Notes on the Founding of Opelousas

History is, like science, a self-correcting discipline: professional historians make their careers in part by correcting or refining the research and assertions of other historians. This is a laudable practice and should be encouraged — even by historians whose own research is called into question and perhaps refuted. As I myself am fond of quoting, "No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar."

What does Shakespeare
 have to do with Louisiana history?

This quote comes from noted Shakespeare scholar Donald Foster, who in 2002 recanted his own claim that the Bard of Avon had authored an anonymous poem titled "A Funeral Elegy." As the New York Times reported, "Now, in a stunning development that has set the world of Shakespeare scholarship abuzz, Professor Foster has admitted he was wrong." To me, such an admission is nothing but praiseworthy. It's how scholarship should work.

This brings me to an issue far removed from the world of British poetry — to a seemingly minor issue that nonetheless has garnered regional media attention in south-central Louisiana: namely, was the town of Opelousas, Louisiana, founded in 1720 as sometimes asserted in tourism brochures, on city welcome signs, and on the Internet, among other places?(1) Or was it founded later, as claimed by several professional and avocational historians, including Dr. Claude F. Oubre of LSU Eunice, Dr. Carl A. Brasseaux of UL Lafayette, genealogist Winston De Ville, independent researchers John Harper and Donald J. Arceneaux (the latter four of whom I thank for proofing this essay), and myself?

In truth, I have never seen any evidence to indicate that Opelousas was founded in 1720 or, for that matter, any time before the mid- to late-eighteenth century. And by "evidence" I don't mean twentieth-century or early twenty-first-century published secondary-source material, such as a book of local history, an encyclopedia entry, a magazine article, or a city government website. I mean primary-source evidence from or around 1720, such as a handwritten colonial document in French or Spanish.

Random example of a primary-source
document from the colonial era.

By the time of Opelousas' alleged 1720 founding, New Orleans had existed for only two years, and the entire Louisiana colony, for a mere twenty-one years. The region surrounding and adjacent to present-day Opelousas (that is, modern south-central and southwestern Louisiana) was during the early to mid-1700s a sort of no-man's land claimed by both France and Spain. In fact, Spain located the capital of its Mexican province of Texas in what is today Louisiana (at Los Adaes near Natchitoches, Louisiana, some 110 miles to the northwest of present-day Opelousas).

Because France and Spain were allied Bourbon monarchies with a common perennial enemy — namely, Britain — the two Empires mutually refrained from settling the disputed region. In this way, reasoned French and Spanish administrators, they could avoid antagonizing each other.

Attakapas Indian,
by Alexandre de Batz (1735).
Source: Wikimedia.org

There was another reason France and Spain avoided incursions into the region: fear of the reputedly cannibalistic Attakapas Indian tribe (whose very name, given to them by other, rival tribes, means "Man-Eater").(2) It is uncertain if the Attakapas were actually cannibals, but it hardly mattered to colonial-age settlers: they believed the Attakapas were cannibals, and that was enough to curtail settlement in the region. In fact, the French in Louisiana rarely wandered from the protective banks of Louisiana's great river system. As a result, most French activity in colonial Louisiana occurred right along the shores of the Red and Mississippi rivers.

It thus would have been surprisingly early, and extremely incautious, for the French to have settled the town of Opelousas in 1720. And yet it nevertheless has been widely stated that the French did precisely that. The year even appears on the City of Opelousas' official seal.(3)

Seal of the City of Opelousas.

The claim also shows up — to cite only a few of a great many published examples — in Fodor's 2000 travel guide to the U.S. It states "Opelousas is the third-oldest town in the state" because it was "Founded by the French in 1720. . . ." Likewise, the New Encyclopedia Britannica observed in 1974 that Opelousas had been "Founded in 1720 as a French garrison and trading post. . . ." In 1954 the Louisiana Municipal Review magazine asserted "History shows that enterprising French adventurers operated a permanent trading post with the friendly Attakapas Indians on the site of present day Opelousas as early as 1720. . . ." 

Unfortunately, none of these sources cite a primary (original colonial-era) source. So what primary-source evidence is there for the 1720 date of origin?

As far as I know, there is no such evidence . . . except for one document that I believe might be the source of an erroneous 1720 date. That document is the French-language Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississipi by Guillaume de l'Isle, printed in 1718 and used shortly afterwards as the basis for John Senex's English-language Map of Louisiana and of the River Mississipi, printed in 1721. Both maps could be said, therefore, to have been printed "around 1720."(Mississipi, by the way, is an archaic, colonial-era spelling of the modern Mississippi.)

Guillaume de l'Isle, Carte de la Louisiane
et du Cours du Mississipi (1718).
Source: Library of Congress

Those two very similar maps depict the entire eastern half of North America, from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Atlantic Coast in east. De l'Isle and Senex's maps also encompass parts of Spanish Mexico, French Louisiana (when the name "Louisiana" denoted about one-third of the entire North American continent), and the British colonies from the Carolinas to New York.

A close look at the section of de l'Isle's map covering littoral south-central and southwestern Louisiana reveals the caption "Indiens errans et Antropophages" — in English, "Wandering Man-Eating Indians." And there, right above the word "Antropophages," is the intriguing word "Loupeloussa".

"Wandering Man-Eating Indians,"
detail of the 1718 de l'Isle map.

I believe it is this word "Loupeloussa" that some unknown or forgotten historical researcher, perhaps decades ago, misinterpreted as referring to the town of Opelousas. But it is not a reference to the town. Rather, it is a reference to the Indian tribe after whom the town was eventually named.

We can be certain of this for two reasons:

First, the intriguing map label in question reads "Loupeloussa" – that is, "L'Oupeloussa", or in English translation "The Oupeloussa". This combination of the French article "L'" with the tribal name "Oupeloussa" indicates that de l'Isle applied the term not to a settlement, but to a group of people: the Oupeloussa tribe. De l'Isle did likewise on the map for many other (though not all) Indian tribes, as when he labeled "Les Cheraqui" (The Cherokee) and "Les Chicachas" (The Chickasaw), to name only two of many such instances.

Other tribes identified
on de l'Isle's map.

Second, just below the "L" in "Loupeloussa" appears a diminutive symbol that looks like a house or other dwelling. De l'Isle expressly states in the key to his map that this symbol denotes "Habitations des Indiens" — Indian habitations. Not colonial settlements founded by Europeans and Africans, but Native American villages.

Key to de l'Isle's map.

One might assert that the Native American village labeled "Loupeloussa" could have evolved into the modern-day town of Opelousas. This, however, is clearly not the case: both the word "Loupeloussa" and its accompanying symbol appear on de l'Isle's map next to a bayou flowing a short distance, and directly, into the Gulf of Mexico. The modern-day town of Opelousas, however, is not located a short distance from the Gulf of Mexico (St. Landry Parish, in which the town sits, being landlocked); nor does the town sit on a notable bayou (local bayous Yarbor and Tesson, for example, being little more than cement-lined coulées [ravines] inside the city limits); nor does the town sit on a bayou flowing directly into the Gulf of Mexico. (The two most notable bayous near but not in Opelousas — namely, the Teche and the Courtableau — likewise do not flow directly into the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, they run more or less southeasterly into the Atchafalaya River and its distributary, the Lower Atchafalaya River.)

"Loupeloussa" label and its dwelling symbol
on the "Rio Mexicano,"
detail of the 1718 de l'Isle map. 

On even closer inspection of de l'Isle's map, we see that the waterway on which the cartographer placed "Loupeloussa" and its dwelling symbol is labeled "R. Mexicano" — that is, Rio Mexicano (or in English, the Mexican River). As I note in my 2016 book, Teche: A History of Louisiana's Most Famous Bayou (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi), "[A]t one time or another the [colonial] Spanish referred to the present-day Sabine and Mermentau rivers . . . as the Rio Mexicano (Mexican River)." Thus, it appears de l'Isle placed the "Loupeloussa" tribe and its village on the Mermentau (the Sabine being too far west in this instance to consider). And the Mermentau, interestingly, does indeed flow directly into the Gulf.

John Senex's English-language map,
based on de l'Isle's earlier one (1721).
(Source: Library of Congress)

To summarize my analysis thus far: de l'Isle's circa 1720 map does not refer to the town of Opelousas, but to a village occupied by the Indian tribe called the "Loupeloussa," from whom the modern-day town — eventually founded some forty miles to the northeast — acquired its name.

The tribe similarly gave its name to the Poste des Opelousas, a term referring not, as often believed, to a single village or outpost or garrison, but to the entire southwestern corner of Louisiana now embracing St. Landry, Calcasieu, Cameron, Beauregard, Allen, Jefferson Davis, Evangeline, and Acadia parishes.

Detail of Senex's English-language map (1721),
based on de l'Isle's earlier one.

It would be several more decades, I believe, before settlers of European and African heritage founded a town called Opelousas. That event must have occurred some time after the mid-1700s. (When precisely the town came into existence I might explore in another essay.) I say this because, as far as anyone knows, the earliest permanent settlers in all south-central and southwestern Louisiana (that is, excluding wandering traders like Joseph Blanpain, who passed through but did not remain in the region) were the French pioneer Andre Massé and his enslaved Africans. And according to Massé's own correspondence, he arrived in the region in or before 1746. Indeed, an 1809 document now in the Louisiana State Land Office, signed by planters Joseph Sorrel and Claire Dauterive Dubuclet, testifies that "André Massé was the first person who settled in this part of the country. . . ."

"André Massé was the first person. . . .":
the Sorrel-Dubuclet document (1809).
Source: Louisiana State Land Office

If that is the case, no non-indigenous peoples settled in the region adjacent to and including modern-day Opelousas until Massé appeared on the Teche around 1746. For this reason — along with French and Spanish political concerns, widespread fear of the Attakapas tribe, and the apparent misinterpretation of de l'Isle's map — it seems to me incredibly doubtful that the town of Opelousas was founded any time before the region passed uncontested to Spanish control in 1762. 

A serious question remains: is there some other colonial-era, primary-source evidence — evidence I might not know about and so have not considered — proving that Opelousas was founded in 1720? If so, I would very much like to see it and, if conclusive, adjust my view accordingly. 

"It is vital, however (and I cannot stress this enough), that researchers distinguish between historical references to the Opelousas tribe, the Poste des Opelousas political district, and the later town of Opelousas. I say this because they are not the same thing, but could be confused with one another."

It is vital, however (and I cannot stress this enough), that researchers distinguish between historical references to the Opelousas tribe, the Poste des Opelousas political district, and the later town of Opelousas. I say this because they are not the same thing, but could be confused with one another. It would be easy, for example, to mistake a reference to the Poste des Opelousas district for a reference to a village or outpost or garrison called Opelousas. As I mentioned, however, the Poste was not a single small point on a map, but rather the entire southwestern part of the present-day state of Louisiana.

The old Poste des Opelousas region.

(Click to enlarge)

Source: William Darby, A Map of the State of Louisiana

with Part of the Mississippi Territory (1816).

Ultimately, if there is no indisputable primary-source evidence for the 1720 date, I suggest the claim, in the best tradition of scholarship, be acknowledged as incorrect and discarded. There would be no shame in this, only merit.

❧

Notes


(1) The media broached this issue, for example, twenty years ago in Henri LeJeune, "Date Set on City's Seal May Not Match History," (Opelousas, La.) Daily World, Special Millennium Edition, 1 January 2000, pp. 1A, 3A; see also Bobby Ardoin, "Opelousas Planning 300th Birthday Celebration, Despite Dispute over City's Founding," (Opelousas, La.) Daily World, 4 January 2020, www.dailyworld.com/story/news/2020/01/04/opelousas-officials-schedule-300th-birthday-celebration-despite-dispute-over-citys-founding/2807156001/, accessed 14 January 2020.

(2) Tribal members today sometimes go by the name "Atakapa Ishak," the latter term being their traditional name for their own tribe (as opposed to "Attakapas," the name given them by other tribes).

(3) J. A. Allen, who designed the city seal in 1961, told the Daily World newspaper in 2000 "that originally he had placed the date of the founding of the city at 1764," but at others' urging he changed the date to 1720 even though, explained the newspaper, "there was no specific document that could be found to place the date . . . [of the founding] of the city. . . ." LeJeune, "Date Set on City's Seal May Not Match History," p. 3A.


Quoted Sources


Shane K. Bernard, Teche: A History of Louisiana's Most Famous Bayou (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016), 11.

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. 

Fodor's 2000 USA (2000), 483.

Louisiana Municipal Review, Vols. 22-23 (1958), 15.

The New Encyclopedia Britannica Volume 7 (1974), 545.

William S. Niederkorn, "A Scholar Recants on His 'Shakespeare' Discovery," The New York Times, 20 June 2002, www.nytimes.com, accessed 12 January 2020.


Thanks to UL Lafayette public history intern Stephanie Simon for proofing this essay.

A Tool for Fighting Fake News & Conspiracy Theories: Teach Critical Thinking in American Classrooms

One might consider the below essay off-topic for a history website, but I don't think so: as a professional historian I rely heavily on Critical Thinking skills, and I do so on a daily basis. And so does, and must, the historical profession in general. (It is no coincidence that a leading proponent of Critical Thinking education is the below-mentioned Stanford History Education Group, which among other publications offers an essay titled "Why Historical Thinking is Not about History.") I learned "to think critically" in both undergraduate- and graduate-level history courses (Historiography, Research & Writing, and so on), as well as in a formal Critical Thinking course offered by a good old Department of Philosophy.*

Ought to be required reading
for all future historians.

I regard that Philosophy course as the single most useful class I ever took. It has allowed me not only to gauge the merits of various historical sources (is a claim true? how do I know it's true? is the source reliable? etc.), but to navigate my way through an increasingly complex world that floods me constantly with information, much of it questionable if not downright false. (My advice: never believe any claim, particularly an extraordinary one, at first blush.)

I offer the below essay as a critique of how this crucial subject is taught in America. Which is to say, insufficiently. This is to the detriment of our nation, whose founding relied on a firm bedrock strata of reason and knowledge, imparted to the Founding Fathers by the Enlightenment. Critical Thinking should not be a religion, however, much less should it be a cult; it is in fact merely a tool, and one with limitations that nonetheless can, when used in good faith, help to lead its users toward the truth.

Here is my essay on the subject. . . .

❧

Search the Internet for the phrase "The Age of Fake News" and you will find no shortage of sources, reliable and otherwise, claiming we live smack-dab in the middle of that epoch. A search for "The Age of Conspiracy Theories" yields similar results. Granted, conspiracy theories and fake news are nothing new: think, for example, of the grand conspiracy theories of nineteenth-century America involving eastern and southern European immigrants, Roman Catholics, and freemasonry. As for fake news, think of the "yellow journalism" of later that same century, when the American print media helped to spark the Spanish-American War over the alleged sabotage of the U.S. battleship Maine — a tragedy whose cause, most historians now agree, can be blamed on an accident, not a Spanish mine.

An example of late-19th century "yellow journalism."

(I mean the paper's content, not its color!)

What is new, however, is the 24-hour news cycle coupled with the dynamism of the Internet and social media. Fakes news and conspiracy theories are now harnessed to 21^st-century technology, enabling canards to proliferate not only across the nation, but around the world, in a matter of seconds.

Amid its nonstop bombardment with facts and factoids, the American citizenry is left to sort out for itself what is fake news and what is real news — as well as what is sometimes legitimate, informed speculation and what is conspiratorial nonsense. Clearly, the citizenry is not up to the task. Earlier this summer, for example, the Pew Research Center found that "Many Americans say the creation and spread of made-up news and information is causing significant harm to the nation and needs to be stopped." Worse, noted Pew, "made-up news and information greatly impact Americans’ confidence in government institutions, and . . . [exert] a major impact on our confidence in each other."

Even the nation’s most skilled Internet and social media navigators fall short when it comes to separating truth from fiction, and facts from lies. I refer to our purportedly skeptic-minded millennials. A 2016 study by the Stanford History Education Group at Stanford University found that "young people's ability to reason about the information . . . can be summed up in one word: bleak." Stanford described this particular lack of Critical Thinking skills as nothing less than a "threat to democracy."

Critical Thinking poster issued
by the Stanford History Education Group.
Source: SHEG website

But what exactly can government, public institutions, and average, ordinary citizens do to counter the dangers of fake news and conspiracy theories?

Fortunately, there is a solution, and a rather obvious one: teach Critical Thinking.

"We already teach Critical Thinking!" would no doubt be the knee-jerk reaction of many educational functionaries. Indeed, it is fashionable in education circles to affirm the primacy of Critical Thinking in our nation’s education system (or systems, since every state runs its own public schools, and every private school is a system unto itself).

The educational functionary.
Source: familyguyfanon.fandom.com

But a tremendous gap exists between the touting of Critical Thinking and the actual teaching of it in an effective, substantive way. After all, how many American college students ever actually enroll in a Critical Thinking course? MindEdge, a private firm that teaches Critical Thinking skills, is often cited as stating that three in five respondents [61 percent] report having studied Critical Thinking in college. I find this a highly suspect statistic. As MindEdge has itself noted, respondents might have claimed Critical Thinking experience after only a passing, superficial exposure to the subject. A professor of Philosophy at a state university thus comments, "I even occasionally get students who think that they have studied Critical Thinking in high school. The evidence suggests that they did not learn too much, based on how they actually perform in a college-level class."

What I mean by learning Critical Thinking is for college students to sign up for a good old survey of basic logic (often called "informal logic" because of its application to everyday life) — a subject for over two thousand years part of the Western core curriculum, otherwise known as the liberal education (a term having nothing to do, of course, with politics).

"A good old survey of basic logic . . . for over
two thousand years part of the Western core curriculum."
Raphael's The School of Athens (ca. 1510).
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Again, a knee-jerk reaction by education administrators is likely to be that students already learn Critical Thinking in math, science, and other much-vaunted STEM courses. But how much sense does it make to study Critical Thinking solely through the lens of another subject, like algebra, calculus, or physics? Why not study Critical Thinking directly, as the subject of its own dedicated, core-curriculum course?

That is how to fight fake news and conspiracy theories (and unreason in general). And it sits waiting in the much-neglected Departments of Philosophy throughout American academe: the solution that would if not cure, then at least curtail the plague that beleaguers our nation. I say this because it is Critical Thinking that teaches us, as the hackneyed but still laudable axiom goes, "Not what to think, but how to think."

Almost as an afterthought I myself, as an undergraduate back in the mid-1980s, took a 100-level (Freshman) course in Critical Thinking. I went on to obtain a doctorate in History, and I work today as a historian (and writer) for a world-renowned company. And I can honestly say that during my twelve grueling years as a college student I never took a class so useful as that basic survey of Logic.

My trusty Critical Thinking 
textbook from college.

Frankly, I can’t imagine how anyone navigates today’s complex world, particularly after the explosion of fake news and conspiracy theories, without a basic grasp of Critical Thinking — without being able to identify, for example, when a politician, commercial pitchman, preacher, lifestyle guru, or others with a vested interest in convincing an audience of something, resort to fallacies like the Ad Hominem, the Vicious Circle, the Slippery Slope, the False Dilemma, the Straw Man, and various other ruses meant (consciously or not) to deceive their listeners.

While Critical Thinking courses already exist, they are not generally required courses. And that is what I suggest we change: American universities should stop lionizing the concept of Critical Thinking in the abstract and instead make it a mandatory course for students of all majors. Students should not learn the skill through the filter of a math or science course where Critical Thinking lingers in the background, subservient. (One might as well try to instill Critical Thinking skills through the prism of Music Appreciation, or German, or Readings in American Literature: it could be attempted, but would it be effective?)

There are, however, skeptics, such as the Newsweek journalist who quipped, "I somehow managed to snag a desk in a newsroom without ever flashing my critical-thinking abilities. . . ." I strongly suspect, however, the journalist in question underrated his own reasoning skills: he did indeed flash his critical-thinking abilities through the very act of analyzing the concept of Critical Thinking, and with a healthy dose of skepticism, too.) What most critics seem to be complaining about, even if they themselves are unaware of it, is not the value of Critical Thinking, or the value of teaching Critical Thinking, but rather the logorrhea, the nauseating, vacuous lip service, paid to the subject that rarely if ever translates into real action.

"Just teach the class!"
Source: Centre for Medieval Studies,
University of Toronto

The solution, however, is simple. Require every college student in every major to take at least one dedicated Critical Thinking course. And teach those courses in that most endangered of academic species, the Departments of Philosophy. Teach those students how to spot the major fallacies, how to construct a sound and valid argument, how to determine if we really know what we think we know — not only for their own betterment, but for the betterment of our country. 

Just teach the class!

________

*By "critical" I mean "skeptical," which in turn means to me the quality or trait of demanding sufficient proof before believing something — even if that belief is merely provisional. I define "skeptical" here because I have noticed many people confuse it, for some reason, with the word "cynical." The latter, however, has an entirely different, and wholly negative, meaning — namely, the quality or trait of assuming the worst about human behavior (or about things in general). Granted, my definition of "skeptical" depends considerably on the meaning of the vague phrase "sufficient proof." For pragmatism's sake, I'll just ignore that issue for the moment! Similarly, I purposely avoid the pitfall of discussing the (alleged) differences between "truth" and "fact," and regard them here as synonymous. 

Sources:

Istvan S. N. Berkeley, Philosophy and Cognitive Science, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, to Shane K. Bernard, 10 July 2019, email communication.

Frank Connolly, Director of Communications and Research, MindEdge, to Shane K. Bernard, 10 July 2019, email communication.

Amy Mitchell et al., "Many Americans Say Made-Up News Is a Critical Problem That Needs To Be Fixed," Pew Research Center, 5 June 2019, https://www.journalism.org/2019/06/05/many-americans-say-made-up-news-is-a-critical-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed/, accessed 31 July 2019.

Alexander Nazaryan, "You're 100 Percent Wrong about Critical Thinking," Newsweek, 14 August 2015, https://www.newsweek.com/youre-100-percent-wrong-about-critical-thinking-362334, accessed 10 July 2019.

Stanford History Education Group, "Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning," 22 November 2016, Stanford University, https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:fv751yt5934/SHEG%20Evaluating%20Information%20Online.pdf, accessed 10 July 2019.