 | Agriculture was the mainstay of Louisiana's economy. Cash crops included cotton, sugar cane, rice, sweet potatoes and tobacco. Most of these crops were raised on vast slave-holding plantations owned by wealthy Creoles and families of English descent from the mid-eastern seaboard. By various estimates, between ½ and But not all plantations were large and slave-holding. Most of the state's farmers were yeomen working small, rural farms that produced barely enough to clothe and feed a family. These people found their roots in Louisiana's "cultural gumbo," which at the Civil War's outbreak included the "Upland South" North Louisiana pioneers, other American settlers, Native Americans, Acadians and the enslaved peoples of the region. |
Scots-Irish and German settlers from South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee, known as the "Upland South" pioneers, established homesteads in Louisiana as early as the 1790's. "Going west," they played an important role in settling the area north of Lake Pontchartrain, commonly referred to as the "Florida Parishes," and later North Louisiana.
These mostly Protestant settler, worked the land and led simple lives. Their culture reflects this ethic. They brought Louisiana the rustic "British pen," style house, which is a single square or nearly square room, usually a log cabin about 16 feet square. This design became the basis for a two-room house referred to as a "dogtrot." Examples of these houses can be found in Lincoln and Claiborne parishes in North Louisiana and at Mile Branch Settlement located in Washington Parish, one of the Florida Parishes.
NATIVE AMERICANS
Tunica-Biloxi, Chitimacha and Choctaw tribes were Louisiana's largest and most significant tribes at the time of the Civil War. They lived near swamps, marshes and in pine woods-land considered undesirable by the planters and farmers who took over the rich alluvial bottomlands for their crops.
The tribes were active traders. Silver ornaments, furs, baskets, wild honey, beads and tomahawks, as well as herbal medicines were eagerly sought by American and European traders and merchants, and through this exchange, the Indians received lead, powder, axes, firearms and European-style clothing.
ACADIANS
From Louisiana's meandering Gulf Coast, north to the Atchafalaya Swamp, up Bayou Lafourche to Bayou Teche- the Acadians shaped their lives and futures on these lands. Known today as the "Cajuns," they migrated to Louisiana after the British expelled them from Nova Scotia in the 1750's. To this day, they live in towns with French names: Abbeville, Lafayette, St. Martinville, Thibodaux, Grosse Tete, Basile and Gueydan.
Many Cajuns were farmers and planters and, in 1860, almost half the slave-holding planters in South Louisiana were Cajun. Other Cajuns embraced a more rustic life, living as trappers, fishermen and hunters, along the swamps and bayous. Most waterways were easily navigable by pirogues or steamboat vessels.
During the Civil War, Cajun Country's waterways were an important means for transporting supplies and troops to training camps and eastern fronts. Before the union forces captured Baton Rouge, Louisiana's state capital was moved to Opelousas in Cajun Country.