Prairie des Femmes Origin Stories

 Prairie des Femmes

Coming to the Prairie and Staying

When I arrived here in 2004 my neighbors called the area Leonville or Anaudville, for the bayou villages to the extreme north and east of the prairie, respectively. There was no marker, no sign and no online presence of the pre-colonial Prairie des Femmes, save for topographical maps where she was marked at Coulee des Marks bridge, and two inquisitive articles published in the Teche News by Mr. Floyd Knott.  If I am completely honest, there was also a wood routed sign that said Prairie des Femmes on a neighbor's chicken coop up by the Bayou Bourbeux that I spied through the trees.  

 The romance of the name seemed to me incongruent with the general knowledge of her existence. I was from another village, called la Ville Platte further to the north in Evangeline Parish. Around la Ville we had many other lieu-dits, les petits places, where we visited and that were part of the common vernacular of life. There was Chataignier, of course, and halfway there, la Pointe Bleue and L'anse Aux Pailles. We frequented Faubourg, Tate Cove, L'anse des Belaire, Vidrine, Redell, and L'anse Grise beyond. I was familiar with these places, yet just 20 minutes from my hometown, I had moved to this women's place whose history and terrain felt remote and largely unexplored. 

Louisiana French connected me more closely to my state, her French and native memory and my place within it all. I began to gather maps, records and historical research as well as personal stories about how the prairie was named: her origin stories. It was clear that these are all native lands and la Prairie des Femmes is a reminder. The neighbors reported the prairie was a place where women and children were found living when the men left for one reason or another. If I asked, they pointed me to the Civil War as origin of the mens' absence, but the records I found suggested that the prairie had a longer memory.

  One local said he believed that the girls outnumbered the boys at the house dances, and that the Stelly, Marks and Quebedaux families produced them. Another story says that in Louisiana's historic flood of 1927 woman and children were sent here from neighboring communities because of its relative safety. (The prairie is at some elevation, but I am still not sure what parts of her flooded in '27) 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. Some say the women of the area refuged back here when the skirmishes along the bayou Bourbeaux, at Grand Coteau and Chretien Point made it unsafe for the women and children in town. Some reported that the women were left here to farm while the men fought for the Civil War, WW1 or WW2. Some locals even pronounce it "prairie des fermes" and will connect the name to the women farming, or the fact that there are still many agricultural fields here. Another neighbor gave me the rough coordinates of a "fort" that existed here for the protection of the women. 

The most likely story of the origin of the name Prairie des Femmes is the native one, of course. The prairie is a pre-colonial, native place, located at the historical boundary of the Attakapas-Iskah and Opelousas tribal lands. It is named for bands of Ishak and earlier Tchefuncte people who used the prairie was a backwater refuge for their women and children away from the major rivers and bayous of the time. Prairie des/aux Femmes appears on detailed maps of the region as early as 1806. Because of the prairie's central and borderland location, there was much native traffic and infrastructure here. 

Legend has that the area was a high land, a safe zone near the bayous where women lived together while the men hunted or warred. There are a few versions of this story. One is that the male natives inhabiting the prairie moved after a hunt, as was custom. A few of the women stayed at the camp, being too comfortable to move.  Another version says that the prairie was used in ancient times as an off-river refuge for the women that protected them until the men came back. The men were always leaving for war or hunting in the stories. Another says that the male hunters, or bears, went on a hunt leaving their wives on the prairie. The women left there were discovered by the French Creoles and Acadians (Michel Cormier) who settled the area and called it la Prairie aux Femmes. (In Louisiana vernacular the contraction des and aux are both used when showing possession, aux being older in my mind. I have found both des and aux on maps of the prairie) I am often curious if the name is a direct translation of the indigenous name for the place, and if so what the old name was. One of my neighbors had his explanation, offering "that's an old name, yeah." After 20 years of research, this seems to be the most accurate detail of all.