Food For Thought: The Culinary & Cultural Roots of
Avoyelles, Evangeline, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee & St. Landry Parishes by
John LaFleur II. Copyright June 2015 All rights reserved.
Le Festival de la Viande Boucanee, or "smoked
meat" festival features Saucisses,Tasso, Jambalaya, Grillades, and more
food once fairly unique to the parishes named above, but especially so in the
northwestern corner of what was once the royal "Poste des Opelousas"
or St. Landry-Evangeline Parishes of Louisiana. File' Gumbo, maque-chou &
bay leaf are among some of the other common, but delicious culinary gifts of
this region, too. The Africans would bring okra and traditions quite compatible
to those of the Indians with whom they too, did intermarry as had the French.
See Chef Marcelle Bienvenu's "Stir The Pot: A History of Cajun
Cuisine" to uncover the true Creole roots of Cajun cooking and the origins
of our smoked meat Tasso tradition. In fact, Louisiana French and it's
Louisiana. And, not to be ignored is the fairly comprehensive "Picayune
Creole Cookbook of 1901" which presents the most basic of our country
Creole recipes and food traditions from "'gratons" to
"daube" to "bouilli" all with their/our Louisiana French
labels! In fact, Louisiana French and its daughter tongue of Louisiana Creole
also reveal the same striking connection to not only Indian food ways, but also
to a wide variety of things affecting life in Colonial French and later Spanish
Louisiana.
This unusual interrelationship of Louisiana's Colonial French to the Mobilian-Choctaw trade
language was noticed by at least, three noteworthy men, all former LSU-Baton
Rouge scholars; Dr. William Read, Dr. James Broussard and Dr. Fred Kniffen. Dr.
Read was an accomplished linguistic expert of Louisiana Indian languages and
appears to be the first to refer to Louisiana French as a creole language;
meaning any of a variety of French-based dialects married to indigenous words
& idiomatic expressions etc. He and his colleague, Dr. Broussard both made
a distinction between "Louisiana Creole French" and it's daughter
tongue then referred to as "Gumbo" or "Negre" (as did
George Washington Cable in his stories about Creole New Orleans), since it was
first introduced by poor African plantation slaves, who notwithstanding their
illiteracy and deprivations, had developed this strictly imitative dialect,
which, ironically, was also to become largely the common speech of the poor and
illiterate Acadian-Cajuns of St. Martinville, Cecilia, parts of St. James and
St. Charles parishes.
This "language" or dialect is also spoken by white
French Creole descendants of Pointe Coupee parish and Creoles of color, too.
The dialect of French at Natchitoches unsurpringly resembles the Louisiana
French of Evangeline-St. Landry Parishes. Dr. Broussard believed that the
dialect we know as "Louisiana French" was the "Louisiana Creole
French" of our historic culture and which nowadays, people refer to as
"Louisiana Creole" today, was a sub-dialect of Louisiana French.
While I don't disagree that what is called Louisiana Creole, today, can be
presumed to be "a unique language," I can understand both Broussard
and Read's viewpoint for several good reasons, but only one of which is
relevant, here. Louisiana French with its Mobilian-Choctaw patois is older and clearly
influenced its daughter tongue of what is nowadays, "Louisiana
Creole" which retains the old Mobilian-Choctaw jargon, which brings us
back to both the focus of this article; our food ways and linguistic
Creole/Metis heritage.
In his wonderful book, "Louisiana Place Names of
Indian Origin" Read documents, as does Dr. Fred Kniffen, the fact that the
Alabama Choctaw followed their 'white' Creole/Metis brothers from Alabama to
Louisiana during their forced, but voluntary evacuation in 1763-4 to New Orleans.
In Louisiana the boot (Territory of Orleans), they were all to move up to
Pointe Coupee where many Illinois Creoles such as the Ardoin and Vidrines met
up with the Fontenot and LaFleur families and united en route to the "
Poste des Opelouss" or to the area of what is today Washington-Grand
Prairie-Opelousas. Some of our Choctaw cousins moved to the Point
Blue-Chataignier and Mamou areas, and others toward St. Landry-Bayou Chicot and
Pine Prairie. Dr. Read refers to our Louisiana French sometimes as "Creole
French" and at other times as "Louisiana French," but he never
refers to it as "Cajun French." See Foreword to "The New
Dictionary of Louisiana French As Spoken In Cajun, Creole & American Indian
Communities" which discusses this issue. This great book remains a unique
and treasured gift too our people and the only true difference between this
dictionary and The Dictionary of Louisiana Creole" -it's daughter
language/dialect-is the complete phoneticizing of our common Louisiana French
lexicon/vocabulary, which to the unsuspecting gives the misleading impression
of being a completely different language, intentionally or not. And, as such,
they are not.
That was a unique and radical departure from Louisiana's long
cultural and historical tradition executed by the leaders of the organization
known as CODOFIL and which leaders sought to and did succeed through political
maneuvering to re-label our shared and historical pre-Acadian culture as
'Cajun' in order to prosper a new Lafayette-based commerce upon the false
pretext that he Acadians had created an "Acadian-based culture" in
Louisiana, but every part of it was a reflection of the much older Creole
culture of Louisiana and nothing resembling the culture of the Acadian
homeland, then or now!
The true Acadian-Cajuns are not at fault for this any of
this deceptive comedy of the absurd. Indeed, that was CODOFIL's charter
objective-commerce and a new Acadian-based tourism centered in Lafayette to
compete with New Orleans, which many felt was "lost to the blacks."
See Dr. Albert Valdman's compendium "French and Creole in Louisiana"
for eyebrow-raising details of CODOFIL's earliest charter.
Their aim in renaming both our historically Creole cuisine
and language tradition as "Cajun" also paved the way for the relabeling
of all the French-speaking parishes as "Acadiana" in 1971 whereas
previously, these parishes were referred to as the "French-speaking
triangle" to simply "the Creole parishes." All white French
speakers became, willingly or not, "Cajuns" and only "blacks"
were represented as "Creole " as if "Creole" was a race!
Truly, "truth is stranger than fiction" in Louisiana when snake oil
salesmen and greedy politicians are allowed to rewrite history! See Dr. Carl
Brasseaux' book, "Acadiana...." It may be surprising for some to
learn that Jambalaya came from the Ishak-Atakapas Indians and was known by the
"coureurs de bois" as early as 1690, and was originally spelled
"Shambalaha" meaning, "Eat up, be made full!" The later
Spanish reign provided us with the current spelling using their aspirated 'h'.
See Hubert Singleton's "The Indians That Gave Us Zydeco." And, our
"Tasso" is derived from the Spanish "tahaso" for smoked
beef which may well have a double origin from both the Spanish-speaking 'Islenos'
and certainly among the Choctaw who originally smoked beef as they were big
into cattle raising.
Today, Tasso is smoked pork, nowadays, because it's a cheaper, but
certainly delicious meat. This cattle raising tradition is also one of their
many forgotten legacies to the Creoles and true Acadian-Creoles of this region.
And, our beloved tradition of muskadine & elderberry wine is also a gift of
both French tradition and Choctaw food custom; "soco" being the
Mobilian Choctaw word for muskadine. Still, in spite of the political, social
and often-times racially-motivated suppression of our diverse
historical-cultural roots the truth is now known that the poor minority
Acadians did not import gumbo or smoked meat or jambalaya, or even the
accordion to their very different Louisiana homeland.
They completely adopted
their new Louisiana Creole cultural identity until Lafayette's politicians
& marketing agencies created the Cajun myth as scripted by myth writer
Senator Dudley LeBlanc who was also known for his famous "snake oil" (Hadacol)
ruse. As was the case with every ethnic group to arrive in colonial Louisiana,
they, too, willingly and happily assimilated her very old Choctaw, French,
Canadian, African and Spanish influenced Latin culture; many of them/us never
accepting the degrading American-made euphemism of "Cadjin" cleaned
up and presented as "Cajun" -the new Acadian ethnic label officially
sponsored by CODOFIL since 1968. The Irish and Italians and still later, the
Acadians also contributed to the preservation of our shared Louisiana-based
linguistic, culinary & social traditions through their adoption of this
unique Louisiana culture through cross-cultural marriages and a shared Catholic
tradition.
In Louisiana, it remains true that we are "the Creole State!"
Now, get yourself and friends or family to the nearest "Viande
Boucanee" store in or near Ville Platte as soon as possible!