Petit Manchac: A Tale of Two Lafayettes

The year 2023 marks the bicentennial of Lafayette Parish, Louisiana — the seat of which was Vermilionville, renamed Lafayette in 1884 to honor the Marquis de Lafayette of American Revolution fame. This two-hundredth anniversary seems an opportune time to reconsider a popular notion about early Vermilionville / Lafayette history: namely, that the community had been founded on a site known as "Petit Manchac" — the latter word thought to be of Mobilian or Choctaw origin meaning "rear" or "rear entrance."(1)

Logo of the Lafayette Parish
bicentennial celebration.

This claim that Vermilionville / Lafayette began as Petit Manchac can be found in numerous sources spanning the past century. "Petit Manchac, Vermilionville, Lafayette," observed Father Charles Léon Souvay in 1921, "each of these three names might well be taken to typify a distinct period in the life of the thriving little city by the Bayou Vermilion." "The settlement, then called Petit Manchac," asserted the World War II-era tome Louisiana: A Guide to the State, "became the governing seat of Lafayette Parish." "'Petit Manchac' Grew Up into Lafayette,” noted a Lafayette newspaper headline in 1959. "Petit Manchac, the original name of Lafayette, even before Vermilionville, means the little back door!" stated New Orleans Magazine in 2013.(2)

But is this true? Was Petit Manchac the name of the colonial-era site that became Vermilionville and then Lafayette, a city of about 120,000 people in present-day Lafayette Parish, Louisiana.(3)

Vermilionville, later Lafayette,
Lafayette Parish, Louisiana,
from J. H. Colton's 1855 map of Louisiana.

Putting aside the Petit Manchac issue for a moment, Manchac in itself has referred over time to a number of Louisiana geographic features. For example, it is the name of a bayou running through the parishes of East Baton Rouge, Ascension, and Iberville. Furthermore, Manchac refers to a small present-day community in Tangipahoa Parish. Manchac Pass is a short waterway connecting Lake Maurepas to Lake Pontchartrain. Historically, Manchac was the name of a colonial-era British fort (also called Fort Bute) and its environs located where Bayou Manchac meets the Mississippi River.(4)

Because all these features bearing the name Manchac sit in southeast Louisiana, it seems a little odd that the future site of Vermilionville / Lafayette — found in south-central Louisiana — should have been called Petit Manchac. Odd, because Vermilionville / Lafayette sits in a region with a slightly different history and culture, where the Attakapas, not the Mobile or Choctaw, resided, and where place names deriving from the latter two tribal languages are less commonly known or altogether unknown.

Although not impossible, it does seem unlikely that Vermilionville / Lafayette traces its origin to a place called Petit Manchac. There is, for example, no known primary-source evidence for the claim (at least as far as I am aware) — no known handwritten colonial-era or early-American document referring to Vermilionville / Lafayette as Petit Manchac.

So where does the story about Petit Manchac morphing into Vermilionville / Lafayette come from? 

I believe the association of Vermilionville / Lafayette with Petit Manchac quite possibly came from someone's misreading of a 19th-century work of history — namely, Charles Gayarré's French-language book Histoire de la Louisiane, published in two-volumes between 1846 and 1847.

Volume 2 of Gayarré's 
Histoire de la Louisiane (1847).

This idea, I should say, is not at all mine, though I concur with it wholly. Rather, the idea comes from my fellow historical researcher Donald Arceneaux and archaeologist Donny Bourgeois. It was they who noticed and interpreted the following passage in Gayarré's book (which I translate) — the earliest known reference to Petit Manchac:

"The English . . . [in] Their vessels, went up the [Mississippi] river under the pretext of going to [Fort] Manchac and to Baton Rouge, stopping, after having passed New Orleans, at the place where the town of Lafayette now stands. . . . The name 'petit Manchac' stuck with this place."(5)

There it is — the association of Petit Manchac with the future site of "the town of Lafayette." 

Seems pretty clear and matter-of-fact.

The crucial passage in Gayarré.

A closer reading of the passage, however, reveals that Gayarré did not refer to Lafayette in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana. Rather, he referred to a different Lafayette, one located some 135 miles to the south-southeast, on the Mississippi River just upstream of New Orleans. 

And there was indeed a town called Lafayette on that stretch of the Mississippi — a town in fact so close to New Orleans that it eventually became part of New Orleans itself. I refer to the Crescent City neighborhood called Faubourg Lafayette, now the 10th Ward, comprising part of New Orleans' renowned Garden District. “The city of Lafayette,” the state declared in 1852, “is hereby incorporated with the city of New Orleans, and shall form part of the city of New Orleans. . . .”(6)

The faubourg of Lafayette (at left),
in relation to central New Orleans (right),
from Charles Zimpel's map of New Orleans (1834).

With this information in mind, it seems to me the assertion that Lafayette / Vermilionville developed from a place called Petit Manchac is incorrect; and that this error likely stemmed directly or indirectly from a misreading of Gayarré's Histoire de la Louisiane. 

The alternative, I should note, would be that early south Louisiana boasted not one but two sites called Petit Manchac, both of which grew into communities named Lafayette — a highly unlikely proposition. The simpler explanation is that someone misread Gayarré and that others repeated that error. This is, unfortunately, not an uncommon occurrence in historical writing.(7)

Thanks to Carl Brasseaux and Don Arceneaux for proofing this blog article.

NOTES

(1)William A. Read, "Louisiana Place-Names of Indian Origin," University Bulletin XIX (February 1927): 36. Read did not seem entirely convinced of the etymology, tentatively suggesting "Perhaps it springs . . . from Mobilian or Choctaw imashaka, 'rear,' or probably 'rear entrance.' . . ." (emphasis added).

(2)Reverend Charles Léon Souvay, "Rummaging through Old Parish Records: An Historical Sketch of the Church of Lafayette, La., 1821-1921," St. Louis Catholic Historical Review III (October 1921): 242; Louisiana: A Guide to the State (New York: Hastings House, 1945), p. 402; Lydia Krause, "'Petit Manchac' Grew Up into Lafayette,” Daily Advertiser, 30 January 1959, Sec. A, 1–5; Charles Paxton, "The Legacy of Native Acadiana," New Orleans Magazine, 1 August 2013, https://www.myneworleans.com/the-legacy-of-native-acadiana/, accessed 27 June 2023. For ease of reading I have corrected Souvey's spelling of Vermilionville from his nonstandard "Vermillionville."

(3)"QuickFacts: Lafayette City, Louisiana; Lafayette Parish, Louisiana," US Census Bureau, population estimate of 1 July 2022, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/lafayettecitylouisiana,lafayetteparishlouisiana/PST045222, accessed 27 June 2023.

(4)See Richard Campanella, "What Might Have Happened at Manchac," 64 Parishes, Winter 2022, https://64parishes.org/what-might-have-happened-at-manchac, accessed 27 June 2023.

(5)Charles Gayarré, Histoire de la Louisiane, Vol. 2 (New Orleans: Magne & Weisse, 1847), 127. It is worth noting that Gayarré himself does not cite a source for his claim that the New Orleans faubourg of Lafayette was once called Petite Manchac — but whether or not his assertion is correct is a separate issue from that surrounding Vermilionville / Lafayette.

(6)The Statutes of the State of Louisiana, ed. U. B. Phillips (New Orleans: Emile La Sere, 1855), 383 (Sec. 43, 1852-55-1).

(7)That earliest instance of a misreading may in fact be Souvay's 1921 essay in St. Louis Catholic Historical Review (see n. 2 above). Though he footnoted that work, Souvey did not mention the source of his claim that Petit Manchac became Vermilionville/Lafayette.

A Glimpse from 1968: Historic Films Looked at Cajuns and Creoles in Epic Year

A couple months ago or so Cajun fiddler David Greely sent me a link to a 1968 film on YouTube. The film showed elderly Cajun couples dancing to late Cajun accordionist Aldus Roger (pronounced RO-ZHAY in the French manner).

Aldus Roger and his band perform for dancers.
Source: La Louisiane (1968)

The video captivated me because moving images of Cajun musicians from the late 1960s or earlier are rare. I was not alone in my interest — the video caused a momentary stir among others interested in Cajun culture.

I say "momentary" because almost as soon as David spread the word about this YouTube footage, the original poster suddenly yanked it from the Internet. This is quite possibly my fault, because when I saw the film I immediately e-mailed the original poster to ask, "Where did you get this? Do you know where I can get a copy? It is extremely important to those who study Cajun culture, and I would like to obtain dubs for preservation and research purposes." (I paraphrase.)

Within a few hours the YouTube video was gone and the poster never answered my query. Indeed, with the video removed I had no way to contact the poster, even to ask the name of the film.

Today I decided to see if I could track down the documentary in question. And, by Googling the words "cadien," "documentaire," "musique," and "1968," I was able to find the film.

Logo of the ORTF.
Source: Les archives de la télévision

Actually, I found three films (and there are perhaps more), all shot between 1968 and 1969 by the Office de radiodiffusion télévision française (ORTF), operated by the French government.

This was a vital time in Cajun and Creole history. As I note in my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People:

That year, 1968, was remarkable nationally and internationally. The Tet Offensive marked a turning point in the Vietnam War. LBJ announced he would not seek reelection to the presidency. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy were assassinated.  Campus rallies erupted into violence amid cries of “Revolution!” Police bullied protestors and innocent bystanders at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. . . .

Acadiana [i.e., Cajun Louisiana] also witnessed incredible events of its own during 1968. Besides the creation of [French education group] CODOFIL, it saw the passage of several laws that bolstered the status of French in Louisiana. The state legislature mandated that public elementary schools offer at least five years of French instruction, and that public high schools offer the subject for at least three years, along with at least one course on the history and culture of French America. It required state colleges and universities to offer teacher certification in elementary school French, and it approved the publication of legal notices and other public documents in French. It also demanded that state-funded educational television be bilingual, showing French programming in equal proportion to its French-speaking viewers. Finally, the legislature authorized the establishment of a non-profit French-language television corporation in conjunction with [local university] USL, to be called Télévision-Louisiane.

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

Other events contributed to making 1968 an astounding year for the French preservation movement. USL committed itself to becoming “a world linguistic center” by establishing an Institute of French Studies and by expanding its role in training French educators. Civic leaders opened cultural exchanges with other French-speaking regions, symbolically pairing Lafayette with the city of Longueuil, Quebec, in what became known as a jumelage (twinning). Business leaders conducted a trade mission to Quebec in order to develop commercial ties. Educators started a summer student exchange program, sending Cajun children to Quebec, and hosting French Canadian children in south Louisiana. An International Acadian Festival took placed in Lafayette, attracting over one hundred governmental and media visitors from Canada and France for two days of receptions, lectures, exhibits, films, tours, and other events that highlighted the region’s French heritage.

Cajuns quickly grasped the significance of this amazing period. “Historians will circle calendar year 1968,” announced Acadiana Profile, a new bilingual magazine, “as the time when the . . . French Renaissance took form and shape and direction in Louisiana.” . . .

Shot in 1968, two of the films appeared in a French series called "En Couleur des U.S.A" ("In Color USA"). Both are available for viewing in their entirety per the website of the Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA), or National Audiovisual Institute, of France.

La Louisiane : Fête de l'écrevisse, May 1968 (14 mins. 31 secs.)

Source: INA.fr

One of the two films, titled "La Louisiane : Fête de l'écrevisse" ("Louisiana: Crawish Festival"), features the 1968 Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival. It originally aired in May that year and its summary reads: 

Reportage sur le festival de l'écrevisse à Breaux Bridge, en Louisiane, dans le pays cajun, avec de nombreuses festivités : course d'écrevisses, fanfares, danses, concours d'épluchage d'écrevisses et parades (une pour les blancs et une autre pour les noirs, alors qu'en théorie la ségrégation n'a plus cours).

 Translation: 

Report on the Crawfish Festival of Breaux, Bridge, in Louisiana, in Cajun country, with many festivities: crawfish races, bands, dances, crawfish peeling contests, and parades (one for whites and another for blacks, even though segregation is no longer acceptable).

The absence of black people among the festival goers struck me as peculiar, even as the film itself depicts a black parade and a white parade. This was, of course, 1968, about a year before south Louisiana finally integrated its elementary and high schools (despite the fact that fifteen years earlier the Supreme Court, per the case Brown v. the Board of Education, had declared "separate-but-equal" education to be unconstitutional).

A crawfish float on Bayou Teche,
Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival.
Source: La Louisiane: Fête de l'écrevisse (1968)

On a less serious note, the film depicts a boat parade on Bayou Teche, a crawfish race, and, in one scene, a van decorated to promote Cajun musician Happy Fats LeBlanc's live Saturday TV program, Mariné, which aired on KLFY-TV 10.

The other film, titled "La Louisiane," was originally released in September 1968 and documents French culture in general in and around Lafayette, Louisiana. It begins with Cajun fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico and, later, includes that priceless footage of Cajun musician Aldus Roger playing for elderly Cajun dancers. It appears to me that the Roger footage was shot at KLFY's studio, originally located on Jefferson Street near its intersection with Pinhook Road. I assume the event is Roger's weekend live Cajun music TV program, which aired on KLFY from the mid-1950s through the 1960s. (I'm unsure when it fell from the station's lineup.) The only reason I doubt we are seeing Roger's weekend program, however, is the inclusion of news in French — unless that was actually part of Roger's program. (The show might be one of KLFY's other long-running local programs, Passe Partout or Meet Your Neighbor, but I've never heard of either having live studio dancers.)

La Louisiane, September 1968 (15 mins. 2 secs.)

Source: INA.fr

Intriguingly, this second film includes an interview in French with future Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards and a rare interview with 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). (I mention Domengeaux in previous articles here and here.) The same year this documentary appeared, Domengeaux became president of the newly created Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) — a group that in coming decades would spearhead the teaching of French in Louisiana public schools. It was a revolutionary idea, for less than a decade earlier Louisiana children had been punished in schools for speaking French.

The summary of this film reads:

Ce reportage en Louisiane du sud part à la découverte des habitants francophones du pays acadien, dans la région de Lafayette : les trappeurs (piégeurs) des marécages du bayou Vermilion, les pêcheurs de crevettes (descendants de bretons ou normands installés d'abord au Canada) dans le port de Delcambre, les noirs descendants de créoles de Saint Domingue et Haiti. A Lafayette, une chaine de télévision et une station de radio émettent des programmes en français. James Domegeaux (un avocat de Lafayette), un représentant du Congrès et le gouverneur de Louisiane témoignent de leur volonté de sauvegarder le français en Louisiane.

Translation: 

This report on south Louisiana sets out to discover the French-speaking residents of Acadian country in the Lafayette area: trappers of the wetlands of Bayou Vermilion, shrimp fishermen (descendants of Bretons and Normans who first settled in Canada) at the port of Delcambre, black descendants of Creoles from Santo Domingo and Haiti. In Lafayette, a television station and a radio station broadcast programs in French. James Domegeaux (a lawyer from Lafayette), a congressman [Edwards, who was not yet governor], and a governor of Louisiana [John McKeithen], show their desire to preserve French in Louisiana. 

Jimmy Domengeaux interviewed.
Source: La Louisiane (1968)

A third film, shot the next year, is available per the INA website, but only as a short preview: it is titled, "Les Enfants de Francien : En Louisiane," which I suppose could be translated as "The Children of Old French: In Louisiana." It originally aired in June 1969 and according to the summary it asks: 

Comment peut-on être de culture française sans être français ? Ce reportage présente la communauté acadienne située dans les marais du delta du Mississippi.

 Translation:

Can French culture exist without being French? This report presents the Acadian community located in the marshes of the Mississippi delta. [I suspect the geography is off slightly.]

I re-post these videos because they afford a fascinating glimpse into the state of south Louisiana’s Cajun and Creole culture in the late 1960s, right at the birth of the French revival movement — as perceived at the time by the French media.

Addendum of 12 February 2013

A third south Louisiana-related film is available for viewing in its entirety through the INA website. Shot in 1976 — eight years after the above two La Louisiane films — it depicts, among other subjects, Louisiana schoolchildren singing "Frère Jacques"; Cajun radio-and-TV personality (and sometimes Cajun singer) Jim Olivier giving a weather forecast in French (another KLFY reference, possibly from the Passe Partout morning program); a second interview with Jimmy Domengeaux (whose group, CODOFIL, is mistakenly called the "Comité du defense du français" — unless a distinct group by this name existed, but I've never heard of it); and a glimpse of Michael Doucet and a few other Cajun musicians performing for the camera.  (The musicians may comprise an early version of the band BeauSoleil or perhaps another of Doucet's groups, Coteau.)