louisiana, where their name evolved into the word Cajuns.

In 1821, an Acadian named Jean Mouton founded Lafayette. At first, Mr. Mouton called the city Vermilionville. It was renamed Lafayette in 1884 to honour a general who had fought in the American Revolutionary War.

 

 The area around Lafayette is very beautiful. Watch out for the alligators, though!

See the banner behind Blanche? This is a fleur-de-lys, literally “flower of the lily.” It represented the kings of France beginning in the Middle Ages, over a thousand years ago.

 Many places that were settled by French colonists now use the fleur-de-lys as a symbol. You'll see it in the flag of Acadiana. I’m sure Maurice le Rocket would want me to mention that the beautiful flag of his home province, Québec, shows the fleur-de-lys!

Maurice would also tell you that Blanche’s name means “white” in French.

As to the wild bears of Louisiana … the Louisiana black bear (Ursus americanus luteolus) is the official state mammal, no less. It is nice to be respected.

Now, Blanche would particularly like to tell you about her two very most favourite things: Cajun music, and food.

Cajun music is wonderful to hear – it makes me want to just get up and dance! Humans often dance waltzes, foxtrot, or two-step to Cajun music. Cajun music is related to the traditional ballads and fiddle music of French Canada. Cajun musicians play the fiddle, accordion, triangle, guitar, and other instruments.

Here is a really famous band called Beausoleil. Blanche heard them play at a nightclub called the Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette. The snowy-haired fiddler (hmm, his hair somehow reminds me of mine) is an amazing musician named Michael Doucet. His band’s name honours Joseph Broussard, an Acadian leader and freedom-fighter whose nickname was Beausoleil. Literally, that means “beautiful sun.”

There’s a park in Lafayette called the Vermilionville Living History Museum and Folklife Park. It re-creates a Cajun town of the 1700s or 1800s. In the old schoolhouse, Merlin Fontenot played a waltz on his violin, and told Blanche stories from Cajun history.

Mr. Fontenot said that he also plays fiddle with a band called Jambalaya. Sure enough, she saw him again that very evening at Randol’s Restaurant, where a big crowd danced to Jambalaya’s lively music. Hey, here is a clip filmed at Randol’s. See how kids are dancing, too – so could you!

In the nearby town of Eunice, a skilled musician and accordion-maker named Marc Savoy runs the Savoy Music Center, where fans of Cajun music can take part in a jamboree, or “jam session,” every Saturday morning.

People show up with their own instruments, and play along by ear. You can also just sit, listen – and tap your toes! Blanche sure did.

This fine gentleman is Hadley J. Castille, the “Cajun Swamp Fiddler,” who plays with a band called The Sharecroppers.

Blanche listened to him perform in a “fiddle jam” at the Delta Grand Theater in the town of Opelousas, about 40 kilometres from Lafayette.

Mr. Castille’s grand-daughter, Sarah Jayde Williams, is a talented fiddler too. She sings Cajun ballads in a gorgeous, haunting voice.

Now, all this music and toe-tapping can make a bear really hungry. And there can be few better places to have a good appetite than Louisiana!

Have you ever heard of crawfish? They look like little freshwater lobsters.

This is a “crawfish boil” Blanche ordered at Randol’s.

You can also deep-fry crawfish, mince them, put them in a tasty “étouffée” sauce, bake them in tarts …

or just eat them as-is …

Any way you care to cook and eat crawfish, you can also do with alligator (carefully).

On the roads around Lafayette, you’ll see signs like “Don’s Homemade Boudin and Cracklins” or “Truck Stop – BBQ Boudin.” OK, I’ll bite … what is boudin?

“Boudin” is a kind of sausage, usually made with ground pork, though it can also be made with crawfish, alligator, shrimp … you name it. Blanche met a master of boudin-making at Johnson’s Boucanière in Lafayette. This is Wallace Johnson, whose family have been in the business since 1937.

Mr. Johnson showed her the smokehouse where the sausages are flavoured using the smoke from burnt oak-wood. The word boucanière means “smokehouse.”

Oh, while I’m defining words, étouffée means “smothered.” It’s a way of saying that the rich sauce of this spicy Cajun stew totally smothers the meat in it.

Now, people from the southern United States will find this funny: I’d never tasted grits before! Grits are a kind of porridge made from ground corn. It is so delicious that Blanche brought me back a whole box.

At Poor Boy’s Riverside Inn in Lafayette, Blanche got to try a dessert called beignets. These are sweet deep-fried dumplings that she says are totally out of this world.

So, was Blanche’s belly a little rounder after her latest visit to Lafayette? Maybe – though all that dancing and toe-tapping to Cajun music sure helped her stay fit!

Story © S. Clouthier

Still photos © S. Clouthier and D. Wei

Acadiana flag courtesy of Wikipedia

Videos courtesy SCRAMBLER390, MYSILVERADO2, and Rebecca McCormick