Jim Bradshaw
Despite the impression given by John Wayne and his compadres in scores of Western movies, there is justification for saying that the American cattle industry was born in south Louisiana, or at least substantially nurtured here.
Cattle were running wild on the prairies of southwest Louisiana by the time the Acadians arrived in 1765. The Avoyelles Indians introduced longhorn cattle onto the Louisiana prairies early on. Some of the first European settlers brought in other cattle purchased from the Comanches to the west. So even before their more famous brethren in Texas and farther west began making storied cattle drives, cowboys were regularly moving herds from the prairies and marshlands of south Louisiana to market in New Orleans.
At first, only a handful of men worked these mostly wild cattle, but that was enough for Louisiana’s governors to notice—and was a good part of the reason that the Acadians were sent to the Poste des Attakapas, St. Martinville today.
Charles-Philippe Aubry, who was acting governor of Louisiana in 1765, when the Acadians got here, had already noticed that south Louisiana’s grass-filled prairies were a great place to raise cattle, at a time when beef was vitally needed to help feed New Orleans.
A good number of the Acadians who made their way to New Orleans about that time had lived in the Chignecto region of old Acadie, and had herded livestock in lands reclaimed from salt marshes there. They knew about cattle and could fill a need for the colony. It was a perfect match. The problem was how to get these penniless people started in the cattle business.
That was resolved on April 4, 1765, when eight Acadian leaders agreed essentially to sharecrop cattle for Antoine Bernard Dauterive, a retired French military officer who had come from the Mobile area and established large landholdings in the Teche region. He agreed to furnish land, five cows with calves, and a bull to Acadian families for six consecutive years. If any of the cattle died during the first year, he would replace them. After that, the Acadians were on their own. At the end of six years, the Acadians were to “return the same number of cows and calves, of the same age and kind that they had received initially” and “the remaining cattle and their increase surviving at the time” was to be divided equally between Dauterive and the Acadians.
After six years Dauterive would get back all of the cattle he had given the Acadians plus half of any increase to the herd. The Acadians kept the other half of the increased herd and that would be their breeding stock for the future.
The experiment worked. In 1773, Amand and Pierre Broussard, helped by eight or nine drovers, began moving small herds of cattle from the prairies to New Orleans. Following the Collet Trail along Bayou Teche and the natural levees of Black Bayou, the cowboys guided herds of 100 to 150 head to market. By 1781, the region was supplying 150 head of cattle to New Orleans each month. By the 1800s, cattle were big business.
Writer Henry Brackenridge reported in 1814: “The number of cattle composing the herds which some of the wealthier possess would in other parts of the United States be considered incredible; there are several who market from one to two thousand calves a year. The cattle driven to New Orleans for sale bring fifteen to twenty dollars a head.”
Geographer William Darby wrote of the prairies in the Opelousas district in 1816, “You behold those vast herds of cattle which afford subsistence to the natives, and the inhabitants of the city of New Orleans. It is certainly one of the most agreeable views in nature, to behold from a point of elevation thousands of horses and cows, of all sizes, scattered over the interminable mead, intermingled in wild confusion.”
The industry continued to grow during the 1800s, so much so that in 1897, Aladin Vincent, who owned thousands of acres in Calcasieu Parish, reported that “the cattle business has been magnificent” and that at least 15,000 head of cattle were shipped that year alone from that parish alone.
The other misconception generated by John Wayne and his trail-driving kin is that all of the cowboys were white. Today’s modern trail rides are just one reminder of the long and rich tradition of black cowboys on the southwest Louisiana prairies. In fact, south Louisiana’s long history of raising, herding, and driving cattle is also one of the primary drivers of the area’s widespread love for horses and horsemanship in all its forms.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.