French Louisiana

The Lafayette, Louisiana Museum, home of Alexandre Mouton, President of the Secession Conference, 1861

I (Bonnie) live in the southwest corner of Louisiana, the heart of what is known as "Cajun" country. When I was growing up here, French was commonly heard in and around my home town, most of the merchants and businessmen spoke French or had someone around who did as so many of their customers spoke only that language. After the spread of American affluence and television, the language died out except in remote areas and country pockets, but a determined effort in the 1950s and 60s by a local congressman by the name of James Domengeaux created an agency called CODOFIL--the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana. CODOFIL is still strongly promoting Louisiana French language and culture, and the degree of its preservation that exists is the result, and the result of the determined efforts of young Louisianians of French heritage who have appreciated and promoted their culture. The popularity of Louisiana French music, now widely appreciated as a unique cultural expression along with Creole and African-American musical forms has ensured that Louisiana's distinctive French-influenced cultural gumbo has survived. "Cajun," though, is widely misunderstood outside its home territory--even in the state at large. "Cajun" on menus throughout the U.S. and lately way too often in London and even in provincial England simply means drowned in red pepper. Those of us who know the richness and subtleties of true Cajun cuisine run like mad when we see "Cajun chicken" or other such frights on British or New York menus--we know it will be a travesty of any of our proud culinary dishes.

Over 500 years old, Lafayette's Cathedral Oak has presided over a unique blend of cultural influences.

A visit to southwest Louisiana and to "Cajun Country" is a visit to a complex cultural pocket containing a blend of Caribbean, African-American, French, Spanish and Anglo influences, spiced lightly with Irish, German, Vietnamese and other strains. From town to town, even close neighbors less than twenty miles away, cultural dominance can change. Franklin, for example, with its many Greek-revival plantation-style nineteenth-century homes and moss-draped oaks, was formerly dominated by southern Anglo-American elites. Now populated by the descendents of early planter families and of their African slaves, it remains a pocket of American plantation culture only a few miles away from both the French areas to the west and the bayou regions to the east. Driving through the southern regions of Louisiana is a drive through time-warps of multiple cultural colors.
        And all of this is not to say anything about New Orleans, America's unique port city, the city that almost everyone first thinks of when one hears "Louisiana." New Orleans is truly sui generis and worthy of its own entry. But if anyone is looking for a European sideroad, he or she should certainly look here, to Louisiana, starting with the Queen City perhaps--no one should die without experiencing it--but going on beyond, into the regions where the cultural European past still lingers, still resonates, still fascinates.
         A trip to Louisiana is in many ways a trip to a foreign country, and equally compelling.  It is quintessentially American, yet not like the rest of America.  It is southern, yet unlike the rest of the American south.  Its languages are English, often spoken with a strong accent, various varieties of French like yet unlike the mother tongue.  Its cuisines are rich and proud; food is a religion here.  The oil rig spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a far greater disaster than the national news media generally recognizes. Its threats not only to the environment and to the economy is dire, but its threat to one of America's richest unique cultures is heartbreaking.