Cajuns
{kay'-juhns}
Cajuns are the descendants of exiles from the French
colony of ACADIA (present-day Nova Scotia and adjacent areas) who
left their homeland in 1755 and found refuge in southern Louisiana a
decade later. By 1790 about 4,000 Acadians occupied the wetlands
along Bayou Lafourche and Bayou Teche; they later settled the
Louisiana prairies. In the fertile bayous they fished, trapped the
fur-bearing animals, gathered moss, and raised sugarcane, cotton, and
corn; on the prairies they established cattle ranches and planted
rice. Their traditional domestic architecture consisted of daubed or
half-timbered houses with gable roofs, mud chimneys, and outside
stairways leading to attics. The landholdings were often surrounded
by the characteristic pieux, a rail-and-post fence.
The French-speaking, Roman Catholic Cajuns, today estimated to number
about 500,000, maintain many cultural and occupational traditions of
their ancestors. Their speech is an archaic form of French into which
are incorporated words taken from English, German, Spanish, and
various Indian languages. With the decline of the muskrat in the
wetlands, the nutria, an import from Argentina, became the Cajun
trapper's staple. Oystering and shrimping are increasingly important
industries. Recently, the exploratory drilling for oil in the
wetlands and adjacent offshore areas has provided the Cajuns with
another source of employment.
Cajun Country
The Canadian province of Acadia (today's Nova Scotia
and surrounding regions) was settled in the early 1700s by French
colonists, but the area became a British possession soon afterwards.
In 1755, as war neared between France and England, the British
authorities demanded that the Acadians renounce their Roman Catholic
faith and swear allegiance to the Crown. The Acadians refused and the
mass exile that followed is well known to all who have read Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow's "Evangeline".
The migration of the French Acadians to Louisiana was neither smooth
nor immediate. Many were shipped to the New England colonies, others
to the West Indies or back to France, and many wandered for 20 years
before learning that they were welcome in the predominantly French
territory of Louisiana. Here they established small farms along the
Mississippi River, Bayou Teche, Bayou Lafourche and other streams in
the southern part of the region. Fishing and trapping villages were
established in the swamplands. Cajun (the word is a corruption of the
original French pronunciation of Acadian--A-ca-jan) Country today
lies within a triangle whose base is the Louisiana coast and whose
apex is near Alexandria in the central part of the state. The
triangle contains 22 parishes and the region's principal city,
Lafayette, is the unofficial capital of "Acadiana".
Cajun Country covers much of southern Louisiana.
French-speaking Acadian refugees, driven from their homes in
Acadie(now Nova Scotia) by the British in 1755, settled along the
swamps and bayous after wandering for 10 years along the Atlantic
seaboard. They quickly adapted to their strange new environment and
were soon harvesting crawfish, shrimp, crabs and oysters. They build
house and boats (called pirogues) from cypress trees, trapped nutria
and muskrat, and grew rice, hot peppers and okra.
Cajun cooking may be a first cousin to the Creole cuisine of New
Orleans, but there is none other quite like it in the world for the
imagination of its dishes or the artistic robustness of its
seasoning. Favorite Cajun dishes include jambalaya, gumbo, turtle
sauce piquante, andouille sausage, boudin (a pork and rice sausage),
cochon du lait, soft-shell crab, stuffed crab, a hundred shrimp
dishes, crawfish etouffee, crawfish bisque, crawfish pie, and dozens
more.
And they developed a style of cooking that has become
world-renowned, with savory, spicy dishes that include crawfish pie,
gumbo, jambalaya and otherdelicious concoctions. The feisty,
hardworking Acadians (Cajuns for short) remained isolated in the
swamps well into the 20th century. As a result, they still speak
their own language, and their culture is filled with unique dances,
songs, and festivals. Crawfish Racing
Cajun music can be lively or melancholy, ...and sometimes both at
once. The traditional instruments are fiddle, accordion and triangle,
and those still dominate (although drums and guitars have found their
way into Cajun bands in recent years). Like the spoken language of
the Cajuns, the lyrics of their songs are part French, part English.
The themes are universal, love (lost and found) and the beauty of
their land, but the melodies and phraseology are unique.
Originally farmers, trappers and fishermen, today's Cajuns occupy
virtually every occupation and are the
backbone of the state's oil and gas exploration and production
industry, particularly offshore. When oil was first discovered in the
North Sea more than 5,000 Cajuns with experience working on oil rigs
in the open sea were employed to drill the first wells and to provide
training.
Along with its food and music, the major trademarks of Cajun Country
are pirogues (canoes made from a single cypress log), Spanish moss,
alligators, swamps, bayous and "Cajun Cabins".
See the number of people in Louisiana reporting Cajun(Acadian) or
French ancestry in the 1990 census.
Cajun Related Resources
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