I couldn’t find the letter sent from John LaFleur to the
Ville Platte Gazette about the Evangeline statue. It was good because he talked about the first
Fontenot being a better statue than Evangeline and how our parish has no real
Acadian connection. I did find Jim Bradshaw's article and he talked about the same thing. Evangeline Parish was named after the heroine
in the poem but many people might think the statue is "an icon for many Acadians living in Louisiana today." Do they believe in ghosts or something? I have some Acadian ancestry
but I think they were all buried a long time ago. And my French ancestors too and they far
outnumbered the Acadians. And of course
the statue will reinforce the Cajun term as our identity. And Cajun is associated with what – Acadian. And, of course, hardly any Acadians came to
the Evangeline, St. Landry and Avoyelles areas.
The Acadians that did come married into the French, or Creole,
population and adapted to their ways.
The Acadians did not teach the French how to speak French, how to
celebrate Mardi Gras, pock eggs, Madame Grand Doigts, cook a gumbo, hunt, fish, raise cattle, play bouree, yada,
yada, yada. The French here already
knew that. And they also knew about
music and ballads. Anyway, it’s still an
interesting thing to me how this social whateveryouwantacallit happened and
still exists. It’s reality. I live and work here. And it’s my family and people. I see it every day. “We’re Cajuns. The damn British kicked us out of Canada and
we came to Louisiana.” I did find the Gazette's article about John
LaFleur’s book. Read the article, read
his book and visit the Courtableau House in Washington.