October Record Club - Clifton Chenier, "Bogalusa Boogie"

Cajuns are people with Acadian ancestors who ended up in Louisiana after being forcibly evicted from eastern Canada by the British in the 1700s, 20 years before the American Revolutionary War. The first Acadians were children of French peasants who, in the early 1600s, colonized the southeastern part of what we today call Canada. It’s worth noting that some percentage of these Acadians were mixed race. Unlike what really happened down by Plymouth Rock, relations between the French settlers and First Nations of Canada, mainly the Mi’kmaq, were actually pretty good. They really did learn local methods of hunting and fishing from the Mi’kmaq. Some of the French men married Mi’kmaq women and started families.

Once trading posts are setup and the Mi’kmaq learn what kind of tools and goods they can acquire by trading furs, it essentially changes the structure of their society. Things seem to be going well. Then, the British Empire begins throwing its weight around. The first capital of Acadia had been established by France in 1605. In 1613, British troops burn it to the ground. During the next hundred years, there are many battles, fought between several nations, over Acadia. By 1713, the British have come out on top but the vast majority of the population is still Acadian and Mi’kmaq. Conflict between Great Britain and France show no sign of calming down, so the British demand an oath of unconditional allegiance from the Acadian people, who, remember, originally came from France and speak (at least a version of) the French language. But that doesn’t make them inherently unified in allegiance to France or inherently unified in anything, really. Still, for the Acadians to sign an unconditional oath of allegiance to Britain could make them obliged in the future to fight for the British against the French or against the Mi’kmaq. That’s a problem. Because, the Mi’kmaq? They aren’t about to concede ownership of their lands to anyone. In fact, they aren’t even aware that France has been claiming ownership of Acadia for a hundred years already. Whether or not it binds the Acadians to take up arms, signing this oath of allegiance to Britain will be viewed by the Mi’kmaq as a betrayal and put Acadian villages at risk of violent raids. So, what the Acadians do here is negotiate an agreement of neutrality with Britain. Their official stance is they just want to stay out of it. Only, some of the Acadians and many Mi’kmaq remain extremely anti-British. Hostilities continue with some regularity over the next 40 years or so, until this all finally comes to a head in what Americans call the French and Indian War, beginning in 1754.

One year into this war, Britain decides there’s really no reason for them to mess with any of this Acadian bullshit. It doesn’t matter who says they’re loyal to Britain or not, who says they’re neutral or not, all the Acadians have to go. British troops round up entire villages, put everyone on boats and ship them off to the 13 British colonies on the east coast of America. In 1758, they begin shipping Acadians all the way over to France and Great Britain. From beginning to end, this process takes about ten years. There were 14,000 Acadians in the area before the first wave of the expulsion. By the year 1764, less than 3,000 are left. And, if this sounds to you like a simple and peaceful relocation of citizens, it is not that. Villages are burned. Families are separated and shipped to different parts of the world on overcrowded ships. Acadians starve to death, drown when ships sink and many of the ones who make it to Great Britain are forced to live in packed warehouses where they die of plague.

The British didn’t ship anyone to Louisiana. Among those Acadians who were anti-British from the start was a man named Joseph Broussard. In 1724, when a group of Mi’kmaq attacked the British-occupied capital of Acadia, Joseph Broussard raided alongside them. He fought in and led attacks against the British for the next 40 years until his capture in 1762. The following year, after the war came to an end, Broussard and his family were sent to live in what is now Haiti, then a French territory. By this time, Broussard is in his early 60s and the tropical climate of Haiti doesn’t suit his Acadian constitution. In 1765, he leads a group of 200 Acadians to the Spanish territory of Louisiana. Around 10 months before this, 4 small Acadian families, about 20 people in total, had traveled from Georgia to live in New Orleans. These are the first Acadians to settle in Louisiana.

The Spanish attitude toward the Acadians is super relaxed. They aren’t exactly integrated into mainstream society but they are given land, a six-month supply of food, crop seed, farming supplies and pretty much left alone to pursue their way of life. Nobody cares if they want to keep speaking Acadian French, there are no taxes to pay and the Acadians and Spanish are both predominantly Roman Catholic, which had been one of the big problems between the Acadians and the Protestant English. The Acadians are so comfortable in Louisiana that they write to family members scattered throughout the world to let them know this is a place they can come live in peace. More Acadians make their way to Louisiana.

1775: the American Revolutionary War begins. Acadians throughout the colonies take up arms against the British to help The United States gain independence from England. 1803: the Louisiana Purchase brings Louisiana into The United States. Americans move to Louisiana in large numbers to find most of the unclaimed land is swamp and uncleared woodlands. Many Acadians are happy to sell their property for maybe more than it’s worth, move into the backwoods and swamplands, build modest homes and houseboats, get back to hunting and fur trapping as a means of survival, as their ancestors had done. It’s not all of the Acadians doing this and it’s not only Acadians doing this but it comes to be thought of as the Acadian way of life, living off the land in this manner. Over the next hundred years, the way English-speaking Americans say the word “Acadian,” it changes. The Acadian French pronunciation doesn’t emphasize the “a” at the beginning of the word and the “d” probably sounds like a “j” to English ears. What they hear and what they start saying, is “Cajun.”

The early Cajuns wouldn’t necessarily think of themselves as poor. They either have what they need or know how to get it from the land around them and are happy to do so. To people pursuing a more metropolitan way of life, none of that makes any sense. Even other Acadians who stay in the cities take steps to distance themselves from their swampland cousins. As the word “Cajun” begins to take on a derogatory meaning (similar to “hick” or “hillbilly”), more and more of the city Acadians choose to self-identify as Creole instead. The full context of this very ambiguous word is far too complicated to get into here. Suffice to say, in the time and place we’re discussing, it’s seen as classier and more refined to be Creole rather than Cajun, though a strong emphasis on one’s roots is implied by either term. The early Cajuns of Louisiana exist on the outskirts of society and this seems to be, at least partly, a matter of preference. They live in tight-knit communities, which does help to preserve their Acadian traditions, though we only have to look at the language they speak to see how inclusive they are of other cultures. Their version of French borrows elements from Spanish, American Indian and African languages. There would be no cause for this unless these people are a part of the conversation. The weird thing is, when elements of other cultures are co-opted by Cajuns, these things tend to become thought of as Cajun. This is the strength of their culture and how it has survived into the modern age. Cajuns hold on to the past while embracing the present.

Some of the earliest Cajun music to be recorded is The Segura Brothers in 1928, doing a song mistakenly labeled as “My Sweetheart Run Away.” Sounds like accordion, triangle, maybe someone tapping their foot a little bit and a voice – that’s it. Admitting that I’m no expert, there is no argument against this being 100% pure Cajun music. If it gets any more Cajun than this, I’m not sure we have a record of it. But the accordion does not come from Acadia and it doesn’t even come from France. Another major instrument in Cajun music is the fiddle. The fiddle comes from neither Acadia nor France and calling it a violin doesn’t make it come from there either.