Cajun Cultue in Louisiana

Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the Cajun people is that they have survived their ordeals during the past four centuries. Cajun is a corrupted form of the French word for Acadian. It refers to people of French descent who were driven out of Acadia, (now Nova Scotia), by the British in the 1750s and who have lived in Louisiana since the late 18th century.

In the 17th century, beginning in 1605, small groups of settlers from the maritime coast and inland canals of western France established a thriving colony along the shores of the Bay of Fundy. They emigrated to Canada to escape from the religious strife then prevalent in France. Winzerling describes the original colonists as "convicts, laborers, some Huguenot ministers and Catholic priests, and some nobles" and the larger groups which followed them as a "sturdy, industrious, and religious element of Brittany and Touraine (4). Among their chief characteristics were a great capacity for hard work, piety, love of family, kindheartedness and s

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n the Louisiana Bayou back country into which they were pushed deeper by successive waves of immigrants, black slaves, Creoles, Germans and others. Boulard says "they turned to hunting and fishing in coastal marshes and swamps that many Anglos found foreboding" (7). According to Calhoun, "they kept mainly to themselves, farming rice and sugar cane, harvesting shrimp and crawfish, and hunting alligators" (28). Until well into the 20th century, rural Louisiana was a semitropical backwater state which survived on a combination of trade through the great port of New Orleans and subsistence agriculture. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, an emissary sent there reported to President Jefferson that Louisianans were "uninformed, indolent, luxurious" and unfit to be citizens (Dufour 115). Calhoun says that in the 1920s the Kingfish, Huey Long, and the oil boom "brought modernity to the region" (28). Long built roads and bridges connecting the Bayou to the mainland. Sanch describes this period as a time of "political corruption, and roguishness, of fabulous wealth and redclay poverty, . . . culture blending and racial divides" (36). Cajuns suffered terribly during the Depression and even though living standards rose after Worl
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Wadsworth Longfellow, Educated AllAmerican, II Boulard, David Duke, Aubin Cajun, Kingfish Huey, Canada Acadians, Brittany Touraine, Fix Fix's, According Calhoun, cajun culture, lache pas la, pas la patate, pas la, lache pas, la patate, music cuisine, december 1993, , bayou country, 17th century, blacks gil,
Approximate Word count = 1715
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)