Shane K. Bernard

This book is divided into two different parts: Part 1, the history of the Teche (p. 1-137), and Part 2 (p. 138-198), the author's adventure down the 125 mile Teche in a canoe with three others, a 2 day journey (47.5 hours), taken over a period of about 1-1/2 years.

I am not personally familiar with this particular area, and so find this a little dry reading, but very informative. This historian likes stats and numbers, not so exciting to read, but makes for an accurate read. He has 37 pages of notes, an impressive list of references for further research and/or reading. It's interesting to see how different historians pick up different tidbits of history that they themselves find interesting. Here's what I found interesting:

Chapter 4, The Teche During Wartime, was very interesting writing on Civil War battles that took place on the Teche between 1863 and 1865: the Battle of Fort Bisland (April 12-12, 1863), the Battle of Irish Bend (April 14, 1863)...near Franlkin, and the Skirmish at Nelson's Canal...just below, between New Iberia and Jeanerette. Looks like that's as far as the Union made it up the bayou by boat. This was focused writing that you will not see in any other history book on the Civil War because it was considered such a small battle in the whole scheme of the war. Of course, the Unions marched on through New Iberia, and through Vermillionville (now Lafayette), through Breaux Bridge to Arnaudeville where they saw where the Rebels had burned the four steamboats they had been seeking. They burned them because that was as far up the bayou they could go. It was too shallow. The rebels actually took over the southern part of the Teche again, but this time Union soldiers came back with a sense of lawlessness, burning everything in sight, stealing valuables from the women, ravishing the colored women in front of the white women and children, taking every cow, chicken pig, every ounce of food, destroying their fields of sugarcane, and all their now freed colored people. The line of goods taken was said to be over 8 miles long.

Chapter 5, Hard Times on the Bayou, provides the years of yellow fever epidemics in the Teche Country after the Civil War: 1867, 1878, 1897, 1898, and last was in 1905, but no personal accounts of what it was like. (p. 101) Maybe I can place some of my ancestors in these eras and do a little more research.

Then there were also the floods: 1867, 1874, and the worst local disaster...the flood of 1882. Forty houses in Loreauville floated away. There was no land visible from the Teche to Grand Lake, all from Midwest rains that spilled into the Mississippi that spilled over into Teche Country. But, then came the Flood of 1927 that would prove most destructive. Nearly the whole Teche Country was underwater....90,000 displaced citizens seeking temporary refuge. Refuge camps sprang up, but being new and inexperienced, typhoid also sprang up (p. 102-107). Very interesting! Which of my ancestors would have lived there in 1927?

The government would try to prevent such future flooding by changing the course of the Teche by first cleaning out the Civil War relics sunk in the bayou (16 wrecks, 82 bridge pilings, 21 "dangerous snags", 38 over-hanging trees, 106 limbs, and a raft of 191 sunken large live oak logs...p. 113), then building 2 locks and damns above St. Martinville and 1 below, making it part of the commercial traffic to New Orleans. At that time, there was not even enough water in the Upper Teche for a pirogue to travel through.

Morgan's Railroad and Texas Railroad reached New Iberia by 1879. What ancestors would have lived there at this time? The railroad transport took over within six years even at higher prices. The railroad could travel 87 miles on tracks from Pattersonville to New Orleans in under 5 hours, when it took steamboats over 5 days to manuever through 300 miles of sometimes treacherous waterways. (p. 115)

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ANCESTRAL CONNECTIONS TO BAYOU TECHE:

Just learned and realized that Leo Adam's ancestor, Bernard de Galvez, governor over then Spanish Louisiana territory in 1783, awarded land to my Acadian ancestors. Previous governor was Luis de Unzaga. So, need to refresh my memory of when exactly my Broussard ancestor was awarded land along the Bayou Teche. (p. 35)

Also, learned that my Acadian ancestors broke Dauterive's contract to raise their cattle for them and to settle on their land in return. They soon split and took their gifts of cattle with them and claimed their own pieces of land lower down on the Bayou Teche near Fausse Point, which was probably the reason Galvez determined the need to award more land to the Acadians which would help in defending the Teche Country from the encroaching British.

P. 160: Fausse Pointe, properly pronounced - FAWS PWANT… (plus d'informations)