By Alice Ferguson

Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, June 6, 1994 

  Editor's note: In 1605, devoutly Catholic French explorers founded Port Royal, Acadia (now Nova Scotia). Their loyalty to a way of life has survived 400 years of history in the New World, including many wars, several plagues, and one of the cruelest examples of ethnic cleansing in history. Their way of life survived, though, and is alive and well in Cajun Country. This is the story of how that came to be. Today's Part One sees the Acadians arrive in the new world, as reported by Bona Arsenault in his book, History of the Acadians, Copyright Ottawa 1978, Editions Lemeac Inc. 
  Captain General Pierre du Gast Sieur De Monts was a man with a mission: "to populate, cultivate and fortify the area, convert the Indians to Christianity and carry on trade with them." 
  A pretty tall order, considering that the year was 1604 and the "area" to which King Henry IV referred was the vast, untamed wilderness of the New World. Little did De Monts know what a rich and varied course of history he began when he undertook his mission. 
  Bona Arsenault, in History of the Acadians, wrote that the adventure began in the heavily forested area that now encompasses Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, Canada. That's where De Monts led a crew of about 120 explorers and trader. There they founded Port Royal, Acadia, the New World's oldest permanent settlement north of the Gulf of Mexico. And they did it a full 15 years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock. 
  With De Monts were Samuel de Champlain, who was to found Quebec just four years later; and the first of many Heberts, Louis, who was an apothecary from Paris. The first Jesuit missionaries, Ennemond Masse and Pierre Biard, followed soon afterward from France.  As Arsenault reported, the early years of Port Royal were difficult ones. Scurvy claimed scores of lives during the first few winters. Ships carrying food, supplies and addition personnel were repeatedly delayed by Atlantic storms and French politics. 
  And then there was the financial disaster of 1613, when the French noblewoman who underwrote the colony's expenses decided to explore elsewhere. She dispatched a ship to Port Royal and collected from the settlement "all the stores and provisions, even the church ornaments given by the queen," Arsenault wrote. The ship also took aboard the two Jesuit missionaries before setting sail to look for a new colony site.  As if that weren't enough, the Acadian settlers had their first run-in with the English that year. Colonists from Virginia decided to 'rid the entire Atlantic coast of the French," starting with Port Royal. The village was sacked and burned, and the Acadians survived the winter of 1613 on their wits, their will and their strong relationship with the area's Micmac Indians. 
  Bickering over Acadia between the French and English continued for more than a century. The territory passed back and forth between the two governments, often with bloodshed, until 1667, when France regained firm control under the Treaty of Breda. Only then could French settlement efforts begin in earnest. 
  Among the first families to arrive were those of Pierre Martin, Guillaume Trahan and Issac Pesselin. Their family names were later recorded in the territory's first census in 1671, which noted "Mathieu Martin, at age 35, as the first-born among the French in Acadia," Arsenault wrote. 
  Those first families and their children spread out to settle the whole of Acadia, particularly in the Beaubassin and Grand-Pre areas. By 1708 the Acadians were well established throughout the region and were recognized as a unique cultural group. 
  According to Arsenault, Acadia's last French governor described them this way: "The more I consider these people, the more I believe they are happiest people in the world." 
  Happy, at least, until a new war broke out between the French and English in 1688. The Treaty of Utrecht officially and finally ceded what is now Nova Scotia to the English in 1713. The Acadians, a strong, prosperous people, suddenly found themselves under the weight of a hostile foreign crown. 
  Arsenault wrote that the English were none too happy, either. The Acadians enjoyed a close relationship with the Micmac and other Indian tribes of the area, which the English found intimidating. British settlers feared that them and their "savages" would stage an uprising against the Crown. 
  Equally distasteful to the English was the Acadians' flat rejection of the Church of England. The French clung ever more fiercely to their Catholic faith. 
  Also, according to Arsenault, the Acadians owned the best land,the most prosperous farms, and the largest numbers of livestock, leaving little profit available to the families of English settlers who were arriving in the New World. 
  "These French inhabitants increase so fast," wrote an English surveyor named Dunbar, "that soon there will be no land left for other colonists." 
  Worst of all to the British Crown, the "French Neutrals," as the Acadians were called, staunchly refused to take a full oath of allegiance to the King. They feared such an oath might one day force them to take arms against their French countrymen. 
  Arsenault quoted Major Lawrence Armstrong's 1732 correspondence: "After 20 years under British authority, these French Catholics are still more subject to our neighbors of Quebec and Cape Breton than to His Majesty whose government, in their way, they seem to scorn." 
  By 1755, the English government had had enough of the French in Acadia, and decided that the time had come to "oblige said inhabitants to take said oath or leave the country." The exile of the Acadians, one of the most wrenching events in the history of the New World, was about to begin. 

By Alice Ferguson   

Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, June 13, 1994 

 Editors note: Descendants of the New World's first French settlers - the Acadians - have built four centuries of history in North America. In Part two of a series chronicling that adventure, we find the Acadians making their way southward towards the bayou country of Louisiana.  In the fall of 1755, the course of history in the New World was forever changed by the deportation of more than 5,000 French Acadians from Nova Scotia. Almost overnight, these Acadians found themselves homeless, stripped of their possessions, torn from their families, and forced to sail southward on overcrowded, under-supplied ships. 
 In his book, History of the Acadians, Bona Arsenault wrote of the events leading up to the fateful October day when the ships and their destitute passengers left Canada's Bay of Fundy. He quotes John Winslow, an English army officer who was stationed at Beausejour, Nova Scotia during the upheaval: 
 "We are now hatching the noble and great project of banishing the French Neutrals (Acadians) from this province ... If we can accomplish this expulsion, it will have been one of the greatest deeds the English in America have ever achieved; for, among other considerations, the part of the country which they occupy is one of the best soils in the world..." Historical documents, journals and letters are Arsenault's primary sources for his description of the events which began in September of 1755. With systematic determination, English troops occupied the French Acadians' villages, burned their homesteads and arrested anyone who resisted. All of the area's Catholic priests were arrested as well, and their churches converted to barracks. 
 In some places, the execution of these orders led to bloody fighting between English soldiers and Acadians. At Fort Cumberland, many were taken prisoner and deported almost immediately, forced to leave wives, children and home steads behind. 
 "One hundred and forty women," wrote a Catholic priest," threw themselves hopelessly and blindly onto the English ships to rejoin their husbands," Arsenault reported. 
 n other areas, he discovered, the fighting gave some Acadian families a chance to escape together and avoid the fate of so many who were separated from their loved ones. Fighting at Miramichi allowed some 200 families to escape into the forests, where they spent a hungry, desperate winter. 
 Arsenault reported that it isn't clear exactly what took place during English deportation efforts at Port Royal, the Acadians' oldest settlement. All that's known is that about half its population of 3,000 managed to escape, and that many British soldiers and Acadians were killed. 
 On September 2, 1755, Winslow issued orders for the arrest of the Acadians at Grand-Pre, as quoted by Arsenault: 
 "His Majesty's commandments (are) that your lands and tenements and cattle andlivestock of all kinds are all forfeited to the Crown ... and that you yourselves are to be removed from this province ... and I hope that in whatever part of the world you fall, you may be faithful subjects, and a peaceable and happy people."  
 On September 10, Winslow ordered the first group of Acadians - 230 young men and boys - to board the waiting English ships: 
 "I ordered ye prisoners to march. They all answered they wouldnot go without their fathers. I took hold of (a prisoner) and bid march. He obeyed and the rest followed, though slowly, and went off praying, singing and crying, being met by the women and children all the way, which is 1  mile, with great lamentations, upon their knees ... Thus ended this painful task of so many heart-breaking scenes."  
 Those prisoners filled the waiting ships and remained aboard them, separated from their families, until more ships arrived on October 8. Acadian women and children, and the elderly and sick, were forced aboard hurriedly and without organization. Hundreds were separated from their relatives at the very point of embarkation, Arsenault reported.  "The inhabitants," Winslow wrote in his journal, "with great sorrow, abandoned their homes ... It was a scene of confusion, despair and desolation ... Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and children, fiances and friends, believing they were merely separating for a few days, were never to meet again on earth, the ships having far distant destinations."  
 The various destinations had been assigned by the English so that the Acadians could not easily regroup and return to Nova Scotia. However, no one had told the Acadians about that aspect of the plan.  On October 17, the ships finally left the Bay of Fundy carrying some 5,000 Acadian exiles. Arsenault's account states that 2,000 were bound for Massachusetts; 700 for Connecticut; 300 for New York; 500 for Pennsylvania; 1,000 for Maryland; 1,200 for Virginia; 500 each for North and South Carolina; and 400 for Georgia. "  
 In this way," Arsenault wrote, " the Acadians were cruelly banished from their country and plunged overnight into abject poverty .. These thousands of victims (of) one of the most sorrowful upheavals in history, left behind all the possessions they had accumulated in four, five, even six generations."  
 The exiles found few friendly faces in the English colonies. Only Maryland, with its large Irish Catholic population, reached out the the Acadians. In most other places, Arsenault wrote, the English "viewed the Indians and the French with equal horror."  
 Most of the colonies didn't even know the Acadian refugees were on the way, since the English government didn't bother to inform in advance. None of the colonial governments had the resources to feed, house or clothe the destitute refugees, who were encouraged to move on as quickly as possible. 
 With great difficulty, they did just that, Arsenault reported. Some managed to find their way back to the Beaubassin area of Nova Scotia or to other points in Canada. A few returned to France. Many of the recently orphaned children were placed with English families in the colonies, and absorbed by a foreign culture.  
 Most of them, over the next decade, trekked southward over land, by river, or along the Atlantic coastline to the swamps and bayous of Louisiana. There, for the second time in as many centuries, they set out to conquer the wilderness of the New World. 
 PART 3 The story of Joseph Broussard dit Beausoliel and his kinsmen, founders of Broussard, LA. Early records indicate they were among the first Acadians to reach Louisiana. 

By Alice Ferguson   

Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, June 20, 1994 

 Editors note: In October 1755, English troops deported more than 5,000 French Acadians from what is now Nova Scotia, Canada. While their journeys were desperate and difficult, times were even harsher for members of the Acadian resistance who remained in hiding in the forests of their homeland. Part Three of The Advertiser's series on the Acadian adventure tells their story, as related in Bona Arsenault's book, History of the Acadians.  
 History tells us that war leaves in its wake the sweetness of victory and the sorrow of the vanquished. War makes heroes, also. That's certainly true of the conflict between the English and the French in Acadia. After Le Grande Derangement of 1755, hundreds of Acadians who had managed to escape deportation hid in the forests of Nova Scotia. As had happened so often before, they hoped the French would regain control of the area so they could reclaim their homesteads from the Protestant enemy.  
 First and foremost among them were the brothers Brossard dit Beausoleil, Alexandre and Joseph. As leaders of the Acadian resistance, they remained in Acadia until after the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763. The Brossards--whose family name was later changed to Broussard - were known for their courage, their marksmanship, and their contagious cheerfulness (hence the nickname for Joseph, " Beasoleil," referring to a smile as bright as the sun).  
 Bona Arsenault's History of the Acadians notes that Joseph Brossard, born in Port Royal, founded the Boundary Creek Settlement with his brother Alexandre in 1740. He later became "a legendary figure both in the Maritimes and in Louisiana."  
 Along with other families whose homesteads had been burned and pillaged, Joseph and Alexandre fled into the woods with their familes. Joseph, a sharpshooter and militia captain, "took a heavy toll of English soldiers sent into the area to capture refugees," Arsenault wrote. His shooting skills became legendary in the region, and his reputed prowess followed him to the bayou country of Louisiana a few years later. But as good a shot as he was, Joseph could only protect so many families. In other regions of Acadia, the refugees were dealt with harshly by English soldiers and by Mother Nature. More than 600 of those who were hiding in the Miramichi River area died of starvation and a "horrible contagion" in the winter of 1757. French missionary Francois LeGuerne wrote that they attempted to survive by "eating the leather of shoes, carrion, and some even the excrement of animals." There was nothing the Brossards could do to feed or warm them. Another group of Acadian refugees joined up with Francois Bourdon at Louisbourg, one of the last French strongholds in Acadia. He was married to Marguerite Gauthier, daughter of Acadians who had fled from Port Royal to Ile St. Jean. When 
 Louisbourg finally fell to the English in 1758, Francois, Marguerite and the thousands of Acadians who had settled in Ile St. Jean after 1755 found themselves running for their lives once again, "trying by all means to get away before the English arrived." By Arsenault's account, their desire for haste was well-founded. At Port-Latour, a few Acadian families survived mainly by fishing in the area. On one April day, the Acadian fishermen returned to find their homes had been burned and their wives and children - 72 of them - had disappeared.  
 The English had captured the women and children and deported them to North Carolina. Most never saw their husbands and fathers again. The English had also begun offering rewards for the scalps of Indians in the area.  
 "A number of English soldiers confused Indian and Acadian scalps," Arsenault wrote. "They had the excuse that officially, all Acadians had been deported from Nova Scotia."  
 Between the lack of food, the threat of scalping, and the continued English assaults against the last few Acadian strongholds, the resistance gradually began to lose its vigor. Even Joseph and Alexandre Brossard could hardly hold out hope when they learned of the fall of Louisbourg in 1758.  
 The final blow for Joseph came when they heard that Quebec had finally fallen, in 1759.  
 "He lost all hope since the refugees who were with him had no food, or other essentials left, and winter was fast approaching" Arsenault recorded.  
 In final desperation, Joseph and Alexandre, along with Jean Basque, Simon Martin, Jean Bourg and Michel Bourg led their followers to Fort Cumberland. They hoped to cut a deal with the English, "rather than die of hunger," Arsenault wrote. Instead, they were imprisoned at Halifax until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763. That signing marked the begining of the last great wave of Acadian refugees to leave Nova Scotia. Most of them, including the Brossards, were headed for Louisiana.  
 Arsenault wrote that their journey resumed in 1764, when Joseph Broussard's name appeared on the registry of a ship bound for the West Indies.  
 "Stricken by a plague and unable to bear the tropical climate, they did not stay. 'Ihey soon headed for the Attakapas region of Louisiana..." Arsenault recorded.  
 The Broussard's arrival was marked in Louisiana records too, by New Orleans Commissioner Nicolas Foucault:  
 "A few days ago, 193 Acadians arrived in Louisiana from Santo Domingo. Since they were extremely indigent, we assured them of the help they need between now and until such time as they are able to choose land in the Opelousas region."  
 Foucault made another entry in his records about two months later, of the arrival of 200 more Acadians. Arsenault believed the Broussard party was among these groups of refugees, since Joseph's name appeared on a contract dated April 4, 1765:  
 "A retired army captain, Antoine Bernard d'Hauterive, agreed to supply them with cattle for breeding purposes," Arsenault wrote." The signatures included those of Pierre Arcenaud, Joseph Broussard,Jean-Baptiste Broussard, Victor Broussard, Jean Dugas, Joseph Guillebeau and Olivier Tibaudau.  
 Finally--some 160 years after Pierre du Gast De Monts first set eyes on the Bay of Fundy - it seemed the Acadians had found a home.  

PART 4-Ragged Bands of Acadians Settle In Louisiana, 

By Alice Ferguson 

Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, June 27, 1994
 

 Editors note: After their exile from Nova Scotia, the Acaians found themselves severed from their families and scattered throughout the colonies of the New World. In the decade between 1755 and 1765, many of them found their way to the bayous and swamps of south Louisiana. As recorded in Bona Arsenault's History of the Acadians, their passage was marked by New World settlers, officials and poets of the era. In Part Four of our series, we find them arriving in small groups in the 
 Attikapas region, what is now the St. Martinville area. In the late 1750's, there was no information superhighway; no television satellite relays, no wire transmission of photographs, no news correspondents jetting around the world to cover the day's breaking stories.  
 But there were stories, and none greater than the exodus of Acadian refugees travelling from Nova Scotia to Louisiana. And there were many who noticed and wrote about them, including the poet Longfellow in "Evangeline":  
 "Past the Ohio shore and the mouth of the Wabash, Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi, Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Acadian boatmen. It was a band of exiles; a raft, as it were, from the shipwrecked Nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together, Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common misfortune..."  
 Many such ragged bands followed the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi river, eventually winding their way down the bayous Plaquemine and Teche. Bona Arsenault's History of the Acadians reports there was no way to count their total numbers, so fragmented was the influx. By 1764, a year after the Treaty of Paris was signed, their arrival was old news to Louisiana officials, but no less of a concern to the colony's government:  
 "I am told that there are at least 4,000 who have picked Louisiana as their destiny after an erratic 10 years," wrote Louisiana military commander Charles Aubry. This unexpected event puts mem in the greatest of difficulty. Nothing was foreseen to settle so many people; and the circumstances we find ourselves in are, to say the least, critical. Never was the colony so short of food as it is today. To add to the problem, they brought smallpox with them which will afflict our colony with a new plague. However, under the circumstances, it is our duty not to abandon them."  
 Quite a different attitude from that of the English colonial governments, which couldn't move th eAcadians along fast enough. Louisiana officials, it seed, were determined to assist the refugees in whatever small way they could.  
 The refugees led southward by the brothers, Joseph and Alexandre Broussard dit Beausoleil, by way of the French West Indies, were among the first on record to receive such assistance, in the form of cattle donated to them by are tired French military captain. Joseph Broussard was also named "capitain commandant des Acaiens des Attakapas," Arsenault wrote.  
 Tragically, he did not live to see the cattle-based prosperity that was to follow for his people. Arsenault reported that, after so long a journey and so many battles, Joseph Broussard finally fell victim to one of the many plagues that swept through the camps of the Acadian refugees. He died on October 20, 1765, and was buried at what is now the site of the Town of Broussard.  
 The plague took others as well, as recorded in St. Martinville's parish registers: Francois Arceneaux; Augustin Bergeron; Sylvain Breaux; Alexandre Broussard, Joseph's brother; Jean Dugas; Joseph Girouard; Joseph Guillebeau. Many others had weathered a decade of homelessness, only to die in the land that their descendants late in the 20th Century would know as Acadiana.  
 But there were happy times as well as sad ones. Arsentult notes that St. Martinville's parish register also recorded the earliest birth of the area: Anne, daughter of Olivier and Madeleine Broussard. She was christened by a missionary, Father Jean Francois, who gave the Attakapas region a new name: la nouvelle Acadie.  
 Fortunately for Arsenault and other researchers, the newly settled Acadians quickly developed their early grants of cattle, and used uniquely shaped brands to distinguish their herds. The brands were preserved in a register that Arsenault called a "precious and unique record." Preserved in the archives of the University of Southwestern Louisiana, the registry included more than 28,000 different brands as well as the cattle owners' names, recorded between 1739 and 1888. In the registry's pages can be found scores of family names still flourishing in the area today.  
 In addition to livestock, the Acadians soon found sugar cane and sweet potatos to be profitable cash crops, just as they are today. Even their architecture, Arsenault noted, survived not only the trek from Acadia, but the generations between the settlement of Acadiana and modern times. The hardy determination of the refugees, who had finally found a permanent home, is apparent in the few wills and similar documents recorded in the mid to late 1760's. One such inventory, of Pierre Arceneaux's estate, totalled a value of $5,530 - a figure Arsenault described as "in the currency of that time, about ten times" the modern value of U.S. currency.  
 Soon the Acadians spread out across the Attakapas region, northward into the Opelousas territory. They met and coexisted with other French settlers who came, both before and after the Acadians' arrival, directly from France. The area also drew many Spanish settlers, who often joined Acadian communities and adopted their lifestyle and customs. As of Arsenault's writing in 1978, some 800,000 souls in south Louisiana claimed the heritage of those first Acadian settlers - that's nearly half of the two million descendants of Acadia throughout the world. And, as lie notes in quoting Judge Felix Voorhies: "We are proud now of being called Acadians, for never has there been a people more noble, more devoted to duty and more patriotic than the Acadians who became exiles, and who braved death itself, rather than renounce their faith, their king and their country."   

PART 5-Acadians Prosper In La Nouvelle Acadie... 

By Alice Ferguson   

Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, July 3, 1994

 Editors Note: When the author Nathaniel Hawthorne first heard the romantic story of Evangeline and her lost lover Gabriel, he thought - unlike Longfellow - the tale had no literary value. Little did he know what a wealth of stories was passed up when he dismissed those early accounts of the Acadians' long journeys. Part Five of our series on the Acadians tells the early history of St. Martinville, their first Louisiana settlement.  
 If history means anything at all, then it was probably an Acadian who made up the saying, "From rags to riches." Or maybe we should credit them with "If at first you don't succeed..." It seems those credos enccapulate the hardy Acadians' history in the New World. First they tamed the wilderness of Nova Scotia and transformed themselves from impoverished explorers into the weathy, landed subjects of so much English envy.  Then they did it again in Louisiana, beginning with Poste des Attakapas, what is now St. Martinville. Acadian refugees arrived there with virtually nothing but were soon throwing lavish balls and relishing in performances of the French opera cormpanies that toured there from New Orleans.  
 Louisiana: A Guide to the State credits Gabriel Fuselier de la Claire  with being the area's first settler, having purchased land from Attakapas chief Rinemo in 1760. Soon afterwards an indigo plantation was established by the Marquis de Vaugine, and was said to afford him a grand lifestyle. His simple home, located in the heart of allegedly cannibalistic Attakapas territory, was filled with silver, crystal and other finery. The Spanish officially named the area Poste des Attakapas in 1767.  
 The area was not fully settled, though, until the arrival of a ragged band of Acadian refugees led by Alexandre and Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil. Joseph, who was made "capitain commandant des Acadiens des Attakapas," died soon after; but he gave his followers a starting point: An untamed wilderness, and a small herd of cattle granted to him upon his arrival at Poste des Attakapas.  
 Over the next decade, many more Acadian refugees made their way to the Bayou Teche country, seeking relatives who had been lost in le Grand Derangement from Nova Scotia. Probably mostfamous among them were Emmeline Labiche and Louis Arceneaux, the true-lifeinspiration for Longfellow's famous poem about Evangeline and Gabriel.Like so many couples, they were forced onto different ships during the English deportation of Acadians from Nova Scotia.  
 In real life, Emmeline spent three years searching for her lover - carrying her wedding dressall the way, before arriving in Poste des Attakapas, only to find that Louis was already there, and had married someone else. Stricken, Emmeline took refuge with the Widow Borda, and purportedly died of grief a few months later. Only in Longfellow's story are Evangeline and Gabriel briefly reunited, as Gabriel lies on his death bed.  
 But the Acadians weren't the only ones arriving in the Attakapas region. Creole and French families from New Orleans and the West Indies also made their way there, perhaps lured by the profitsto be made from indigo, flax, hemp and cattle ranching. The lure was indeedstrong, given the era. Typical settlement grants, according to A Guide to the State, included 200 acres of land; 50 additional acres For each newborn child; and 20 extra acres for each slave the grantee owned. Those who administered the grants were, however, somewhat particular as to whom they welcomed to the community, the Guide notes: "A bachelor colonist must prove he was successful in the tillage of land for four years before he could secure title to homesteaded grants. If recommended by some 'honorable planter' whose daughter would be given in marriage to the newcomer, the land could be secured sooner. Catholies were preferred as settlers but others 'of great personality' were occasionally accepted." Protestant ministers, however, were not - at least not for several years.  
 At about the same time in history, many members of the French aristocracy arrived at Poste des Attakapas in flight from the bloody French Revolution. Determined to maintain their lifestyle, they brought with them jewels, silver, expensive furnishings, and all the lavish trappings of the French Court. Poste des Attakapas soon became known as Le Petit Paris because of these new arrivals' relatively opulent lifestyle. Steam-boats brought tourists and opera companies from New Orleans, and the Acadians' life on the bayou was both peaceful and prosperous.  
 Travellers in the area wrote of grand balls, complete with chamber music, dancing and grand ladies in be jewelled gowns. The Barber of Seville drew crowds to the local theater, and Poste des Attakapas was described as "a pretty little village full of barons, marquis, counts and countesses. "And all of them were waiting for the day when the French Revolution would be quashed so they could return home to their native France.  
 Those hopes were not to be realized, the Guide recorded, bit by bit, jewels and other finery were sold to buy food and maintain homesteads. A few of the titled aristocrats were able to marry into wealthier Acadian and Creole families. Some were reduced to trading or farming or, even worse in the eyes of their hard-working Acadian neighbors, to living in poverty with only their pride and their grand memories for comfort. Another important source of prosperity for residents of the area was smuggling, with none other than the British, who had, just a few years before, stripped the Acadians of their possessions and forced them from their homes in Nova Scotia. Now, in the French-and-Spanish-held Louisiana territory, the British found themselves running contraband under cover of darkness along the bayous to Butte La Rose and Petit Manchac. In a classic case of the tables being turned, the "Brits" now depended upon the nouveau riche Acadians to help them earn subsistence from their less-than-legal ventures. In keeping with their rocky history, a wave of bad luck hit the Acadians at Poste de Attakapas in the 1850's, when yellow fever, a fire, and a hurricane devastated much of St. Martinville and claimed many inhabitants' lives. But after all the Acadians had been through during their centuries in the New World, these catastrophes seemed only new challenges to be met with fortitude. The Acadians had established la nouvelle Acadie.  Part Six follows the Acadians as they continue to prosper and to settle other cities and towns: Broussard, New Iberia, Avery Island, Church Point, Lafayette, and others. 

By Alice Ferguson   

Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, July 10, 1994

 Editor's note: Having found a permanent homeland in southwestern Louisiana, Acadian refugees from Nova Scotia were not content to sit back and squander their energies. Part Six of The Advertiser's series on the settlement of Acadiana tracks growth as the refugees and their children spread out from St. Martinville to establish new towns, ranches and business ventures. They were particularly successful in and around Vermilionville, now known as Lafayette.  
 Early visitors to the "large plantation of Jean Mouton" known as Vermilionville found a genteel lifestyle of cattle ranching, religious activities and graceful Southern entertaining. Would they ever have guessed that Anne Bastoroche Mouton and her children, including Jean, spent 10 days in the forests of Nova Scotia, hiding from the English and surviving on roots and berries? Anne and Salvator Mouton's son Marin, according to Louisiana: A Guide to the State, was spared that hardship; he wasn't born until after the family had made its escape to Louisiana. The brothers Jean and Marin, along with Andrew Martin, cleared away the first bits of forest to open up settlement in the area they called Vermilionville. It was the missionary Pere Michael Bernard Barriere who provided the first written account of life in Vermilionille, the Guide states. Like their Acadian neigh-bors in St. Martinville, the Mou-tons and others in the area enjoyed a peaceful, prosperous lifestyle in La Nouvelle Acadie. And for the Moutons, political power was theirs as well. L'Oncle dit Chapeau Jean - known so for his fondness of hats - fathered Alexandre Mouton, who became the first Democratic governor of Louisiana. He also was elected to the U.S. Senate.  
 The other branch of the Mouton family - called the Capuchin Moutons because forefather Marin preferred a homespun cap to his brother's hats  - also prospered in the area.  
 But Jean was the undisputed patriarch. He was instrumental in having Vermilionville named as the parish seat in 1824, and donated land for the courthouse and the area's first Catholic church. He, his brothers and his sons are still recognized as Lafayette's true forefathers. Another Mouton, Alfred, was also active in Vermilionville's early history. A West Point graduate, he was hired by area cattle ranchers to help them fend off rustlers, as the Guide notes: "Cattle raising (was) jeopardized ... by a highly organized band of cattle thieves. Ruin threatened the Acadian ranchers when the rustlers grew so bold they began to corral entire herds in day light. The bandits were largely 'foreigners.' Numbered among them were wild young sons of Acadian families, attracted by easy money and adventure." Alfred Mouton, though, apparently felt his Acadian people had had enough adventure in the New World, and set out to put a stop to his cousins' marauding. With help from some 4,000 "vigilantes" and a large-sized cannon, the Guide states, he managed to disband the bandits. About 200 were captured. The leaders ended up swinging from trees, but the Acadian participants got off with only a lashing and a promise to improve their behavior.  
 The Moutons and other residents of Vermilionville had their share of sickness and death, as did the St. Martinville Acadians. Two separate outbreaks of yellow fever, and then the Civil War, tested the spirit of Vermilionville's founding families. (which became lafayette in 1884). As usual, they weathered the storm and, after the railroad came in 1881, flourished even more.  
 They spread out to New Iberia, which by the census of 1788 already had 190 residents. Canary Islanders were attracted to the area by the rich prospect of flax and hemp farming, and later raised cattle after the example of their Vermilionville neighbors. Like most area towns, New Iberia suffered from epidemics of yellow fever. During the bout of it in 1839, many were saved by the homespun medicines of the slave named Felicite.  
 Other parties of settlers left the newly established towns at St. Martinville, Vermilionville and New Iberia to seek a place of their own. John Hays settled at Avery Island in 1791, and the town of Washington was established in 1800. Arnaudville was next, establistied in 1807. As author Bob Hamm wrote in What is a Cajun, "a Cajun can work as hard and as long as any living man. He carved out Acadiana by hand from the swamp and marshes and uncultivated prairies." And they weren't about to stop with just a few. More towns and parishes were yet to come, the Guide recounts, to provide space, homes and prosperity for the sons and daughters of the refugees from Acadia.  

 By Alice Ferguson 
 Editor's note: Abraham Maslow, one of the 20th century's great social scientists, put forth the view that individuals - and societies - develop by meeting a series of progressively more complicated needs. We have seen the Acadians struggle to meet their basic needs for food, shelter and a safe homeland. Now, in Part Seven of The Advertiser's series, we see them growing as a unique culture, to pursue higher social, spiritual and economic goals 
 Science fiction novelist Robert Heinlein wrote that when a community is large enough to require identification cards, it's too big and someone should move on.
 He wasn't around to tell that to the Acadians in the last half of the 19th century, but they seemed to get the idea anyway. Not content to manage the hamlets they had already established, the ever-busysettlers were on the grow, taming new areas of south Louisiana.
 The Acadians' strong Catholic faith was the fire that fueled many of these efforts, most notably in Grand Coteau. Louisiana: A Guide to the State credits Mrs. Charles Smith with donating 100 acres of land, plus travelling expenses for Sacred Heart nuns from St. Louis, to found a Catholic school for the area's genteel young ladies. As a result the Academy of the Sacred Heart was founded in 1821, followed in 1838 by St. Charles College for Boys (now a Jesuit facility).
 By the start of the Civil War, a small but devout community of support personnel had grown up around the schools. Fortunately for them Sacred Heart's mother superior enjoyed a certain degree of influence over Union commanders whose troops had surrounded the convent and campus (remains of battlefield trenches can still be seen in some places near the Academy). The school's archives still house letters they exchanged, bearing assurances that neither the school nor its inhabitants would be harmed and that Union soldiers would personnally guarantee the safety of food shipments to the campus.
 At about the same time, in 1866, Sacred Heart became even more important to area Catholics because of the miraculous healing of a young postulant named Mary Wilson. The spirit of John Berchmans, a much-revered Jesuit priest appeared to the young woman in a vision and cured her ailment, after traditional medicine had given up on her survival. The school now houses a shrine to St.John Berchmans, in an upstairs room where the miracle is said to have occurred.
 But Grand Coteau wasn't the only town established upon the foundation of the Church. Abbeville got its start the same way in 1845. Pere Antoine Desire Megret had had a falling out with the board of the church he pastored in Vermilionville, and set out to build a new church of his own. He built St. Marie Magdalen's Chapel on land he purchased for $900 - quite a sum for a pastor in those days. Soon the parishioners came, and Abbeville built its quiet prosperity by farming and milling rice and sugar.
 Abbeville also had its share of problems with cattle rustlers just as Vermilionville had experienced, the Guide notes. Townsmen there ruled that anyone bringing meat to Abbeville's market must also bring the branded hides, to prove their product wasn't stolen. The rules were enforced by loosely organized comites de vigilance.
 Growing numbers of parishioners also helped establish Carencro as a town with its own unique Church history. It got its name from Indians in the area, who believed carrion crows came there in search of a huge monster animal that had died in the vicinity, the Guide explained. The earliest settlers, however, referred to the place as La Chapelle, since there was a Catholic chapel there. In 1874, Pierre Cormier decided a church was needed, and donated land for its construction.
 Cormier, however, believed the name "Carencro," and its Indian orgin, were offensive and required that the town be named, of all things, St. Pierre. Although the settlers were willing, the Indian the name stuck and St. Pierre never made the map. His church was destroyed twice by fire and then aggain by a tornado before its fourth rebuilding in 1900.
 Although the growth of the Church fuelled most of the Acadians new settlements during this part of their history, towns were established for other reasons as well, the Guide notes. Some were simply outgrowths of previously established settlements such as Vermilionville "St. Martinville. Others such as Eunice - founded in 1892 by Gustave Etienne Fuselier - answered the call of the Acadians' strong sense of community. Fuselier wanted his children to grow up in a town with neighbors, schools and shops, not on a plantation surrounded only by acres and acres of crops.
 Not everyone, though, was so anxious to see the wilderness tamed. The Guide recounts the reaction of one such settler to the coming of the railroads and the founding of Scott in 1880-81:
 "An old settler was averse to having the strange iron 'beast' running wild across the prairie ... He covered himself with a white sheet and, as the train came snorting around the bend, jumped out from a hiding place in the tall grass. Finding after a few trials that this had no effect, he disgustedly packed his belongings and headed out further into the wilderness."
 But that old settler was certainly a minority. By the time Basile was founded in 1905, the Acadians were well established throughout the area and their claim to south Louisiana as a homeland was undisputed. Settlers from France, Spain, German and other regions blended in, adopted the Acadian way of life, and accepted the Catholic Church as the center of social and spiritual life.
 For the Acadians, history had repeated itself. Four hundred years after they first arrived in Canada's Bay of Fundy in 1604, the determined Frenchmen had finally established a lasting home in La Nouvelle Acadie. This time, there would be no one to force, them out.
 
  PART 8-20th Century Brings Problems And Prosperity, Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, July 25, 1994.  

 Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, July 24, 1994
 By Alice Ferguson 

 Editor note: By the arrival of the 20th Century, the Acadians had already survived 300 of years of struggle and persecution in the New World. They had found a permanent homeland in the bayou country of south Louisiana. But their story was far from over. Today's Part 8 of The Advertiser's series focuses on the Acadians' growth and development during the 1900's. 
 After Le Grand Derangement of the 1750's and the wave of resettlement and prosperity that followed, it would seem that the Acadians might be due for a rest--if not from their labors, then at least from the persecution which had haunted them through their earlier years in the New World. Undoubtedly, many Acadians found that restful peace in La Nouvelle Acadie.
 But does history ever really leave any of us alone?
 It certainly did not forget the Acadians. They had done exactly as their ancestors' British nemesis, Col. John Winslow, had instructed them in October 1755, when he informed them that they would be expelled from their homes in Nova Scotia:
 "I hope that in whatever part of the world you fall, you will be faithful subjects and a peaceable and happy people."
 It seemed his parting words were almost prophetic. The Acadians did prove faithful subjects, through America's Great Depression and all of the nation's wars. Statistics from Louisiana. A Guide to the State prove their patriotism: More than 5,000 Louisiana soldiers died in World War II alone. Nearly 800 were lost in the Viet Nam conflict.
 In peacetime, the Acadians rode the wave of steady, if controversial, prosperity brought. by Gov. Huey Long's legacy. They developed the state's sugar cane and rice industries, built roads, railroads and bridges, raised levees and constructed great universities. School children received free books, pencils and paper. And when oil was first discovered beneath Acadiana's soils and swamps -- near Jennings in 1901, according to the Louisiana Almanac - the Acadians rode that wave of good fortune too.
 But times were not always, good for these determined people. Mother Nature sent them plagues of yellow fever (the last, according to the Almanac, in 1909); floods (the worst in 1927) and hurricanes (Audrey, Hilda and Betsy, just to name a few) . In many seasons, it was a struggle just to keep the crops in the ground and the rivers in their banks.
 Worst of all was the attitude of those not included in the French Acadian community. Les Americans, as these non-French speaking outsiders were called, did not understand the Acadian history, culture, or way of life. They viewed the French speaking people as something less than socially. The nation developeda negative image of Winslow's "loyal subjects," and "Cajun" became a racial slur. Yet again, the descendants of North America's first permanent settlers found themselves at the short end of the proverbial stick.
 O.C. 'Dan' Guillot and members of his staff at the Lafayette Parish Clerk of Court's office remember those days well. The prejudice against the Acadians wasn't just happening in other parts of the country, either. Even here in Louisiana, their unique and delicate culture came under attack.
 In those days, Guillot said, public schools punished students for speaking their native language. Young children, who grew up speaking only French, discovered on the first day of school that French was unacceptable, maybe even a source of shame. They would be forced to speak only English in school.
 "If you got caught speaking French, the teacher would make you recite a poem in English, or some other punishment," said one of Guillot's staffers. Who can say how this requirement affected students' scholastic performance, much less their self esteem? Their parents, many of whom did not speak English at all, couldn't help the children with school work taught in a foreign tongue. Nor could they understand the need for such an approach to education.
 These children, caught between the French heritage of the past and the American, English-speaking view of the future, were forced to ask themselves, "Is it so bad to be a Cajun?"
 For some of them, the transition was simply one upheaval too many. If they stayed in school at all, they did so for only short period, before returning to the French-speaking comfort of family-owned farms and businesses. Many of those who did acquire an education - in English - did so only to leave Louisiana and their heritage behind them in search of higher-paying employment elsewhere.
 But as the centuries since 1604 have shown, the Acadian spirit is not easily bruised. Before long, that spirit's voice could be heard in grass-roots movements to preserve a unique language, culture and history.
 "It was in the 1950's that Cajuns started to realize they were a special people, and that they should be proud that they could speak two languages," Guillot said. "Dudley J. LeBlanc was really the first preservationist. He the same time, and they fought like cats and dogs."
 The Longs may have secured political power, but it was LeBlanc who raised the flag for preservation of the Acadian heritage and culture.
 His efforts set the example for many others, most notably Jimmy Domengeaux, founder of CODOFIL the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana. His philosophy was that if the language is saved, so is the culture. Today, many tourist attractions, parks and living museums such as Acadian Village and Vermillionville take pride in celebrating the Acadian way of life.
 And the public school system which had once tried to stamp out the Cajun French language, did a complete about-face when they instituted French immersion and other programs designed to nurture the Acadian culture, rather than smother it.
 Even the national view of Acadiana began to change with the growth of south Louisiana's tourism industry. No longer seen as "second-class", the Acadians were viewed with respect and perhaps a bit of awe by those who came to know their history and culture. Les Americans just couldn't get enough of the happy music, the spicy food, warm hospitality, sporting lifestyle or the rich natural resources of Acadiana. One can once again be proud to be called "Cajun," and proud to speak the native French.