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Prairie Stories

 The Prairie Has a Memory

Ashlee Wilson, 2024

Ashlee Wilson, a native of Ville Platte, Louisiana, is a teacher, artist, and self-taught Louisiana French speaker. She is widely recognized for her writing, photography, and visual journals documenting her journey in learning Louisiana French, as well as her work with native plants and folk herbalism. Ashlee created the Prairie des Femmes blog in 2012 to chronicle daily life on her historical prairie. She is also the author of The Plains of Mary (2014) and the Ô Malheureuse collection (2019, UL Press). She currently teaches French at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau.

The Prairie Has a Memory pays homage to her home, La Prairie des Femmes, in St. Landry Parish. This historic prairie, documented in records from the mid- to late 18th century, lies near the boundaries of the Attakapas-Ishak and Opelousas territories, just east of the sacred hills of Grand Coteau. Once a sweet potato farm, the land has become a site of restoration under Ashlee’s care. For over 20 years, she and her family have cultivated native plants, reintroduced traditional land stewardship practices such as periodic burns, minimal mowing, and abstaining from chemical herbicides, all in an effort to restore the prairie’s natural balance and preserve its memory.

La prairie a une mémoire. The prairie has a memory.

The prairie has a collective memory, and in our stewardship of it, we are invited to remember. The indigenous tribes of Louisiana were masters at management practices such as prairie burning and worked with the seasons and cycles of the year to maximize productivity with minimal impact. In colonial times settlers traveled by ship across oceans and made linguistic parallels between the prairie landscape and the open sea. Despite the decline of this habitat, the prairie retains its memory and so do we. The feminine imagery displayed across the Cajun Prairie in the form of Marian grottos is a visible symbol of our reverence for the feminine as well as the deeper indigenous matriarchy that permeates our cultural memory. Cultures all over the world recognize water goddesses as protectoresses over long voyages. In South Louisiana perhaps the most visible of these is Our Lady of the Assumption, known in Acadian culture as the Maris Stella or Star of the Sea, but also in Yemayá, the Yoruba water goddess. 

The prairie has an outer and inner life. On the outside the folklore is French, American, Cajun or Creole, but underneath the deep-rooted grasses, native seeds, as well as sacred indigenous relics remain. Research of the origin of the name Prairie des Femmes (Prairie of the Women) has led to the story of it being a place where indigenous women stayed when their men left. This research has also manifested on a personal level into a tangible reverence for the land and recognition of the fragility of the loss of not just the prairie soils, but also the stories and the languages that existed here. 

My act of restoration for the prairie has been to inhabit the Prairie des Femmes and act as a scribe for her folklore as well as a steward by encouraging her native flora and fauna. One of the proofs of this work has been the appearance in my overworked sweet potato field of the native medicinal pseudognaphalium obtousifolium, fragrant rabbit tobacco, known locally as vinéraire (vulneraire). I found it by its fragrance in the back of my prairie in 2011, and in a similar way to the gathering of Prairie des Femmes origin stories, I have begun to share this medicine with locals who have memories and need of it. 

Notre Dame de Guadalupe

Le 11 décembre

Belle, le 10 décembre

Le 9 décembre, un lundi

Samedi en décembre

Le 5 décembre

Prairie aux Femmes Maps

La Veuve de Musicien

La balance de la vie 
Devient les restants 
C’est nous qui reste 
Quand les hommes sont gone 
Le dernier bout c’est la veuve du pain
Mais moi j’suis la veuve d’un musicien 

December 1

November 30

Comme la Femme dit

From the Egyptian Book of the Dead Chapter 94, Prairie des Femmes Journal 2-2016, Tomb of Nefertari #pdfjournalaew

Found Poetry: Carencro Coyote Sightings

Prairie Noël

Song for a Blue Roday

Items on my desk at the Academy of the Sacred Heart on a Thursday in Mid-November

11 novembre

10 novembre

November 5

Le 4 novembre

Le 3 novembre

Ville Platte Girl

"Les filles de la Ville Platte

Moi j'connais pas quoi y'a avec eux

Elles me semblent si vaillantes et si adorables

Mais y'a pas un qui veut de moi

Moi j'connais pas si c'est moi 

Si c'est moi le malchanceux de la Ville Platte"

My parents met at the Evangeline Club

My daddy said that it was instant love

He'd played all over Acadiana

Lookin for the prettiest girl in Louisiana

A Ville Platte Girl

The way you know that she a Ville Platte Girl 

She'll cut you some yeuxs canailles

Yan-yan et yon-yon après cet homme tout le temps

She in love with his soco eye.

***

 J'etais au bal at the fais-do-do

We step'd it fast and then we waltz'd it slow 

Y'avait une catin 

Who really caught my eye 

Elle 'té assis au coin avec les yeux canailles 

J'ai dit moi-même

Mais hey I like that 

But you know that girl looks like 

She's from Ville Platte

Mais je m'ai dit  moi-même 

I'm gonna give her a whirl

No matter what they say 

About the Ville Platte girl.

We some real good dancers now

Don't ya know?

Yeah we can jitterbug 

and we can zydeco

All them good ole boys 

They wanna give us a twirl

Cause there's just something bout 

A Ville Platte girl

You know I been warned time and time again

About the girls from the Parish of Evangeline 

But my paw paw said that I should give it a whirl

No matter what they say about the Ville Platte girl:

Elles ont les yeux canailles 

Tout le temps elle tchequaille

Ça aime roder la Prairie Ronde

Ça l'aime aller au Fred's

Cook on the braise

Elle peux jouer bourée et bataille

T'as jamais connue une fille comme ça

And if you think you know 

You probably connais pas 

All them good ole boys 

They wanna give her the world 

But that ain't nothin to a Ville Platte girl.

Ashlee Wilson 2016

Unrequited love’s part of being young

Maison Blanche

Maison Blanche

Moi je reste dans un mobile home
Mais tous les soirs je rêve de ma maison blanche
Moi j'ai une femme et un ti-garçon
Et j'aimerais les mettre dans ma maison blanche

Moi j'veux pas d'être president
Mais j'aimerais rester dans ma maison blanche.

Moi j'veux pas d'être le president
Mais j'aimerais rester dans ma maison blanche.

Ma Maison Blanche

 

Vinéraire

Plan A or Plan B

Octobre

Il était une fois dans la Louisiane

Il était une fois 

dans la Louisiane

une place qui s’appelle 

la prairie des femmes

Les signes de l'automne

La vinéraire blanchit 

Dans la savane 

The painted bunting's gone

The turn of the goldenrod 

Annonce l'avant automne

La fête de l'Assomption 

J'après ramasser ma sasafron

La lumière jaune me donne

L'envie du gateau sirop

La roulaison en vermillion

C'est un oxblood de trop

Beau Jocues' death anniversary

Damballah weather for Andres Esprit

Umbrelles of elder in the sureau trees

A carencro feather, Bon Dieu te bénit

The sides of the coteau are cut for hay

He likes a thin gumbo, no filé

“Be Happy”

 

Origin of Grand Coteau

 Grand Coteau, La. 

The origin of Grand Coteau dates back to 1821, when Sieur 
Charles Smith, a large land owner in this section, donated land to 
the church for a convent. The convent was founded by Mother Eugenie. 
Aude and called “Grand Coteau.” In 1837 St. Charles College was 
built. The settlement that grew up around the two schools was 
originally called “St. Charles Town,” but later became known | as 
Grand Coteau, the name it still holds today.