In 1604, the French began settling in an an area we now call Nova Scotia. Over the next 150 years they developed a large community of between 12,000 and 18,000 people that became known as Acadians. During this time, there was a conflict between the French and the British and the Acadians decided to take on a position of neutrality. They didn’t see any reason to get involved. But, the Brits being the lovable Brits of the time thought differently. Because the Acadians chose to not get involved, the British decided to push them off of their land, an act referred to as Le Grand Dérangement. Although they were strewn about for a while, the Acadians eventually settled in Louisiana.

Now, what’s Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a poet from Maine got to do with this? Nothing, yet. It wasn’t until a couple hundred years after the Acadian exile that he heard the story about an Acadian couple who were separated on their wedding day, by the Brits. The woman spent years looking for her husband-to-be. Whether or not she found him is unknown – at least to me.

This story inspired Longfellow to begin writing a poem. In 1845 he began writing Evangeline, an epic poem that portrayed the exile, and the woman’s quest to find her fiance’. Although the details of the poem are fictitious, the overall theme is fitting.

“As was his poetic practice, once Longfellow had briefed himself on the factual background, he used his material with a very free hand. He was a bard, not a historian; what mattered was the basic human truth of his story, not its particulars.” – Charles Calhoun

The poem become a sensation. Within 10 years it had been translated into more than 10 languages, and there are a couple of offshoot movies from the 1920’s that are also available. Ultimately, this helped develop a bit of tourism for the area of Louisiana that we refer to as the Cajun Heartland, or the Cajun Prairie. The Evangeline Oak, featured in Acadian Reminiscences – The True Story Of Evangeline, a popular offshoot of the original poem, is one of the historic landmarks of the area. Evangeline Parish, is an area that is as Cajun as Cajun can get. Also, the Evangeline Statue in St. Martinville is another famous landmark that dates back to Longfellow’s poem.

In closing, we say thank you to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a poet from Maine, in helping put our wonderful little Louisiana Acadian (Cajun) community on the map.

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