C’est Vrai: Of fish traps and spring finery

There has been an admirable effort in recent years to clean up Bayou Teche and other south Louisiana waterways and to protect the oaks that are such a magnificent part of our scenery. We generally attribute it to a new awareness of our environment and of its fragility.
But the impulse to beautify bayous has long been with us. When newspaperman Daniel Dennett took a tour of the Teche in January 1851, he noted that “the beauties of the Teche everyone admires who visits the parish, and the Atchafalaya between the mouth of the Teche and Berwick’s Bay is hardly less beautiful, though not so highly praised. … The general appearance of the plantations and scenery on the whole route is highly pleasing.”
But, he said, “amidst all this profusion of beauty and loveliness there is a great call for improvement.”
Much of the natural beauty of the Teche was obscured by fish traps “ugly enough to scare all the fish from its banks,” he said. Also,” the eye catches the remains of [fallen oaks] lying in the water’s edge, with their huge trunks imbedded in the mud, and their limbs projecting out in a threatening attitude.”
The fish traps “and other images of deformity” should be “torn from their present resting places, and piled up in heaps and burnt,” he said.
If that were done, “not only would the bayou look far more beautiful, but every man’s plantation that borders on the bayou would wear a more lovely appearance … the general aspect of the whole country would be improved. … [and] our parish will have a fame … beyond that of any other agricultural portion of the United States.”
Taking care of the “venerable oaks that line the margins of our lakes and bayous” was just as important to him as cleaning up the bayou. The trees “ought not to be ruthlessly destroyed,” he said.
In his view oaks could be cut down “when they stand seriously in the way of cultivation.” But when they stand “in pastures, by the highway or by the water side,” they ought to be spared because “they are ornaments of a grand and imposing character.”
The beauty of the Teche country would be unmatched, Dennett said, “with these natural water courses clear, the banks of the lakes and bayous everywhere improved, and the oaks and cypress, and other forest trees, left standing where they are not detrimental to the interests of the planters.”
Nearly 20 years and a Civil War intervened before we find another report by Dennett on an excursion up the Teche. This one was in the early spring instead of the dead of winter, and that apparently made a great deal of difference.
“The Bayou Teche never looked more pleasant than on the evening of our trip,” he wrote in April 1868. “The trees loaded with verdure not a month old, the natural pastures matted with a spring crop of grass, the face of nature lately washed by a refreshing shower, a clear sky, smooth waters and bracing breezes, a gallant steamer and a whole souled captain, rendered the trip extremely agreeable.”
This time he wrote not a word about ugly fish traps or other “images of deformity.”
Just three years after the end of the war, the Teche surely bore the signs of battles fought on its banks and harbored the remains of sunken gunships and other debris. But to Denning, perhaps because of the still fresh memory of wartime scenes, the bayou, dressed up in its springtime finery, now looked simply beautiful.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.