Cajun Crawfish Pie
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Cajun Houses
When the Acadians moved to Louisiana from Acadia (Nova Scotia), they arrived with next to nothing. The governor of Louisiana supplied many of the families with small land grants, seeds, a few cattle, and some machinery to work the fields. With these few supplies, the Cajuns had to begin a new life in a land that was completely unfamiliar to them. Naturally, one of the first things that they needed were houses. Since the land was wild and untamed, and they had so much to do, the earliest Cajun houses were built with the assistance of the local Indians in Louisiana. These houses were really just temporary huts, but they worked fairly well at keeping the rain off of their heads.
Around 1773, the first permanent houses were built in Acadiana. The Cajuns used a style of housing that they had known in Acadia (Poteaux-en-terre), but this housing would not work so well in Louisiana. For one thing, the walls and roofs were designed to keep the home warm in the cold Nova Scotia climate, but it turned the Cajun houses into infernos in the Louisiana heat. Secondly, everything rots quickly in South Louisiana. The poles that they planted into the ground quickly rotted from the water and termites that thrive here. The Acadians simply needed a better style of housing that was more suited to the local conditions.
By 1790 the Cajuns learned that their housing styles from Acadia were not going to work. They soon designed a housing style and structure that would work in the hot Gulf Coast environment- the Cajun or Acadian house. To construct these homes, they would call on the help of all of their neighbors to raise it. the principal material used in it was cypress wood, which was resistant to the termites and water. Another great advantage to using cypress wood was that the trees were literally everywhere in South Louisiana. To help these houses last longer, the Cajuns also learned to raise them about two feet off of the ground by placing them on cypress blocks. The walls were insulated by a mixture of clay and Spanish moss, which was excellent at insulating the home. The walls on the outside were also covered with cypress planks which helped to protect the structure from the constant rain. Each wall typically had two windows on it, but glass was not used. Most Acadian houses also had a very tall, steep pitched roof. While the earlier houses were always just one room, the expansion into multiple rooms slowly rose into the 19th century.
One of the great treats of driving through Acadiana is visiting the Acadian or Cajun houses that still dot the landscape. If you do a google search for "acadian house" you can see many fine examples and places to visit them.