Carnival in Louisiana by Brian J. Costello

Author:Brian J. Costello
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2017-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

11

Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes

Deep in the heart of bayou country, near the Gulf of Mexico, the parishes of Terrebonne and Lafourche have extensive Carnival calendars that attract locals and visitors alike. Every year, the parades in Houma, Thibodaux, and surrounding communities consist of New Orleans–fabricated floats interspersed with marching bands and drill and dance units that help amp the spirit.

Paraders and spectators in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes revel in their Creole, Acadian French, and Native American heritages of merrymaking and pride themselves on the exchange of exceptionally large quantities of souvenir throws. Maskers aboard the ten floats of King Sucrose’s 1901 parade through Thibodaux tossed candies in profusion, and the parades of Ti Can Duplantis, rolling from Bayou Cane to Houma in the early 1900s, featured the throwing of sweetened popcorn balls. A 2016 preview of the Krewe of Hercules parade, largest in the two-parish area, indicates, obviously with some degree of hyperbole, the emphasis on numbers of floats and throws: “This year the krewe presents 35 double-decker floats carrying 750 revelers bombing crowds with millions of throws.”1

Houma

The city of Houma, seat of Terrebonne Parish, features nine large parades and several elegant balls, and bills itself as host of the most extensive Carnival calendar outside Greater New Orleans. The town’s earliest-known Mardi Gras parade rolled in 1911 and was led by banker Joseph A. Robichaux, who reigned as “King Bivalve” in honor of the local oyster industry.

Three years later, Filican “Ti Can” Duplantis, a Bayou Cane sugarcane farmer, organized the Bayou Cane Carnival Association. Nearly every year from 1914 through 1930, Duplantis and friends transformed cane carts and hay wagons into floats and paraded through the Bayou Cane settlement on Bayou Terrebonne and often extended their route three miles down the bayou into the town of Houma.

The lengthy Bayou Cane parades are remembered for horse- and oxen-drawn floats decorated in cane reeds, palmetto, moss, and wildflowers, plus the appearance of a trained goat, monkeys, and other small animals in cages. Mountains of sweetened popcorn balls made by Madame Duplantis were tossed to spectators from a two-wheel cart drawn by Duplantis’ own bull, Veidel. The 1924 parade featured twenty-five floats led by “King Boeuf,” as Bayou Cane’s live boeuf gras calf was known. In 1926, the Houma Courier estimated that 100 Bayou Cane “young people” belonged to the Carnival Association and that their parade attracted some 5,000–6,000 spectators from a two-parish area (Terrebonne and Lafourche) each year.

The spirit of the Bayou Cane Carnival parades spread down Bayou Terrebonne among the townspeople of Houma, and shortly after Ti Can Duplantis’ 1924 festivities, the Houma Carnival Club was organized with the purpose of staging a “gorgeous” ten-float, New Orleans–quality parade. These preparations manifested themselves on Mardi Gras 1925 in the Rex parade led through the streets of Houma by King Bivalve. Houma’s memorable 1926 celebration featured four parades. “Ti Can” Duplantis led his Bayou Cane Carnival Association three times from Bayou Cane into Houma—“a little more elaborate and gorgeous each succeeding day,” according

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.