Cultural Character of Life in the Marshes and Swamps of Coastal Louisiana

Grade Levels K-6
Subject(s)
· History
· Geography

Overview: The swamps and marshes were a difficult place to live.

Grade Levels 6-8
Subject(s)
· Louisiana History
· Geography

Overview: The swamps and marshes were a difficult place to live and displaced people were the ones who learned how to live there.

Grade Levels 9-12
Subject(s):
· Louisiana History
· Geography
· Industrial History
· Cultural Geography

Overview: The swamps and marshes were a difficult place to live. Displaced people escaped to the area and learned how to make a living there. The way of life was so unique that it called for new skills and the acceptance of life based on working with nature to provide the families' needs.

Curriculum Objectives:
The student will be exposed to the diverse peoples who have called the swamps and marshes home, including Native Americans, escaped slaves, Pirates, Cajuns, Islenos, Haitians, Hungarians, Croatians, Chinese and most recently the Vietnamese. The abundance of the area had significant influence on the foodways and commerce in New Orleans. And the peoples, in their isolation, have preserved their own cultures, adding to the rich character of the area.

How Cultural Character is Defined:
Cultural Character describes the unique customs, economic activities and history of the people of the swamps and marshes of Coastal Louisiana. Much of what has been unique is being absorbed into mainstream culture as more peoples have moved out of the swamps and marshes and make their living out of the area.

The Story:
The story of Louisiana History is told with little reference to the people who lived in the swamps and marshes of coastal Louisiana. These were difficult and forbidding places.
Yet the people who did live there established unique ways of surviving which have carried on until recently. The cultures were so isolated from mainstream life that they could preserve their own traditions, languages and other distinct attributes even as the rest of the state moved into modern life. The Pearl River Area is mostly a footnote in history books. The area is referenced mostly as a place where people escaped to, where they had a hideout, or where people were forced to live in trying to survive.

Native Americans and the first Europeans:
The Native Americans who settled in the coastal regions were known as the "little nations." These tribes included names now remembered by place names like the Houmas, Bayougoulas, Biloxis, Pascagoulas, Mobiles, and those who remain largely unknown today like the Mougalaches, the Acolapissa, the Capinans, and the Moctobis. All the tribes (except the Biloxis and Muctobi who spoke a version of Sioux) spoke a dialect of Muskhogean, a language of the Choctaws and Chickasaws, but were not part of their political structure. When DeSoto was in the Gulf of Mexico and discovered the mouth of a major river (what may have been the Mississippi River) in 1519, these tribes were just establishing themselves on the coast. In 1542 DeSoto's second in command arrived with a group of explorers to the present day site of New Orleans and first described the Choctaws.

One hundred forty years later (1682), LaSalle made a 56 day trip from Canada down the Mississippi River and claimed Louisiana for King Louis the XIV of France. By that time, the Native American population had been greatly diminished, due to exposure to European diseases. During that trip, Bienveille wrote a report which suggests that the number of wild animals on the coast had also been greatly diminished probably because of overhunting. One report describes Native Americans trading 8-9 thousand buffalo hides at Fort Mississippi forty miles north of the Gulf of Mexico on the Mississippi River.

In 1698 Iberville with his brother Bienville made their way up the Mississippi River and founded Louisiana. There were contemporaneous accounts that British slavers and their Native American allies, the Chickasaws, had conducted raids on the "little nations" causing them to relocate settlements often. These British raids were to secure run away slaves whom the tribes protected. Slave hunters would capture the slaves and sever a tendon in the foot to prevent the captured individual from running away, but this did not stop the slaves from walking or working. In 1708 the English unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate an agreement with the Choctaws to induce them to annihilate all the "Little Nations." Many tribes left the area and moved further west out of British reach. Only the Acolapissa Indians stayed in the Pearl River area, moving in 1702 to a fortified location north of Lake Pontchartrain.

The Biloxis, who spoke a dialect of the Sioux language, moved to a location on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, that they called Shupic Atcha or Mudfish Bayou. The French called it Bayou St. John. This area of New Orleans had been used continuously as a winter camp by various native tribes, but was deserted when the Biloxis moved there.

In 1722 about 30 Biloxis and Pascagoulas were found living on the Pearl River (near Pearlington) at a site formerly occupied by the Acolapissa.

By 1830 there was a treaty, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in which the Choctaws had to leave the area and go to Oklahoma. Some did not leave and settled in communities along the Pearl River including Shieldsboro, Devil's Swamp, Bayou LaCroix and Dilville, intermingling with whites and working with blacks and whites.

The First European Settlement in Louisiana Coastal Area:
The first businessman to attempt a Louisiana settlement, Antoine Crozat, said to be the richest man in all of France, returned his monopoly to develop the territory of Louisiana to the crown five years into his 15 year monopoly saying he failed to discover gold or silver, failed to establish tobacco plantations and that his commerce with Spain had fallen apart. In 1718 Bienville founded New Orleans (de Pauger laid out the French Quarter in 1721) and John Laws became the second businessman given a monopoly to colonize Louisiana and bring her spoils to France. He publicized the beautiful mountains and temperate climate of Louisiana to secure French colonists. However, if only the French had been recruited to develop Louisiana, it would have failed. Many of the people who came over were prisoners, con-men and others who lacked the skills and knowledge to establish the colony. However two other groups: the African slaves who provided the labor of clearing the land and establishing the first crops, rice and indigo; and the German farmers who provided reliable food production; came immediately and were responsible for firmly establishing the colony. Thus beginning the mixing of cultures which significantly affects the cultural character of the area, setting it apart from the English colonies.

Slaves in the Area:
Once French settlement began, the French immediately began importing African Slaves into coastal Louisiana in order to be able to survive. Of the 7,000 or so Europeans that arrived in the colony in the first four years after founding, only 119 had land grants on which to build plantations. The rest were either indentured servants or convicted criminals. The French also tried to secure Native American women and children as slaves. Because the early Native American slaves were female and the African American slaves were male, many slave families in the early part of the century had African American fathers and Native American mothers. The African slaves realized that their best chance to escape was to band together with Native Americans, who could lead them to places where they could survive, leading to a ban of the enslavement of Native Americans in 1763. Slaves escaped into the Pearl River area because it was possible to live there undetected. In New Orleans, the only place in America where such things were allowed, there were Sunday gatherings of African and Native American slaves in Congo Square where there was much singing, drumming and dancing. Without slave labor the sugar, cotton and tobacco plantation economy would not have been possible. The slaves made immeasurable contributions to the foodways of Louisiana: Gumbo is an African word that means okra, for example. And the drumming techniques were a major influence on the creation of Jazz.

Cajuns in the Swamps and Marshes:
Many people identify Cajuns or the Acadians as the first people to settle in the Swamps and Marshes of coastal Louisiana. While it is true that some did, becoming fishermen and trappers, most settled on farmland and lived as farmers. The Cajuns, however, are sort of a paradigm of a displaced peoples. In Louisiana, many chose to live in close proximity to other Cajuns and in isolation from the American settlements.

The Acadian's story began in France of the 1500s. France had been Roman Catholic, but in the 1500s, Protestant Calvinism spread into France. Ten to twenty percent of the population became Huguenots. Protestant-Catholic relations became strained by several events: the murder of many Huguenot leaders who were in Paris for a wedding in 1572 and the subsequent murder of tens of thousands of Huguenots around the country; the Thirty Years' War (1618-1642) where the Catholic-Protestant conflicts in Bohemia spread to Germany (France eventually became the leading power of Europe replacing Spain and taking over large parts of the Alsace area of Germany). At the same time, making a living in France was difficult, with most of the peasant population living under the control of landowners, with excessive taxes and an inaccessible court system.

In 1632, with the Treaty of St. Germain-En-Laye, France once again gained control of New France (including Acadia or present day Nova Scotia on the east coast of what is now Canada) and immediately began sending men and women to settle in Acadia. By 1670 Acadia had about 400 people (France having decided it was not a good idea to depopulate its country) while Massachusetts had 40,000. By 1700, the 2000 "Acadians" had developed their own culture and no longer considered themselves pure French. Some of the Acadia area came under British rule in 1710, the remainder coming under British rule with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. However, the exact boundaries of Acadia were disputed until 1763. In 1755, the British Governor of Acadia, Charles Lawrence decided to deport the Acadians, for fear they would fight alongside the French and Native Americans against the British and because they would not pledge loyalty to England.

The first exile happened in 1755, sending Acadians to the American Colonies and England (through Virginia). The second exile happened in 1758, sending Acadians to France. Between 1764 and 1768 over 1000 Acadians who had escaped to the American colonies or who had been held in Acadia, made their way to Louisiana. Then in 1785 1600 Acadians from France came to Louisiana, with Spain paying to carry them to New Orleans, completing the Acadian migration. (France had ceded control of the Isle of Orleans and the land west of the Mississippi to Spain in 1762.) In 1790, French Creoles, living in Haiti, fled the island when there was a slave revolt.

Early settlers were given 6-8 arpents of frontland by 40 arpents in depth on a river or bayou. Each grantee was given 3 years to build a levee and drainage ditches and to clear 2 arpents of river frontage and build a fence around the cleared land. They also had to build a road behind the levee with bridges over the ditches. They couldn't sell the land for 3 years. The Acadians settled along bayous and in the prairie areas in the western part of the state where they raised livestock and were involved in agriculture selling their goods in New Orleans. But the government in New Orleans had set low prices for their goods, and the Acadians found that they could travel to Manchac and sell to the English at much better prices (even though it was against the law).

European Immigrants:
There were other cultures which had an early influence on the culture of the Swamps and Marshes of Coastal Louisiana. These groups include: German-Americans, Islenos, Haitians, Croatians, Hungarian-Americans, Chinese, Filipinos and Vietnamese.

Within four years of the founding of New Orleans (1718) German settlers fleeing the poverty of their homeland, arrived in New Orleans. The German settlers are often credited with the early survival of New Orleans. They were the farmers who supplied the colony with food. They settled along the Mississippi River north of the city on the "German Coast." These Germans intermingles with the Acadians and German surnames like Folse, Himel and Schecksneider are now considered good Cajun names. They also brought their pigs and sausage making into the food culture of coastal Louisiana.

The German immigrants of the 19th century came in three waves ending in the 1850's. The first wave came after the famine following the Napoleonic Wars and came as indentured servants to work on farms and plantations. The second wave of immigrants came after a civil war in Germany and were professionals who settled in New Orleans bringing breweries, building churches and theatres. The final wave of German immigrants was composed primarily of industrial workers.

The largest group of Spanish settlers came to New Orleans from the Canary Islands. Some were recruited as soldiers by Spain to fight against the British in the American Revolution. About 1000 Canary Islanders came between 1778 and 1783. These Islenos (which means islanders) as they are known, were isolated for many years and are presently centered in St. Bernard Parish where they have historically earned a livelihood by farming, hunting, trapping and fishing.

Ten thousand Haitians came to New Orleans between 1790-1809. Spurred on by the slave revolt on Saint-Domingue (now present day Haiti), these settlers were one third white, one third free persons of color and one third domestic slaves. They created the state's first newspaper, brought opera to New Orleans, played a role in creating Creole cuisine and perpetuated voodoo practices in the city. Haitian Creoles taught the settlers the secret of crystallizing sugarcane.

The Croatians also known as Yugoslavians or Dalmations came to New Orleans as crewmen aboard merchant ships in the 1820s. Because of the economic difficulty facing these people who came from the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia (later part of the nation of Yugoslavia), they were forced to go to sea. When they arrived in New Orleans, they became longshoremen working on the docks. They recruited brides from their homeland, but the process was expensive and many Croatians married French or Italian women who were expected to adapt to their husband's culture. Between 1899 and 1910 three thousand Yugoslavian immigrants arrived in New Orleans. They were welcomed by the Dalmatian benevolent societies. Many moved to Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parish, opening boarding houses and restaurants. Others worked as fishermen, oystermen and trappers. They brought with them their techniques for cultivating oysters and methods of using a rake-like tool for harvesting oysters , called "tonging." They invested their profits to acquire large parcels of land on which they have planted orange groves in Plaquemines Parish.

Chinese and Filipinos established themselves on the coastal areas of Louisiana. The Filipinos are said to have started the shrimping industry on the Gulf Coast in the 1870's. They also introduced the process of drying shrimp for export. They built large raised platforms to dry shrimp and would perform ancient Chinese rituals of "dancing the shrimp." The "dancers" wore canvas on their shoes and would dance on the shrimp to remove their heads and tails.

The Hungarian-Americans, instead of coming through the port of New Orleans, came by train from the Northeastern ports, arriving in Louisiana around 1896 to work in the lumber mills near present-day Hammond, Louisiana. As the cut-over land became available, the Hungarian settlers acquired it and began small farming operations. Until recently many of the settlers preserved their language community and culture by remaining isolated. Local businesses in the settlement area offer Hungarian sausages and pastries year round.

Twenty five thousand Vietnamese, by far the largest Asian contingent in Louisiana, came to the state in 1975 after the fall of South Vietnam's capital, Saigon. The Catholic Church
took the lead in resettling refuges and a large number settled in New Orleans East in an area now known as "Little Vietnam." The Louisiana shrimping and fishing industries provided many Vietnamese with employment. By 1990, one in every ten Vietnamese in Louisiana were fishermen, and one twentieth of the entire fishing industry in Louisiana is now made up of Vietnamese.

The Pearl River Historical Footnotes: Pirates, Bandits, Friends of Napoleon, Louisiana-Style Politics, Civil War Deserters, Floods, Floating Bar Rooms and Ghost Towns

Jean Lafitte is the most famous of the pirates who preyed on vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. Piracy was not a crime in the United States until so declared by an act of Congress in 1819. Before that time, pirates (also known as privateers) had letters of marque from foreign governments which cut these governments into a percentage of the take; Lafitte used letters from Carthage in North Africa. He had more than 500 pirates and 14 schooners. In 1814, the American Navy and Army attacked John Lafitte's lair in the swamp. Hearing of Lafitte's treatment, the British offered him an officer's commission to join the British navy to fight the Americans. Lafitte told Governor Claiborne of Louisiana of the offer, and the Governor offered to drop charges against him and his men if he would fight with the Americans against the British. At the battle in Chalmette from December 14, 1814-January 19, 1815, Lafitte and his men fought along side the Americans to defeat the British. Lafitte then moved his operations to Galveston and Andrew Jackson went on to be President of the United States.

Pierre Remaux, who was known as the "King of Honey Island" was an infamous outlaw who operated along the Pearl River, but maintained a fine home in New Orleans under the name Col. Loring, pretending to be a mine owner from Mexico. He ran a piracy operation with fast ships and with men with fast horses for robbery on land. They had a number of hideouts in which they stored their loot, including caves which were dug into a bluff south of Pearlington. Another famous outlaw of the 1820's, John Murrell, was a highway operator who had a hiding place in Honey Island across from Gainesville.

When Napoleon Bonaparte was imprisoned on the island of St. Helena in 1815, his brother Jerome plotted to rescue him and bring him to New Orleans. Jerome and his faithful followers left France disguised as crewmen on a ship. Rather than be discovered by pirates by going up the Mississippi or through the Rigolets, they went up the Pearl River to meet Jeremiah Henley, who had fought with Napoleon's army in Moscow. Henley lived on the East Pearl River. There under two big oak trees, near where the old Napoleon Church later stood, Jerome was said to have buried $80,000 in gold to finance the operation. The group made their way by night to New Orleans and found little support for their plan to bring Napoleon over to New Orleans. Napoleon died in 1821.

The reputation of Plaquemines Parish for political chicanery dates back to the Presidential election of 1844 when James K. Polk, a democrat, received 1007 votes, while Henry Clay, a Whig had only 37 votes. (In the 1840 Presidential election only 290 votes were cast in Plaquemines Parish. A radical group of Democrats called the Locofocos took charge in Louisiana to produce a majority vote in the state for Polk and were successful. In Plaquemines, Judge Gilbert Leonard chartered two steamboats and loaded the boat with 350 men and plenty of whiskey. They then visited 3 polling places in the Parish where the men voted in each. Polk carried the state of Louisiana by 699 votes, so the illegally cast votes in Plaquemines Parish decided the election.

Destitute families and Confederate and Union deserters moved to Honey Island during the Civil War. The area's terrain discouraged military authorities from trying to find the deserters. Eventually the area came under Union control and surveillance, but the deserters could still survive fishing, hunting and setting trot-lines.

In 1900, there was a great flood along the Pearl River and a number of people were wiped out and left the Honey Island area.

In 1908, Mississippi became a dry state: no whiskey could be made or sold in the state. After Mississippi went dry, a number of bars were built across the Pearl River in Louisiana and a number of floating bar rooms were anchored on the Louisiana side of the Pearl River. One of the best known of these was called the Blue Goose. A bell on the riverbank signaled oarsman to carry customers over. Visitors would enjoy the evening and then fill their saddlebags with "river water" for future use. National prohibition (in 1918) ended the Pearl River saloons. In a parody of a popular folk song, the loss of the well-known facility was memorialized in the phrase "go tell Aunt Dinah that the Blue Goose is dead."

There are three ghost towns in the Pearl River area, all of them on the present site of the NASA space center: Gainsville was an old pirate town and later a logging town and once a county seat. Logtown was an old logging town, once home to 3,000 people and with a silent picture show and a public school with a swimming pool. Napoleon was another old town in the area where Napoleon supporters were said to have attempted to organize his arrival in the New World.

How People Made a Living in the Swamps and Marshes:
By the mid-1800's the 150 wetland-oriented communities were sustained by the marshes and swamps of Louisiana. These communities ranged in populations from 10 to 1,000 people. And people in the Pearl River area made their living by trapping and hunting first, benefiting from the almost unlimited supply of wild game. They also fished to feed themselves and their families.

Fishing and shrimping were a means of survival before they became big industries in Louisiana. Fishing for survival in the Honey Island area involved "setting lines" and using various kinds of nets to catch fish. The earliest European shrimped in large groups by wading or using small skiffs in the waters along the coast pulling a seine net. Then shrimp were sold in local markets. When the Chinese immigrants introduced drying platforms, shrimp began to be exported. Later motorized luggers (a kind of boat based on a Mediterranean fishing vessel) which pulled a seine net. Later trawl nets were introduced from the Atlantic. These trawls had boards which ran along the bottom and popped the shrimp into the nets. A third kind of net, known as a night trawl or butterfly net was introduced to be used in shallow waters at night when shrimp are near the surface of the water. The commercial fishing and shrimping industry in Louisiana is a $10 billion dollar industry today, though environmental degradation is causing the catch to be less plentiful. Some popular species of fish, like the Red Drum, are endangered species due to overfishing.

Hunting and trapping were also a means of survival before they became industries in Louisiana. By 1900, Hunters provided hundreds of thousands of dressed ducks to restaurants around the country. Alligator hides were marketed around the country. Trappers sold pelts of mink and otter and could catch thousands of muskrats in a three-month season. By 1925 Louisiana became America's number one fur producer. 1,000 dealers bought furs from over 20,000 trappers. There were over 600 trappers in the Pearl River area alone. Many trappers and hunters plied their trade in the winter and fished, shrimped, and oystered during the appropriate seasons throughout the rest of the year. Today there are very few trappers in Louisiana since the last major market for furs in the former USSR has crashed.

Shell fish mounds in the Pearl River area are commonly found and are vestiges of Native Americans gathering and fishing. Harvesting was done by hand and later, through "tonging." In the early 1900s there was a dispute between Mississippi and Louisiana concerning their state borders. Mississippi oystermen were arrested and forced to dump their catch overboard by the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Department officials. The two states sued to define their boundaries and Louisiana gained additional oyster bottoms. Today, the oyster industry draws on skills such as reef-building, seeding oysters, operating an oyster dredge, repairing dredge nets and oyster shucking. The oyster beds are at risk from environmental degradation, though today, Louisiana's shucking houses process more than one million pounds of meat annually.

The first commercial forest products in the Pearl River area were Cypress trees that could be used for ships masts and pine tar for use in caulking ships. Some of the first trees that were used to render pine tar were trees partially rotted, having been blown down in a hurricane probably in 1772. Other early forest products included cypress roofing shakes, oak barrel staves, barrel heads and hoops, firewood for homes and kitchens in New Orleans, and baskets made from thin oak slats and filled with produce from the farms along the river. By the 1830's logging was becoming a significant industry, mostly focused on the great longleaf and slash pine on the Gulf Coast. Early logging involved floating logs down in waterways to get them to the mills. In the late 1880s the crosscut saw replaced the axe for cutting down trees. Later a caralog with four oxen was used, still later an eight-wheel log wagon (which doubled the carrying capacity of the caralog) was used. And finally small gauge railroad spurs were used (probably using cars obsoleted when all of the railroad lines when to "standard" gauge). By 1900, Logtown was producing 100,000 feet of lumber a day. It is said that the East Pearl was full of logs going to the sawmills at Pearlington and Logtown. 1918 was the peak of the lumber industry in the area. The logging boomtowns turned into ghost towns by the 1930's and none of the virgin stands of trees remained.

Louisiana's first oil producing well was drilled in 1901. Use of submersible drilling barges, which need canals to float into position, began in 1934. In 1937 the Gulf of Mexico had its first successful well. The canals cut through the wetlands have been a major destabilizing force on the delicate wetlands ecology. However, the industry has provided many jobs for the people of the area.

Resources substantially used to prepare this essay:
http://www.leeric.lsu.edu/le/cover
http://www.crt.state.la.us/crt/tourism
http://www.cajunculture.com
http://www.acadian-cajun.com
Louisiana's Loss Mississippi's Gain, Brunswick Publishing Company,
Lawrenceville, VA, Robert G. Scharff, 1999.
Louisiana Yesterday and Today, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge,
LA, John Wilds, Charles L. Dufour, Walter G. Cowan, 1996.

Definitions:
ACADIANA - An area of South Louisiana stretching from Lake Charles to the Mississippi River, so called because of the Acadian and Cajun cultural heritage.
ACADIANS - The Acadians were exiles from the coast of Nova Scotia who were from France originally and were French speaking.
ARPENT - Any of various French units of land measurement, especially one used in parts of Canada and the southern United States and equal to about .4 hectare (.85 acre).
CAJUNS - The Cajuns, are a group of people of French descent, including the Acadians, Creoles, and other French speaking peoples who settled in the Gulf Coast area.
CONGO SQUARE - An area in New Orleans where slaves were allowed to gather on Sundays and dance and play music.
CROATIANS - People who come from the coast of Croatia or the former Yugoslavian coast. Also called the Dalmation Coast.
GERMAN COAST - An area above New Orleans along the Mississippi River in St. John the Baptist and St. Charles Parish in what is part of Acadiana today.
HUGUENOTS - These were French protestants.
ISLENOS - Settlers in Coastal Louisiana from the Canary Islands.

Cultural Character of Life in the Marshes and Swamps of Coastal Louisiana

Grade Levels K-6
Subject(s)
· History
· Geography

Overview: The swamps and marshes were a difficult place to live.

Grade Levels 6-8
Subject(s)
· Louisiana History
· Geography

Overview: The swamps and marshes were a difficult place to live and displaced people were the ones who learned how to live there.

Grade Levels 9-12
Subject(s):
· Louisiana History
· Geography
· Industrial History
· Cultural Geography

Overview: The swamps and marshes were a difficult place to live. Displaced people escaped to the area and learned how to make a living there. The way of life was so unique that it called for new skills and the acceptance of life based on working with nature to provide the families' needs.

Curriculum Objectives:
The student will be exposed to the diverse peoples who have called the swamps and marshes home, including Native Americans, escaped slaves, Pirates, Cajuns, Islenos, Haitians, Hungarians, Croatians, Chinese and most recently the Vietnamese. The abundance of the area had significant influence on the foodways and commerce in New Orleans. And the peoples, in their isolation, have preserved their own cultures, adding to the rich character of the area.

How Cultural Character is Defined:
Cultural Character describes the unique customs, economic activities and history of the people of the swamps and marshes of Coastal Louisiana. Much of what has been unique is being absorbed into mainstream culture as more peoples have moved out of the swamps and marshes and make their living out of the area.

The Story:
The story of Louisiana History is told with little reference to the people who lived in the swamps and marshes of coastal Louisiana. These were difficult and forbidding places.
Yet the people who did live there established unique ways of surviving which have carried on until recently. The cultures were so isolated from mainstream life that they could preserve their own traditions, languages and other distinct attributes even as the rest of the state moved into modern life. The Pearl River Area is mostly a footnote in history books. The area is referenced mostly as a place where people escaped to, where they had a hideout, or where people were forced to live in trying to survive.

Native Americans and the first Europeans:
The Native Americans who settled in the coastal regions were known as the "little nations." These tribes included names now remembered by place names like the Houmas, Bayougoulas, Biloxis, Pascagoulas, Mobiles, and those who remain largely unknown today like the Mougalaches, the Acolapissa, the Capinans, and the Moctobis. All the tribes (except the Biloxis and Muctobi who spoke a version of Sioux) spoke a dialect of Muskhogean, a language of the Choctaws and Chickasaws, but were not part of their political structure. When DeSoto was in the Gulf of Mexico and discovered the mouth of a major river (what may have been the Mississippi River) in 1519, these tribes were just establishing themselves on the coast. In 1542 DeSoto's second in command arrived with a group of explorers to the present day site of New Orleans and first described the Choctaws.

One hundred forty years later (1682), LaSalle made a 56 day trip from Canada down the Mississippi River and claimed Louisiana for King Louis the XIV of France. By that time, the Native American population had been greatly diminished, due to exposure to European diseases. During that trip, Bienveille wrote a report which suggests that the number of wild animals on the coast had also been greatly diminished probably because of overhunting. One report describes Native Americans trading 8-9 thousand buffalo hides at Fort Mississippi forty miles north of the Gulf of Mexico on the Mississippi River.

In 1698 Iberville with his brother Bienville made their way up the Mississippi River and founded Louisiana. There were contemporaneous accounts that British slavers and their Native American allies, the Chickasaws, had conducted raids on the "little nations" causing them to relocate settlements often. These British raids were to secure run away slaves whom the tribes protected. Slave hunters would capture the slaves and sever a tendon in the foot to prevent the captured individual from running away, but this did not stop the slaves from walking or working. In 1708 the English unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate an agreement with the Choctaws to induce them to annihilate all the "Little Nations." Many tribes left the area and moved further west out of British reach. Only the Acolapissa Indians stayed in the Pearl River area, moving in 1702 to a fortified location north of Lake Pontchartrain.

The Biloxis, who spoke a dialect of the Sioux language, moved to a location on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, that they called Shupic Atcha or Mudfish Bayou. The French called it Bayou St. John. This area of New Orleans had been used continuously as a winter camp by various native tribes, but was deserted when the Biloxis moved there.

In 1722 about 30 Biloxis and Pascagoulas were found living on the Pearl River (near Pearlington) at a site formerly occupied by the Acolapissa.

By 1830 there was a treaty, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in which the Choctaws had to leave the area and go to Oklahoma. Some did not leave and settled in communities along the Pearl River including Shieldsboro, Devil's Swamp, Bayou LaCroix and Dilville, intermingling with whites and working with blacks and whites.

The First European Settlement in Louisiana Coastal Area:
The first businessman to attempt a Louisiana settlement, Antoine Crozat, said to be the richest man in all of France, returned his monopoly to develop the territory of Louisiana to the crown five years into his 15 year monopoly saying he failed to discover gold or silver, failed to establish tobacco plantations and that his commerce with Spain had fallen apart. In 1718 Bienville founded New Orleans (de Pauger laid out the French Quarter in 1721) and John Laws became the second businessman given a monopoly to colonize Louisiana and bring her spoils to France. He publicized the beautiful mountains and temperate climate of Louisiana to secure French colonists. However, if only the French had been recruited to develop Louisiana, it would have failed. Many of the people who came over were prisoners, con-men and others who lacked the skills and knowledge to establish the colony. However two other groups: the African slaves who provided the labor of clearing the land and establishing the first crops, rice and indigo; and the German farmers who provided reliable food production; came immediately and were responsible for firmly establishing the colony. Thus beginning the mixing of cultures which significantly affects the cultural character of the area, setting it apart from the English colonies.

Slaves in the Area:
Once French settlement began, the French immediately began importing African Slaves into coastal Louisiana in order to be able to survive. Of the 7,000 or so Europeans that arrived in the colony in the first four years after founding, only 119 had land grants on which to build plantations. The rest were either indentured servants or convicted criminals. The French also tried to secure Native American women and children as slaves. Because the early Native American slaves were female and the African American slaves were male, many slave families in the early part of the century had African American fathers and Native American mothers. The African slaves realized that their best chance to escape was to band together with Native Americans, who could lead them to places where they could survive, leading to a ban of the enslavement of Native Americans in 1763. Slaves escaped into the Pearl River area because it was possible to live there undetected. In New Orleans, the only place in America where such things were allowed, there were Sunday gatherings of African and Native American slaves in Congo Square where there was much singing, drumming and dancing. Without slave labor the sugar, cotton and tobacco plantation economy would not have been possible. The slaves made immeasurable contributions to the foodways of Louisiana: Gumbo is an African word that means okra, for example. And the drumming techniques were a major influence on the creation of Jazz.

Cajuns in the Swamps and Marshes:
Many people identify Cajuns or the Acadians as the first people to settle in the Swamps and Marshes of coastal Louisiana. While it is true that some did, becoming fishermen and trappers, most settled on farmland and lived as farmers. The Cajuns, however, are sort of a paradigm of a displaced peoples. In Louisiana, many chose to live in close proximity to other Cajuns and in isolation from the American settlements.

The Acadian's story began in France of the 1500s. France had been Roman Catholic, but in the 1500s, Protestant Calvinism spread into France. Ten to twenty percent of the population became Huguenots. Protestant-Catholic relations became strained by several events: the murder of many Huguenot leaders who were in Paris for a wedding in 1572 and the subsequent murder of tens of thousands of Huguenots around the country; the Thirty Years' War (1618-1642) where the Catholic-Protestant conflicts in Bohemia spread to Germany (France eventually became the leading power of Europe replacing Spain and taking over large parts of the Alsace area of Germany). At the same time, making a living in France was difficult, with most of the peasant population living under the control of landowners, with excessive taxes and an inaccessible court system.

In 1632, with the Treaty of St. Germain-En-Laye, France once again gained control of New France (including Acadia or present day Nova Scotia on the east coast of what is now Canada) and immediately began sending men and women to settle in Acadia. By 1670 Acadia had about 400 people (France having decided it was not a good idea to depopulate its country) while Massachusetts had 40,000. By 1700, the 2000 "Acadians" had developed their own culture and no longer considered themselves pure French. Some of the Acadia area came under British rule in 1710, the remainder coming under British rule with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. However, the exact boundaries of Acadia were disputed until 1763. In 1755, the British Governor of Acadia, Charles Lawrence decided to deport the Acadians, for fear they would fight alongside the French and Native Americans against the British and because they would not pledge loyalty to England.

The first exile happened in 1755, sending Acadians to the American Colonies and England (through Virginia). The second exile happened in 1758, sending Acadians to France. Between 1764 and 1768 over 1000 Acadians who had escaped to the American colonies or who had been held in Acadia, made their way to Louisiana. Then in 1785 1600 Acadians from France came to Louisiana, with Spain paying to carry them to New Orleans, completing the Acadian migration. (France had ceded control of the Isle of Orleans and the land west of the Mississippi to Spain in 1762.) In 1790, French Creoles, living in Haiti, fled the island when there was a slave revolt.

Early settlers were given 6-8 arpents of frontland by 40 arpents in depth on a river or bayou. Each grantee was given 3 years to build a levee and drainage ditches and to clear 2 arpents of river frontage and build a fence around the cleared land. They also had to build a road behind the levee with bridges over the ditches. They couldn't sell the land for 3 years. The Acadians settled along bayous and in the prairie areas in the western part of the state where they raised livestock and were involved in agriculture selling their goods in New Orleans. But the government in New Orleans had set low prices for their goods, and the Acadians found that they could travel to Manchac and sell to the English at much better prices (even though it was against the law).

European Immigrants:
There were other cultures which had an early influence on the culture of the Swamps and Marshes of Coastal Louisiana. These groups include: German-Americans, Islenos, Haitians, Croatians, Hungarian-Americans, Chinese, Filipinos and Vietnamese.

Within four years of the founding of New Orleans (1718) German settlers fleeing the poverty of their homeland, arrived in New Orleans. The German settlers are often credited with the early survival of New Orleans. They were the farmers who supplied the colony with food. They settled along the Mississippi River north of the city on the "German Coast." These Germans intermingles with the Acadians and German surnames like Folse, Himel and Schecksneider are now considered good Cajun names. They also brought their pigs and sausage making into the food culture of coastal Louisiana.

The German immigrants of the 19th century came in three waves ending in the 1850's. The first wave came after the famine following the Napoleonic Wars and came as indentured servants to work on farms and plantations. The second wave of immigrants came after a civil war in Germany and were professionals who settled in New Orleans bringing breweries, building churches and theatres. The final wave of German immigrants was composed primarily of industrial workers.

The largest group of Spanish settlers came to New Orleans from the Canary Islands. Some were recruited as soldiers by Spain to fight against the British in the American Revolution. About 1000 Canary Islanders came between 1778 and 1783. These Islenos (which means islanders) as they are known, were isolated for many years and are presently centered in St. Bernard Parish where they have historically earned a livelihood by farming, hunting, trapping and fishing.

Ten thousand Haitians came to New Orleans between 1790-1809. Spurred on by the slave revolt on Saint-Domingue (now present day Haiti), these settlers were one third white, one third free persons of color and one third domestic slaves. They created the state's first newspaper, brought opera to New Orleans, played a role in creating Creole cuisine and perpetuated voodoo practices in the city. Haitian Creoles taught the settlers the secret of crystallizing sugarcane.

The Croatians also known as Yugoslavians or Dalmations came to New Orleans as crewmen aboard merchant ships in the 1820s. Because of the economic difficulty facing these people who came from the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia (later part of the nation of Yugoslavia), they were forced to go to sea. When they arrived in New Orleans, they became longshoremen working on the docks. They recruited brides from their homeland, but the process was expensive and many Croatians married French or Italian women who were expected to adapt to their husband's culture. Between 1899 and 1910 three thousand Yugoslavian immigrants arrived in New Orleans. They were welcomed by the Dalmatian benevolent societies. Many moved to Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parish, opening boarding houses and restaurants. Others worked as fishermen, oystermen and trappers. They brought with them their techniques for cultivating oysters and methods of using a rake-like tool for harvesting oysters , called "tonging." They invested their profits to acquire large parcels of land on which they have planted orange groves in Plaquemines Parish.

Chinese and Filipinos established themselves on the coastal areas of Louisiana. The Filipinos are said to have started the shrimping industry on the Gulf Coast in the 1870's. They also introduced the process of drying shrimp for export. They built large raised platforms to dry shrimp and would perform ancient Chinese rituals of "dancing the shrimp." The "dancers" wore canvas on their shoes and would dance on the shrimp to remove their heads and tails.

The Hungarian-Americans, instead of coming through the port of New Orleans, came by train from the Northeastern ports, arriving in Louisiana around 1896 to work in the lumber mills near present-day Hammond, Louisiana. As the cut-over land became available, the Hungarian settlers acquired it and began small farming operations. Until recently many of the settlers preserved their language community and culture by remaining isolated. Local businesses in the settlement area offer Hungarian sausages and pastries year round.

Twenty five thousand Vietnamese, by far the largest Asian contingent in Louisiana, came to the state in 1975 after the fall of South Vietnam's capital, Saigon. The Catholic Church
took the lead in resettling refuges and a large number settled in New Orleans East in an area now known as "Little Vietnam." The Louisiana shrimping and fishing industries provided many Vietnamese with employment. By 1990, one in every ten Vietnamese in Louisiana were fishermen, and one twentieth of the entire fishing industry in Louisiana is now made up of Vietnamese.

The Pearl River Historical Footnotes: Pirates, Bandits, Friends of Napoleon, Louisiana-Style Politics, Civil War Deserters, Floods, Floating Bar Rooms and Ghost Towns

Jean Lafitte is the most famous of the pirates who preyed on vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. Piracy was not a crime in the United States until so declared by an act of Congress in 1819. Before that time, pirates (also known as privateers) had letters of marque from foreign governments which cut these governments into a percentage of the take; Lafitte used letters from Carthage in North Africa. He had more than 500 pirates and 14 schooners. In 1814, the American Navy and Army attacked John Lafitte's lair in the swamp. Hearing of Lafitte's treatment, the British offered him an officer's commission to join the British navy to fight the Americans. Lafitte told Governor Claiborne of Louisiana of the offer, and the Governor offered to drop charges against him and his men if he would fight with the Americans against the British. At the battle in Chalmette from December 14, 1814-January 19, 1815, Lafitte and his men fought along side the Americans to defeat the British. Lafitte then moved his operations to Galveston and Andrew Jackson went on to be President of the United States.

Pierre Remaux, who was known as the "King of Honey Island" was an infamous outlaw who operated along the Pearl River, but maintained a fine home in New Orleans under the name Col. Loring, pretending to be a mine owner from Mexico. He ran a piracy operation with fast ships and with men with fast horses for robbery on land. They had a number of hideouts in which they stored their loot, including caves which were dug into a bluff south of Pearlington. Another famous outlaw of the 1820's, John Murrell, was a highway operator who had a hiding place in Honey Island across from Gainesville.

When Napoleon Bonaparte was imprisoned on the island of St. Helena in 1815, his brother Jerome plotted to rescue him and bring him to New Orleans. Jerome and his faithful followers left France disguised as crewmen on a ship. Rather than be discovered by pirates by going up the Mississippi or through the Rigolets, they went up the Pearl River to meet Jeremiah Henley, who had fought with Napoleon's army in Moscow. Henley lived on the East Pearl River. There under two big oak trees, near where the old Napoleon Church later stood, Jerome was said to have buried $80,000 in gold to finance the operation. The group made their way by night to New Orleans and found little support for their plan to bring Napoleon over to New Orleans. Napoleon died in 1821.

The reputation of Plaquemines Parish for political chicanery dates back to the Presidential election of 1844 when James K. Polk, a democrat, received 1007 votes, while Henry Clay, a Whig had only 37 votes. (In the 1840 Presidential election only 290 votes were cast in Plaquemines Parish. A radical group of Democrats called the Locofocos took charge in Louisiana to produce a majority vote in the state for Polk and were successful. In Plaquemines, Judge Gilbert Leonard chartered two steamboats and loaded the boat with 350 men and plenty of whiskey. They then visited 3 polling places in the Parish where the men voted in each. Polk carried the state of Louisiana by 699 votes, so the illegally cast votes in Plaquemines Parish decided the election.

Destitute families and Confederate and Union deserters moved to Honey Island during the Civil War. The area's terrain discouraged military authorities from trying to find the deserters. Eventually the area came under Union control and surveillance, but the deserters could still survive fishing, hunting and setting trot-lines.

In 1900, there was a great flood along the Pearl River and a number of people were wiped out and left the Honey Island area.

In 1908, Mississippi became a dry state: no whiskey could be made or sold in the state. After Mississippi went dry, a number of bars were built across the Pearl River in Louisiana and a number of floating bar rooms were anchored on the Louisiana side of the Pearl River. One of the best known of these was called the Blue Goose. A bell on the riverbank signaled oarsman to carry customers over. Visitors would enjoy the evening and then fill their saddlebags with "river water" for future use. National prohibition (in 1918) ended the Pearl River saloons. In a parody of a popular folk song, the loss of the well-known facility was memorialized in the phrase "go tell Aunt Dinah that the Blue Goose is dead."

There are three ghost towns in the Pearl River area, all of them on the present site of the NASA space center: Gainsville was an old pirate town and later a logging town and once a county seat. Logtown was an old logging town, once home to 3,000 people and with a silent picture show and a public school with a swimming pool. Napoleon was another old town in the area where Napoleon supporters were said to have attempted to organize his arrival in the New World.

How People Made a Living in the Swamps and Marshes:
By the mid-1800's the 150 wetland-oriented communities were sustained by the marshes and swamps of Louisiana. These communities ranged in populations from 10 to 1,000 people. And people in the Pearl River area made their living by trapping and hunting first, benefiting from the almost unlimited supply of wild game. They also fished to feed themselves and their families.

Fishing and shrimping were a means of survival before they became big industries in Louisiana. Fishing for survival in the Honey Island area involved "setting lines" and using various kinds of nets to catch fish. The earliest European shrimped in large groups by wading or using small skiffs in the waters along the coast pulling a seine net. Then shrimp were sold in local markets. When the Chinese immigrants introduced drying platforms, shrimp began to be exported. Later motorized luggers (a kind of boat based on a Mediterranean fishing vessel) which pulled a seine net. Later trawl nets were introduced from the Atlantic. These trawls had boards which ran along the bottom and popped the shrimp into the nets. A third kind of net, known as a night trawl or butterfly net was introduced to be used in shallow waters at night when shrimp are near the surface of the water. The commercial fishing and shrimping industry in Louisiana is a $10 billion dollar industry today, though environmental degradation is causing the catch to be less plentiful. Some popular species of fish, like the Red Drum, are endangered species due to overfishing.

Hunting and trapping were also a means of survival before they became industries in Louisiana. By 1900, Hunters provided hundreds of thousands of dressed ducks to restaurants around the country. Alligator hides were marketed around the country. Trappers sold pelts of mink and otter and could catch thousands of muskrats in a three-month season. By 1925 Louisiana became America's number one fur producer. 1,000 dealers bought furs from over 20,000 trappers. There were over 600 trappers in the Pearl River area alone. Many trappers and hunters plied their trade in the winter and fished, shrimped, and oystered during the appropriate seasons throughout the rest of the year. Today there are very few trappers in Louisiana since the last major market for furs in the former USSR has crashed.

Shell fish mounds in the Pearl River area are commonly found and are vestiges of Native Americans gathering and fishing. Harvesting was done by hand and later, through "tonging." In the early 1900s there was a dispute between Mississippi and Louisiana concerning their state borders. Mississippi oystermen were arrested and forced to dump their catch overboard by the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Department officials. The two states sued to define their boundaries and Louisiana gained additional oyster bottoms. Today, the oyster industry draws on skills such as reef-building, seeding oysters, operating an oyster dredge, repairing dredge nets and oyster shucking. The oyster beds are at risk from environmental degradation, though today, Louisiana's shucking houses process more than one million pounds of meat annually.

The first commercial forest products in the Pearl River area were Cypress trees that could be used for ships masts and pine tar for use in caulking ships. Some of the first trees that were used to render pine tar were trees partially rotted, having been blown down in a hurricane probably in 1772. Other early forest products included cypress roofing shakes, oak barrel staves, barrel heads and hoops, firewood for homes and kitchens in New Orleans, and baskets made from thin oak slats and filled with produce from the farms along the river. By the 1830's logging was becoming a significant industry, mostly focused on the great longleaf and slash pine on the Gulf Coast. Early logging involved floating logs down in waterways to get them to the mills. In the late 1880s the crosscut saw replaced the axe for cutting down trees. Later a caralog with four oxen was used, still later an eight-wheel log wagon (which doubled the carrying capacity of the caralog) was used. And finally small gauge railroad spurs were used (probably using cars obsoleted when all of the railroad lines when to "standard" gauge). By 1900, Logtown was producing 100,000 feet of lumber a day. It is said that the East Pearl was full of logs going to the sawmills at Pearlington and Logtown. 1918 was the peak of the lumber industry in the area. The logging boomtowns turned into ghost towns by the 1930's and none of the virgin stands of trees remained.

Louisiana's first oil producing well was drilled in 1901. Use of submersible drilling barges, which need canals to float into position, began in 1934. In 1937 the Gulf of Mexico had its first successful well. The canals cut through the wetlands have been a major destabilizing force on the delicate wetlands ecology. However, the industry has provided many jobs for the people of the area.

Resources substantially used to prepare this essay:
http://www.leeric.lsu.edu/le/cover
http://www.crt.state.la.us/crt/tourism
http://www.cajunculture.com
http://www.acadian-cajun.com
Louisiana's Loss Mississippi's Gain, Brunswick Publishing Company,
Lawrenceville, VA, Robert G. Scharff, 1999.
Louisiana Yesterday and Today, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge,
LA, John Wilds, Charles L. Dufour, Walter G. Cowan, 1996.

Definitions:
ACADIANA - An area of South Louisiana stretching from Lake Charles to the Mississippi River, so called because of the Acadian and Cajun cultural heritage.
ACADIANS - The Acadians were exiles from the coast of Nova Scotia who were from France originally and were French speaking.
ARPENT - Any of various French units of land measurement, especially one used in parts of Canada and the southern United States and equal to about .4 hectare (.85 acre).
CAJUNS - The Cajuns, are a group of people of French descent, including the Acadians, Creoles, and other French speaking peoples who settled in the Gulf Coast area.
CONGO SQUARE - An area in New Orleans where slaves were allowed to gather on Sundays and dance and play music.
CROATIANS - People who come from the coast of Croatia or the former Yugoslavian coast. Also called the Dalmation Coast.
GERMAN COAST - An area above New Orleans along the Mississippi River in St. John the Baptist and St. Charles Parish in what is part of Acadiana today.
HUGUENOTS - These were French protestants.
ISLENOS - Settlers in Coastal Louisiana from the Canary Islands.