Two Cultures, One Harvest

Only in the heart of Louisiana’s Cajun Harvest Country will you find a culture as rich and longstanding as Germany’s so intricately intertwined with that of Acadie—where sauerkraut gets generously dosed with cayenne and it can be difficult to tell bratwurst from boudin. 

Acadia Parish has long benefited from the traditions of its immigrant settlers of both cultures and their descendants, who came to the fertile “Cajun prairie” as a refuge and made it a home. 

The Acadians settled the area first in the late 18th century, after being exiled by the British from their home in Nova Scotia and discovering Louisiana to be friendly to French-speaking outsiders. On the remote prairie, they farmed cattle, corn, and cotton, and built their homes simply, using bousillage (see this traditional building method for yourself at Le Vieux Presbytere, a circa-1887 building once used to house Catholic priests in Church Point). Largely isolated from other communities, their Catholic, French Acadian culture sustained itself and came to shape the region’s cuisine, music, and traditions. 

The Germans arrived a little more than a century later, seeing rich potential for agriculture in this rural Acadian commune, and freedom to practice their religion in the wake of Chancellor Otto von Bismark’s Kulturkampf—the passing of various discriminatory laws targeting Catholics in their native Germany. The colony grew into the 19th century, establishing the area’s now-famous rice industry as they went. Visitors can learn more about this history, and the local families who shaped it, at the Roberts Cove German Heritage Museum in Rayne—which displays artifacts ranging from antique farm tools to maps to beer steins. 

Both these distinct cultures bore the brunt of the nation’s 20th century Americanization initiatives, facing pressure in educational settings to embrace an English-speaking, American identity. The resulting language loss and cultural amnesia sparked vibrant preservation movements still at work today in Acadia Parish, which strive to celebrate the heritage of the area’s ancestors through language revitalization and cultural events like traditional dancing at the Cajun Country Lounge & Dancehall and the annual Robert’s Cove Germanfest. 

If you look with a keen eye, you can still see the fascinating ways these cultures have come together to create something altogether new—such as at the International Rice Festival, where the agricultural ingenuity of German settlers is celebrated at the harvest of a crop that has, as a result, come to be an indispensable ingredient in Cajun dishes like gumbo, étouffée, and rice and gravy. 

Learn more about the vibrant culture of Acadia Parish at acadiatourism.com.