But soon after they arrived, Acadia fell to the English. The land shifted between the two old world empires for a hundred years until the British launched a military campaign to claim the region at last. The French Acadians, they demanded, must renounce their Catholic faith and their allegiance to France.
The Acadians stubbornly refused, and things got worse as the years progressed, until finally the English began a series of deportations. France now had to find new lands to dump the refugees from their lost colony. Many were shipped directly to France’s Louisiana territory, others were dropped off on France’s various West Indies holdings. Others still made their way into the United States; places like Pennsylvania and Georgia.
The French and Spanish colonists who had already been profiting in the region for years had taken up the good land in Louisiana. So these Acadians struck out west from New Orleans and settled the backwaters.
France was so intent to maintain their stake in the island of Hispaniola that Napoleon Bonaparte sent an army to squash the slave uprising. France needed control of Louisiana as a military and economic staging ground for Hispaniola. But by 1803, the slaves crushed the French military so severely that France needed to sell their Louisiana territory just to keep up with their renewed war with Britain.
Buying this ‘Louisiana Purchase’ from France was a bargain – a bargain of desperation by a country broken by their own slaves, and forced by Britain to turn their heads elsewhere. By 1804, the French half of Hispaniola was independent from France, and the Louisiana Acadians were now governed by the United States.
As slave rebellions spread throughout the West Indies, more and more people of Acadian heritage found their way north to the bayous. Through time, the term Acadian Americanized to ‘Cajun.’
Fast forward back to today, and many of these Cajuns still speak English as a second language, are isolated culturally and physically from the rest of America, and maintain a culture of incredible hospitality and cuisine.
Jon says that for a hundred years, man has been dredging this Cajun region, and levying the Mississippi River.
Because this part of Louisiana is built from the silt water sediments of the Mississippi River, it is naturally compacting. The land maintains itself as the Mississippi carries sediments south from the rest of the Great Plains. As the soil compacts, new soils materialize during the yearly flood season.
But the Louisianans levied their Great River and the oil industry built its own levees and canals in the basin, and so today, the Atchafalaya region receives no sediments to replenish the land.
The protective barrier islands are being eaten up, and many of the coastal regions have already sunk. In thirty to fifty years, the sea will swallow up Cajun Country. The locals are reporting that many of the places they fished and played as children have completely sunk.
Even this far north in Gibson, the bayou canal banks have flooded over, killing oaks and palmettos. Some of the flooded palmettos are still alive, which means some of these areas have only become inundated within the last few years.
I ask Jon why he thinks nothing’s being done about it. He explains the costs of the current proposals. Fifteen billion dollars. Twenty billion dollars. Twenty five billion dollars.
Jon believes the solution is easier than that. He says it’s a matter of controlled flooding of the Mississippi River. Of man reproducing the traditional flooding season by opening up a portion of the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya, and of the state and federal governments working with the oil industry to help pay for their past mistakes.
"You mean like Yellowstone?" I say. "You mean the problem with sinking in Louisiana is as simple as the fire policy in Yellowstone?"
Instead of let in burn, I said, "A let it flood policy?"
"Yup."
"In Theriot,” I say, some of the houses were on stilts, and about twenty feet in the air. Some were three feet in the air, some were brick structures on the ground."
"Exactly. You know, the Indians who lived here, their houses were on stilts. And now there are regulations requiring you to build your house a certain level above the ground."
But the fact is apparent. If Louisiana has a tradition of corruption in government, and self-motivated legislators are concerned about current votes, a policy that would flood and effectively harm thousands of personal properties would cause them to delay work to future administrations, even if the costs to the Louisiana economy escalate by each year delayed.
Those costs, Jon says, include the devastation of a hurricane. "If a hurricane would hit the bayou, or worse, New Orleans, the whole place would sink. Death everywhere. The fact is those salt marsh islands were the only protection against the wind. The slowed the hurricane down."
I explain the water pumps I saw near Theriot, and Rubin explains that everything is being drained, sucked out and displaced, making things even worse.
)
){kind=link}