Cajun country                                       Louisiana

Officially called ' Acadiana ' Cajun country is made up of 22 parishes in Louisiana and is home to the largest French speaking population in the US . Of the 700,000 Acadians in  Louisiana about 45% speak French as a second Language .The area is named from L'Acadie ( now called Nova Scotia ) where French settlers were exiled from by the British in 1755 . The French gave the name Acadie to the maritime section of New France . The origin of the name is still debated. Some contend it is from the Micmac Indian word algatig, meaning a camp or the Micmac word akade, meaning a place where things abound. Others favor the Arcadia from classical Greece .

The ' capital ' of French Louisiana is the city of Lafayette. Cajun country consists of three main districts, south of Lafayette are bayous and swamps of the Atchafalaya Basin where the first Cajuns settled . Northwest of Lafayette is the Cajun prairie made up of rice fields and ranches . Southwest of Lafayette is the ' Cajun Coast ' along the Gulf of Mexico

Cajun country in the 1930s

The Cajuns: A People's Story of Exile and Triumph

 The deportation was a deliberate attempt to destroy a people and wipe out a distinct culture. It failed. The Acadians were too tough and too resilient. Today, there are an estimated 3 million Acadian descendants worldwide..

Cajun Country Guide

Atchafalaya Houseboat

 My Years in the Louisiana Swamp. In the late 1970s, Roland and Calvin Voisin made a decision to live a pleasantly isolated life: they constructed a houseboat in Louisiana's Atchafalaya River Basin Swamp, caught their own food and made money by trading and welding.