MODERN CAJUNS:
Playing Second Fiddle to No One By Kathy Bradshaw
From bayous to boudin balls, pirogues to pistolettes, zydeco to Zatarain’s, Cajun culture has become an integral part of the very identity of Louisiana. You simply can’t take the Cajun out of Louisiana. “A Cajun can look at a rice field and tell how much gravy it would take to cover that much rice.” —Cajun proverb Cajun culture is vibrant, historic, and multi-faceted. It’s the accordion, the washboard, the two-step. It’s family gatherings, fais do-dos, and catfish courtbouillon. Jambalaya, crawfish pie, filé gumbo… The Cajuns have become so much the beloved face of Louisiana that certain aspects of their culture are regularly packaged and peddled to people everywhere, in Acadiana and beyond. The word Cajun has become a genuine brand that is tacked on to the names of food and merchandise that have nothing whatsoever to do with being Cajun, in order to increase these items’ appeal. Whether it’s on beer cans or snack mix bags, “Cajun” keeps turning up in the most unexpected and non-Cajun of places. Cajun culture is also a big draw for tourists. From the music and heritage festivals, such as Festivals Acadiens and the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Fest, to the Cajun restaurants and swamp tours, hundreds of thousands of people come out annually (in a normal year) to enjoy fresh-boiled crawfish, dance to the sounds of the fiddle, and feed marshmallows to alligators from the back of an airboat. All of this can make it very difficult to decipher what is authentically Cajun and what is just the watered-down, tourist-friendly version. Cajuns are so much more than the beer-guzzling, gumbo-scarfing, crawfish-trapping, fun-loving, French-speaking residents of the backwoods of Louisiana that many people think they are. Their culture is based on nearly 300 years of history, community, innovation, perseverance, and tradition. But how did the Cajun culture come to be what it is today, and how did it end up being associated with everything from a daiquiri flavor to a variety of cold cut turkey? And how much of what we perceive as Cajun really is? Cajuns in the Beginning In the 1600s and 1700s, still long before the French Revolution, many French people left France in search of liberté, egalité, and the makings of a better brie and headed to the New World. Some of them settled in Louisiana and set about converting swampland into Bourbon Street, while others found themselves much further north in what would later become parts of Canada, including Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. This area was named French Acadia. The Acadians, as they were called, lived happily French for many years, raising their dairy cattle for cheese, growing grapes for wine, and cultivating grains for bread—or cake, if they chose to eat cake, with no pressure from the French monarchy either way—
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Halloween Issue | Where Y'at Magazine
until the British came and ruined their fun. In 1710, the British invaded French Acadia and demanded that the Acadians break their ties with France and pledge their undying allegiance to Britain instead. Surely not wanting to downgrade from foie gras to Yorkshire pudding, the Acadians refused. But the animosity between France and Britain continued to grow, ultimately leading to the dreadful Seven Years’ War between the two countries, from 1756 until 1763. During the war, the British kicked the Acadians out of Nova Scotia and the surrounding areas in a mass eviction that was referred to as The Great Expulsion or The Great Upheaval. Although the Acadians were dispersed throughout the U.S. and many returned to France, the vast majority ended up gathering in Louisiana, in a region that came to be aptly called Acadiana, and ultimately creating the Cajun heritage that they are known for today. Parlez-vous français? The Cajuns had a rough go of it for a while. Not only did they have to brave the harsh conditions of rural Louisiana, but they were also often met with prejudice and intolerance by other people. In fact, the term Cajun itself originated as a shortened and disparaging form of the word Acadian. For a long time, French remained the official language of Louisiana, but that didn’t last. “The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and statehood in 1812 placed serious pressure on French Louisiana to conform to the language and culture of the United States,” explains Barry Ancelet, a Cajun folklorist in Lafayette. Under pressure from English-speaking authorities, the French language was slowly but forcefully removed from Louisiana. English was taught exclusively in schools, and speaking French was not just frowned upon, but eventually strictly outlawed. “Children were humiliated and punished for speaking the language of their ancestors,” Ancelet says. Philip Smith, a Cajun from Erath, Louisiana, adds, “I can remember my grandpa saying that he got disciplined—which means that they paddled him—on multiple occasions, for speaking French with his friends in school.” But while French wasn’t tolerated in public, this didn’t stop the Cajuns from speaking their language behind closed doors. Like so many things that are officially forbidden, speaking French never went away entirely; it just went underground. “Anytime you spoke French, it was like Prohibition—drinking alcohol in somebody’s basement,” says Smith. Nevertheless, the Americanization of 19th-century Louisiana caused a multigenerational gap in French-speakers among the Cajuns of Louisiana. While this was
