In an extraordinary feat of research and intrepid historical navigation, Carl A. Brasseaux and Keith P. Fontenot serve as guides through the labyrinthian and often harrowing world of Louisiana bayou steamboat journeys of the mid to late nineteenth century. The bayou country's steamboat saga mirrors in microcosm the tale of America's most colorful -- and most highly romanticized -- transportation era. But Brasseaux and Fontenot brace readers with a boldly revisionist picture of the opulent Mississippi River floating palaces: stripped-down, utilitarian freight-haulers belching smoke from twin stacks, churning through shallow swamps and narrow tributary streams, and encountering such hazards as shoals, sawyers, stumps, highwater and dry-bed seasons, and the remains of vessels claimed by those treacheries. For decades, steamboats transported goods, passengers, and mail between New Orleans and south Louisiana's vibrant interior agricultural region, bearing testimony to the resourcefulness, ingenuity, and tenacity of crews in conquering the challenges posed by a forbidding environment. Brasseaux and Fontenot marshaled a monumental array of information, including sources long-buried in courthouses, private collections, and the records of the Army Corps of Engineers. They offer data on some five hundred steamboats, keelboats, and barges known to have operated in the bayou country. This book is the first major study of a fascinating slice of the steamboat industry, showcasing a trade critically important to New Orleans's prosperity but largely forgotten in southern historiography until now. Encompassing economic, social, transportation, and environmental history, it captures the period just before the iron horse emerged as America's undisputed master of inland conveyance.

Steamboats on Louisiana's Bayous: A History and Directory

History

Brasseaux, Carl A.

Fontenot, Keith P.

Americas

LSU Press

The Creoles of Color rightfully count themselves among South Louisiana's first families, yet their contributions to the region have been almost completely ignored by historians, demographers, sociologists, and anthropologists. The oversight stems largely from the special status of the Creoles of Color community in rural Louisiana's multitiered society. This book constitutes the first serious historical examination of a distinctive multiracial society and its notable contributions to the Pelican State's development. In recounting the sometimes turbulent history of these fascinating people, the authors have mined exhaustively the region's primary source records. The early Creoles of Color are portrayed as a dynamic component of the region's economy. From the earliest days of settlement and establishment in the prairie regions, the Creoles of Color were seeking prosperity. They received a greater degree of help than perhaps other free blacks. Concerned by what others thought about them, they were a people driven constantly to succeed. This trait proved not to be lost on their progeny. In antebellum Louisiana's three-tiered society - whites, free people of color, and slaves - many struggled to be an integral part of the community. After the Civil War, however, Creoles of Color were denied a separate status. To maintain a semblance of respect and position among the increasing population and to have sufficient lands for agriculture, they found it necessary at times to relocate. The enclaves they developed kept them isolated and distinct. Cherishing wholesome family life and a deep respect for hard work, their religion, and their property, they became clannish, moving out of the mainstream. For much of their existence, as this book shows, they remained a people distinct, isolated, and apart.

Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country

Oubre, Claude F.

Univ Pr of Mississippi

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