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Hunting and Fishing in Barataria Swamps and Uncanny Pirogues Game in Plenty niiil Only to B iienclieii in Bonts YVlilch Mere Trifles Upset When my friend Tony La Font of Isle Caminadn wants a new boat to go after the French ducks an ilos gris back in the deep swamp of the floatin prairies where the foot of no man may tread anc no ordinary craft can navigate he takes his a and chops one out of a handy tree just as hi father did and his other hardy forbears reachin back to the days when the pirates of Jean La Fitfc hewed them the same indispensable pirogues witl which they stole up the cypress jungles of Bara taria to traffic in illicit goods with the merchant of the New Orleans of ISOH ISOHA A Cajun of the Louisiana Gulf coast without hi pirogue would feel as helpless as any commute would if tlie 720 local train was strikebound lit couldnt get off his isle to run his trapllnc or fol ¬ low a terrapin trail or sound out the run of the shrimp or paddle doyn tlie bayou to tlie trade store or to his neighbors for gossip or any other of the practical affairs of living Within twentyoighl hours travel from Chicago there are shy clannisli families who live under palm thatches and whc depend in large part not only for locomotion but also livelihood upon a water craft not only the most ancient but one of the prettiest and most practical in the world a hollow tree trunk unsinkable un ¬ breakable in any ordinary usage light enough to be swung on a trappers back and dragged where solid footing is to be had and shallow enough to skim over the bottomless mire of the tidal flats and eternallyflooded forests of Baratnria BaratnriaTony Tony doesnt consult a soul when he wants a new duck boat he sharpens up his ax and selects his cypress log and sometimes if lie doesnt find one of the right seasoning and grain in his native forest he will disappear northward for a few days and then one of the towsteamboats that fetch the rafts across Lake Salvador to the mills along the Mis ¬ sissippi will 10 short a nice stick of timber And Tony will reappear innocently again down on his south coast island wjth his pirogue log neatly wedged in halves reaily for his skillful shaping In three days no lumberman would ever recognize that Xypress length in the two beautifully molded thinly carved canoes which lie on the shell beach before Tonys palmroofed camp facing the gulf gulfPLENTY PLENTY OF LOGS FbR PIROGUES PIROGUESNom Nom tie Dieu The best logs will go adrift and the bayou tides will slip them down the coast When I asked Tony La Font one day as I sat under his hurricanetorn shed at La Caminada where lie got his big log to build me a duck boat there sixty miles from the nearest cypress swamp he shrugged and said saidI I catch him me meWell Well how do you build em emI I chop him mo moWell Well how do you trim em up so fine that a fellow has to have his hair parted just right to keep em balanced as I know because Ive had pirogues buck me out four times when I readied for my pipe incautiously or sneezed or tried to look over my shoulder suddenly at a duck getting out of the cane caneMe Me I loan know fo nuttin I chop him and chop him and smooth him wif my handadze Msieu Wen I get him right lie done doneI I gave up then and watched the artist lie chopped and hacked leisurely away a day and a half with his old ax and handadze and when he was through he gave me a needlelike little boat that weighed sixtyfour pounds was thirteen feet long and twentytwo inches wide and drew less than three inches of water with me and my duck stuff in it A famous runnin pirogue it was that I could drag where I couldnt paddle and ride where I couldnt walk and which was as finicky as an opera star Avhen I didnt obey her whims and as steady as an old shoe when I did At that Ive seen the darn thing tip herself upside down while tied peaceably to a dock just to show she couldnt be trusted if she didnt want to toA A runnin pirogue is what the leanshanked men of the deep swamp want just as the Cajuns of the more open waters of the coast islands want a more seaworthy craft and Tony will gnaw the old cypress log Into cither shape without any more measurements than his eye his thumb and a piece of rosean cane give him Tony cant road or write even in the Cajun patois or figure above 5x5 but he can fashion a hull as clean and graceful as any ¬ thing Herreshoff ever designed or Lipton sailed I watched nil one afternoon while ho whacked mine out and the halfInch thickness of the sides hardly varied tlie slightest fraction and tlie bow strength of two inches needed for crashing a pirogue through wrecked forests did not differ from the stern di ¬ mension Tony notched out the spots where he hung the single seat about twothirds of her length aft while continually assuring me that lie didnt know fo nuttin about it but when I crawled into the teetering log it lay as true along the water as if he had weighed and measured me for it My runnin pirogue would not hold two iio passengers thanks I tried to ferry a fellow ashore from a launch in it once and it stopped in midstream trembled slightly and side ¬ slipped us both overboard from no cause whatever except temperament just temperament She wasnt maile for two and she wasnt going to ride two so one wriggle and she was free of the burden Mac and I swam ashore thinking of sharks and sting ¬ rays and accused each other of having had a heavier thought on one side of his head than the other which was sufficient excuse for our craft to MUST BALANCE THOUGHTS IN PIROGUES PIROGUESAnil Anil as for shooting from a runnin pirogue after five seasons paddling poling and grassdrag ¬ ging one across the trembling prarie the isles flottantes of the watery wilderness that stretches westward from the Mississippi passes to the Sabine Kiver I still have enough cautions respect for the uncertain craft to abstain from all save two shoot ¬ ing positions dead ahead over the bow and over the left beam with Ihe body braced to allow for the guns kick Manys the easy shot Ive let go by rather than take the chance of an upset into the Barataria quagmires with not a foot of soil in five miles that would offer safe footing And trying to right and crawl into a capsized sixtyfive pound dugout filled with sucking mud the chilling bot ¬ tomless mud of a Louisiana winter morning is no fun Fellows have gone back to the feeding x nds in the deep swamp and never been heard of since from just such mishaps mishapsButMhats ButMhats where the ducks are and a pirogue is the only means of access through the prairie cane jungles Standing upright in his tiny canoe shov iug with a forked pole against the grass roots a Barafario llnner wlll break Trail Into the mos impenetrable snot snotOn On tlie scclmled little islets and shell chenieres tlie only habitable snots in this lonely region th Cajun families cannot be induced to part witl their best and lightest pirogues When the hunting and trapping season is over they are packed away mider covers of palmetto so that the semitropii summer sun will not crack them and the ordinarj dugouts eighteen or twenty feet long are used stout craft that can even carry a sail In the early summer when the natives hunt terrapin foi the traders gas luggars a youth will put ofl for the swamp prairies witli his three turtlf dogs and sail miles before a light breeze steer ¬ ing the outfit with his paddle over the stern quarter I myself tried this once and a family dispute be ¬ tween two of the mongrel hounds put us all over ¬ board in Bnratnria Bay I kicked the muslin sail free and swam for a shell reef dragging the over ¬ turned canoe behind me and five fine diamond back terrapin went joyously back to tlieir native marshes but tied up in it gunny sack sackThe The two old Manilaman hunters back on tlieii platform camp at Petit CoQuille who watched this disaster shook their heads silently when I waded to the shell reef n fellow who would upset a pirogue under any circumstances ought not to be left unwatched in the Barataria swamps Tlieir brownskinned kids of seven will take a pirogue and paddle it anywhere and up in the more habit ¬ able bayous toward the Mississippi one will find old women paddling to market with a dozen eggs in a basket or a dozen chickens tied to the thwart If the twentymilesperhpur launch of some Yankee reclamation engineer shoots along the old lady will carefully poke about to catch the resultant swell dead bow on and then resume her course muttering maledictions in the Cajun patois Tlie Baratarians have no faith in these ambitious efforts to reclaim tlie salt swamps from the gulf and tliere arc vast tracts today given back to the inuskrats and ducks where thousands of dollars have been wasted in trying to build levees across the sinking prairies prairiesBARATARIANS BARATARIANS AGAINST RECLAMATIONERS RECLAMATIONERSThe The good Gpil gave this land of dying forest and saltcane jungle to tlieir forefathers who followed Pirate La Fitte down into iVarataria think the hardy natives and rpt to raise corn or potatoes SQ they shrug when they see the Yankee dredges trying to ridge up the soft mud wondering just how long it will be ere the Mexican Gulf comes rolling in to flatten everything again below the grassroot levels As for Msieur Tony La Font Jhc West Indian hurricanes do not bother him greatly 1 piles his family bedding cooking pots inuskrat traps and pirogue into his stout luggar and goes drifting inland witli the gale Sometimes the morning after a hurricane finds Msieu LSI Fonts luggar resting on a sea of grass five miles from open water and he then has some months labor iligging a way out but as for the wrecked home back on La Caminada facing the gulf well a few poles and planks and tlie palmettoes cut from the higher chenieres sopn form another domicile Vhy worry about a house when that treacherous bine gulf is alwayspromising a frolic in September and there is no land in all the coast region high enough to reach above the hurricane tides tidesI I was on a relief expedition hurried from New Orleans to Grande Isle after the record hurricane of 191 when the wind hit a clip of 122 miles an hour in bursts and we found the natives of the erstwhile pirates island all safe and sound imidst their battered homes among the oaks that aved them from the rushing waters but the Ju slant clamor was Wherc were theboats2i There wasnt a luggar or a converted gasoline craft left in the shallow anchorage behind the isle and the pirogue runners went searching at once miles find miles northward over the grassy swamps for their bigger craft and discovered most of them safe and sound but in all sorts of exasperating places to retrieve from It was weeks before the islanders ceased sending their hardy young pirogue men into the untraveled tidal lakes and bays for the lost ones onesAnd And as the fishing was ruined for a time and the tiny gardens among the oak groves buried in sand and salt water the islanders had to depend once again on tlieir pirogues The head of the family would iwddie around the marshy inlets seeking tlie mullet schools and once among them lie would stand upright in the little dugout and swing bis castnet after the dinner for the day Give a coast Cajun his black drip coffee and a coubouil lion and he doesnt want any other fare Coffee an onion and a handful of rice and Octo or Leon or Tony with his castnet and pirogue will pick up i living in any spot the gulf storms drifted him himDucks Ducks in the winter terrapin in the spring shrimp Mstnotting in the summer all the minor occupa ¬ tions depend oh his tiny canoe of cypress One of the comical sights I onca saw Was when 1 crept clumsily along a grass trail the walls higher than iiiy head polling a pirogue to a grass hiimmock which was slowly sinking under the weight of three Manilaman kids and four turtle dogs all jelling and barking about a fiveinch diamond back who was too disgusted and startled to dive to safety when the trailers came on him Tlie little grass islet settled clean under the muck finally and there was a hullabaloo getting dogs ind kids back into tlie dugouts wet black with iiiid but successful successfulDees Dees ol turtle Msieu de trade sto he give 3cto and me two dolleh fo decs turtle heh fails failsIleh Ileh yaas smiled Octo who had gone to his tieck in the muck when he couldnt shove his pirogue aver it any longer Diit ol turtle he sho got to slide fast to get away from dees ol turtle dawgs Msieu MsieuIt It took me an hour to pole my pirogue back ver the trail into which these adventurous lads if twelve years had followed looking for terrapin HI the grass luimmocks Once in tlie open water of ay des Islettes they hoisted a flimsy red sail m each of tlieir dugouts and were in camp long jefore I arrived Uiding a swamp pirogue calls or just about the same sense of balance as does id ing a bicycle aiid you only get the same sense f security from experience with them themSCENERY SCENERY EXPERIENCE AND DISASTER DISASTERIt It was after a friend and myself haiKmade a four nonths paddling trip through the south Louisiana iwamps from near the extreme end of the Mis ¬ sissippi delta westward and then up through the tchafalaya lakes through tlie real primeval cypress nngle that I felt cocky enough to tackle a job with ur pirogue that I never finished and couldnt We lad worked the little green log back to tlie coast siands again this being a dugout of slightly more seaworthy build than the ninnin pirogues and Aere in camp on Grand Terre Island just at the Hiss to the gulf where Pirate La Fitte and his fort wfore the war of 1812 when Mac bantered me into irying to cross the pass through tlie breakers that oiled up on the adjacent bars barsIt It was no place for a craft that didnt have three Inches freeboard in the smoothest water but after nspecting the flood tide setting up Barataria Bay figured that the worst that could happen would w to have n collision with one of the twoton lorpolses that were bobbing up and down every few ards and if that came the pirogue aiid I would cling to each other fondly and drift ashore on one of the shell islets inside the bay if I only could ride the craft through the Hirf line lineIf If that was a big If I paddled away from the cove all right leaving Mae smoking on the ruined wall of the fort aiid a couple of Cajim shlrmpers silent before this latest lunacy of us two Yankees It wasnt their Idea of sport nt all as they later remarked And O Id Man Milliet of the light house fit Grand Terre said hed never seen such fool proceedings since Heck was h pup Sitting crosslegged and braced with a paddle dug firmly down in the undertow the little pirogue followed the receding surf out over tlie flats like a dog after a bone and met the first little roller coming in steadily enough though the water danced along even with the gunwales and wet the edge of my kiiees kiieesXow Xow for the big boys I yelled and dug in with the cypress spikes and flotsam of hurricaner my best licks to meet tlie breakers in deeper water over the last bar If I kept my seat through these fellows I thought the swiftflowing halfmile of the pass would be easy So on came another nice wave which rolled smoothly under tlie thirteenfoot log still meeting eni head on and I threw up the paddle balanced the sideways twist and prepared o meet the third roller Well it came along all ight a big one and it grabbed the stern of that pirogue yanked it under a smother of suds and whirled it shoreward with the bow sticking tip at ibout fortyfive degrees I sat tight aiid steady is a man would try on a bucking broncho deter ¬ mined not to be spilled out Sideways and the bow icpt risingstraighter and the stern sinking lower jntil this fool pirogue did a complete back somersault the bar under that comber an awful wallop that took most of my shirt and some of the skin off ny shoulders and when the backwash let me see daylight I certainly did kick through it for home hanging onto the cypress canoe with one linhd Maci was loping along in the shallows trying to snapshot the performance and when I waded ashore around the point in calm water he remarked regret ¬ fully fullySay Say you spoiled a great reputation for us with this stunt After I told these natives that we had poked a trail through the Atchafalaya cypress forests for four months with this log they said we were great becg pirogue runners But since you tried to navigate the gulf with one just now they think were just Yankee bluffers Charles Tenuey Jackson in Outers Recreation
