Carl A. Brasseaux

University of Southwestern Louisiana. Center for Louisiana Studies

Mainly covers the Acadian dispersal in the United States and Canada.

Dispersal and Wanderings of the Acadians, 1755-1809

"Scattered to the Wind"

Keith P. Fontenot

In an extraordinary feat of research and intrepid historical navigation, Carl A. Brasseaux and Keith P. Fontenot serve as guides through the labyrinthian and often harrowing world of Louisiana bayou steamboat journeys of the mid to late nineteenth century. The bayou country's steamboat saga mirrors in microcosm the tale of America's most colorful -- and most highly romanticized -- transportation era. But Brasseaux and Fontenot brace readers with a boldly revisionist picture of the opulent Mississippi River floating palaces: stripped-down, utilitarian freight-haulers belching smoke from twin stacks, churning through shallow swamps and narrow tributary streams, and encountering such hazards as shoals, sawyers, stumps, highwater and dry-bed seasons, and the remains of vessels claimed by those treacheries. For decades, steamboats transported goods, passengers, and mail between New Orleans and south Louisiana's vibrant interior agricultural region, bearing testimony to the resourcefulness, ingenuity, and tenacity of crews in conquering the challenges posed by a forbidding environment. Brasseaux and Fontenot marshaled a monumental array of information, including sources long-buried in courthouses, private collections, and the records of the Army Corps of Engineers. They offer data on some five hundred steamboats, keelboats, and barges known to have operated in the bayou country. This book is the first major study of a fascinating slice of the steamboat industry, showcasing a trade critically important to New Orleans's prosperity but largely forgotten in southern historiography until now. Encompassing economic, social, transportation, and environmental history, it captures the period just before the iron horse emerged as America's undisputed master of inland conveyance.

A History and Directory

Steamboats on Louisiana's Bayous

In recent years, ethnographers have recognized south Louisiana as home to perhaps the most complex rural society in North America. More than a dozen French-speaking immigrant groups have been identified there, Cajuns and white Creoles being the most famous. In this guide to the amazing social, cultural, and linguistic variation within Louisiana's French-speaking region, Carl A. Brasseaux presents an overview of the origins and evolution of all the Francophone communities. Brasseaux examines the impact of French immigration on Louisiana over the past three centuries. He shows how this once-undesirable outpost of the French empire became colonized by individuals ranging from criminals to entrepreneurs who went on to form a multifaceted society -- one that, unlike other American melting pots, rests upon a French cultural foundation. A prolific author and expert on the region, Brasseaux offers readers an entertaining history of how these diverse peoples created south Louisiana's famous vibrant culture, interacting with African Americans, Spaniards, and Protestant Anglos and encountering influences from southern plantation life and the Caribbean. He explores in detail three still cohesive components in the Francophone melting pot, each one famous for having retained a distinct identity: the Creole communities, both black and white; the Cajun people; and the state's largest concentration of French speakers -- the Houma tribe. A product of thirty years' research, French, Cajun, Creole, Houma provides a reliable and understandable guide to the ethnic roots of a region long popular as an international tourist attraction.

A Primer on Francophone Louisiana

French, Cajun, Creole, Houma

Marcelle Bienvenu

Ryan A. Brasseaux

"Despite the increased popularity of Cajun foods such as gumbo, crawfish etouffee, and boudin, relatively little is known about the history of this cuisine. Stir the Pot explores its origins, its evolution from a seventeenth-century French settlement in Nova Scotia to the explosion of Cajun food onto the American dining scene over the past few decades. The authors debunk the myths surrounding Cajun food - foremost that its staples are closely guarded relics of the Cajuns' early days in Louisiana - and explain how local dishes and culinary traditions have come to embody Cajun cuisine both at home and throughout the world." -- from the publisher.

The History of Cajun Cuisine

Stir the Pot

"This work serves as a model for compiling ethnohistories of other nonliterate peoples."--BOOK JACKET.

Transformation of a People, 1803-1877

Acadian to Cajun

Claude F. Oubre

The first serious historical examination of a distinctive multiracial society of Louisiana

Carl A. Brasseaux

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