La Cuisine Chez Moi

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Viola

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Prairie des Femmes Matxhboxes

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Hand Painted Prairie des Femmes Ceramics

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PDF Wiki

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Prairie des Femmes

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Lila Grace Journal with the Plastic Pouch

Subjects covered in my Lila Grace spiral journal with the clear plastic pocket on the front that my nanny gave me for Christmas that I wasn't sure that I'd use but now I can barely part with:

January 12  2026- 

1 page of prep for Louisiana Folklore Society Meeting

Pixelated PDF Star

The PDF blog was begun anonymously as an online representation of a liminal-real place

Feb 23

Notes on the Bayou Culture Collaborative presentation

Sacred Heart Faculty Retreat, notes and quotes by Sister Karem, RSCJ

The spirit drove Jesus into the desert.

Seeds that God has planted will sprout.

March 

Planning Notes for Jazz Fest demonstration 

"Je t'espère comme j'espère le printemps"

Pony Bradshaw lyrics

Narrative 

Yeat's muse Maud Gonne

My Spring Desire Path

I saw Chiron on the PDF road

Houston Color Factory confetti, ephemera, still holds the audio to Solange's "Losing You"

Things in which he was present in the Houston Museum of Natural Science

Poetry/narrative

April 

La Semaine Sainte at school

pearls of sap, a racine-coeur par Ariste

Point Blue Toile

"Every writer gets a toothache, it's a threshold." Shome

Comment on a nettoyé le poisson avec de la mousse espagnol

Pock-Pock talk with K-4

A note from Sarah H when she gave me fresh eggs

A blue runner in the garden

"Walt Whitman on the moon" article

Rose de Marais, symbolism of the Prairie des Femmes

"Baton Rouge owes its name to the Houma tribe" article

"Sometimes I dream to the beat of Carolina" Calico Jim

Music recital paper for the boys

A blue runner in the cardinal nest 

Prep list for Jazz Fest folklife village 

Abyssus abyssum invocat

Notes on Jazzfest, names of people I met there

"Sacred is Secret"

The relationship between Mary Magdalene and mamou seeds

May

Invocations of May 1 list

Swamp Rose hydrosol

Photos of Jazz fest 

Notes on Chikashshanompa

Printed notes on Florida Ethnobotany

Narrative and notes on water birds, bee balm

A dream of a tent

Ahalla'ta'

List of Chickasaw names for native plants I use 

Narrative on first cherries I picked

Lightening Pine

Medicines I made in early May

Laudate Chrism essence

A may-haw sweet dough pie at Congé

Indian Perfume 

Meeting with a beekeeper under the oaks, he was poisoning black invasive bees

Berchman's ground breaking ceremony on the coteau

Printed List of my 40 Zines

I spoke the old languages to the cherry tree

Notes on ephemeral perfumes of rainwater and gardenia, roses from the Sacred Heart gardens

Notes on the Cajun Prairie by Malcom Vidrine 

We'd go to Pictou Island and we'd sleep

Notes on the Arnaudville French table and Dr. Barry Ancelet and Jean Arceneaux's new book Jamais Assez de Becs

"J'aime voir la marque sur la page" il dit

"Even the idea of prairie was lost...the prairie as a long disappeared idea." Vidrine

Catalpa Tree notes

A seal from Mal's letter

Poetic block list of assorted characters

Creole Magic Fishing lure

Billy's pepper jack boudin ball and roll up stickers

Bob Borel's Mom Mom's The Sacred Ordinary

Barras, Eastin and Labbe' Notes from La Table de St Martinville

Dried tarragon from Tante Moune's garden

Red Shoes Meeting notes

Lewis and Clark's notes on October 16th, Women's Creek and Girl's Creek 

C.C. Robin

​“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)).

Meche-Wilkes Mound

                    

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).

The Anthropology department came across an historical discovery in '89, revealing some history of Acadiana. Archaeological excavations at Meche-Wilkes mound near Grand Coteau by USL archaeology students confirmed the earthen mounds were built by the Acadiana's native people during the first pre-Christian millennium. These mounds were used for cooking during the era. Lonnie Utley USL's L'Acadien 1989

On the Olivier Site and Meche-Wilkes Mound

Jon L Gibson 

The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point Place

CULTURAL RESOURCES SURVEY OF FOUR DISPOSAL AREAS ALONG THE VERMILION RIVER LAFAYETTE PARISH, LOUISIANA

Cultural Resources Survey of Four Disposal Areas Along the Vermilion River Lafayette Parish

 

Cultural Resources Survey of Four Disposal Areas 

Along the Vermilion River Lafayette Parish:

US Army Corps of Engineers

"USL continued to excavate selected sites in the general area. A. Frank Servello conducted test excavations in the Meche-Wilkes Mound (16SL18) on Coulee de Marks between Grand Coteau and Arnaudville in the late 1970s. Coulee de Marks is a tributary of Bayou Fusilier, which is the eastern head branch of the Vermilion River. Gibson continued excavations there in 1989-1991. This site has a low conical mound filled with fragments of Poverty Point objects as well as fiber-tempered and untempered Tchefuncte-like pottery, surrounded by a midden containing untempered Tchefuncte-like pottery (Gibson 1990a:109-lll, 117-118, Tables 26-27). The fiber-tempered pottery is similar to that from the Ruth Canal site, 20km to the south, and these sites, along with a few others bearing fiber-tempered wares in the locality, probably represent a very narrow time interval around 1000 B.C."

"Despite its compact size, Beau Rivage (near the confluence of Bayou Tortue and Vermillion River) had large quantities of exotic rocks—thousands of pieces and possibly hundreds of kilograms. Exotics make up over a third of all lithic materials in the available collection (Gibson 1976a:Table 20). There are at least nine other sites within a 25km radius of Beau Rivage that have exotic materials—materials other than novaculite and quartz crystals, which are not really exclusive Poverty Point commodities (Gibson 1991b). The Olivier site (16SL12), near the junction of Coulee de Marks and Bayou Fusilier, is the most notable of these other sites (Gibson 1976a:38-39). But none of these sites comes close to matching Beau Rivage in absolute quantities, although Olivier might come close in terms of relative quantities. The point to be made here is that Beau Rivage is not an isolated component. For 25km above and below Beau Rivage along the Coteau Ridge and flanking Vermilion swamp are other presumably coeval sites bearing foreign lithic materials. We suspect Beau Rivage was the local supplier. But where did Beau Rivage get the rocks? In an earlier analysis, Gibson claimed that they came directly from the Poverty Point site, 280km to the north {Gibson 1979). Gibson thought they were first delivered to Poverty Point, where they were rendered into tool blanks before they were then shipped on to distant consumers, like Beau Rivage. Now, after more than a decade of recent excavation at Poverty Point have failed to find either the unaltered bulk materials or the primary chipping residue showing that preshaping actually took place at Poverty Point, we are not as certain. Initial shaping of tool blanks for trade now seems more likely to have been carried out at the rock outcrops or deposits themselves. Poverty Point still seems to be the most likely source of the blanks and nodules that got to Beau Rivage, but search for intervening distributors continues."

"...Several San Patrice points were found at Meche-Wilkes Mound, on Coulee de Marks near its junction with Bayou Fusilier"

"Additional Archaic components occur upstream and downstream from Lafayette. Downstream some eight kilometers below the Vermilion River gap is a cluster of sites (16VM7, 16VM17 and 16VM23) near the mouths of Anslem Coulee and Coulee He des Cannes. One of these (16VM23) produced several projectile points (including Evans, Ensor, Benton, and others), point fragments, drills and drill fragments, chipped adzes and gouges and fragments, boatstone fragments, and tubular and barrel-shaped stone beads (Gibson 1976a:Table 23, Figure 10). However, only a handful of flakes was recovered, totally insufficient to complement the number of finished tools on the site. The assemblage is unusual enough to lead us to suspect that it might be functionally specialized, perhaps even ceremonial. Upstream where the river parallels the Coteau Ridge are other Archaic components, and on the low Prairie des Femmes terrace, where flanked by Coulee de Marks between Grand Coteau and Arnaudville, is the oldest Archaic component known in the Vermilion locality. The Coulee de Marks site (16SL48) produced Early Archaic point types, Keithville and Cache River, as well as point fragments and preforms, small flake end scrapers, and chipping residue (Gibson 1990a:Table 24). There was substantial Archaic activity on or near the Vermilion River, and it seems to have spanned much of the long Archaic interval. But precisely when and what forms it took are unknown. We have only the most general perceptions of the interval, but they are sufficient to show that the locality continued to be a favorite spot for native groups. Having a long-standing sizeable population in a place with easy access to the interconnected waterways in the Lower Mississippi Valley was probably a prerequisite for entering into an era of commercial exchange, which characterized the ensuing period."

Mississippi Meander and the Teche Ridge

 

Back Field Habitation

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. 

The Dome of the Prairie

The prairie has a memory and it echos like a dome. I first felt it when I was alone out here at night, in a pull camper, waiting. I'd sit at the table, the light from the sliding glass door created a halo of illumination that terminated at the long grass, where I perceived its rustling as large animals passing in the darkness. 

The pre-Katrina nights out here I was afraid of the wilderness of this place. It was the camp. I was never sure how near or far I was from civilization. I stayed quietly in the camper, barely wanting to alert the prairie of my presence. But the Tuesday New Orleans flooded, like so many others, I fled north and took refuge in the prairie like no other place before. The long gravel road was my moat, the orb of light in the field around the camper became my world, the safest place in south Louisiana. 

We planted the prairie edge with a ring of thousands of native trees: sweet gum, live oak, cypress, persimmon, pecan, mulberry etc., keeping the center pasture open in different rotations. The trees created a little wood where we maintained a path, and formed a semi-circle around the perimeter of the property. The higher the edge trees grew, the more my prairie view was obstructed, but also the more the birdsong echoed within the dome of the prairie. I sat at the base of the cypress tree and imagined the life I would lead here. Somewhere, floating in the air above the prairie ground were the rooms of a castle-home not yet built, where I would live blissfully, conceive and become a mother, raise my children, where I would birth this very blog and all of the notions in it, where I would deny myself the world for the protection of the prairie.

I became one with this place, instinctually returning all fertility to her ground. It's here where my children's nombrils are buried, under a live oak in the western yard. I ate the flowers and fruits and roots produced here. I gathered and made medicines daily. I made perfume oils and sprays of the prairie flowers and balms with the pine sap. I caught rainwater and collected dew on resonant days. In the late afternoons in fall, I could hear a faint rumble, like thunder, of the Beau Chene drum line echoing in the dome. The prairie remembered drums.

I settled into the natural law of this land. We grew and lost both plants and animals without getting too sentimental.  We allowed nature to rule, even a little wildly. Out of this natural kingdom many realms were born in me. We planted gardens but I never had a green thumb. It was the native plants that resonated because they were not reliant on me, except for my understanding of them and their environment and my dedication to their growth and protection. As time when on plants like honeysuckle, chassepareille, elderflower and blackberry crowded themselves through every crack of the fence, waving wildly to be noticed, to be made of use, and I listened. 

There was an unassuming charm here at prairie, an enchanted, forgotten country east of Opelousas.  It was in the juxtaposition of her beauty and humility, of how she is treated now, and the dignity in the story of who she was before. She remembered the millennia of seasons, and despite the modern agriculture, the cutting and poisoning and the forgetting of the old ways and the old languages, the plants remembered the cycles and seeds still remained in the ground who, despite the loss of so much rhizome, also remembered how to grow, especially after a prairie burn. 

There was information in the silence and the space that I lived in, the movements of the plants and animals, the sunrises and sunsets, the position the moon rose at different phases adn in relation to the cypress tree.  Sometimes when the prairie sky domed around the edge trees I could feel the different birdsongs that echoed within this protectorate. Slowly I learned that language, too.  

My red ballet flats with prairie dirt in the camper, 2004

Decorations of dog fennel and a bottle of red liquid we found in the house, room party 2004

Me and Paul in the orb, 2005

The camper and the room, summer 2005

the pull camper 

Evangeline

"Beautiful is the land, with its prairies and forests of fruit-trees; 

Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the bluest of heavens 

Bending above, and resting its dome on the walls of the forest. 

They who dwell there have named it the Eden of Louisiana.”

"

Fuller of fragrance than they, and as heavy with shadows and night-dews,
Hung the heart of the maiden. The calm and the magical moonlight
Seemed to inundate her soul with indefinable longing;
As, through the garden gate, and beneath the shade of the oak-trees,
Passed she along the path to the edge of the measureless prairie.
Silent it lay, with a silvery haze upon it, and fire-flies
Gleaming and floating away in mingled and infinite numbers.
Over her head the stars, the thoughts of God in the heavens,
Shone on the eyes of man who had ceased to marvel and worship,
Save when a blazing comet was seen on the walls of that temple,
As if a hand had appeared and written upon them, “Upharsin.”
And the soul of the maiden, between the stars and the fire-flies,
Wandered alone, and she cried,—“O Gabriel! O my beloved!
Art thou so near unto me, and yet I cannot behold thee?
Art thou so near unto me, and yet thy voice does not reach me?
Ah! how often thy feet have trod this path to the prairie!
Ah! how often thine eyes have looked on the woodlands around me!
Ah! how often beneath this oak, returning from labor,
Thou hast lain down to rest and to dream of me in thy slumbers!
When shall these eyes behold, these arms be folded about thee?”
Loud and sudden and near the note of a whippoorwill sounded
Like a flute in the woods; and anon, through the neighboring thickets,
Farther and farther away it floated and dropped into silence.
“Patience!” whispered the oaks from oracular caverns of darkness

Longfellow, Evangeline 

Indian Perfume

​A swamp rose out the darkness 

Coton jaune from the loom

Sillage on my homespun  

Of Indian perfume 

The marsh was wide at midnight 

A braid of long black hair

The feather of a water bird 

 The sacred vinéraire 

I gathered my best medicine: 

Dew from the swamp rose bloom 

The highway cut straight through the marsh 

Love is like a wound 

I gave him my best medicine 

Under the flower moon 

A bouquet of everlasting 

He called Indian perfume 

My mom likes to pick wild cherries

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Medicines I made in early May

First thing I did this morning was to collect the rain drops off of the gardenias, making a gardenia water that smells like perfume. 

Cherry bounce with wild fruit gathered in St. Landry Parish Louisiana

Perfume sprays: bee balm, baume et vinéraire, life everlasting

Dried baume in my journal

Cinnamon and clove alcohol

Lavender oil alcohol

Gardenia enfleurage oil from the gardens 

Lightening pine sap 

Clearest swamp rose hydrosol before I left for New Orleans

Things I found in the prairie after the rain

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Various white and black glazed ceramic

 Knapped blue glass

Blue crawfish claw

Heavy polished black stone

First Cherries

I went and picked cherries on the tree line. I saw a mockingbird in the cherry tree and we exchanged some unpleasantries. There are three cherry trees in the Sacred Heart tree lines that I know, and they are growing among fragrant cherry laurels, chasseparaille, wild grape vines, pecans, hackberry, and elderflower bushes. Today there was a light drizzle paired with the smell of bonfire out on the blue coteau. There were nettles gone to seed underfoot with no sting. I picked cherries until it started to really rain. I stored them in an empty plastic apple I got for teacher appreciation. 

I gathered there, at home and also along the Bayou Fuselier Road. I reviewed the name of wild cherry in Choctaw italikchi, doctor tree. Tomorrow I plan on checking my other trees and researching the uses of the cherry leaves, bark and root after Marius' first communion. 

Lightening Pine

In the storms this afternoon lightening struck very close to the Sacred Heart. I was standing in the first grade classroom admiring their fairyland village of cascading vines and paper mâché houses when the bright lightening flashed through the windows along the gallery and thunder boomed, shaking the coteau under our feet. We screamed and huddled together; it was so close! I started singing Oh les trains quand ils jubutaient by Cesar Vincent to the girls. 

I wondered if it was at my lightening pine again, the tallest and biggest in the pine alley, less than a hundred feet from our 204 year old school building. I check it almost daily since it was struck last year. The injury left is a long open vein in the bark that exposes the weeping sapwood. It produces the clearest tears of sap, like amber pearls at the seam. I've spent the last year collecting the clear suspended drops from this injury in miniature jars. I remember being so interested when it was struck because I knew it would open a wound that would give. I felt that the sap was now charged with a clear electricity.  Since then we have observed the tree healing itself again. The bark can be read. There is an identical scar around the other side that is sealed up with decades of bulbous resin that sometimes form balls that fall at the base. I collect them as curiosities for our knick-knack shelf in class. I found one today. I have taught my girls about tree medicine.

In the light rain after the storm I wandered out onto the wet grounds to check the great pine and found it had again acted as sentinel, channeling the electricity through the sap and down into the holy coteau, a lightening rod protecting the entire campus. 

Baume

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Jazz Fest Folklife Village

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Media Links

 

• About me

• Self Published Books by Ashlee
  
• O Malheureuse on UL Press
  
• Woman of the Prairie, Country Roads
• Music by Ashlee Wilson
  
• Women Shaping the Louisiana French Revival 
• Intention Film
• Louisiane en Vers Podcast 
• Charrer Veiller Podcast

• Pour une plus grande place des femmes dans la littérature louisianaise

• Bitter Southerner
• La Tite' Eastonne
  
• Bonjour Louisiane
• New York Times
• Acadiana Profile
  
• Bousillage 64 Parishes
  
• Prairie des Femmes Mardi Gras
• Prairie Noël 
• National Geographic
  
• Les Carnets Nord Sud
  
• The Current: Louisiana French in the Pandemic
  
• The 78 Project