Cajuns

Cajuns are the descendants of exiles from the French colony of ACADIA (present-day Nova Scotia and adjacent areas) who left their homeland in 1755 and found refuge in southern Louisiana a decade later. By 1790 about 4,000 Acadians occupied the wetlands along Bayou Lafourche and Bayou Teche; they later settled the Louisiana prairies. In the fertile bayous they fished, trapped the fur-bearing animals, gathered moss, and raised sugarcane, cotton, and corn;on the prairies they established cattle ranches and planted rice

The French-speaking, Roman Catholic Cajuns, today estimated to number about 500,000, maintain many cultural and occupational traditions of their ancestors. Their speech is an archaic form of French into which are incorporated words taken from English, German, Spanish, and various Indian languages. With the decline of the muskrat in the wetlands, the nutria, an import from Argentina, became the Cajun trapper's staple. Oystering and shrimping are increasingly important industries. Recently, the exploratory drilling for oil in the wetlands and adjacent offshore areas has provided the Cajuns with another source of employment.
The migration of the French Acadians to Louisiana was neither smooth nor immediate. Many were shipped to the New England colonies, others to the West Indies or back to France, and many wandered for 20 years before learning that they were welcome in the predominantly French territory of Louisiana. Fishing and trapping villages were established in the swamplands.

Cajun cooking may be a first cousin to the Creole cuisine of New Orleans, but there is none other quite like it in the world for the imagination of its dishes or the artistic robustness of its seasoning. Favorite Cajun dishes include jambalaya, gumbo, turtle sauce piquante, andouille sausage, boudin (a pork and rice sausage),cochon du lait, soft-shell crab, stuffed crab, a hundred shrimp dishes, crawfish etouffee, crawfish bisque, crawfish pie, and dozens more.

The feisty, hardworking Acadians (Cajuns for short) remained isolated in the swamps well into the 20th century. As a result, they still speak their own language, and their culture is filled with unique dances, songs, festivals and Crawfish Racing. Along with its food and music, the major trademarks of Cajun Country are pirogues (canoes made from a single cypress log), Spanish moss, alligators, swamps, bayous and "Cajun Cabins".