How the Crawfish got its name

There is a story displayed on the wall of the River Walk mall in New Orleans titled, “How the Crawfish got its name”. Now this is the kind of stuff everybody needs to know. How you gonna’ beat Uncle Randy, or Grandma Sandy (a little familial bragging there) to maybe one “answer” a night playing “Jeopardy” on TV, if you don’t pick up on this stuff?

If you are familiar with ‘Cajun’ cooking at all you would know that crawfish is a very important and desirable part of their diet? Go to Louisiana and you are sure to find ‘crawfish’ somewhere on the menu. Remember we’re talking Cajun here, not Creole. That’s a different story and one I am not prepared to discuss. Anyway there is a strong connection between Cajuns and crawfish and that’s where the story begins and here it is:

Way back in the 1600 and 1700 hundreds French immigrants settled what became known as Acadia in what is now the Canadian Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, also known as the Maritime Provinces. They were very successful in the ‘New World’ and prospered as both fisherman and farmers. It was this very success that became part of the problem.

Around 1750 and until the 1763 Treaty of Paris, the British and French were in dispute over the ‘New World’; mostly a border dispute regarding the boundary between French Canada and the British American colonies. That was the “Seven Years War” or as we know it “the French and Indian War”. We all know, or should know, the British won. In this conflict it became important for the British to populate the area with loyal British subjects. For the Acadians, therein ‘lay the rub’, they were self sufficient, got along well with the Indians, occupied the best land, and didn’t really need the British, ergo, they had to go! That began the “Great Upheaval”, and the Acadians were forcibly expelled from there homeland. They were returned to France, indentured as farmers in the Colonies, sent to the West Indies, some families were split up, and even some were sold into slavery. But as it happens and legends are made, some made it to Louisiana.

As the Legend goes the Acadians were the best of fisherman and as such had established a very successful relationship with the sea and its life including the Acadians favorite, the lobster. It came to pass that the lobster were very sad to see their friends, the Acadians, leave. They were so sad in fact that some lobster chose to go with them to Louisiana. It was a long and arduous journey for both, but particularly so for the lobster who had short legs and were not use to walking on land. The lobster did prevail but because of the length and difficulty of the journey they had shrunk to a fraction of their former great size. That and they had become known as the fish that ‘crawled’ all the way from Canada to Louisiana, the ‘crawlfish’ or as we know them today, the ‘crawfish’. And that is how the ‘Crawfish’ got its name.

As to the Acadians and how they became ‘Cajuns’? Well, that has to do with aphesis or dropping the leading letter and slurring the rest of the word or………………….. Well maybe it’s that, or maybe it should just be considered another story and one that may be best told by a Mikmiq Indian? Go figure?????

A couple of other minor points: When the Acadians got to French New Orleans and settled it was not long before the French ceded ownership rights of Louisiana to Spain. And just to add insult to injury the Spanish moved the Acadians to another part of the Mississippi, maybe a little deeper into the swamp, I don’t know? But they got over it! They were very badly treated and they got over it! At least they appear to be over it. I don’t hear any ‘hue and cry’! Maybe there’s something for other peoples and cultures to learn there. Ya’ think???