Cane River Creole

East Texas practices clear cutting. "This is heavy lumber country," said Andy, "and they DO reseed, probably on a 50-year cycle." Loblolly pine, in demand because it grows so straight and tall and fast, has almost no lower branchesas it gets older. The cut areas, sandy soil churned and devoid or still studded with black stumps, stood out in ugly contrast. A buffer along the road of about 50 feet showed how tall the trees grow naturally.
We crossed into Louisiana around 9 a.m. Most everyone else slept late. Even the roadside churches were still quiet. Only a few farms interrupted the scenery. "There's probably a lot more money in trees," said Andy, "even if you wait 50 years for the next harvest. It's probably also just too expensive to clear the land for farming and it may be too damp. Certain crops would rot from too much moisture. But I'll give Louisiana one thing--the roads are a lot cleaner, and we've only come about ten miles into the state."
We turned onto Route #28. "There's a big difference in speed limits here," said Andy. The divided highway posted a 55 m.p.h. limit. "This would be at least 70 m.p.h., maybe 80, in Texas." Easy way for the unwary to earn a speeding ticket.
Route #119 needed some serious repairing, but the rolling terrain, heavily wooded, offered a pleasant, livable environment. "It's considerably cleaner with much better homes in the same type of climate as East Texas," said Andy. I agreed.
Thanks to predictions for an ice storm in Arkansas, we changed plans to drive north and spent the day at Cane River Creole National Historical Park, two cotton plantations that represent a continuum of history throughout three centuries and show a culture nurtured by French and Spanish colonial ways, steeped in Africanisms and enriched by American Indian contact.

Magnolia Plantation, established by Ambrose LeComte II and his wife Julia Buard LeComte, included more than 6,000 acres by 1860, with 275 enslaved persons cultivating and harvesting 2,240 acres of cotton and corn. The workers lived in 70 cabins, 24 of which were unusual brick two-room structures for two families each before the Civil War. Eight of them, converted to one-family structures for tenant farmers after the war, still survived. At the plantation store, Ranger Catherine explained how freed slaves were kept in economic bondage after the Civil War. She showed us the store currency. Each plantation store had its own paper money. Share croppers, paid in the plantation currency, had to purchase all goods at the plantation store. It bound some workers to the land through personal debt.

"I never knew that," said Andy.

I echoed his amazement. The store reinforced the sense of community as the local gathering site, but what a means of economic slavery it instituted and controlled. Slavery here certainly didn't end with emancipation

Here too we visited the slave hospital and the gin barn, where cotton was cleaned and compressed into 400-500 pound bales. In addition, Magnolia featured a blacksmith shop, one of the most important buildings on the plantation, to forge nails and hardware for other construction, and the pigeonnier, parapets that flanked the main house, to raise pigeons. This elegant part of the creole landscape emphasized the wealth of the landowner, many of whom relished squab, and the pigeon droppings were used as fertilizer in the garden.

At Oakland Plantation, originally named Bermuda, Ranger Jo Ann treated us to an hour-long private tour of the house, founded by Jean Pierre Emanuel Prud'homme. The French aristocrat began farming the area in 1785, and received a Spanish land grant in 1789. Eight generations of his French creole family worked on the land, keeping the physical complex intact for two centuries. The live oaks in the front yard, draped with resurrection ferns, attested to the longevity of care.
Andy said, "I wouldn't mind being overseer on this property." He even tried the rocking chair on the front porch of the overseer's house.

Jean Pierre's first cash crops were tobacco and indigo, but by the 1800's, the Prud'hommes were the first family west of the Mississippi River to farm cotton on a large scale. Ranger Jo Ann pointed out original furniture from the 1700's, as she described the lifestyles of land owner and slave in this raised creole "cottage."

We saw the bottle garden out front with glass beer and wine bottles to frame the beds of flowers and the live oak allee to draft breezes from the Cane River toward the main house. In addition, Ranger Jo Ann pointed out trap doors in the house where trusted slaves had direct access for family needs. Outbuildings, which we toured on our own, included a wash house, where a laundress in the 1940's earned $4.00 a month; a corn crib with gutters that collected crib roof rain water in a 16-foot deep cistern, that held 4,804 gallons for watering stock; an outhouse with four seats, including a baby potty seat; a slave (sharecropper/ tenant farmer) residence occupied until the 1970's; and the plantation store, open after the Civil War and selling supplies to sharecroppers and tenant farmers until 1983.

A fascinating look at the culture and heritage of the Deep South, the historic park gave us a glimpse of plantation history in Louisiana.

On the road north toward Shreveport, we stopped in Natchitoches, the oldest town of the Louisiana Purchase. Quiet, classy and very French in architecture and heritage, this town with its wrought iron balconies in front of shops and restaurants faces lovely Cane River Lake. What a beautiful place to live in the winter!