Our Cajun Language

La Vie d'une Maîtress d'École

bulletin board in class- French in Acadiana

After marrying and moving to the prairie, I found myself teaching at the parish high school at the mouth of the chemin gravaille. Every morning I drove up the dirt road, over the bayou, across the little highway and into the driveway of the school. It was a rural school. Many of my coworkers spoke French with me, the janitor, to coach, all the ladies in the cafeteria, many teachers, the principal... They spoke a beautiful French and taught me a lot. 

My students came from Creole and Cajun families who still spoke French. Heberts, Quebedeaux, Arnaud, Stelly, Marks, Richards, Gautraux, Babineaux, Angelle, Mistrot, Malveaux, McGee. My first week a girl raised her hand and asked me if I knew of her great grandfather, Dennis McGee, one of Cajun music's most beloved and colorful fiddle players. I taught a bunch of Clifton Chenier, the King of Zydeco's cousins, nieces and nephews. They were all related to the great musicians. Too many to tell here, but they all had stories.

They had words, too. My big loveable football players once came into class, hand over their hearts singing "Madame! Quelle éspoir..."(what are my chances/hope?) I made these same boys translate "La Porte en Arierre"(The Back Door) by D.L. Menard as their senior final and they did it without error. That was too easy.

When I taught the verb laisser (to leave, let) they waited for me to explain the conjugation before Paul Broussard raised his hand. "Madame," he said, "what's "laisse-les" mean?...because when me and my brother fight, my mom says, "Stop! stop!" and my dad says "laisse-les!!!"(let them!) That conjugation business was a waste of time, it seemed.

That class was memorable; full of good kids who were close to French at home. When they'd get fired up they'd start saying, "va la merde! va la merde!"(go to h***) or when Olivia got mad at Paul she'd hiss, "'bec mon tchu, Paul!"(kiss my a**!) I fussed at them a lot, but my rule was that they had to speak French in class, and they were using the French they knew. Plus, their pronunciation and accents were flawless. On a costume day of homecoming week, a shy creole girl who pretty much spoke French because she was raised with her grandmother (there were many like this) told me "Madame, ton linge semble drôle."(Madame, your clothes look funny.) Another time she managed to stammer out, "On est contents de l'auoir toi pour notre maitress" (We are happy that you are our teacher.)

They taught me about the insect called the "t-doigt"(little finger). They said that when a little tiny black and yellow striped fly (hover fly) started flying around your head, raise and wiggle your little finger and say "t-doigt, t-doigt, t-doigt" and it'll land on your finger. It's true. I have since seen the t-doigt, called the t-doigt, and it has landed on my t-doigt.

They brought me things. One morning Amy Martin was waiting at my door with an electric blue crawfish her daddy found in his traps. They brought cartons of homegrown muscadines, boxes of yams, limbs off shrubs like the manglier that had medicinal properties. They brought me handwritten french song lyrics, cookbooks,  CDs of all kinds of French music, family stories and pictures.

In the halls when they changed classes they'd  show off their French, even the students who did not take French with me. They'd ask me politely, "Comment ça va, Madame?" like pros, but more often I would hear all the Cajun curse words strung together in every combination possible echoing off the cinder block walls.

"May the Force be with you"

Louisiana AgriCulture

Michot-Decuir House, Avoyelles

 

"People have to know that in South Louisiana we have culture and not just agriculture."

 ~Adele Domas Michot, mother of Louis J. Michot, as told to the author by LJM, November 22, 2007,  at La Roue Qui Pend

Coming to the Prairie and Staying

The first time I came to the Prairie des Femmes it was January 2004 and the field didn't look like much. It was in an area near Arnaudville, which, despite its proximity to my hometown, I had never been to. Happy and curious to go and see this land my new beau had put a down payment on, we drove out, just three months after meeting. He wanted to know if I liked it. If it was 'too far'. From what? It was far, but I did like it enough. It was country land, and cheap and in the parish bordering Evangeline, where my family was. There was a nearby high school where I could teach, and eventually did, so that was reasonable. The five mile gravel road that the land was on was another factor to consider. It hugged the bayou before crossing the prairie and following the oxbow swamp around three completely blind curves and a few more dog legs. There was litter in the bayou and dumped trash, tires, mattresses, and appliances all along the road, mostly at the curves. Sometimes a few bags of crawfish heads with the death smell all over the place. There's so much litter that sometimes, now, I forget to see it, and other times I am actually happy to see the orange jumpsuits of Saint Landry Parish inmates walking on the cleaning crew. 

There are quite a few young men who like to spin out and leave deep ruts after a rain. Other than fields and thick woods, there are a few dozen modest houses and trailer homes that dot the prairie, some line the road, and some are set back in coves. The houses are more affluent and concentrated as you approach Marks' Bridge, at the heart of the Prairie des Femmes. In the woods, many wooden structures are going to ruin or have already flattened.

In the fields there are a few horses and herds of black cows. There are violet crows that fly menacingly around, buzzards who claim the abundant carrion of the dirt road, falcons who navigate their wings through the woods and owls who live in the tall trees along the bayou.  

Since I came to the Prairie and stayed I have noticed that in the trees along the road there are dozens of bright red cardinals that swoop bravely across the path and back into the woods, and despite the starkness of the road on a winter's day, the neighbors passing in their familiar trucks will lift a finger or two off the steering wheel in greeting.

Quand la Corne est dans l'air

J'ai pris ses photos de la lune hier au soir au crépescule. Ça me rappellé d'un proverbe en Francais qui parle de "quand la corne de la lune est en bas..." the weather is supposed to be one way, and "quand la corne est en haut" it's supposed to be another. I think it's something like, when the points (horns) of the moon are pointing upwards, there will be good weather, and when they point downwards, the weather is supposed to be bad? rainy? I am not sure. I looked it up once, and there are modern French weather proverbs that talk about this very thing, but I am interested about the local version. I heard someone mention it on KVPI's Tasse de Cafe radio program one morning. They said .."oh ouais, la corne est en haut!" and everyone understood. That's something that I have noticed that Cajun and Creole people of Louisiana still do. We watch the sky and animals for the forecast. Wonder how long that information has been passed down and will continue to be. Please excuse the "blurific" iphone photos, but, j'connais pas, there is something nice about them, quand-même.

 la lune et le bamboo sont hauts

What does it mean when the horns of the moon are up?

Painting of the Prairie 2006

I did this painting of the prairie just after we moved in, in 2006. I never really finished it, but it was good enough to remind me of how the prairie used to look.

Update les Vieux Temps article by Floyd Knott

Click here for Les Vieux Temps Article UPDATE Oral history is sometimes not entirely accurate. One of the many enjoyments I get from writing articles about old times is the many comments from the readers about different versions of events from the past that they have heard from there elders. Such was the case about the origin of the name Prairie Des Femmes, a community in St. Landry Parish. Apparently the version expressed earlier about the name coming as a result of the Civil War battles was not correct because additional research indicates that the name was in use as early as 1809. Father Hebert’s earliest document in which Prairie Des Femmes was mentioned was a memo written in 1809 from the cattle warden. A document, “Police des Animaux,” which authorizes the picking up of all stray cattle in the District of Grand Coteau, Prairie Des Femmes and Carencro, was signed by George King, parish judge. Prairie Des Femme was mentioned quite frequently by Father Hebert in his research from 1809 to 1830 – years before the Civil War.

David Lanclos has a different explanation:

“I have also heard a version of the story about how the place came to be called by that name. The story goes that as Indian groups traveled through their hunting grounds they often set up camps on the various prairies that bordered Bayou Teche. According to the story, Indians had set up a camp at the place we know today as Prairie Des Femmes. When they decided it was time to move on, there were several women who were too old or too sick to travel. As was often the custom of these Indians, the old women were abandoned at that place, where they were eventually discovered by early settlers who lived in the area. The place thus came to be called Prairie Des Femmes.”

Is this the true story? Who knows, but if we keep exploring it, sooner or later, a definitive version about the origin of the name Prairie Des Femmes is bound to emerge. If anyone has heard a different version, please contact me.

Comments about Les Vieux Temps articles are always appreciated. Please call (337) 754-9980 or e-mail yknott123@aol.com

The LaGrange House

The historic Lagrange House is the oldest structure on the prairie. The story I heard about this place is that it was built in the 1700 possibly early 1800s by a former soldier/general in Napoleon's army or his descendant. He was shipwrecked after leaving Egypt picked up with two comrades by a passing ship and left in New Orleans. They were in poor shape when a wealthy planter from les Opelousas recognized their fine French accents and shabby vêtements and knew they were in trouble. He offered to bring them back to his plantation, where, as luck would have it, he had three eligible daughters that each officer married. One of their homesteads was the older house in the photos, most recently inhabited into the 1980's by a family, then an elderly gentleman.

Nonc Dav looking at the LaGrange House, oldest building on the prairie. We were told that the writing on the main wall of the home was done to prevent trespassers.

The cypress foundations.

 

Wisteria in early March

 built-in bed and bousillage wall

 

the porch and foundations 

 

Decorative rafter ends- Carribean?

an interior room

bousillage and pegs in the garconierre

Les Vieux Temps article about PDF

Mr. Floyd Knott's Les Vieux Temps article about la Prairie des Femmes.

"In the mid-1900s, some of the favorite places to dance to Cajun music were the Silver Slipper and the Happy Landing in Pecaniere. It was there, as a youngster, that I met many people from Prairie des Femmes (femmes is French for women). Prairie des Femmes is a community between Grand Coteau, Arnaudville and Opelousas. I was always amazed at the large number of girls from the same family at the dances. One family had eight girls and only one male. Although to a smaller degree, I observed the same pattern with other families. So it was easy to make the assumption that the community was so named because females outnumbered males.

Recently I met Mrs. Marks, an elderly lady from that community. When she introduced herself as coming from Marks Bridge of the Prairie des Femmes area, my curiosity was again aroused. She joked about all the Marks, Quebedeaux, and Lagrange girls in her neighborhood when she was young. So I asked her if she knew the reason why it was so named. I was familiar with the origin of the Marks Bridge name but Prairie des Femmes was only speculation — and indeed when I posed the question she gave me a different explanation from the one I had assumed.

She told me that her grandfather had always told her that during the Civil War most battles were fought along Bayou Teche and Bayou Bourbeau and that before the battles, the menfolk would move the women and children to the safety of the prairie and that was the reason it was called Prairie des Femmes." Floyd Knott

Various Landscapes of the Prairie

Thomassee Road in the summer

Les jambes de pluie toward Grand Coteau

a purple field on Jules LaGrange road

arc en ciel to the east

the ho,stead under a late summer sky

Marie des Femmes

The Mysterious PDF by K. Cornell

Here is a link to a set of images taken back in 2006 seen through the beautiful eye of our friend kccornell. Velvet live oaks in winter at the fringes of the oxbow, the old LaGrange house made of cypress pegs and bousillage, the garçonière, red brick hearth, newspaper wallpaper, original cypress pylons. Really beautiful set. Thanks, K. Cornell!!

photo credits K. Cornell

La Prairie des Femmes

La Prairie des Femmes (Women's Prairie) is a natural prairie in Saint Landry Parish, Louisiana that borders an oxbow-shaped swamp to the north, Bayou Bourbeau to the west, and Pointe Claire to the east. Prairie Laurent is to the north/northwest and la Prairie Basse to the south. The nearest town is Leonville, and the towns of Arnaudville (La Jonction) and historic Grand Coteau are nearby. Coulée des Marks runs through la Prairie des Femmes and creates a small cypress basin at the country intersection of Thomassee and Jules Lagrange roads at Le Pont des Marks, or Mark's Bridge.

Prairie des Femmes appears on detailed maps of the region as early as 1806, having been inhabited by French Creoles well before this time. The prairie was at the border of the Atakapas and Opelousa tribe's territories, so there was much Indian traffic through the area. Legend has that the area was a high land, a safe zone near the bayous where Native American women lived together while the men hunted or warred with neighboring tribes. Another story says that in Louisiana's historic flood of 1927 that woman and children were sent there from neighboring communities because of its safety. Another tale sites the area as a place where the widows of the soldiers of the Civil War settled to live the remainder of their lives in peace. The most likely story of the origin of the name Prairie des Femmes has two versions: One is that the natives inhabiting the prairie moved after a hunt, as was custom. A few of their old women were left at  the camp being too old to move. The other version is similar, but is more mysterious: that the braves went off one day on a hunt leaving the women and children and simply never came back.  The women left there were discovered by the French Creoles and Acadians who settled the area who called it La Prairie des Femmes.

La Ville de Manteau par Edius Naquin