Rooted in Liberté

Excerpt from Rooted in Liberté

A rogue named La Liberté lent his name to this waterway which has been traveled by Native Americans, funeral processions, Santa Claus and alligators. Please join me as I paddle you up the bayou for a glimpse of life in Bonfouca, both past and present. To your left is the west side, and to your right is the east side of Bayou Liberty. Be quiet a moment, look around, breath the clean, moist air, and take a moment to listen to the bullfrogs croak and the insects build to a crescendo. Until the 1820's, it was the only passage into this isolated and protected place. A boat was the only method of transportation up, down or across the slow bayou, whether you needed groceries or were carrying the deceased from St. Genevieve's Chapel to Dubuisson Cemetery a mile away. I will stop at the cemetery and describe our version of a jazz funeral and show you the inscriptions in French on the headstones. Everywhere we look is another story, or another perfect photo shot, so relax and get comfortable. Before we shove off, though, there are a few things you will find interesting that will set the tone for our trip.

Prior to my research for this book, like so many locals, I knew the community of Bonfouca as an enchanting, serene landscape teeming with wildlife, delicate spider lilies, palmettos, fragrant magnolias, cypress trees, and magnificent oaks laced with Spanish moss. For thirty years I have painted, photographed, and mentally etched this lush scene into my soul. I sensed the past dripping from the ancient oaks, and rising from the shell middens, but little did I know that these stories of famous and infamous characters would be so fascinating. I knew that the people who made up this unique community were a diverse group of Native American, European, African, Caribbean, American, and a special blend of Creoles. However, I did not understand the tenacity of their ties to this region until I began to interview with them. While exploring plantation homes, Creole cottages and modern designs, you will learn the stories these inhabitants shared with me about their current and past way of life.

From its panoramic opening to Lake Ponchartrain, to the shaded, overhung upper reaches of the bayou there were numerous rendezvous between Native Americans, French and Spanish explorers and entrepreneurs. Of course, these rendezvous soon included the free and enslaved people of color and then the English and American newcomers. Schooners built here brought the Chahtas to sell their baskets, herbs and wares to Bayou St. John and the French Quarter. The clay in these very banks helped men like the illustrious brick-maker Francois Cousin rebuild The Big Easy after the great fires of 1788 and 1794. It is frequently boasted that his superior bricks, thanks to the knowledge of the Chahtas, are in the St. Louis Cathedral. The clay was dug from the pond on my family's Bayou Liberty home that he once owned. Politicians and aristocrats from New Orleans, including Henry Clay, sought solace and refuge here during times of conflict and disease. Freed slaves hid residents from union soldiers who brought their boats up the bayou. During the Yellow Fever epidemic many sought "the treatment" from the ozone woods and artesian water, as they escaped the big city.

These beautiful wetlands inspired "The Bards of Bonfouca", Father Rouquette and the Cousin brothers. Since that time, visual, musical and literary artists have continuously been drawn to her charm. The community has pulled together to maintain their traditions like the Pirogue Races, Santa on the Bayou, All Saint's Day, and Jazz on the Bayou, even after a twelve foot storm surge inundated Bayou Liberty as the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed overhead. Now sit back, while I share the history, habitat, and stories that are rooted in Liberté.