| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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It would be interesting to know if the conflict between the recent immigrants and the long-time residents is as strong here as some other areas.
We arrived at Bayou Segnette and boarded our boat (also called the Cajun Queen, just like the one on the first day). This one was more like a raft with benches and an overhead covering than a boat with a distinct bow and stern.
The first mile or so of the bayou (swamp) was filled with shrimp boats and other fishing boats. But very soon these disappeared behind us and we were in something that looked like a Louisiana swamp.
Along the banks (and in some parts in the center of the bayou as well) were large green patches of duckweed, which in pictures looks like a light green scum on the water. On the banks were cypress trees, often covered with Spanish moss (which is no, strictly speaking, a moss, but rather an air plant).
We saw a couple of alligators, a three-footer and a fivefooter. We didn't see any snakes but we weren't very close to the banks. Occasionally we could see pipelines and we passed one oil well and an oil treatment plant, but this tour was through a much more isolated area than the earlier Cajun Queen tour.
We spent about two hours on the swamp, then returned to the bus and continued 'deeper into Cajun country,' as the brochures say. We drove west along the southern bank of the river, which runs west to east at this point, through sugar plantations. Actually, they're not plantations in the usual sense, but just large farms. In some of the ditches we passed we could see turtles on logs, and egrets.
It took us about an hour to get to Oak Alley Plantation, where we had lunch. During this ride we got a very thorough history of the Cajuns. Descended from Vikings and Celts in northern France, they preferred to keep to themselves and avoid organized government whenever possible. This caused conflict in France and they were exiled to what is now Nova Scotia. There they lived in an uneasy juxtaposition with the other French settlers until the British took over. Because of their independent natures and because they were Catholic and would not convert to Protestantism, they were persecuted for many years. Finally, the British government expelled them, burning their farms and intentionally splitting up families in the hope of destroying their identity as a distinct group. Most were returned to France, where they were not welcome and were eventually sent to Louisiana where they were reunited--by pure accident--with others who had traveled directly to Louisiana.
The name Cajun came from 'Acadienne' which in turn came from the Indian word for the area in Canada where they had settled. The French already in Louisiana and the Creoles looked down on the new arrivals and they were forced off the land along the river and back into the bayous. Until the 1930s, the Cajuns kept to themselves; then the oil and gas companies moved in and started hiring Cajuns, who started speaking English and sending their children to schools which forbade them to speak Cajun. So by the late 1950s to early 1960s Cajun--a mixture of 17th Century French, Spanish, German, English, and various Indian dialects--was a 'dead' language. Now there is a revival and many people are insisting that Cajun be taught in the schools as a required second language. Whether they can actually revive Cajun remains to be seen. Certainly there are still some people who speak it as a first language, but not many, and most people would rather learn a 'useful' language such as modern French than a language of limited use such as Cajun. How many people learn Hopi?
In many ways the history of the Cajuns is similar to the history of the Jews, I suppose. But their smaller numbers and limited geographical distribution made it easier for the assimilation of some to result in the disappearance of the group as a whole.
Oak Alley Plantation is a Tara-style plantation, named after its rows of live oaks. (Why are they called 'live' oaks? It's not like the others are dead or something.) Mark and I shared a gumbo and a catfish sandwich and I also had a piece of pecan pie. After lunch Mark got to talking to the driver and got some recommendations for Cajun music.
We didn't tour the Oak Alley house itself because its furnishings are all post-plantation period. Instead we went to San Francisco Plantation. This entailed crossing the river by ferry. (There are several free ferries across the river.) Unfortunately, we missed the 1:30 ferry by about a minute. For some reason, it did not come directly back and so there was no 2:00 run. By the time we got across at 2:30 we were running an hour late. While we waited the driver played Cajun music on his tape deck so it wasn't a total loss.
San Francisco is so named from a corruption of the French phrase which means 'everything he has,' meaning the owner put his whole fortune into building it for his new wife from Germany. The front lawn and gardens used to extend to the levee, but have been supplanted by the road. The furnishings are all authentic, but are much like the other restored homes of the period in other parts of the country or even other parts of the world.
Then back to New Orleans and a repeat of the French Quarter tour as we dropped people off. I'm sure there must have been a more efficient route. In the process of riding around, we saw Dale and Jo looking at the architecture, but they didn't see us.
After resting up in the room we went out and wandered through the French Quarter. Mark, Kate, and I ended up eating at the Gumbo Shop. Then we wandered around some more, mostly on Bourbon Street- -not all that interesting, but the most lively of the streets. Eventually we returned to the hotel.
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Our last pre-convention day! We started with beignets and coffee at Cafe du Monde. Kate was less than thrilled- -she prefers a heartier breakfast and complained that the powered sugar was trying to crawl up her nose.
When we went to the Ranger Station we discovered there was some confusion over our reservation. We had asked the concierge to make reservations yesterday, but our names weren't on the list and the tour was full. Kendall (our previous ranger and a science fiction fan--he's apparently attending the convention) said to stay around and he'd see what he could do. When Dave met us he said the hotel called the room at 8:45 AM to tell us we didn't have spots on the 9:30 tour. However, Kendall came back and gave us spots--literally. They use stick-on dots to identify the tour members. I guess they decided that there would be enough cancellations or no-shows.
Our guide was named Evelyn Turner (catchy name, that). We began--you guessed it--on the levee. There apparently are tours that don't start on the levee but we didn't take any of them. The first white settlers buried their dead in the levee, but the first time it flooded all the bodies floated into town. (The Indians burned their dead, having realized that the below-sea-level land wasn't suitable for burying.) The next step was burying in the church but space was really limited. A cemetery was set aside 'back of town,' but the water table was a problem. Just burying the body didn't work--at the first rain it would 'bloat and float.' Weighting the coffin, or drilling holes in the coffin to allow drainage, didn't help. Finally the city built a brick wall around the cemetery to contain the bodies when they floated around during the rain. Even that didn't solve the smell problem, so eventually the cemetery (and all the bodies) were moved even further 'back o' town' to St. Louis Cemetery #1. Here there are three types of tombs. Wall crypts are the simplest, but they cannot be reopened and re-used until a year and a day have passed. At that point, if there are pieces of the coffin which haven't decayed they are removed, but the remaining remains (as it were), if any, are swept to the back and the new coffin inserted. Then there are shelf vaults in which the top two shelves are mesh, and as the body and coffin decay, the pieces fall through to the bottom section and the shelves are ready for re-use sooner. Finally, there are society vaults in which those who were too poor to pay for their own crypts paid a small amount each month as insurance that they would have a burial crypt. These are circular crypts with shelves around the outside and a central chamber for the collection of the undecayed remains when the shelves around the outside are re-used.
The same cemetery was used for Catholics and Protestants, though the latter had a separate section. All free people of any color were buried in the same cemetery as well, but slaves had a separate cemetery. The Jews (or the Hebrews, as you guide first called them/us) also had a separate cemetery as well as the additional complication of requiring the burial to be in soil. So they built up mounds, but it wasn't clear from the description we got whether the mounds we all soil or based on rocks or something else with soil on top or in it.
After we left the cemetery we stopped at a cafe for a chance to rest our feet. Kate and I got fruit salad, which got Mark worried that we wouldn't want to eat lunch. We also ran into Dale and Jo there; we can't seem to avoid them!
The Voodoo Museum was next. This is what Fodor's describes as a commercial museum--three small rooms in back of a voodoo shop. The labels were not always readable because the lighting was extremely poor, but there was a surprising amount in the rooms. The visit tied in nicely with the cemetery, since in the cemetery we saw two of the tombs of Marie Laveau, the leading practitioner of voodoo in the last century. Both tombs were covered with voodoo 'wish marks,' either three X's in a row, or an X with a circle around the center. Laveau had fifteen children in twelve years, so I'm sure her fertility potions sold well.
After the museum--I'd describe it but I can't help but feel that any description of a voodoo museum would sound more ridiculous than religious (but that that's proably how an impartial description of a church would sound too)--anyway, after the museum, we walked along, stopping at Tower Records and getting yet more Cajun cassettes, then stopping at El Liborio, a small Cuban restaurant, for lunch. Mark and Kate had the roast pork (the nibble I had was very good) and I had black beans, rice, and plantains. Dave went elsewhere since he wasn't interested in our next (and last) sightseeing stop, the Confederate Museum.
The Confederate Museum was only a few blocks from the hotel but the walk was through a fairly sleazy part of town. We arrived to find that the museum occupied an old building that was being renovated. This meant that part of the museum was closed off, so we got in for half price. The renovation consisted of adding air conditioning. This meant that there was no air conditioning yet. It was hot.
We returned to the hotel about 4 PM. Thus endeth the sightseeing. Here beginneth the convention, details of which are in a separate report.
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