The Grevembergs, Early Cattle Ranchers of the Attakapas

Eighteenth-century colonists in south Louisiana’s Attakapas region commonly raised cattle, not only to feed themselves, but to feed the lower Louisiana colony in general and New Orleans in particular. An important source of information about this early cattle industry is the historical document known as The Brand Book for the Opelousas and Attakapas Districts. The original is located in the Jefferson Caffery Louisiana Room of Dupré Library at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 


Nineteenth-century engraving of a south Louisiana cattle rancher.
(Source: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline
[NY:  John B. Alden, 1892].)

Researchers are fond of citing The Brand Book’s earliest entry as proof that cattle ranching in Louisiana extended back as early as the 1730s. The entry in question is the brand registration for Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg, colonists of Flemish ancestry who settled around present-day New Iberia. 



As Maurine Bergerie writes in They Tasted Bayou Water: A Brief History of Iberia Parish (1962), “Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg registered their brand in 1739. . . .” Likewise, William Faulkner Rushton observes in The Cajuns: From Acadia to Louisiana (1979), “Louisiana’s cattle industry goes back at least to 1739, the date the first cattle brand was recorded in the state’s French ‘brand book.’”

However, I think 1739 is incorrect. 



I have no doubt that The Brand Book reads “1739,” but I think this date is a mistake — perhaps a simple careless error made by an anonymous scribe in the course of copying and recopying The Brand Book.

Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg's cattle brand entries
in The Brand Book, dated "1739." (Click to enlarge.) 
(Source: Jefferson Caffery Louisiana Room, Dupré Library,
University of Louisiana at Lafayette.)

I am not the first to suspect an error. As folklorist Lauren C. Post noted in The McNeese Review academic journal (1958):

As might be expected, with a long succession of brand recorders working over a period of sixty-four years and for a period which extended over 128 years, the work had many inconsistencies. At least, there appear to be inconsistencies. One page . . . shows that Louis Grevemberg registered his 5F brand in 1737. In another place the same book shows that he registered the same brand in 1739. The book for 1760-1888 listed Louis Grevemberg as registering the 5F brand on October 14, 1793. 

Besides these inconsistencies noted by Post, I believe the 1739 (and 1737) date to be incorrect for the following reasons:

First, a glance at other early entries in The Brand Book reveals no others from the 1730s. Indeed, except for a couple of entries from the late 1740s (which I also find suspect), the mass of registered brands date from the 1760s and later, when settlement of the Attakapas District finally began in earnest.

Detail of a sample page from The Brand Book. (Source: Photo of
facsimile in The African American Museum, St. Martinville, La.)

Second, there is no evidence that the brothers Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg were in the Attakapas District before 1770, when Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg (presumably their father) received a Spanish land grant in the region. (France gave Louisiana to Spain in 1762, explaining why Jean-Baptiste received not a French but a Spanish land grant in 1770.) Indeed, Louis and Barthélémy only received land grants for themselves in the region in 1774 and 1781, respectively. (Correction: In 1765 Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg wrote the French caretaker government of Spanish Louisiana that he had been in possession of his Attakapas land "for fourteen years past" and noted that he purchased this land "to form a vacherie. . . ." In short, Grevemberg established a cattle ranch in the Attakapas District in 1751. Regardless, the founding of this vacherie still post-dates the 1737 and 1739 dates so often cited and does not preclude Grevemberg from first registering his brand decades later, when the region's increasing population demanded the creation of cattle brands. Note that Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg still did not receive a formal Spanish land grant until 1770. [Source: Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg memorial, Pintado Papers, typewritten translation on microfilm, St. Martin Parish Library, St. Martinville, La. — thanks to Don Arceneaux for informing me of this document.])

Finally (and most convincingly), Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg were born, respectively, in 1731 and 1753 — which means that Louis would have been only six to eight years old when his brands were allegedly registered; and that Barthélémy’s brands would have been registered fourteen to sixteen years before his own birth!

For these reasons I do not believe that Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg registered cattle brands in the Attakapas District in 1737 and 1739. Rather, I think it most likely that Louis and Barthélémy registered their brands some time after their father received his Attakapas land grant in 1770, or after they received their own land grants in the region a few years later. Indeed, as Post observed, The Brand Book does refer to Louis Grevemberg registering a brand in 1793, even while it also refers to him doing so allegedly in 1737 and 1739.

Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg's cattle brand entries
in The Brand Book, dated "1793" (Click to enlarge.)
(Source: Jefferson Caffery Louisiana Room, Dupré Library, University of Louisiana at Lafayette)

However, there is one (I think minor) flaw in my assertion — that is, Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg had a grandfather named Barthélémy (born ca. 1685 in Flanders, Belgium). One could therefore argue that it was this earlier Barthélémy Grevemberg who registered his brand in the 1730s. This seems unlikely, however, because, again, there is no other evidence that the Grevembergs — or any other colonists, not even the intrepid André Masse — had settled in the Attakapas region so early. Moreover, such a counterargument would still not account for the alleged registering of Louis Grevemberg's brand in 1737/1739.

An addendum concerning the identity of Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg: In 1779 a colonist by this name rendered enormous assistance to the founders of Nueva Iberia (present-day New Iberia). I believe that this Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg was a brother of Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg, but have yet to prove this link. He clearly was not Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg, father of Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg, for colonial records indicate that their father had died by 19 June 1772.

Signature of Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg,
who assisted the Nueva Iberia colony, 1779.
(Source: Center for Louisiana Studies, 
University of Louisiana at Lafayette.)

A related note: In his book Changing Tides: Twilight and Dawn in the Spanish Sea, 1763-1803 (1995), historian Robert S. Weddle identifies this same Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg as “Jean Baptiste Grevemberg dit Gonsoulin” — that is, Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg nicknamed Gonsoulin. But this is incorrect: Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg actually bore the same nickname as the other males of his family, which was “dit Flammand,” a reference to the family’s Flemish roots.

Gonsoulin, on the other hand, was an entirely different colonist. His full name was François Gonsoulin and he often worked as a surveyor in the Attakapas region.

Signature of François Gonsoulin, 1779. (Source: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.)

Sources:

Maurine Bergerie, They Tasted Bayou Water: A Brief History of Iberia Parish (New Orleans, La.: Pelican, 1962).

Rev. Donald J. Hebert, Southwest Lousiana Records, Vols. 1 and 2, s.v. "Grevemberg."

Lauren C. Post, "Cattle Branding in Southwest Louisiana," The McNeese Review X (1958): 101-117.

William Faulkner Rushton, The Cajuns: From Acadia to Louisiana (New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1979).

Tracking the Decline of Cajun French

The history of the Cajuns in the twentieth century often touches on the subject of language — that is, the decline of Cajun French as more and more young Cajuns learned to speak English as their first and often their only language. As I wrote in my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People

As I grew older, I became increasingly aware of the cultural rift between [my Bernard family’s] generations. How was it, I wondered, that after more than three hundred years in the New World, our family had suddenly lost the ability to speak French? What had occurred between my generation and that of my grandparents to bring about this significant change?

Americanization, I asserted, is what had occurred. And that Americanization was spurred along, more than any other factor, by the punishment of Cajun children for speaking French at school. As I noted:

The consequences [of punishment] were disastrous for Cajun French, pushing the dialect to the brink of extinction. For the first time [1946-1950], a minority of the ethnic group's children spoke French as their primary language. The percentage would plummet to 21 percent for those born between 1956 and 1960, a woeful decline from the 83 percent for Cajuns born at the dawn of the century. . . . [Furthermore] Among Cajuns born between 1966 and 1970 . . . only about 12 percent grew up speaking French as their primary language; for those born between 1971 and 1975, the figure dropped to about 8 percent.

I arrived at these figures by using census data — in particular, Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS), available mainly to scholars through academic institutions. PUMS offers raw census data extrapolated from 5 percent of households in specific geographic regions.

In my case, I used PUMS data to track the decline of Cajun French throughout the twentieth century. This is shown in the below chart, which I made in the 1990s and now publish for the first time.

Click to enlarge chart.

A word of caution:

The chart does not measure the percentage of Cajuns who spoke French in any given year. It does, however, measure the percentage of Cajuns who spoke French as their first language in 1990 according to their dates of birth (broken into five-year age groups).

So the chart reveals, for example, that for the five-year age group born between 1921 and 1925, approximately 76% spoke French as their first language in 1990.

(Some may wonder why I placed the dark vertical line denoting the start of the World War II era with the 1936-40 age group and not the 1941-45 age group. I did this because children born in the mid- to late 1930s would not have exhibited linguistic traits until they actually began to speak and they would not have exhibited permanent linguistic traits until they entered school at age five or six — and by that time the US would have entered World War II.)

The Secret CODOFIL Papers

In the mid-1990s I interviewed Cajun activist and educator Richard Guidry (d. 2008), who at one time worked for the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) — an organization founded by the state of Louisiana in 1968 “to do any and all things necessary to accomplish the development, utilization and preservation of the French language as found in the state of Louisiana for the cultural, economic and tourist[ic] benefit of the state.”

Today CODOFIL primarily helps to administer French education programs in Louisiana’s public school system.

During our interview, Guidry informed me that when he worked at CODOFIL a colleague confessed to him that she had been recruited by the FBI to infiltrate the organization. Her mission, she claimed, was to determine if CODOFIL was subversive. This notion will seem absurdly humorous to anyone who knows CODOFIL, which is hardly subversive. Innocuous, even conservative (politically and otherwise) during its infancy — but not subversive. One might as well suspect the Daughters of the American Revolution of subversion. I exaggerate only slightly.

As a historian trained to be skeptical, I neither believed nor disbelieved Guidry, though I did find his claim interesting. As such, I wrote to the FBI to request, through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), any documents it possessed concerning CODOFIL or its early president, former U.S. Congressman James "Jimmy" Domengeaux (pronounced in the French manner as DUH-MAZH-ZHEE-O, much like the surname of baseball great Joe DiMaggio).

Jimmy Domengeaux in 1968.
(Source: La Louisiane [documentary], INA.fr)

Two years later, in 1998, the FBI sent me twenty-seven pages of documents concerning Domengeaux.

Cover page of Domengeaux-related documents
sent to me by the FBI.

None of these documents, however, mentioned CODOFIL. Indeed, all twenty-seven pages predated CODOFIL’s origin. And while a cover letter noted that the FBI had never maintained a file on Domengeaux, the bureau had nonetheless located these Domengeaux-related documents in files pertaining to other subjects.

Those twenty-seven pages contained a hodgepodge of information: A request to investigate policemen who allegedly violated the civil rights of campaign volunteers working for Domengeaux’s brother; an appeal by Domengeaux to locate an individual who drove a US government vehicle involved in a traffic accident; an NAACP document accusing the former congressman of “racebaiting.”

Civil Rights complaint filed in 1956 by Domengeaux
on behalf of "a well-known 'winehead.'" (FBI Archives)

I wondered, however, why the FBI had chosen to withhold from me four additional pages of documents? 

Granted, the bureau’s cover letter explained that it withheld these four pages because, among lesser reasons, they had been “specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy.”

To be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy? What, had Domengeaux stumbled on America’s plans for the D-Day invasion of Normandy? After all, he left elected public office in the 1940s.

Request by Domengeaux in 1958 for information
on the driver of a US government vehicle
involved in an accident. (FBI Archives)

I appealed the FBI’s decision to withhold the documents — under President Clinton, under President Bush — each round of appeals taking years and never meeting with success. I was neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post, nor could I afford legal representation. “Appeal” simply meant writing letters to the FBI saying “I appeal your decision” and then waiting for an answer.

In early 2009 I again appealed the decision, but this time a new factor seemed as though it might work in my favor: Newly sworn-in President Barack Obama had issued a memorandum instructing “All agencies . . . [to] adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government.” The President added, “The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”

NAACP document from 1948 accusing
Domengeaux of "race-baiting." (FBI Archives)

In response to my new appeal citing the President's instructions, the FBI released the four previously withheld pages — thirteen years after I first appealed the bureau’s decision to withhold them.

And what were these documents so vital to “national defense or foreign policy”? 

Well, one of them was a clipping of a 1992 article from the French Canadian newspaper Le Devoir. That’s right — a newspaper article that anyone had been free to read since publication. The article, about a 1970 government report on the French Canadian separatist movement, made no reference to Domengeaux or CODOFIL, but it bore the intriguing title (and I translate), “CIA Also Monitoring the Acadians."

Le Devoir article about the CIA monitoring
Acadians in Canada (30 December 1992). (FBI Archives)

By “Acadians” the article did not mean Louisiana Cajuns, but their long-lost cousins in French Canada. Indeed, the only reference to Cajuns appeared toward the end of the article, when its author stated, “While many Acadians [around 1970] — including Premier of New Brunswick Louis Robichaud — were opposed to the separation [of French Canada from the rest of the nation], many others saw in the independence process an opportunity to get money [from France, I presume] to ‘develop cultural links with these original Acadians living in Maine, Massachusetts and Louisiana.’. . .” [My italics.]

Another previously withheld “secret” document (and it really was stamped “secret”) concerned Congressman Domengeaux’s 1946 request to the federal government that a French diplomat, not he, award the Order of the French Army to a south Louisiana veteran “because of his work in organizing the Maquis” (the French Resistance in World War II).

Domengeaux is mentioned toward the middle of this
1946 document in reference to a south Louisiana veteran
who was to receive a French medal. (FBI Archives)

(The FBI redacted the name of the US serviceman to receive this award. I showed the document to my acquaintance, General Robert LeBlanc of Abbeville, Louisiana, who not only had been a Domengeaux constituent, but during World War II had joined the OSS and crossed Nazi lines in France to aid the Maquis. General LeBlanc thus believed that the name redacted by the FBI was probably his own. While he did not receive the “Order of the French Army” (l’Ordre de l’Armée Française), LeBlanc had been nominated by France for the Croix de Guerre. He never received the citation, however, because of his untimely reassignment to China.)

Interestingly, one of the previously withheld pages made reference to something called the “GUARD RAIL investigation” and bore the stamp “TOP SECRET / GUARD RAIL.”

I subsequently asked the FBI for information about GUARD RAIL, but it replied that nothing could be found on the subject. 

Document from 1976 that twice mentions
"GUARD RAIL," whatever that is. (FBI Archives)

It is interesting to me, however, that in response to my request for papers concerning CODOFIL and Domengeaux, the FBI should first withhold and then send me this document about something called the “GUARD RAIL investigation.” I say this because although the document in question made no reference to CODOFIL or Domengeaux (as far as I was permitted to see), the FBI nonetheless associated GUARD RAIL with these two subjects — otherwise it would not have sent me the document. Of course, it’s possible that GUARD RAIL had nothing to do with CODOFIL or Domengeaux and that the FBI merely sent me the document by mistake. Who knows?

This undated page mentions neither Domengeaux nor CODOFIL,
but it does demonstrate that positive-thinking guru Norman Vincent Peale
took his marching orders from Joseph Goebbels. (FBI Archives)

So, what does all this mean? Does it mean that CODOFIL was a subversive organization or that the FBI once infiltrated it? 

No, it just means that the FBI was sitting on a bunch of fairly mundane papers that ultimately were of no real use to me as a historian. Regardless, they are interesting and I post a selection of them here for examination.

The Elusive André Massé, Pioneer of the Attakapas

Many researchers of the Teche region know the name André Massé: He was an early, if not the earliest, European pioneer of the Attakapas District of Louisiana (that is, south-central Louisiana). Unfortunately, a good deal of misinformation surrounds Massé’s place of residence.

Map of Louisiana showing the Attakapas District (copyright © 2008).
Source: Shane K. Bernard, Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors:
A Young Reader's History (2008).

In his voluminous Treatise on the Limits of Louisiana and Texas (1812), the Spanish cleric José Antonio Pichardo placed the French settler along the Sabine River, or, as he put it, "next to a river . . . call[ed] . . . the Adaes [Río de los Adays], or Mexicano — and which is [also called] the Sabinas. . . ."

Confusingly, Pichardo also quotes the Spanish governor of Texas, Navarrete (1759-1767), who wrote that Massé’s dwelling stood "[T]o this [east] side of the Río de los Adaes [Sabine River], and before coming to the little Río de las Flores. . . ." The Spanish cleric Morfi echoed this claim in his Memorias para la Historia de Texas (ca. 1781). 

About the location of this Río de las Flores: Pichardo stated that he did not refer to the larger waterway of the same name found in Texas. Rather, he referred to a smaller Río de las Flores, which he associated with Bayu de Agua Salada and Río de los Lobos, small waterways that emptied in the Gulf of Mexico on either side of Encinal del Tigre (present-day Chênière au Tigre, Louisiana). The encinal (a Spanish term for a clump of oak trees) stood a short distance west of the Río Bermellon (Vermilion River).

Pichardo's 1811 map of the south Louisiana coast
showing Bayu de Agua Salada, Río de Lobos,
and other geographic features.

This would place Massé in or near present-day coastal Vermilion Parish, Louisiana — which, although in the Attakapas District, is farther west than Massé’s actual documented place of residence, near Bayou Teche.

It seems clear to me, however, that Pichardo — writing decades after Massé’s death — did not really know where Massé had resided. Was it along the Sabine on the present-day Louisiana-Texas border? Or was it in or near present-day Vermilion Parish?



Likewise, in more recent times Robert S. Weddle stated in his book The French Thorn that Massé established a Texas rancheria on the Río de Angelina or its parent river, the Río de Neches. Weddle based his conclusion, however, solely on inaccurate claims by Spanish explorer Bernardo de Miranda — who so distorted his map of the Louisiana and Texas coasts that even the Viceroy of New Spain dismissed the illustration at the time (1757) as not "subject to the rules of geography."

In short, the map expressed wishful thinking on Miranda's part. It showed Spanish-held Texas stretching all the way to the Mississippi River. As a result, the Río de Angelina, which in reality runs north of Beaumont/Port Arthur, Texas, appears on Miranda’s map as if it ran through south-central Louisiana! 

Miranda's 1757 map of "Texas" with red square
around Massé's house. Map source: Research Laboratories
of Archaeology (RLA), http://rla.unc.edu/EMAS/index.html

Indeed, if one uses Miranda's own map scale as a guide, then Massé's house on the Río de Angelina stood 70 leagues (about 185 miles) west of New Orleans — which would put Massé somewhere around Hackberry, Louisiana, near Lake Charles. In other words, one could read Miranda's map either as placing Massé in Texas (if one goes by river names) or in Louisiana (if one goes by the map scale) . . . a contradiction that, when combined with the map's overall distortion, makes Miranda useless for determining Massé's place of residence.

A final piece of evidence: In the mid-1750s Massé petitioned the Spanish to permit him to move to Texas — a request the Spanish denied. However, if Massé had been living in Texas, as some have claimed, why would he have asked the Spanish to permit him to move to Texas? The answer is evident: He was not in Texas.

Ultimately, I think there is no reason to believe that André Massé resided anywhere during the period circa 1747 (when he first appeared in the historical record) to 1775 (by which time he had died) except in the Attakapas District. Indeed, there are several contemporary documents that overtly place Massé there, including church and civil records.

1756 document from the Poste des Attakapas church
containing several references to "Andre Massé," "Mr. [Monsieur]
Massé," and "Sr. [Sieur] Massé." Photo of a facsimile in the
African American Museum, St. Martinville, La.

Addendum:

Weddle identified Massé in the historical record as early as 1728, citing as his source page 26 of Winston De Ville's book Opelousas: The History of a French and Spanish Military Post in America. But a glance at that page reveals that De Ville mentioned not Massé, but a certain "De Massy." Weddle, however, assumed that de Massy was the same as Massé, and he made this assumption without informing readers of the difference in surnames. Moreover, Weddle made this assumption even though De Ville himself noted that "[I]t cannot be determined who de Massy is" (though, De Ville mused, he might have been a Louisiana resident named Jean Massy, originally of Tours, France).

Oddly, Weddle did not cite De Ville's actual reference to André Massé elsewhere in Opelousas: On page 31 De Ville stated that the Frenchman "settled on the lower Trinity River in Texas. . . ." But on checking De Ville's source, one finds that it contains no reference to Massé!

So, again, I believe that there is no credible contemporary, primary-source evidence that Massé lived in Texas. Rather, the evidence shows that he lived in the Attakapas region of Louisiana, and that claims to the contrary are based on poor or non-existent data.

Addendum of 31 October 2012:

I found the below document in the Louisiana State Land Office: dated early 1809, and signed by Joseph Sorrel and Claire Dauterive Dubuclet, it states "that André Massé was the first person who settled in this part of the country. . . ." One can see from the various surnames mentioned in the document — Sorrel, Dubuclet, Fontenot, Flamand (i.e., Grevemberg), Landry, Judice, etc. — that "this part of the country" meant the Bayou Teche region. Source: Declaration of Joseph Sorrel and Clair Dauterive Dubuclet, [19 January (unclear, could read "February")] 1809, in Claim Papers S.W.D. [Southwestern District], T.14S. R.6-8E. & T.14S. R.9E. 58, Louisiana State Land Office, document no. 510.00174, Baton Rouge, La., https://wwwslodms.doa.la.gov/, accessed 4 September 2018. 



Here are the signatures and date on recto:

Other sources:

Winston De Ville, Opelousas: The History of a French and Spanish Military Post in America, 1716-1803 (Cottonport, La.: Polyanthos, 1973).

José Antonio Pichardo, Pichardo’s Treatise on the Limits of Louisiana and Texas, Vols. 1-4 (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1931-1946).

Robert S. Weddle, The French Thorn: Rival Explorers in the Spanish Sea, 1682-1762 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991).





Debunking the Alleged Origin of the Word "Coonass"

Note: See also my new blog article on this topic, titled More on That Word "Coonass": A Labor Dispute Trial Documents Its Use in 1940.

The thing I enjoy most about being a historian is the detective work — piecing together clues in search of historical facts. And sometimes that search results in the debunking of myths.

Take the alleged etymology (that is, word origin) of the term coonass, an ethnic label that some use as a synonym for Cajun. It's a controversial word because while many Cajuns embrace the term and regard it as a badge of ethnic pride, other Cajuns consider it highly offensive.

A novelty "Registered Coonass" sticker.

This etymology goes as follows: During World War II native Frenchmen inexplicably derided their Cajun GI liberators as conasses, a standard French word meaning "stupid person" or "dirty prostitute." Anglo-American GIs overheard this slur, misunderstood it as coonass, and used it in reference to Cajun GIs. After the war, the term came to be applied to Cajuns in general.

This alleged etymology is well-known and is still cited on occasion as authoritative. It appears to have been thought up in the early 1970s by the late cultural activist, politician, and attorney James "Jimmy" Domengeaux (1907-1988). (His surname is pronounced in the French manner as DUH-MAZH-ZHEE-O, much like the surname of baseball great Joe DiMaggio.)* As head of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), Domengeaux railed against the term's use, including its use by then-Governor Edwin W. Edwards in jovial reference to himself.

Jimmy Domengeaux in 1968.
(Source: La Louisiane [documentary], INA.fr)

Even if Domengeaux himself did not concoct this etymology, he certainly did more than anyone else to popularize it. In fact, the Louisiana state legislature condemned the use of coonass in 1981 not because the word referred to a raccoon's posterior, but because, as Domengeaux claimed, it supposedly hailed from the French slur conasse.

Excerpt from a 1981 resolution
condemning the word coonass.
(Source: Louisiana State Legislature)

I myself had always assumed that a blue-ribbon panel of university-trained linguists must have formulated the conasse explanation. I was therefore surprised to learn that it was merely one man's hypothesis. (Someone who had not taken Domengeaux’s etymology at face value was Cajun scholar Barry Jean Ancelet of the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Ancelet rejected Domengeaux's notion as "shaky linguistics at best.")

It was quite by accident, however, that I ended up debunking Domengeaux's popular conasse etymology.

In the late 1990s I was searching the online database of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for anything having to do with the Nike-Cajun rocket. The U.S. military invented the Nike-Cajun in the 1950s as a sounding rocket for testing the atmosphere. But why, I wondered, had it been called the Nike-Cajun rocket? The name evoked a strange combination of ancient Greek mythology and rural south Louisiana folklife.

A Nike-Cajun rocket.
(Source: National Archives and Records Administration) 

I'll explain the origin of the Nike-Cajun in a later posting (see my article "The Nike-Cajun Rocket: How It Got Its Name") — but it was while researching this rocket that I stumbled across a reference to World War II stock footage depicting something called the Cajun Coonass.

What in the world was that? I wondered. As it turned out, the Cajun Coonass was the nickname of a U.S. warplane. In fact, the National Archives had a photograph of the airplane shot by the Army Signal Corps in April 1943.

The date’s significance took a few seconds to register. "That's over a year before D-Day.”

In other words, it was over a year before there were any Cajuns in France to be called conasse, the word that supposedly morphed into coonass: Domengeaux’s etymology was wrong.

Ordering a print of the photograph, I found that it did indeed show a U.S. airplane, specifically a C-47, sporting the word coonass on its fuselage — juxtaposed (some would say redundantly) with the word Cajun.

According to Army Signal Corps data on the back of the original print, the image was made not only over a year before the Allied invasion of France, but halfway around the world, in the South Pacific. (The plane's pilot, I should explain, was a Cajun from Sunset, Louisiana, and thus he had the privilege of naming the plane. It's therefore interesting that he chose the word coonass.)

1943 photograph of the C-47 Cajun Coonass (with enlarged inset).
(Source: National Archives and Records Administration)

Granted, Cajun GIs could have been called conasse as early as 1942, when U.S. troops went up against Vichy French forces in North Africa; or even during World War I, when U.S. doughboys served in France. But Domengeaux had not made these claims, nor had the Louisiana state legislature made them in its concurrent resolution condemning coonass. In fact, the resolution stated, "[S]ince World War II, certain persons commenced using the word 'coonass' in referring to an Acadian (Cajun)" because "[T]he word . . . originated when French-speaking Louisiana soldiers stationed in France were often called by native French soldiers as 'conasse.' . . ."

My own feeling is that coonass originated much closer to "home," that is, in the Acadiana region of south Louisiana or right across the border in east Texas, where Cajun culture mingled with the WASP-ish Bible-belt culture of the Lone Star State. This is mere speculation on my part, however, and for now the term's origin remains a mystery.

But thanks to this serendipitous discovery of the Cajun Coonass photograph in the National Archives, I now know the term did not arise as Domengeaux claimed in his conasse theory.

Some activists have expressed concern that debunking the conasse theory might set back the effort to stamp out coonass. My opinion is that the disproved conasse theory isn’t needed to stamp out the word: it should suffice to say, if one is so inclined, “I don’t want to be referred to as the backside of a raccoon!”

For more information on the word coonass and its colorful history, see my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (2003), pp. 8, 15, 96-97, 109, 138, 142.

Cover of my book
The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (2003)

Addendum of 13 March 2012

Here is World War II stock motion picture footage from the National Archives and Records Administration showing the Cajun Coonass and its crew. The pilot, Lt. Albert Burleigh, hailed from Sunset, Louisiana; he is shown first in line among the crew and is wearing an officer's cap. Like the above still photo (apparently taken at the same time), this film was shot in April 1943 at the Port Moresby airfield in Papua New Guinea.

(Source: National Archives and Records Administration)

A note on selected source material:

The original Cajun Coonass still photograph is in the National Archives and Records Administration and is photograph #342-FH-3A-32507-79171a.c. It is dated "April, 1943" on the back after a typewritten list of the plane's crewmembers; and it is dated "rec'd 7 Jan. 1944" on the front — both dates predating the D-Day arrival of Cajun GIs in France. I obtained photocopies (verso and recto) and a glossy print of this image from the National Archives in 1998.

Data from the front (verso) and back (recto)
of the Cajun Coonass still photograph
establishing when and where the image was taken.
(Click to enlarge.)

The Cajun Coonass motion picture footage also comes from the National Archives and is film NWDNM(m)-342-USAF-12835-1 (reel #2) or NWDNM(m)-342-USAF-19392 (reel #4), both reels being supplied to me by the National Archives in 1999 on a single VHS tape.

________

*This pronunciation is confirmed by the website of Domengeaux's own former law firm, which states "Our law firm was established in Lafayette in 1957 by attorney James R. 'Jimmy' Domengeaux (pronounced like DiMaggio). . . ." Source: Domengeaux, Wright, Roy & Edwards website, http://www.wrightroy.com/Firm-Overview/, accessed 17 February 2013.

Agnus Dei Artifact Found on Banks of Bayou Teche

As a professional historian and curator, I'm often asked to examine artifacts that people find in their closets, attics, backyards, and elsewhere.

Here I show one of these objets trouvés (that's a fancy French phrase for "found objects"). My neighbor uncovered it in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana — known in "the old days" as Pont Breaux — in the mud along Bayou Teche.

Agnus Dei object found on banks of Bayou Teche.

It's a metal object measuring 3/8 x 1 15/16 x 2.25 inches (5 x 49 x 56 mm) and apparently made of pewter or lead. While it looks old, I cannot be sure of its age. If I had to guess, I would say it's from the period circa 1750 to 1900. I assign a starting date of 1750 because it was around that time that the first Europeans came to the area.

And they came via the Teche, which early explorers used to travel deep into the semitropical south Louisiana frontier. For the next two hundred years residents of Attakapas (south-central Louisiana) used the Teche as a primary means of transportation, rowing and then steaming along its 130-mile path until railroads and highways all but killed off commercial river traffic. Today the Teche is used mainly by pleasure boaters, but occasionally tugboats still push barges laden with limestone or who-knows-what up the twisting waterway.

For comparison, another Agnus Dei with aureole.

Back to the object: It is obviously religious in nature and probably Roman Catholic in origin. I say this because the region's inhabitants were almost wholly of this faith, at least until recent decades. In fact, the object represents a common motif in Roman Catholic iconography: the Agnus Dei, Latin for "Lamb of God." (Agnus Dei is pronounced AG-NOOS DAY or AG-NOOS DAY-EYE, though the former seems preferable.)

The lamb symbol was associated very early with Jesus. As written in John 1:20-34, "John saw Jesus coming to him and he saith: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sins of the world."

This reference is preserved in the modern Roman Catholic liturgy when priests say:

"Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us."

Which in the old Latin liturgy would have been:

"Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis."

Another Agnus Dei example.

As seen in the photo at top, the artifact shows the lamb lying on a rectangular object and surrounded by a sunburst.

In Roman Catholic iconography the sunburst is called an aureole.

The rectangular object on the artifact symbolizes a book, specifically the Book of Seven Seals, which in Revelation was opened by a lamb. "And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals," it states, "and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see."

The Catholic Encyclopedia notes:

"Throughout the Apocalypse the portraiture of Jesus is that of the lamb. Through the shedding of its blood it has opened the book with seven seals and has triumphed over Satan."

Yet another Agnus Dei image.

The Catholic Encyclopedia identifies another Biblical figure associated with the symbol of the lamb:

"The Agnus Dei also appears in portraitures of St. John the Baptist, represented as lying upon a book held in his hand, or in an aureole. . . ."

Note the other examples of the Agnus Dei shown here.  As you can see, they closely resemble the image on the artifact found in Breaux Bridge.

So this is what we have: A symbol of Jesus that is also associated with St. John the Baptist — namely, a classic rendition of the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God, complete with aureole and the Book of the Seven Seals. (It does not have, however, the banner or flag often but not always shown in other depictions of the Agnus Dei.)

Religious symbolism aside, the purpose of the artifact in question remains a mystery: The back is flat and undecorated, suggesting the artifact was affixed to some other object, such as a Bible or piece of furniture. Whatever its origins, this objet trouvé seems to reflect the strong Roman Catholic tradition of south Louisiana, a tradition brought to the region by Acadian, French, and Spanish settlers, among others, who first moved up the Teche some two hundred fifty years ago.