Cajun Immersion

Vermillion Ville is a Cajun/Creole Heritage and Folklife Center and one of the best living history museums your blog writers have visited.  The Center deals with the years 1865 - 1890.  Most of the buildings brought here are authentic.  Their furnishings are also authentic.  Many of the buildings have a craftsman to show visitors his/her art.

Before starting the tour, we enjoyed gumbo, tilapia, crawfish etouffee on pasta, glazed carrots, broccoli biscuit, and, of course, bread pudding.

After lunch our escort docent took us on a tour of the Center starting with the 1840 Arcenious house.  Mr. Arcenious was one of the people who introduced cotton production to Acadia.  In his time cotton was the leading component of the country’s gross national product.  The government bought most of the cotton and then sold it on the international market.

The cotton spinner demonstrated her spinning wheel and told us it takes her a year to spin and weave the cotton to make a shirt.  She could tell the strength of her thread by sound and touch.   It takes fifty hours to gather a bale of cotton and six bales to make the material for a shirt.  That shirt could last decades.  Brown cotton is for personal use and white is sold.

These rolls of cotton have been died from natural products on the farm.

The loom is more than 200 years old and is no longer in use.

Quilts served a purpose beyond warmth on the bed .  They were communication devices.  When a quilt was hanging on the porch, it was an invitation for people traveling on the river to come in.  It could mean help was needed or company desired. 

Chimneys were painted white to indicate the daughter was available for marriage.

In the Ecole, school, Mr. Merlin fiddled tunes.  He is eighty-nine years old, fought in WWII, and has a reputation as a flirt.  He played G-d Bless America, Dixie and Yankee Doodle. 

This message on the chalk board warned students not to speak French anywhere near the school.

Below the chalk board are the French and Creole flags.

Students would bring vegetables in these cups to put in a common pot to make jambalaya to share for lunch

Maison Mouton is a replica of a house built in 1810. Cliff, a woodworker, explained the hand tools on display.  The first ones were provided by the Spanish government (Spain owned the land when the Acadians first came). 

He explained that a fungus in wood creates this spalted effect.

These passe partout saws were passed from neighbor to neighbor.

An outside room of the house was for visitors to stay in.  Since they were generally strangers, they did not have access to the rest of the house.

A seventh-generation blacksmith was in La Forge.  He explained that the three essential tools were the anvil, hammer and fire.   

La Maison Acadienne is a hospital, emergency room and pharmacy.  The garden club has created a Healer’s Garden filled with medicinal herbs labeled as to the conditions they treat.

 Considering that some Acadians lived in Haiti before moving to Louisiana, the hospital also had voodoo dolls. 

Maison Boucvalt belonged to a German family and had an indoor toilet.  Th picture was made from hair of a girl who was either deceased or had became a nun.

 The barn had a 500-pound bale of cotton (standard size) and wooden tools.

A Creole dollmaker demonstrated her clothespin dolls that take four hours to make.  A corn shuck doll takes a year to make.

We took a ferry across the stream to the church.  It is a replica of a non-denominational church.  The pelican is a treasured symbol because it will sacrifice its own flesh to feed its young.
The rectory was built in 1830 and has its interior door atilt.

Our final artisan was a builder who used the traditional boussage, (moss, mud and horse hair) to line the walls of homes.  Spanish moss, named for its similarity to the beards of Spaniards, is used for rope, mattress stuffing, and some car seats.

The last buildings on our tour were a washhouse, a kitchen and a native Palmetto cabin.

The tour reinforced and increased what we have learned in our travels through Acadia.

In the evening we continued our “lesson” in Cajun food at Randol’s.  This dinner had a wonderful Lagniappe, Cajun dance music.  While some of our group graced the dance floor, others got great pleasure from watching.

 Mr. Merlin from Vermillion is a fiddler in the Cajun band at Randol’s.

Our leaders Art and Rita tripped the light fantastic.

 Pam is a happy dance partner.

Carolyn is adept at Cajun dance.

 Peter and Carol looked lovely on the dance floor.