A Snake, a Worm, and a Dead End: In Search of the Meaning of "Teche"

I recently read about astronomer Johannes Kepler, who spent years forging a theory about the operation of the Solar System — only to admit to himself eventually that the data simply did not support his idea. 

Keppler had to throw out his beloved theory.

Johannes Kepler:
Never canoed on Bayou Teche.
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

So I suppose I should not feel too bad about spending the past five days fleshing out a theory about the origin of the word Teche, only to have to toss it after realizing it just didn't stand up to scrutiny.

I ought to explain that in my forthcoming book about the history of Bayou Teche, I grapple with the alleged origins of the word Teche. One of these etymologies — the one cited most commonly in popular and academic literature — holds that Teche derives from the Chitimacha word for "snake." The problem with this claim, I observed, is that there is no known Chitimacha word for "snake" that even remotely resembles Teche. (Some popular sources claim that the Chitimacha, or even the Attakapas, word for snake is "tenche," from which derived Teche; but there is no known evidence to support this assertion.)

Bayou Teche, photographed by the author, autumn 2011.

In short, I found this etymology dubious and searched for other explanations. And for the past five days I thought I'd found one — a good one.

Last week I drove to Louisiana State University to visit its Museum of Natural Science. I made the two-hour trip to examine Chitimacha Indian baskets, some of them a century old. All came ultimately from the Chitimachas' ancestral lands at Charenton, Louisiana (now inside the Sovereign Nation of the Chitimacha), located about 25 miles southeast of my home.

While scrutinizing the baskets, the museum staff showed me a booklet of handwritten notes compiled by Mrs. Sidney Bradford, née Mary Avery McIlhenny, daughter of Tabasco sauce inventor E. McIlhenny. An avid basket collector, Bradford used the booklet around 1900 to record traditional basket pattern names.

Mrs. Sidney Bradford, née Mary Avery McIlhenny,
in her youth (ca. 1885).
(Courtesy McIlhenny Company Archives)

Glancing through the booklet, I noticed that under a drawing of one basket pattern she had written in pencil, "Tesh mich."

Tesh?
 

This, of course, is the exact pronunciation of the name of the bayou.

Beneath "Tesh mich" she had translated the phrase into English as "worm tracks."

Tesh as the Chitimacha word for "worm" (top);
The "T" may look like a "J," but note how Bradford
makes her "T" when writing "Taught" elsewhere
in the booklet (bottom).
(Courtesy Museum of Natural Science, LSU)

Previously I'd been unable to find a Chitimacha word that sounded like Teche. I'd consulted Daniel W. Hieber's Chitimacha-English dictionary (a work in progress accessible here via the Internet), Morris Swadesh's 1950 Chitimacha-English dictionary, and the published research of noted anthropologist John R. Swanton. But I did so without success. This confused me because according to any number of present-day sources Teche is supposed to mean "snake," and its application to the bayou is said to derive from a well-known tribal legend:

Many years ago . . . there was a huge and venomous snake. This snake was so large, and so long, that its size was not measured in feet, but in miles. This enormous snake had been an enemy of the Chitimacha for many years, because of its destruction to many of their ways of life. One day, the Chitimacha chief called together his warriors, and had them prepare themselves for a battle with their enemy. In those days, there were no guns that could be used to kill this snake. All they had were clubs and bows and arrows, with arrowheads made of large bones from the garfish. . . . The warriors fought courageously to kill the enemy, but the snake fought just as hard to survive. As the beast turned and twisted in the last few days of a slow death, it broadened, curved and deepened the place wherein his huge body lay. The Bayou Teche is proof of the exact position into which this enemy placed himself when overcome by the Chitimacha warriors. (Source: Chitimacha.gov)

Yet Bradford had translated Tesh not as "snake," but as "worm." 

Perhaps, I thought, the word Teche didn't come from the Chitimacha for "snake"; perhaps it came instead from the Chitimacha for "worm." A snake and a worm are similar in shape: both are writhing, legless, elongated creatures. Perhaps someone long ago garbled the original story in translation and in doing so the worm became a snake?

Chitimacha basket maker Christine Paul (ca. 1900).
(Courtesy McIlhenny Company Archives)

Swanton's published writings seemed to support my budding hypothesis. Aware of Bradford's interest in Chitimacha basketry, Swanton wrote in 1911 about some of her specimens, "All of the designs are tci'cmic, or 'worm-track' designs. . . ."

Here, Swanton rendered the Chitimacha word for "worm" not as "tesh," as Bradford did, but as "tci'c," and elsewhere "tciic."

Well, I thought, tci'c and tciic still vaguely remind me of Teche.

I sensed I remained on the right track when I read Swanton's note that "[the letter] c in Chitimacha words used in these [basket] descriptions is pronounced the same as English sh." In other words, tci'c and tciic were pronounced "tshesh" and "tsheesh" — extremely close to the modern pronunciation of Teche!

I believed I had just about nailed down the origin of Bayou Teche's name. I had strong evidence, I felt, that the name came from tci'c and tciic, the Chitimacha words for "worm," which Bradford had rendered as Tesh. Moreover, tradition held that a giant snake had formed the Teche, and does not a worm twist and turn like a snake? Could not someone have confused the two creatures when translating the myth into English? Finally, was not the winding shape of the bayou reflected in the very "worm track" pattern of the Chitimacha baskets?

Chitimacha basket with "worm track" pattern.
(Source: Swanton, Indian Tribes
of the Lower Mississippi Valley [1911];
colorized by the author)

Then my hypothesis unraveled. Consulting noted linguist Jack Martin of the College of William and Mary, who specializes in Native American languages of the South, I learned that Swanton had used "Americanist phonetic notation" when writing out Chitimacha words. This phonetic system did not correspond to the present-day phonetics taught in elementary schools or used in standard dictionaries. In fact, when Swanton wrote tci'c and tciic, I found out, he meant for them to be pronounced not "tshesh" and "tsheesh," as I thought, but "chesh" and "cheesh." This, I had to admit, didn't sound so much like Teche anymore. 

Still, I countered, why would Mrs. Bradford have written Tesh in her booklet as the tribal word for "worm"?

I double checked the booklet: Yes, it definitely read Tesh. But as I leafed through the booklet's other handwritten pages I saw that she had rendered the same word elsewhere as chi, chie, chis, and chish. These sounded little like Teche, but very much like "cheesh," the correct pronunciation, as Professor Martin had explained to me.

Indeed, Swadesh, using a different phonetic system when he compiled his Chitimacha dictionary in 1950, wrote the word for "worm" as ǯi•š. When translated into easy-to-read phonetics (for non-linguists like me), ǯi•š would similarly be pronounced "cheesh."

Chitimacha basket maker Clara Darden (ca. 1900).
(Courtesy McIlhenny Company Archives)

In addition, Swanton, the professor told me, had noted in an unpublished paper that the Chitimacha name for the Teche was qukx — a word that sounded nothing like Teche.

In fact, the Chitimacha phrase for "Bayou Teche" was qukx caad.

I already knew the phrase qukx caad. Indeed, it was the very fact that qukx sounded nothing like Teche that caused me to question the popular etymology in the first place. Frankly, I had suspected that qukx caad was a recent folk etymology — that is, I thought perhaps someone, hearing that the Chitimacha had traditionally called the bayou (albeit in their own language) "Snake Bayou," had consulted a Chitimacha dictionary (perhaps one of those I myself was using), looked up the tribal words for "snake" and "bayou," and assumed that Chitimachas in earlier times must have used the same words, qukx caad, to indicate Bayou Teche.

Now, however, I knew my hunch was wrong: Swanton's unpublished paper from the early twentieth century proved that the Chitimacha had indeed traditionally called the waterway qukx caad — Snake Bayou.

But — and this is important — if the traditional Chitimacha name for Bayou Teche was qukx caad . . . then how did the word Teche fit into the story?

Chitimacha baskets (ca. 1900).
(Courtesy McIlhenny Company Archives)

I was back where I started: qukx and Teche bore no resemblance to each other, either in pronunciation or appearance. So where did the word Teche come from? And if the Chitimacha had not used the term, had it come from the early French or Spanish pioneers and cartographers? And if from them, where did they get it? Perhaps from the Attakapas, or the Houma, or the Choctaw? The latter seemed possible, for other nearby place names derive from Choctaw — for example, Atchafalaya and Catahoula.

What if Teche came to the region from the Afro-Caribbean world, I wondered, perhaps even from West Africa itself? Certainly there is precedent in words like yam and gumbo. (See my previous articles about the Afro-Caribbean origin of the word gumbo here and here.)

As I’ve previously stated, I enjoy historical detection. It's what drew me to my career in history. And while the detective work sometimes pays off, other times it leads nowhere — such as in this instance. Although my pursuit of this lead yielded no positive results, it serves nonetheless as a case study in how history is sometimes done.  Historians must do away with wishful thinking and, viewing their own work through the lens of objectivity, admit their errors, throw out their findings, and start over. As one educator noted:

"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar."

But I have another hypothesis, one I won't discuss here, that remains feasible. And so I fall back on that idea, even as I keep looking for alternate explanations for the name of the bayou.

Galaxies, Bowling and Swamp Pop: Johnny Preston and The Cajuns in Escondido

This is so trivial a matter I'm unsure why I wrote it up . . . but I did.  And so here you have it:

A friend of mine sent me a link to one of those "remember-the-days?" websites that feature images of a younger America. This particular collection of photographs focused on gas stations across the country from the 1920s through the 1960s. You can see the site for yourself here.

One of the images captured a California gas station and what I believe to be a 1962 Ford Galaxie at the pump. (Correct me if I'm wrong about the make or model — I originally thought it was a 1960 Chevy Impala.)

Filling up next to the Escondido Bowl.

Behind the car stands a sign for a bowling alley, restaurant, and coffee shop called the Escondido Bowl. Thus, judging from this sign and the Galaxie — as well as from the other cars in the image — the photograph was taken in Escondido, California (located below Los Angeles near San Diego), in or shortly after 1962.

What really caught my eye, however, was the marquee below the Escondido Bowl signage. It read:

Johnny Preston

The Cajuns

See? "Johnny Preston" and "The Cajuns."

For those who don't know, Johnny Preston had an international number one hit single in 1959 with the song, "Running Bear," written by J. P. Richardson (aka The Big Bopper, who died in the same plane crash that killed Buddy Holly).

Johnnie Preston singing "Running Bear."

(Source: NRRArchives on YouTube.com)

In 1996 I published my first book, Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues, about the swamp pop musical genre of south Louisiana and east Texas. Swamp pop is a combination of New Orleans-style rhythm-and-blues, country-and-western, and Cajun and black Creole music. It was invented by Cajun and black Creole teenagers in the mid- to late 1950s, and its heyday stretched from 1958 to 1964, ending with the advent of the British Invasion.

Cover of my book Swamp Pop.

Among the pioneer swamp pop musicians I interviewed for the book was Johnny Preston — real name Johnny Preston Courville. As his tell-tale ethnic surname suggests, he was a Cajun, hailing from the Beaumont-Port Arthur area of east Texas (to which many south Louisiana Cajuns migrated during the early to mid-twentieth century). I assumed "The Cajuns" was the name of Johnny's band — though I'd never heard of him fronting a band by this name. 

I told my father, swamp pop musician Rod Bernard, about Johnny’s name appearing on the marquee. He replied, "Well, I toured with Johnny on the West Coast around that time. A bunch of us from around here toured with him out west."

Newspaper ad for a 1960 tour out west featuring Dad,
Johnny Preston, Jivin' Gene, Benny Barnes, and Skip Stewart.
(Source: Tucson Daily Citizen, 30 January 1960)

Dad and I suddenly had the same thought: What if he had been there, with Johnny, at the Escondido Bowl when the photograph in question had been taken? Perhaps "The Cajuns" referred to the other singers in the tour group, all but one of whom, Benny Barnes, were indeed Cajuns? The other singers were Dad, Jivin’ Gene (real name Gene Bourgeois) and Skip Stewart (Maurice Guillory); Dad’s band, The Twisters — some of whose members were Cajuns — served as the backing band for the tour group.

Left to right, Benny Barnes, Jivin' Gene,
Dad, and Johnny Preston, ca. 1960.
(Source: Author's Collection)

I checked a few online newspaper archives and found that Johnny Preston toured the West Coast, including the Escondido area, with a band called "The Cajuns" in 1964 and 1965 — a few years after he toured the West Coast with Dad and the other swamp pop artists. In other words, Dad was not with Johnny when the gas station photograph was taken.  Not that it matters. Still, it would have been a neat coincidence. In any event, the gas station photograph captures a moment in time when swamp pop music was young and often performed by its pioneers far beyond its homeland. Swamp pop still exists today, but its pioneers are slowly passing away (Johnny himself died in 2011), and the genre is largely confined to the dance halls and honky tonks of south Louisiana and East Texas.

Addendum:  In retrospect I think I wrote this as nothing more than an exercise in historical detection (which I enjoy).

Serendipity and Fort Tombecbe: Cooperation between Historians and Archaeologists

About two years ago my friend, genealogist Winston De Ville, sent me a hand-drawn colonial-era map or plan of a fort. I wasn't sure why he sent it to me, because the plan was unrelated to any of my research. In retrospect, he isn't sure why he sent it to me, either. The other documents he included with the plan concerned Bayou Teche, a subject on which I was (and am still) conducting research. Perhaps he got the fort plan mixed up with the Teche material and sent it to me by mistake?

The plan of a colonial-era fort.
(Source: Winston De Ville, FASG;
colorized by the author)

Regardless, he sent me the plan of the fort, I put it in my files "just in case," and I forgot about it.

Two days ago I was looking through my files and pulled out the plan of the fort. It occurred to me that another friend, archaeologist Dr. Ashley A. Dumas of the University of West Alabama, might find the plan of interest. She is presently excavating colonial-era Fort Tombecbe, located in rural Alabama. Surely it's not the same fort, I thought, but perhaps it will be useful for comparison with Tombecbe.

So I scanned and e-mailed the plan to her, stating in my cover note, "Don't know if this is of interest to you or not." 

To which Dr. Dumas replied, "Holy cow, that is Fort Tombecbe!!!! The fort I work on now! Any date associated with it? Did you find it yourself or is it online?"

Close up of the fort in the plan.
(Source: Winston De Ville, FASG;
colorized by the author)

I didn't respond immediately as I was off doing research. A short time later Dr. Dumas wrote back again, "Can you get a higher resolution image? Can I get one? I can't read all the writing. It looks like a draft plan of the fort, possibly by Lusser. Or maybe shows changing alignment of the palisade wall? Do you see that funny little rectangle with the circle attached in one corner of the fort? That's the bread oven. I excavated a portion of that structure and that bastion corner this summer."

Still I didn't reply, spurring another e-mail from Dr. Dumas: "Shane! you're killing me. Do you know if I can get a better copy?"

When I returned to my office I did not read Dr. Dumas’ e-mails in order. I therefore was unaware she had already identified the fort in the plan as Tombecbe when I wrote back:

"What, is it a helpful map??? That's the best copy I can scan from my photocopy, which in itself is crappy. Anyway, does the map mean anything to you? (I saw ‘tombe’ in the French at top, and for a second thought it might be ‘Tombegbe’ but I don't think so; I think it's just the [French] verb ‘tomber.’)”

To which Dr. Dumas quickly responded, "No, no. It's Fort Tombecbe. Where'd you get the copy? Is there a catalog number or something that I can use. . . ?"

Fort Tombecbe (May 1737) by Ignace Broutin.
(Source: 2012 Fort Tombecbe Archaeological Project)

I finally understood the relevance of the plan and told Dr. Dumas where to find the original. (It's in Spain.) I then re-scanned in higher resolution the archaic French writing, "inverted" the scan's color in Photoshop to generate an easier-to-read negative, and asked Dr. Dumas, "Does this help to read the French (see attachment)?"

Unfortunately, I forgot to attach the scan, prompting Dr. Dumas to e-mail me back, "There's no attachment. I think you're trying to give me a heart attack."

I eventually sent Dr. Dumas the color-inverted image (the next day when I returned to my office). 

Some of the French text on the plan of the fort.
(Source: Winston De Ville, FASG;
colorized by the author)

On examination of the plan, Dr. Dumas observed that "The scale is at the bottom and goes up to 60 toises [one toise = 6.396 U.S. feet]. I think that the strange little geometric drawings above the fort represent [early Louisiana colonial governor] Bienville's encampment of April-May 1736. The timing of this map is interesting because it coincides with Bienville's first arrival at Tombecbe to meet with Choctaw chiefs." She added, "Desperate to get a good copy!"

Despite the unintended humor and fumbling around on my part, this is a good example of "interdisciplinary cooperation" among scholars — in this case, a historian helping an archaeologist. And of course it works in reverse, too. (Oddly enough, I tend to work more with archaeologists than with other historians.) And yet the incident also serves as a good example of serendipity: Had not Mr. De Ville accidentally sent me a plan of a fort unrelated to my own research, and had I not kept it, filed it away, and stumbled across it a few nights ago while looking for something else, I might never have thought of sending it to Dr. Dumas. And even then I did not think it would turn out to be the fort she'd been excavating.

Sometimes research and discovery happens this way: I can't tell you how many things I've discovered in my own research by accident. (Take, for example, the Cajun Coonass airplane photo about which I've written previously.)

For more information on archaeology at the fort, see The 2012 Fort Tombecbe Archaeological Project blog site.

Sur le Teche: Exploring the Bayou by Canoe, Stage 1

To research my history of Bayou Teche I resolved to paddle the entire length of the waterway.  Friends found this humorous because they knew me to be an “avid indoorsman.”  But how could I not paddle it?  Had I not paddled it, someone, somewhere — at a book signing, during an interview — would inevitably ask me, “Have you ever been on Bayou Teche?” to which I would have had to answer, “No — but I drive across it every day on the way to work.”

The paddlers for stage one, at the Courtableau landing.
Back row: Jacques, Preston, and me; in front, Keith.
(Click images to enlarge them; photograph by author)

So I decided to explore the entire bayou and to do so not by motorboat (which seemed like cheating), but the old-fashioned way, by canoe — all approximately one hundred twenty-five miles of it.  It just seemed the thorough thing to do, if I were going to write a book about the Teche.  And this proved correct, because there was no substitute for seeing for oneself, from a canoe, where the Teche springs from Bayou Courtableau, meets Bayou Fuselier, zigzags at Baldwin, juts out at Irish Bend.

I would not canoe the bayou all at once, however, but in stages over many months.  And I would do so slowly, stopping to take ample notes, photographs, GPS coordinates.  This journal is based on that data.

Preston and Jacques heading into the Teche from the Courtableau.
(Photograph by author)

I drafted two friends to assist me in the trek, both recent archaeology graduates from University of Louisiana at Lafayette: Preston Guidry and Jacques Doucet.  Preston’s father, Keith Guidry, made up a last-minute addition to the team.  And while Preston and Jacques ended up sitting out several stages of the trip, Keith became my one constant: we, the two older guys in our forties and fifties, would be the only two members of the canoe team to complete the entire journey.

Ben Guidry filled in for brother Preston on a couple stages; and my fellow history enthusiast Don Arceneaux joined Keith and me for one stage.

I was the least experienced paddler of the group, but the others made up for my greenness. Together, an Arceneaux, a Doucet, three Guidrys, and a Bernard, we would seek an answer to the weighty question, “How many Cajuns does it take to paddle Bayou Teche?”

Aerial photograph of Stage 1, Port Barre to Arnaudville.
(Source: Google Maps)

Stage 1: Port Barre to Arnaudville

We began our trip around 9 a.m. on October 23, 2011.  The temperature that morning was cool (about 56 °F), but grew warmer in the afternoon (about 81 °F).  The sky was mostly clear.  We chose that day to start our trip because it fell shortly after the annual Tour du Teche canoe race. We didn’t want to get in the way of the racers and so let them go first.  Preston, Jacques, Keith and I put in at the public boat ramp at Port Barre [30.558367, -91.954874], on Bayou Courtableau.  Port Barre — the town whose speed trap the swamp pop band Rufus Jagneaux sang about in the early 1970s:

All of y’all know about Port Barre.
(If ) they catch you there it’s half of your hide.
You might as well gone to Tucumcari.
It costs you that to leave there alive.

In all fairness to Port Barre, the song was actually written about a speed trap in nearby Krotz Springs; but “Port Barre” just sounded more lyrical to the composer.

It was in Port Barre that the Courtableau Inn, a nightclub owned by my great-grandfather, Oscar Bordelon — first name pronounced OH-SCARE in the French manner — stood right across the bayou from the boat ramp.  In fact, it stood on the lot now occupied by the Squeaky Clean Car/Boat Wash.  It was there, in that nightclub in the late 1940s and early ‘50s, that my father heard Cajun musicians like Papa Cairo and Nathan Abshire.  Dad recalls slot machines lining the walls, even though the devices were illegal at the time.  But those were the days of legendary St. Landry Parish sheriff “Cat” Doucet, who tolerated gambling and certain other prohibited vices.

My great-grandfather's nightclub;
at far right you can see Bayou Courtableau behind the club.
(Source: The Johnnie Allan Collection, UL-Lafayette)

Within minutes of embarking we were paddling on the Teche itself.  At Port Barre the bayou is narrow, varying from about 75 to 95 feet wide (not much larger than a sizable coulée, our regional word for a ravine).  Dense tree canopies reached toward the opposing banks and pressed in on our canoes.  Before it was dredged around 1920 this stretch of the Teche was navigable only during high-water season (each December to June) or if a sizeable flood had recently occurred.

On the Teche near its origin at Port Barre.
(Photograph by author)

The current at Port Barre was swift and strong that day even though bayous are known for lethargic, even nonexistent currents.  With casual paddling it carried our two canoes downstream at a decent clip.  This fooled us into thinking we would make similarly fast headway the entire length of the bayou; but farther down the current slowed and, eventually, reversed, reducing our progress until paddling became a more laborious task.  By the fourth or fifth stage it took us ten or twelve hours to accomplish what we had originally achieved in roughly half that time.  But this lesson would not be learned for several months, finishing, as we did, a stage every month to month and a half.

Shortly after leaving Port Barre we spotted a coyote running along the east bank — our first sight of wildlife.  We soon saw a number of large bleached bones on the west bank, probably from cattle.  Right before that we caught a strong scent of cattle dung and must have passed a ranch (or vacherie, as our ancestors would have called it).  We would pass other ranches during the several stages of our trip.  On one occasion Keith shouted an insult to an insolently staring bull.  In response the bull took a step toward us and stomped a hoof.  That much is true, but the story became more elaborate with each retelling, and after several months Keith had the bull jumping in the bayou to pursue us.

Grazing land along the Teche south of Port Barre.
(Photograph by author)

There would be plenty of joking on the trip, including recurring riffs on Deliverance (explanation unnecessary).

One time that day Keith and I stopped our canoe beside a bridge to wait for Preston and Jacques.  As we floated there, someone threw a bottle from a passing car: clipping the rail, it shattered in its anonymous paper bag and splashed in the water beside me.  Who knows how much trash has ended up tossed in the Teche like that?

Not too long after seeing the coyote, Preston and Jacques spotted a water moccasin swimming in the bayou.  Surprisingly, It was the only snake we saw during the many stages of our trip. Likewise, we saw only one alligator, and it was dead.  Actually, make that two alligators, because we spotted a large one of our final leg of the journey.  I will describe that incident later.

An old car along the Teche.
(Photograph by author)

I noticed much less garbage on the bayou than expected, certainly a tribute to the efforts of the TECHE Project, Cajuns for Bayou Teche, and the Tour du Teche.  The largest quantity of garbage I saw that day lay inside the city limits of Port Barre, where someone used the banks of the bayou as a private garbage dump.  Outside of town, however, the garbage became less frequent.  Some of it was vintage, which gave it a certain respectability: no one wants to see a late-model clothes washer or automobile half-submerged in the bayou or protruding from its banks; but a rusty Depression-era clothes washer or vintage 1950s coupe are more interesting, and even appealing in their antiquity.

Another old car along the Teche.
(Photograph by author)

Paddling down the Teche that day we passed the mouths of a few Teche tributaries — so minor that my canoe team and I missed them entirely.  Or if we saw them, we must have disregarded them as mere ditches.  In any event, the first of these small waterways we passed was Bayou Toulouse, which flows into the Teche where the Union Pacific (formerly Missouri Pacific) railroad spans the bayou just below Port Barre.  The next tributary was Bayou Little Teche, formerly known as Bayou Marie Croquant.  Then came Bayou del Puent, formerly spelled Bayou del Puente — meaning “Bayou of the Bridge” or simply “Bridge Bayou.”  Bayou del Puente appears in historical documents as early as 1812, and the name strikes me as unusual because it’s Spanish and perhaps a remnant of Spain’s nearly four-decade rule of Louisiana (1762-1800).

As for Bayou Little Teche’s earlier name, Bayou Marie Croquant: its been rendered Bayou Marie Crocan or Bayou Maricoquant, and during the Civil War it was called the Barri-Croquant.  As one historian noted, a Union general “committed a minor error which was to baffle civil war scholars for generations,” namely “On all the Union maps, the letter ‘M’ in Marie Croquant was so blurred as to render interpretation all but impossible.  [General] Franklin read it as a ‘B,’ possibly thinking of Barre [as in “Port Barre”], and all Union correspondence thereafter refers to the bayou as the Barri-Croquant.”

Even the name Bayou Little Teche is confusing, because the uppermost stretch of Bayou Teche was itself sometimes called the Little Teche.  In 1886, for example, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officer commented, “From here [Leonville] up the stream is called the Little Teche. . . .”

More confusingly, early nineteenth-century land maps sometimes referred to the Marie Croquant as the main channel of the Teche and showed it winding toward and under the town of Washington to become what is today Bayou Carron.  Worse, some historical documents referred to these same waterways as “Bayau [sic] Catereau or Teche” or “Bayou Grand Louis or Teche, or Carron” — indicating disagreement over what to call these tributaries, none of which, in any event, should be confused with the Teche proper that is the subject of this book.

Paddling along, we saw only a few houses lining the Teche between Port Barre and the next bayouside community, Leonville [30.473495, -91.98005].  Interestingly, this area was known during Prohibition as a hotbed of moonshining.  In fact, the entire triangular region between Leonville, Arnaudville, and the nearby unincorporated community of Pecanière was well-known for its bootlegging.  This being said, I have found no evidence of rum-running on the Teche itself during Prohibition.  The narrowness of the bayou would have afforded little if any secrecy and, thanks to the coming of modern roads, automobiles would have provided a faster, and more elusive, means of distribution.

On the outskirts of Leonville we encountered enough suburban-style houses to remove the illusion of paddling through wilderness.  We reached Leonville at 11:45 a.m. to the sounds of a church carillon (or at least it sounded to me like a carillon).

Just south of town, as my team and I headed back into countryside, we spotted a nutria rat on the bank.  With a flash of its pumpkin-orange teeth and long hairless tail, it scurried away to hide from us.  Within the hour, just below the Oscar Rivette Bridge [30.447948, -91.924641], we saw a large owl.  Five minutes later we passed under high-voltage transmission lines, whose audible hum and static made me nervous to sit between them and a body of water.

Keith and me (in front) on the Teche.
(Photograph by Jacques Doucet)

We observed pecan pickers here and there just north of the next bayou community, Arnaudville, as well as a large bird I recorded as an “anhinga.”  I’m no ornithologist, however, but it was large, sported dark plumage, and had black legs — perhaps not an anhinga, but a little blue heron?  We would see many brilliantly white herons, or egrets as they are also called, on our trips, often individual herons whose hunting we repeatedly interrupted, spurring him farther and farther downstream ahead of our canoes.

View of the Teche from my canoe.
(Photograph by author)

At 1:45 p.m. we arrived in Arnaudville [30.397596, -91.930761], our terminus for this stage of the trip.  We put ashore at Myron’s Maison de Manger (excellent burgers), right below the junction of the Teche and Bayou Fuselier.

On this side of the Teche and Fuselier sat the vacherie of my colonial-era ancestor, Lyons-born planter Gabriel Fuselier de la Claire.  It’s an extravagant name, but if he had been a big wheel in France I doubt he would have chosen to brave the south Louisiana frontier.  With its heat, humidity, mosquitoes, alligators, pirates, and potential for slave and Native American revolts, the French and Spanish colony was no paradise despite its idealized portrayals in literature (à la Evangeline).

Late eighteenth-century map of the Teche
("Teichte") showing location of Fuselier's vacherie (red arrow).
Waterway labeled "Fourche du Vermillon" [sic] is Bayou Fuselier.
(Source: St. Martin Parish Courthouse,
courtesy Don Arceneaux & George Bentley;
colorized by the author)

Fuselier de la Claire prospered in Louisiana, however, as did his heirs — but somewhere down the line, probably during Reconstruction, the Fuseliers lost their fortune and ended up marrying into my clan of subsistence-farming Cajuns.  The same went for the de la Morandières, de Livaudaises, and other formerly affluent French Creoles who by twist of fate became my ancestors.  A generation or so after marrying into the Bernards little remained of their previous culture, though my late Cajun grandmother recalled her elderly grandmother-in-law, the last de la Morandière of the line, speaking “that fancy French.”

My favorite photo from that day on the Teche, October 2011.
(Photograph by author)

A folksy hand-painted sign hung beside the bayou near the landing at Myron’s, erected by the local Sons of Confederate Veterans chapter (or “encampment,” as they call it).  Placed for the benefit of boaters, the sign identified this as the spot where, in April 1863, Confederate forces fleeing General Banks’ invaders scuttled the supply steamboats Darby, Louise, Blue Hammock, and Cricket.

Sign listing steamboats that sank on that spot during the Civil War.
(Photograph by author)

The Official Records of the conflict indicate that the five vessels had been scuttled by the Rebels to keep them from falling into enemy hands. As a Union officer wrote in April 1863:

I was there [Breaux Bridge] informed that the steamboats Darby, Louise, Blue Hammock, and Uncle Tommy had passed up the bayou the day before — that is, the evening of the 16th instant — . . . having valuable stores belonging to the enemy. . . . I sent forward a man up the Bayou Teche to ascertain the position and condition of the boats. He reported next morning that all of them had been burned at the junction [of bayous Teche and Fuselier] as soon as the enemy learned of the arrival of my command at Breaux Bridge. . . . [At] the junction I examined the wreck of four steamboats. The water having risen after the rains of Saturday night and Sunday morning, 18th and 19th instant, I was unable to see any names on the boats, or the guns reported to have been left on the Darby. Their smoke-stacks and part of their machinery only were above water. From all the information I received I have no doubt of their being the Darby, Louise, Blue Hammock, and the Crocket. The Uncle Tommy is burned higher up in the Bayou Teche, and the wreck of this boat is high enough out of water to see her name. Cargoes of beef, rum, sugar, and commissary stores, cloth, uniforms, and large quantities of arms and ammunition were destroyed in these boats. Some barges took off portions of the cargoes of ammunition and arms from these steamboats before they were set on fire. (Source: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, Volume 15, Part 1 [Baton Rouge-Natchez], 343-44.)

Burning steamboats.
(Source: Harper's Weekly [1869];
colorized by author)

How many bullets, swords, balls of shot, and other Civil War artifacts sat right there at the bottom of the bayou, only a few feet beneath our canoes?  Similar thoughts came to me repeatedly as I descended the Teche.  I imagined bones, swords, cannons, revolvers, doubloons, and all sorts of other artifacts passing underneath me, perhaps within reach.  Who knows what the mud and muck of the Teche is waiting to reveal?

After 19 miles of paddling we were exhausted, and of the four of us I was by far in the most miserable.  My arms hurt as though I’d lifted barbells all day, and my palms stung with blisters and glistened with a metallic sheen from handling the aluminum paddles.  “Next time,” I noted to myself, “bring gloves.”  By the time I reached home, I hurt all over.  My bones seemed to ache to the marrow.  No matter in what position I sat or lay, I could not ease the discomfort.  This was my penalty for undertaking the trip without any physical preparation.  I swallowed some aspirin and slept horribly, but by morning the pain had disappeared except for vague aching in my upper arms.  Fortunately, this pain did not return after future stages.  I needed this first stage to break myself in.

The remainder of my canoeing diary will be published in my forthcoming book, Teche: A History of Louisiana's Most Famous Bayou, due out in 2016.  This book examines the Teche from its geological formation through its prehistoric and colonial settlement to the coming of sugar and cotton, steam-driven riverboats and sugar mills, and slavery.  It surveys the Civil War on the Teche, as well as the impact of floods, yellow fever, and postwar violence on the bayou.  Finally, it looks at modern efforts to redesign the Teche using dams, locks, flood gates, and other structures, and the recent push to clean and revitalize the bayou.  To receive an e-mail when the book is released, please e-mail me using the address in the margin at upper right (directly under the Facebook button). ~ Shane K. Bernard, July 2015