"Cajuns of the Teche": Bad History, Wartime Propaganda, or Both?

I first learned about the short film Cajuns of the Teche, directed by André de LaVarre and released in August 1942 by Columbia Pictures, while researching my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People. This find occurred by accident in the late 1990s, while looking for something else in the National Archives and Records Administration. (Serendipity often happens when I’m conducting historical research. I think it’s a perfectly valid form of discovery.)

Title cards from Cajuns of the Teche.
(Screen grabs by author)

In short, a reel of film labeled Cajuns of the Teche sat in the National Archives and had not yet been dubbed to videotape (much less had it been digitized; that technology was not yet at hand for most people). A student at the time, I didn’t have the $250 or so that the National Archives wanted to transfer the film to video, so I contacted my friend, Lafayette attorney Warren A. Perrin. Back then Warren served as president of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana and owned, as he still does, the Acadian Museum in his hometown of Erath.

Warren agreed to fund the film’s transfer to video through his museum, so I filled out the pertinent paperwork, mailed it off, waited, and a few weeks later a VHS dub arrived from Washington, D.C. I watched the film, found it delightful, but ultimately did not use it as research material for my book. Moving on to other projects, I forgot about the dub for about fifteen years, but recently pulled it out of my files and digitized it so that I can present it here:

(Click to play video)

Two thoughts come to mind when I watch Cajuns of the Teche: First, after seventy years the images are crisp, clear, well-composed, and in my opinion extremely valuable as a record of the Teche region around World War II; second, the narration is often extremely misleading and in some instances downright wrong. 

I’ll catalog these misleading and incorrect claims. The narrator repeatedly refers to the Cajuns’ ancestors as “Arcadians,” when the proper term is “Acadian.” Moreover, the Acadians did not arrive in Louisiana when it was “a colony of the kingdom of France,” as the narrator asserts, but a colony of Spain (albeit one administered for a time by French caretakers — Spain only slowly assumed full control of the formerly French colony).

The scenes of grandiose “Cajun homes” (see timestamps 3:19, 4:45 and 5:13 to 5:21 on the video) never fail to elicit snickers from other Cajuns to whom I’ve shown the film privately. The narration is entirely misleading when it states, “In the past we built many grand and spacious mansions, for our families were large and our attendants were many.” The dwellings in the film were far too luxurious for average, ordinary Cajuns, most of whom lived as subsistence farmers — and who certainly did not have many “attendants” (apparently a euphemism for “slaves”). Granted, a very few “genteel Acadians” managed to rise to positions of wealth in antebellum south Louisiana — mainly sugar planters with enslaved workforces — but they were the exception, not the rule.

Not a Cajun house.
(Screen grab by author)

In addition, the narration refers to the Louisiana colony as “a land with freedom of religion.” While it is true that the Acadians freely practiced their Catholic faith in Spanish-held Louisiana — the Spanish, after all, were Catholics, too — the colony was hardly a bastion of religious toleration. The Spanish, for example, forbid Protestants from holding public worship and they expelled all Jews from the colony.

The “Cajun garden” shown in the film at 5:27 — featuring a centuries-old Buddha statue, if one looks closely enough — is actually Jungle Gardens, owned and operated by Scots-Irish Tabasco sauce manufacturer E. A. McIlhenny (hardly a Cajun).

Some of the narration is drivel. I do not believe, as claimed at 9:47 in the film, that an appreciation of “fine silks and soft satins” represented “one of the strongest traits of French heritage” among Cajun girls. Equally nonsensical is the narrator’s reference at 5:55 — made over the image of fancifully dressed Cajun men and girls enjoying an elegant ring dance — to “slippered steps of old Acadia.” Acadian men and woman alike generally wore moccasins, living as they did on the rugged North American frontier. 

Historically inaccurate Norman milkmaid costume.
(Screen grab by author)

Fortunately, the images themselves are infinitely more valuable than the narration. This is not to say that some of the images are not misleading. For example, the Norman milkmaid costumes worn in the film by some Cajun girls and women (0:45 and 8:05) were unknown to their Acadian ancestors. An example of what anthropologists and other scholars call “fakelore,” these costumes were probably introduced to more upwardly mobile Cajuns through mass-produced, illustrated volumes of Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline (which follows the fate of an Acadian maiden exiled to south Louisiana). I say “upwardly mobile” because the mass of ordinary Cajuns never read Evangeline.

Circa 1890 depiction of Evangeline.
(Colorized by author)

Criticism aside (at last, you say), I made these other observations while watching Cajuns of the Teche:

The shot of boats moored along a bayou (1:43) seems to show some other waterway besides the Teche, perhaps Bayou Lafourche. I could be wrong — perhaps it is the Teche.

The stern-wheeler shown early in the film (1:50), the V. J. Kurzweg, is despite its appearance not a steamboat. As Carl A. Brasseaux writes in Steamboats on Louisiana’s Bayous, the Kurzweg “is widely — albeit inaccurately — remembered along Bayou Teche as one of the stream’s last steamboats,” but it “was not technically a steamboat” because “it was propelled by diesel motors.” Note the Kurzweg has no towering twin smokestacks as found on most steamboats: as a diesel-powered vessel it did not require them.

The V. J. Kurzweg on Bayou Teche, ca. 1942.
(Screen grab by author)

The fishermen at 2:35 do not seem to be on Bayou Teche, but rather in a cypress swamp. (A bayou is a slow-moving, muddy, usually smallish river, while a swamp is a wooded wetland.) If I had to guess, I would say the swamp in question is the Atchafalaya, if only because of its proximity to the Teche. But there are many patches of swamp in the region that are not in the Atchafalaya. In any event, the swamp in the film was clearly experiencing a flood, as indicated by the swift current.

Sugar cane field workers in Cajuns of the Teche.
(Screen grab by author)

Another scene depicts a mounted white overseer (3:55) supervising a work crew as it weeds young sugarcane shoots. I cannot tell if the work crew is black or white or both. A shot of three male field workers reveals one with black hands (also 3:55), but work gloves mask the race of the other two workers. A wide shot appears to show two white female field workers at far left (4:13). The other field workers in the shot, however, cannot be seen clearly enough to establish their races.

It is tempting to draw a lesson about race or race relations from this scene. But it is impossible to do so without really knowing the workers’ racial makeup. Regardless, the shot does illustrate the region’s dependence on manual field labor in 1942. It would take the ongoing war and resulting labor shortages to spur south Louisiana agriculture to mechanize. What I observed about rural Lafayette Parish in The Cajuns no doubt held true for much of Cajun Louisiana: Despite the findings of a 1942 survey “that ‘tractors are not thought to be necessary or even desirable,’” Lafayette parish farmers “had almost universally adopted mechanization within a decade. ‘The old days of the plow and the horse are gone,’ observed a 1951 survey.”

A ring dance on the banks of the Teche.
(Screen grab by author)

The reference to “giant spiders” (4:09) alludes to the legend of the Durand wedding, which allegedly occurred at Oak and Pine Alley on the outskirts of St. Martinville. As journalist Jim Bradshaw records:

It was only to be expected that [Durand] would throw the finest wedding ever when two of his daughters decided to get married on the same day. . . . [A]s the romantic legend is told, he ordered a million spiders sent from China and sent couriers to California to fetch hundreds of pounds of silver and gold dust. (A less romantic version of the story says the spiders came from nearby Catahoula Lake, but I like the China version better.) . . . Shortly before the wedding day, the spiders were set loose to spin millions of yards of delicate webs among the limbs of the oak and pine alley. On the morning of the wedding, servants armed with bellows filled with the silver and gold dust sprayed the cobweb canopy to set it glittering in the sunlight like something from a fairy tale.

Of this legend Brasseaux states, “Most southern Louisianians are familiar with the stories of the spiders imported from China for the Oak and Pine Alley wedding.” Yet it along with similar local legends, he notes, have been “proven unfounded by recent historical research.” (To Bradshaw’s credit, he concurs with Brasseaux that the story is a legend.)

Elsewhere, the narrator observes (6:08) “We Cajuns speak French among ourselves, and some of our children do not learn English until they reach the classroom.” Where they will have the French whipped out of them, I thought. I was being only slightly facetious, for south Louisiana educators often punished Cajun children for speaking French at school. More than any other factor, this practice accounted for the rapid decline of Cajun French during the early to mid-twentieth century. (See my previous blog article about tracking this decline.)

Quilters with garde-soleils.
(Screen grab by author)

Finally, although the Cajuns’ dress is not “authentic” (that is, historically accurate) in the spinning wheel scene at the beginning or in the ring dance scene, the clothing shown in other scenes does strike me as authentic.  See, for example, the field workers (Cajun or otherwise) shown from 3:55 to 4:29; and the school children from 6:05 to 6:24. (Note the students in question attended an all-white school: segregation did not end in much of Louisiana until 1969 — about fifteen years after the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education struck down separate-but-equal schooling nationwide.) See also the churchgoers at 6:38 and 6:45; the corn husk weavers at 7:05; and the quilters at 7:42 (complete with their garde-soleils, or sunbonnets). In addition, see the weaver at right, but not at left, at 8:04, and, conversely, the same weaver at left, but not at right, at 8:10; and the wedding goers at the end of the film (9:40 onwards). The apparel in these scenes looks very authentic to me. Perhaps the subjects had no time or compulsion to dress for the camera?

Horse and buggies leaving Cajun wedding.
(Screen grab by author)

Now to address an issue other than the film’s accuracy: Was the film wartime propaganda?

I found Cajuns of the Teche in the National Archives collection of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA). Founded in 1953 during the Cold War and still active today, the USIA, as its website notes, “explains and supports American foreign policy and promotes U.S. national interests through a wide range of overseas information programs . . . [and] promotes mutual understanding between the United States and other nations by conducting educational and cultural activities.” Created prior to the advent of the USIA, Cajuns of the Teche sat in a section of the USIA collection regarding an earlier organization, the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI). Established in 1942, the OWI, as the Library of Congress explains, “served as an important U.S. government propaganda agency during World War II.”

Logos of the USIA and the OWI.

Why would a travelogue film issued by Columbia Pictures be found in a collection pertaining to the OWI?

The answer might be found in a pictorial “feature” (pre-packaged photo essay for overseas consumption) issued by the OWI in 1944 and titled “The Bayou French of Louisiana.” This feature consisted of a four-page typewritten essay about the Cajuns along with many captioned black-and-white still images. These photos depicted “everyday” Cajun culture, activities, and places. 

Intriguingly, at least four of these black-and-white still images depict events also shown in Cajuns of the Teche. Moreover, these black-and-white images were clearly shot at the exact same moment as the corresponding images in the film — albeit from slightly different angles. See the below image comparisons: Those at left are “screen grabs” from Columbia Pictures’ Cajuns of the Teche, while those at right are still images from the OWI's “The Bayou French of Louisiana.” As you can see, the paired images are almost identical (click to enlarge):

The OWI’s “The Bayou French of Louisiana” was clearly wartime propaganda. Its purpose was to show overseas audiences how American society could support an ethnically heterogeneous population, yet still be undeniably “American.” As the OWI essay accompanying the images put it, “The persistence of Cajun French traditions in the United States, as those of other national groups, is encouraged in the belief that such diversity enriches and strengthens democratic institutions. The various population groups of the United States are encouraged to perpetuate their folkways so that each may contribute to the homogenous but broadly variegated culture of the United States.”

But was the earlier Cajuns of the Teche also wartime propaganda? 

The federal government created the U.S. Office of War Information in June 1942; Columbia Pictures issued Cajuns of the Teche the next month. This would hardly seem enough time for the fledgling OWI to produce an eleven-minute film shot on location in south Louisiana and to arrange for a major Hollywood studio to distribute it. And while there are examples of the OWI and Columbia Pictures teaming up later to release wartime propaganda films (such as the 1943 film Troop Train and the 1945 film The True Glory), there is no known evidence of OWI involvement with Cajuns of the Teche.

Back of OWI print indicating when and
from whom it had been purchased.
(National Archives and Records Administration,
Washington, D.C.)

A key to understanding the actual, tenuous relationship between the OWI’s propagandistic “The Bayou French of Louisiana” and Columbia Pictures’ Cajuns of the Teche may be found on the back of the original B&W prints used with “The Bayou French of Louisiana.” Data there indicates that the OWI licensed the images from a commercial entity named “Screen Traveler, from Gendreau.” Presumably a stock photo vendor, Screen Traveler may have sent a photographer to Louisiana in 1942 alongside Columbia Pictures’ film crew. This would explain why some of the images in Cajuns of the Teche and some of those in “The Bayou French of Louisiana” correspond so closely.

Ultimately, I do not believe — given the current evidence — that Cajuns of the Teche was a product of OWI wartime propaganda; but I do believe that still photographs taken during the filming of Cajuns of the Teche ended up in the wartime propaganda project “The Bayou French of Louisiana.” I make this assertion because we know for certain that the OWI, a government entity charged with producing wartime propaganda, issued “The Bayou French of Louisiana”; and we know that some of the images used in “The Bayou French of Louisiana” closely match scenes in Cajuns of the Teche.

Still, the question remains: why is there a reel of Cajuns of the Teche in the OWI section of the USIA's archival collection?

Now Available: My Children's History of the Cajuns in English and French Editions

Now available online from Amazon.com (click here to purchase in English or French)!

Maintenant disponible en ligne à Amazon.com (cliquez ici pour vendre en anglais ou française)!

I'm pleased to announce that my 2008 book, Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors: A Young Reader's History, has now (as of April 1, 2013) been released in a French translation by Faustine Hillard.

J’ai le plaisir d’annoncer que mon livre intitulé Les Cadiens et leurs ancêtres acadiens: l'histoire racontée aux jeunes est maintenant disponible (1 avril 2013) en version française, traduite par Faustine Hillard.

Cover of the English version and the French translation.
Couverture du livre en anglais et la traduction en français.

Published by the University Press of Mississippi and funded in part through a translation grant from the Quebec Ministère des Relations Internationales, the book, retitled Les Cadiens et leurs ancêtres acadiens: l'histoire racontée aux jeunes, is aimed at middle-school and high-school readers — though it is useful as an adult primer — particularly students in French Immersion and other French education courses.

Publié par la Presse Universitaire du Mississippi et financé en partie par une subvention du Ministère des Relations Internationales du Québec, le livre, intitulé Les Cadiens et leurs ancêtres acadiens: l'histoire racontée aux jeunes, cible le jeune lecteur collégien ou lycéen, surtout celui des classes d’immersion en français ou ceux qui apprennent le français langue seconde.  Il s'avère toutefois une introduction enrichissante au lecteur adulte voulant s’initier à la question. 

Inside the French version. (click to enlarge)
L'intérieur de la version en français. (Cliquez pour agrandir.)

Folklorist and linguist Barry Jean Ancelet writes:

"Shane Bernard's book . . . is an excellent addition to the database that is being developed on the history and culture of Louisiana. And this accessible French edition offers a perspective essential for any student (child or adult) who seeks to understand the Cajuns."

Le folkloriste et linguiste Barry Jean Ancelet écrivit:

"Ce livre de Shane Bernard . . . est une excellente addition à la banque d'information qui est en train de se développer sur l'histoire et la culture de la Louisiane. Et cette édition en français facilement abordable offre une perspective indispensable pour tout étudiant (petit ou grand) qui cherche à comprendre les Cadiens."

And historian Carl A. Brasseaux states:

"Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors by Shane Bernard provides students — and young adults generally — with a perfect introduction to the history of one of North America's most distinctive, and most misunderstood, ethnic groups. Concise and highly readable, this book is an essential resource for every Louisiana classroom."

Et l'historien Carl A. Brasseaux déclara:

"Les Cadiens et leurs ancêtres acadiens par Shane Bernard fournit aux étudiants--et aux jeunes adultes en général--une parfaite introduction à l'histoire de l'un des plus distinctifs et des plus incompris groupes ethniques en Amérique du Nord. Concis et facile à lire, ce livre est une ressource essentielle pour chaque salle de classe en Louisiane." 

Of the English version, the Times-Picayune noted:

Bernard takes just 85 pages to provide a concise history of one of the unique peoples that make Louisiana special. It is a brief but delightfully engaging account of who the Cajuns are and how they got that way, a narrative as informative as it is easy to navigate. . . . [The book] fills an important gap on the Louisiana history bookshelf, and its value can be appreciated by the not-so-young as well. 

Au sujet de la version en anglais, le quotidien de la Nouvelle Orléans, The Times-Picayune, remarqua:

Bernard nous raconte l'histoire abrégée d’un des peuples qui contribue à l'extraordinaire mosaïque démographique de la Louisiane en un récit de moins de 85 pages.  Ce bref mais charmant compte rendu entraîne le lecteur à découvrir le peuple cadien et suivre son évolution dans un récit qui informe tout en restant facile à naviguer. . . . [Ce livre] comble une lacune importante en ce qui est de l'histoire de la Louisiane.  C'est un livre qui s'apprécie à tout âge.      

In 2008 the Louisiana Center for the Book, located in the state library, selected the English version of Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors to represent Louisiana at the National Book Festival's Pavilion of the States in Washington, D.C.

En 2008, Les Cadiens et leurs ancêtres acadiens: l'histoire racontée aux jeunes (version langue anglaise) fut sélectionné par le Centre du Livre en Louisiane, qui se trouve à la bibliothèque de l’état, pour représenter la Louisiane au Pavillon des Etats du Festival National du Livre à Washington, D.C.

Inside the French version. (click to enlarge)
L'intérieur de la version en français. (Cliquez pour agrandir.)

Click here to purchase in English or French)!

Cliquez ici pour vendre en anglais ou française)!

A Meteor over Cajun Louisiana: Window on Atomic-Age Anxieties

The recent explosion of a meteor (or "bolide") near Chelyabinsk, Russia, reminded me of a similar incident that took place over south Louisiana in the late 1950s.

A meteor streaking through the atmosphere.
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

In my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People I used this incident to illustrate how atomic-age anxieties had infiltrated Louisiana's traditionally French-speaking parishes — a region that at one time had been fairly isolated from the currents of mainstream American history. Some fellow historians bristle at the suggestion that south Louisiana was ever particularly isolated: but "isolated" is a relative term, and compared to, say, contemporary downtown Peoria, suburban Cincinnati, or midtown Manhattan, or any number of other mainstream American places, it was without doubt relatively isolated during the pre-World War II era.

This changed on a rapid, widespread basis with the coming of World War II, an event that finally immersed south Louisiana in mainstream American culture. As such, I demonstrated in The Cajuns that when a meteor lit up the region's night sky in the late 1950s, many Cajuns suspected they had just been attacked by the Soviet Union. As I concluded about their terrified response to the meteor, "Obviously, Cajuns were as susceptible to Cold War anxieties as other segments of American society."

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

Given the present interest in meteors, I excerpt here the section of my book dealing with that astronomical event over south Louisiana:

Around 10 p.m. on March 15, 1957, a fiery meteor emitting a shower of red sparks hurtled over south Louisiana, turning darkness to broad daylight before slamming into West Côte Blanche Bay. Windows rattled, some shattered, and police throughout central Acadiana [the Cajuns parishes of south-central Louisiana] fielded calls from hundreds of frantic citizens. No, they replied, it wasn't a mid-air collision, an oil-rig blowout, a "space ship from Mars," or "la fin du monde," the end of the world. It was only a chunk of rock from outer space. 

Significantly, some Acadiana residents assumed that what they had witnessed was an incoming missile and the flash of an atomic blast. They believed that the Soviets had launched a nuclear attack on Baton Rouge or New Orleans. According to the Abbeville Meridional, for example, a local resident "who prefers not being identified" said he thought the meteor was a guided missile . . . sent to this area by the Russians for some destructive purposes." The same article cited Vermilion Parish resident Preston Broussard as describing the meteor's impact as "like the explosion of weapons used in warfare." Lafayette's Daily Advertiser stated "Some thought it was . . . 'an atomic bomb dropped over New Orleans.'" In the rural community of Kaplan, school teacher Earl Comeaux was putting his daughter to sleep when he observed "the yard light up as in daytime." At first the event puzzled him, but as he recalled, "It dawned on me that that was the flash of an A-bomb exploding. Since it was in the east, I immediately thought of Baton Rouge, a prime target of the Russians. They would be after the petroleum plants there."

Newspaper article from March 1957
about the meteor.
(Source: Altus [Okla.] Times-Democrat/Google News)

Comeaux knew more than most locals about atomic warfare: a few years earlier he had served with Strategic Air Command, flying on B-50 bombers that carried nuclear warheads targeted for Moscow rail yards. Waking his wife anxiously, Comeaux told her about the mysterious flash, and explained that if the capital had indeed been bombed, the resulting shockwave ought to reach Kaplan at any moment. "Well, no sooner was that said than a great boom shook the house," he recalled. "I was convinced that we had been attacked by the Russians." Gathering their children, the Comeauxs huddled around their television, awaiting official word of doomsday. After a long night they learned about the meteor that had crashed nearby. "How terrified I had been for my family and myself!" he recalled. "How ridiculous my reaction to a natural occurrence." . . .

A follow-up note: I have tried unsuccessfully on occasion to coax both scientists and treasure hunters into searching for the meteorite in question. A large chunk of the object reportedly fell to Earth just off an easily identifiable spot on the Louisiana coast — the amusingly named Point No Point, which sits directly between East and West Côte Blanche bays. As I told a journalist in 2007:

I once spent a good deal of time researching this meteor, and three fishermen from Baldwin [in St. Mary Parish] reported that the meteor (or at least an automobile-sized part of it) crashed between their boat and the shoreline, which was located only a short distance away (a hundred yards or so, I recall). . . . They had been fishing near the division between East and West Côte Blanche Bay[s] at a place called Point No Point. The impact of the meteor hitting the water was so loud that their ears were still ringing days later, and they felt fortunate to be alive. Another, smaller chunk of the meteor landed on an inland oil rig near Houma, and the oil-field worker who saw it fall out of the sky and roll up against some equipment took the rock home as a keepsake. Who knows where it is now?

Approximate reported impact site
of meteor off Point No Point.
(Source: Google Maps)

The three fishermen in question drew a map showing precisely where this large chunk of space rock crashed into the water near Point No Point. This map still exists, and it seems to me that someone with an underwater magnetometer might use it to find the meteorite — assuming the meteorite is made of iron or some other easily detectable metal — and raise it to the surface.

Location of Point No Point (aka Marone Point).
(Source: Google Maps)

But what do I know about such things, really? I'm not a geophysicist, but a historian. And for all I know the rock, or what is left of it after possibly rusting beneath the waves for over a half-century, is buried under fifty feet of sludge.

A Film Documents South Louisiana's Logging Industry, ca. 1925: Responsible Stewardship or Environmental Disaster?

Earlier today I learned of a two-part, roughly thirty-minute black-and-white silent film from circa 1925 documenting the daily operations of a south Louisiana cypress company. (I later realized that, purely by coincidence, an old high-school classmate of mine put the digitized film online.)

The movie shows lumberjacks in pirogues (small flat-bottomed boats) cutting down ancient cypress trees in or around the Atchafalaya Basin; a pull boat drawing the logs onto a canal using a chain and windlass; a dredge boat armed with a steam shovel extending the logging canals into a cypress swamp; a locomotive pulling flatcars of logs to the mill; a "towboat" (actually the full-fledged steamboat Sewanee) pulling a "boom" of logs to the mill; "overhead electric cars" — presumably state-of-the-art technology at the time — carrying logs around the lumberyard; "mechanical electric stackers" piling lumber; and early gas-powered trucks pulling wagons of lumber.

The film in question was shot by L. K. Williams, a member of the Williams family of Patterson who operated the massive F. B. Williams Cypress Company, located in that same town on or near the banks of Bayou Teche. The waterway from which L. K. Williams filmed the cypress mill (seen on reel two) is quite possibly the Teche itself, but it's difficult to say because there are many man-made canals around Patterson. The scene in question just as easily could have been shot from one of those canals.

Advertisement for F. B. Williams Cypress Company, Patterson, La.
(Source: The Lumber Trade Journal, 15 Sept 1914)

Note the industry-specific terms* that appear in the film’s captions:

Boom, n. Logs or timbers fastened together end to end and used to hold floating logs. The term sometimes includes the logs enclosed, as a boom of logs. 

Crib, n. Specifically, a raft of logs; loosely applied to a boom of logs. 

Float road[, n.]. A channel cleared in a swamp and used to float cypress logs from the woods to the boom at the river or mill.

F. B. Williams Cypress Company, Patterson, La.,
as shown in the ca. 1925 film.

I cannot find a definition for a run, another term used in the captions, but it is presumably the same as that for gutter road, which is "The path followed in skidding logs" — skid meaning "To draw logs from the stump to the skidway, landing, or mill." In turn, a skidway is "Two skids laid parallel at right angles to a road, usually raised above the ground at the end nearest the road.” The same source adds, "Logs are usually piled upon a skidway as they are brought from the stump for loading upon sleds, wagons, or cars."

This film provides a valuable insight into a now dormant Teche country industry: once lumber mills dotted the lower bayou, drawing on the nearby massive cypress swamp that is the Atchafalaya Basin, as well as on other, smaller cypress swamps in the region. Whether or not this turn-of-the-twentieth-century industry represented responsible stewardship of Louisiana’s natural resources or an environmental disaster (or something in between), I leave to viewers to decide. I myself do not weigh in on the issue because I have not researched the matter, and while it would be easy to deem it an "environmental disaster" I do not know this as a matter of fact.

The steamboat Sewanee, as shown in the ca. 1925 film.
It tows a "boom" of logs behind it.

*Definitions are quoted from: Bureau of Forestry, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Terms Used in Forestry and Logging (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1905).

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.)

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.