Lafayette

Let's leave the coast, drive 3 hours, and reach Lafayette, in the heart of Cajun Louisiana.

This is home for tonight, Mouton Plantation.

The bed is so high that you need this to climb on it...

On the following day, a very strong storm hits the town during hours (we are now in what they call the hurricane pre-season), I even get stuck into my bedroom because the building has become an island, it is surrounded by a 10cm deep pool.
Eventually, the rains stops, and the water level decreases, allowing me to go on with the visits planned for today: the Acadian cultural center and Vermillion historical village.

Just a comment about the cemeteries in Louisiana: the whole state is a giant swamp, if you dig 3 feet you will find water, wherever you are. Therefore here they cannot bury people, the graves are always above the ground.

Small problem: at some point I was supposed to cross a park, and it has turned into a lake, following the heavy rains of the night and morning.

The Spanish moss was harvested to stuff mattresses, mule collars and the seats of Henry Ford's Model Ts. Combined with mud it made bousillage which Cajuns used as plaster to build walls.

 

A bit of history: where do the Cajuns come from?
Immigrants from France came, the wealthy seeking greater fortunes and the poor constricted from the streets of Paris. The word Cajun is the English pronunciation of Cadien, the descendants of French-speaking melting pot.
They originally came from Acadia, still a Canadian province today. After the British conquest of Acadia in 1710, the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht allowed the Acadians to keep their lands and keep on practising their Catholic faith. However, in 1755, Britain and France were in the eary stages of the Seven Years' War, remaining neutral. The Acadians refused to sign an unconditional oath of allegiance to Britain and Anglican faith, and were deported to what is now the Western coast of United States, the Caribbean and then on to Louisiana. Most of them died during the trip.

Natural fires and clay soil created the treeless prairies louisianaises. Oceans of grass grew 6 feet tall. Early Acadiens grew cattle on it, in ranches or, as they call it here, in "vacheries", and built a thriving cowboy trade. Taken over for rice during the 1980s, no extensive areas of virgin prairie remain.
In the 1930s Louisiana saloons offered free crawfish (presumably well salted) to help selling beer. Once decried as poor man's food, the crustacean's popularity increased with succeeding decade.

In Southwest Louisiana, French was the dominant language until the mid-1900s. Nativr Amercians along with Spanish, German, African and English arrivals and their descendants learned to speak French to conduct business and socialize with neighbors.
Creole French borrows vocabulary and grammar from West African and American Indian languages, and is distinct from the Creole languages of the French-speaking Caribbean islands.
In contrast, Cajun French incorporates an older French dialect from the 1700s and is different from modern continental French.
Creole and Cajun French dialects are distinct. 

This is 'la cabanage de piégeur', the trapper's cabin. It illustrates a basic dwelling in which trappers used to live. Trapping was one of the first commercial trades in the area, and early trading posts centered on the trade of furs such as deer, otter, beaver, muskrat and mink.

In the 1910s, new laws banned the French language in schools as an attempt to Americanize the non-English speaking populations. The lines "I will not speak French" on the blackboard of this reproduction of a typical schoolhouse recall that time period.