• Historian raps myth on Acadians 
• Chauvin church joins with Canadian sister
• Highlights of CMA events for Tuesday

There will be a ceremony twinning Assumption Parish with the Evangeline Region of Prince Edward Island, Canada; the Bayou Lafourche Heritage Celebration, Larose; festivities honoring the families of Bergeron, Bourgeois, Caillouet and Gautreaux at Acadian Village, Lafayette; at the Acadian Memorial in St. Martinville author John Francois will discuss his new novel ''The March'' and the role his ancestor Pierre Pitre played in the War of 1812 at 2 p.m. For more information telephone the CMA office at (888) 526-1999 or the Acadian Memorial at (318) 394-2258.

PHOTO (not available): Dr. Glen Conrad of the Center for Louisiana Studies of the University of Southwestern Louisiana mans a slide projector while discussing land distribution and ownership in the early years of Louisiana.
 
 

ST. MARTINVILLE -- In the beginning and for centuries thereafter, the dreams, glories and tragedies of the Acadian people centered on the private ownership of land.

Dr. Glen Conrad, director of the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, began his week-long lecture series Monday with a slide presentation and lecture detailing the acquisition and settlement of land in Louisiana by the ancestors of present-day Cajuns and other ethnic groups.

The series is sponsored by the Acadian Memorial as part of the Congrès Mondial Acadien Louisiane -- 1999 and was supposed to be held at that facility. However, so many people showed up for the lecture that it had to be moved across the street to the city council meeting chamber.

The Acadian culture had its genesis in 1604 when a small band of French settlers crossed the Atlantic to risk their lives in the wilderness of what is now the Maritime Provinces of Canada in order to escape the late feudal system and finally till their own soil.

They were following their dream.

In Acadia they invented an ingenious system using levees to take advantage of the tremendous tides (called ''tidal bores''') to convert marshland into farmland so fertile, according to Warren Perrin, president of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana, ''Just one acre could feed a family.''

That was one of their glories.

The most plausible explanation for the motivation of the deportations that began in 1755 is that it was a land grab.

That was the great tragedy.

For 30 years, most of the refugees searched for a home on land they could call their own. They found it in Louisiana.

According to Conrad, in the earlier periods of settlement, the Acadians were situated strategically on land grants by the French and later the Spanish as buffers to a possible invasion by the British.

The practice was to parcel the land along rivers and bayous, which were the main thoroughfares of transportation, in long, narrow strips. Most were 10 arpents wide by 500 arpents deep but some were thousands of arpents in length. An arpent is 192 feet wide, slightly less than an acre.

Ironically, this system had been employed in Acadia, too.

Conrad concentrated his lecture on the Attakapas District, now comprising all or parts of Vermilion, Lafayette, St. Martin, Iberia and St. Mary Parishes.

Acadians could also squat on unoccupied land and eventually gain a title called a ''patent,'' he said.

After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, he said, the new American government took steps to determine which parcels were privately owned and declared everything else public land.

The state's inheritance laws that required equal distribution of all property to each heir began to create problems, he said. Parcels per family grew increasingly smaller, making it difficult for families to survive.

To correct this problem, he said, the government put public land up for sale.

''You could buy an 80-acre farm for $100,'' he said.

This started a rapid migration westward, particularly to the lands along Vermilion Bayou. Within a short period of time, both sides of the Vermilion were completely in the hands of Acadians, then beginning to be called Cajuns.

The 1990 U.S. census established Vermilion Parish as the most Cajun place in America by capita based on numbers of descendants of Acadian refugees and speakers of French.