“Crossing the wide prairie, strewn with flowers, whose stems raise them to the height of the horse on which the traveler is riding, surprise follows surprise in this varied vegetation. One rides suddenly upon herds of cattle, who raise their haughty heads above the grass as one rapidly approaches.” (Robin (2000)).
The Meche-Wilkes Mound, is located near Arnaudville on the periphery of the Atchafalaya Basin on the edge of the Pleistocene terrace. This site has been protected by the landowner and is relatively undisturbed. Gibson conducted excavations at the Meche-Wilkes Mound in 1990. The site contains deposits dating to the Poverty Point, Tchefuncte, Baytown, Plaquemine, and historic periods (Lousiana State Site Form).
This field where we settled over 20 years ago never seemed physically special but there was a presence here. It's a leached sweet potato field out in the center of the open prairie, near the oxbow woods as I called them. It was not on the bayou. There was no important earth works, inclines or mounds as there are in other places in the prairie. The neighbors have found buckets full of artifacts: spear points, grind stones and stone tools. I know of the three prehistoric sites in the prairie including the Meche-Wilkes Mound and the Olivier site, but they are a half mile away from here. For years I have walked looking at the ground and feeling the subtle undulations, but never suspecting that there had ever been anything here besides farmland and pasture.
I had found ceramics. Years ago we surmised they were spread to aerate the soil for farming. Maybe they were spread in a flood event. Either seemed plausible. Maybe more plausible than there being a homestead in the exact spot that we chose, ten acres back off a gravel road, near haphazardly and only because of its proximity to a lone cypress in the tree line.
I found delicate things in the earth though, the curl of a blue and white fleur de lis, doll arms and legs, pieces of plates, bricks, thick crocks and milk glass. Still, with our position back here I could hardly imagine there had been habitation so far off of the dirt road. There were no paths or racourcis that I knew of crossing the prairie. Still I got the message that there was memory back here, both recent and ancient. Then one day in the carrot patch I found a real rock in the shape of a perfect heart.
In the east yard we plowed some rows to plant coton jaune, native brown cotton. After it rained I would inspect the exposed ground along the rows. I found another stone, but this time it seemed to be a hand tool for grinding or hitting. There was a worn tip and slight indentions along the sides that fit my thumb and fingers perfectly. I marveled at its weight and ergonomic feeling in my hand.
Sometimes when I walk the field, or even recently when I turned over a little dirt out there, I still find white ceramics and strange rocks, sometimes blue glass that looks knapped at the edges. The more I let the prairie grow, the more old plants appear that tell of use. The more I dig, the more is unearthed. I tell myself if there was a home place here it would have been in my east back field according to the evidence, but it still doesn't make sense. Not to mention how ironic it would be to have built in the same place. On the other hand, it does makes sense to me, because there is a tangible presence back here that is pleased to be remembered.
Recently I was going through some old topography maps online of the area and something caught my eye: a few black squares denoting domicile on the 1940 topographic map, far back in the prairie. Intrigued, I doubted it was far enough to be my field. But I used the overlay tool to match up the road and other landmarks with satellite maps, and discovered to my surprise that they were located at the end of my driveway, flanking both sides of my house, in the exact place where I find the ceramics in the backfield.
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| Prairie des Femmes generator box by Churchgoing Mule |
Via Mike Leblanc:
10.0 Adjacent Angles, Prairies and Points
There is yet other places, known as Prairie Laurent, Prairie des Femme, and Point Clair. Each has its distinctive character based on the stories upon which its sense of place was created.
10.1 Prairie Laurant
Prairie Laurant is also known as Prairie des Mulates, that is literally, Prairie of Mulattoes. Mulatto is in French, is called a mulâtre for men and mulâtresse for women.[1] Perhaps one of the most well known residents of La Prairie Basse is Clifton Chenier, and his brother, Cleveland, both proud black men, who are among the founders of Zydeco music. Reflecting their racial heterogeneity, their music is a hybridization of Blues, Jazz, Cajun, Country and Western, and Rhythm and Blues, played with an accordion, that quintessential French instrument, and a washboard, a folk instrument used to create African rhythms.
10.2 Prairie des Femmes
To south of Prairie Laurent, a place is still called La Prairie des Femmes (or literally Prairie of Women). If you ask an inhabitant of that place (who are mostly Cajuns) what is the origin of that place name, you will be told that all of the men were killed while on a hunting expedition in time long forgotten or during a war, particularly World War I or World War II. However, the earliest maps of the area created by Spanish indicate that the place was called the same name so the meaning has been placed mouth to ear for some 300 years, its true meaning lost to the ghosts of another time.
To the east of La Prairie des Femmes is a place called Pointe Claire, a pasture used in the spring to herd cattle upon the grasslands. As late as the 1960’s, the cattle were driven by horseback from land laid fallow in the winter months to these nearby pastures for their spring grass. These lands were first discovered by that early band of Africans who hunted deer to extinction and were later to inter-marry with Acadians who herded cattle upon those lands.
10.3 McVeigh Plantation
To the south of La Prairie Basse lies the McVeigh plantation, a place of level lands upon a prairie cleared of its high grass and where slavery was practiced in the 19th Century and later where share cropping also enslaved Afro-American, Creoles and Cajuns in a labor system meant to drive their laborers and their families into penury and serfdom meant to tie them to land as well as to enrich their land owners. Today, McVeigh Road runs down the middle of this plantation and is bordered on both sides by cane fields.
McVeigh Road comes to an end at its intersection with Louisiana Highway 31, which parallels Bayou Teche. Alongside of highway is a narrow strip of land upon, which was too narrow to farm and which was the location of the sharecropper shacks used in the early 20th Century. While the descendants of Ton Ton were free persons of color and devote Catholics, the descendants of the slaves working on the McVeigh plantation were lively Protestants, practicing within the Baptist Convention.
Information via Mike Leblanc
