Seventh Installment
Atchafalaya Culture:
Living and Surviving in the Basin

Land to Water to Land
Jim Delahoussaye
Biologist

The basin levee system defines what we think of today as the Atchafalaya basin. It is an artificial demarcation designed by the Corp as a spillway system, it is not a natural basin.
The original basin is about twice the size of what is now between the levees.
(6:47):Other than the physical setting we have the cultural setting designed primarily by the people who lived in the basin. Three books serve as a foundation of what is known from 1973 on—Atchafalaya Basin Swamp Life and Atchafalaya Swamp Life, and Greg Girourd’s Cajun Founders of the Atchafalaya. The Bayou Chene story told of a community that had an existence all its own.
(8:35): Millet Point is a unique situation in which a single group of people lived in one place, all subject to the requirements that the basin exerted on people. They lived on houseboats for almost fifty years.
Houseboat dwelling require a different way of looking at life. Houseboats were structures 30’x15’, divided into three rooms.
The source of the material being presented is from tapings that began in 1974 to the present. The introduction to the community was in 1974 when it was still on the levee. The people are the fourth generation that date back to 1850. These are direct memories from people in an isolated community who could not read or write.
(19:06): The first transitions of the people was from land to water-why: Families drifted apart (children left and parents followed); followed the fish; independence; economic pressure (most moves occurred during depression years); improved living conditions (houseboats better constructed). Where did they make the transition—usually near families so where they could get help with what they needed.
(24:34): Not every place in the basin equally friendly to houseboat communities. The location had to be protected from open water, have trees on which to tie the houseboat. It is uncertain why areas on the east side of the basin (east of Grand Lake) were the locations of the houseboat communities. There were ten sites such sites in the basin the pit (near Morgan City), Bayou Long, Four Mile Bayou, Big Pigeon, Little Pigeon, Williams Canal, Bayou Blue, Keel Boat Pass, Hog Island and Blue Point.
(26:32): First generation of houseboat dwellers moved to houseboats about 1875. By the third generation people had spent some part of their life on land.
The dwelling consisted of three things/units. They were built on barges that measured thirty feet long, fifteen feet wide for the largest. The houseboats were structures that had three rooms with windows, doors on each end and a walk way all around (often without railings). There was a raft like structure called a crib attached to the houseboat, which was built of cottonwood logs since they would float the longest, with a decking on top of the crib. This became the yard when the land was flooded. A push skiff moved the houseboat in the time before the gasoline engines.
(32:58): Basically, the houseboats are all gone. There are some on the back roads around Bayou Long that the cabins have been taken off the barges and put on blocks.
Kerry and Bobby Anslum of Morgan City have access to original cypress sinker logs from their grandfather.
Dr. Chip & Mrs. Patsy Metz of Bayou Vista/Morgan City have restored a houseboat and turned it into a bed and breakfast. It was pulled onto land from Bayou Teche and left on the barge. The interior of the barge was photographed and measured.
(37:36): There were dug out canoes in the basin. Indians made dug out boats by felling a cypress tree, burning the interior of the tree and then scrapping out the burnt part with shells. Everyone had a pirogue; they were the bicycles of the basin. Pirogues, with their limited capacity, gave way to push boats. Push boats/skiffs are obsolete. Using original cypress obtained from the Anslum Brothers, a push boats was constructed from a discarded boat found in Charnton.