Photo by Sam Irwin

October 2011. L'Ordre des Chevaliers de la Prairie Cadjine: And thanks to these knights of the Cajun Prairie, chivalry is far from dead.

The chivalric tradition is alive and well in Ville Platte, Louisiana.  There, in that rural agricultural town, you can still find a somewhat authentic medieval knight. It doesn’t matter that he is dressed in sports sunglasses and a faux suit of chainmail, or that the point of his helmet is awry; each competitor is a true knight pledged to do great things.

Though Ville Platte is best known for zydeco, gumbo and fais do-do, few know that the town preserves a tradition of medieval jousting dating back to the Norman Conquest. Yep, that’s more than a thousand years.

For it is in Ville Platte where young men, the pride of the Cajun prairie, do battle against a figurative foe (The Seven Enemies of Cotton) in an equestrian competition called Le Tournoi (the tournament). Le Tournoi (roughly pronounced toourn-wa) involves a horse, a rider, a lance and seven three-inch iron rings suspended from poles. The rider must gallop the horse at a high rate of speed on a semi-circular track and spear each of the suspended rings to score a perfect round.

The annual competition is held in conjunction with the Ville Platte Cotton Festival. When cotton was king in Evangeline Parish, field hands were always needed. Anyone big enough to carry a cotton sack could make a few dollars handpicking the fields.

Soybean and rice are the primary crops of the region now, and the only cotton plants you’ll find in the city are ornamental. Still, we’re talking about tradition and Le Tournoi is tied to the Cotton Festival, let’s hope in perpetuity.

The boll weevil and the bollworm, as well as flood, drought, silk, rayon and nylon were the seven enemies of cotton. What better way to kill the enemies than to spear them with an ancient lance? It’s positively primeval.

The twenty qualifying competitors are the main attraction of the Cotton Festival Parade. Riding two by two, they’re clad in silver tunics meant to resemble a medieval armor. The fabric, however, suspiciously looks like it’s made of synthetic fiber, even perhaps that mortal enemy of cotton—rayon. The irony of wearing a foe of cotton is apparently lost on the knights. It doesn’t matter anyway. The knights are anxious to reach the field of battle, otherwise known as the Ville Platte Industrial Park. There, seven posts, each dangling a ring that represents one of cotton’s enemies, mark the circular track.

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