By Lynn W. Schonberg

Throughout history, humans have had a mysterious and powerful relationship with Mother Nature.

The Barataria-Terrebonne Estuary complex, positioned between the Atchafalaya River and the Mississippi River, is depicted in bright green in the illustration above. Click for full size image - 156K.

We've lived, and sometimes died, by her hand. We have tried to predict what she will do, change her condition and course, and even wrestle with her actions. But people usually relate to Mother Nature by adapting to her -- humans changing nature, and nature changing humans.

One of America's

"Dancing the Shrimp," a colorful Chinese tradition, was a method for removing the heads and shells from dried shrimp. Click for full size image - 106K.

best demonstrations of this interactive relationship between man and nature can be found in the history and life of the Barataria-Terrebonne Estuary. Wedged between the Mississippi River and the Atchafalaya Swamp in south-central Louisiana, Barataria-Terrebonne encompasses more coastal wetlands than any other estuary in the United States.

Estuaries are important ecosystems, where fresh water drained from the land mixes with ocean or gulf salt water in swamps, marshes, lakes, and bays.

As early as 900 A.D., peoples of Barataria-Terrebonne were directly tied to the natural resources of the area for their day-to-day existence. Today, remnants of an "Indian mound" built of clamshells sometime during the period from 600 A.D. to 900 A.D. can still be found there.

This was the scene at a shrimp-drying platform in the settlement of Bassa Bassa, circa 1925. Click for full size image - 60K.

And centuries later, a gumbo mix of ethnic groups settling the area depended on the environment -- its lands and its waters -- for their very survival.

A unique wetland habitat, Barataria-Terrebonne sustains the nation's oldest French-speaking culture. Its environment not only provided immigrants with ways to make a living, it created their way of life.

The distinct cultural blend of the area directly reflects Louisiana's environment, and how native Indians and widely diverse immigrants adjusted to it. Each ethnic group brought cultural skills and traditions, such as ways of harvesting, farming, processing, and cooking. Yet these styles had to be adapted to local geography and climate.

A bathing beauty contestant and others enjoy the beach at Grand Isle, circa 1930's. Click for full size image - 101K.

Using their adapted traditions, the ethnic groups taught each other how to make sustainable use of Barataria-Terrebonne's resources and how to live in the surroundings. As people became accommodated to the environment, their actions changed the landscape and altered the natural flow of water that, ultimately, affected the livelihood and lifestyle choices of later generations.

Before the French founded La Nouvelle Orleans in 1718, native Houma Indians were living at the northern tip of the Barataria-Terrebonne. They began moving south in the early 1700's, along the way giving the name "Red Pole" to what would later be known as Baton Rouge.

Settling in coastal marshes of Barataria-Terrebonne, the Houmas taught settlers how to use resources around them, such as making pirogues from cypress trees and decoys with cane reeds and feathers.

At the time, two different groups of French immigrants were settling south Barataria-Terrebonne. Together with immigrants from the south of France, Cajuns -- originally known as "Acadians" -- and Creoles today form the largest and oldest immigrant group in south-central Louisiana. Cajuns, who were French immigrants exiled from Nova Scotia, settled the Mississippi River's "Acadien Coast." The geography of Barataria-Terrebonne was an important influence on these settlers. To them, the isolated setting provided by wetland environments was ideal for starting a new life.

The Ocean Club, one of America's most luxurious hotels, was among the Grand Isle tourist attractions devastated by a hurricane in 1893. It was never rebuilt in its original grand manner. Click for full size image - 106K.

French Creoles living in Haiti fled the island when a full-scale slave revolt erupted. Immigrating about 1790, they re-created their grand plantations along Barataria-Terrebonne's river banks. In addition to cultural styles, Creole refugees brought their skills and knowledge of sugarcane processing.

From Morganza to the cheniers (seaside ridges) of the Gulf of Mexico, french settlers adapted to their new environment of "prairies" and bayous by small-scale and plantation-style farming. They supplemented their diets and income with hunting, fishing, and cattle herding. Together, Cajuns and Creoles have kept French a living language to this day.

The Germans were among the first big group of Europeans to settle Barataria-Terrebonne. They mainly settled along the "German Coast," which today is St. Charles, St. James, and St. John the Baptist parishes. German colonists initially saw Barataria-Terrebonne as a jungle, and some even petitioned to go back to Germany. But they learned from native Indians what could grow, and they made agriculture work.

Spain recruited soldiers from the Canary Islands during the American Revolution and resettled them along strategic bayous such as Barataria. At the bayou's entrance stood a Spanish fort built for customs in the 1800's. "Isleños" or "islanders" came to the mosquito-filled swamps of Barataria-Terrebonne from an arid, mountainous terrain.

According to Irvin Perez, one of the Isleños, "They named every lake and pond for what they left in the Canary Islands. That's how homesick they were." And today, 200 years later, they still call themselves Isleños.

Filipinos, seafaring people, began arriving as early as 1765 on Spanish galleons -- heavy sailing ships -- that landed at New Orleans' port. Being from a subtropical climate with fisheries resources, they were lured to Barataria-Terrebonne's adaptable land and climate. Shrimp and fish were staples of their diet. Even hurricanes were somewhat familiar to them because they had experienced typhoons in the Philippines.

Mostly settling on barrier islands and coastal marshes, Filipinos built their traditional-style houses, raised about ten feet above water, in colonies called "stilt villages." Settlements such as Manila Village were raised completely above ground. Other wetland communities adopted this house style, until the coast was lined with camps on stilts.

It is said that Filipinos, together with other Asian immigrants, established the first large-scale shrimp fishery on the Gulf Coast. Manila Village, Bassa Bassa, and other settlements formed major shrimp-producing towns. Related activities there ranged from seining for shrimp in French-style boats called luggers to exporting dried shrimp to China.

Their towns filled the coast with extensive raised platforms used to dry shrimp in the sun. Here they would perform ancient Chinese rituals of "dancing the shrimp," a method for removing the heads and shells from dried shrimp. The "dancers," who wore canvas on their shoes, were often accompanied by guitar. On Fifi Island, just behind Grand Isle, remnants of a shrimp-drying platform established in the 1870's still exist today.

Around 1850, Croatians from the Dalmatian coast came to New Orleans. Because they were also seafaring people, they possessed boating and fishing skills essential to Barataria-Terrebonne and continued their trade as fishermen and "farmers of the sea."

Croatian and Slavonian styles spread to other cultural groups, specifically their techniques of cultivating oysters and methods of using a rake-like tool for harvesting oysters, called "tonging." In 1890, these styles had expanded to make Louisiana first among the Gulf states in the number of individuals involved in oystering. Today, Louisiana's shucking houses process more than one million pounds of meat annually.

Barataria-Terrebonne's bountiful resources drew other widely diverse ethnic groups from Yugoslavia, Spain, China, Africa, Italy, and Ireland. Dependent on those resources, ethnic groups adopted each other's traditions.

Native Americans taught the settlers how to use palmetto and cypress for building boats and Filipino-style stilt villages. They also showed them how to farm the land, while Croatian and Slavonian immigrants provided them with ways to farm the water. Haitian Creoles taught the settlers the secret of crystallizing sugarcane.

Isleños named bays and lakes that were sailed by luggers, the French-imported boats. From markets in New Orleans, Sicilians sold harvested oysters and produce. Meanwhile, Cajuns brought flavor to cooking styles using spicy ingredients and techniques.

By mid-1800, resources of Louisiana's marshes sustained more than 150 wetland-oriented communities, ranging in resident population from 10 to 1,000. For food and income, they relied on fertile soils of natural levees and estuarine-dependent wildlife and fisheries. They were well aware of their environment and worked together to harvest its resources. At that time, Barataria-Terrebonne settlers altered the terrain to harvest their many resources. By early 1900, local hunters provided 250,000 dressed ducks a year to restaurants around the country. One hunter could market more than 1,000 alligator hides. Trappers sold pelts of mink and otter and could sometimes catch 10,000 muskrats in a three-month season.

By 1925, when Louisiana would become America's number one fur producer, 1,000 dealers bought furs from over 20,000 trappers. But to access the hunting and trapping grounds, ditches, or trenasses, were hand-dug, thus altering natural flows of water throughout the basins.

One of the region's principal industries around 1900 was logging. It was also the first major industry to impact the area's biological resources. Barataria-Terrebonne's backland swamps provided stands of cypress as high as 40,000 board feet per acre. Cypress had many uses because of its resistance to rot and termites. It was an especially good material for building elevated houses, and its spongy root was a good texture for carving decoys.

From about 1880 to 1950, millions of timber-board feet were harvested from backlands, and, ultimately, not a single stand of virgin cypress remained.

Another noteworthy industry was tourism. By 1890's Grand Isle -- with its tropical birds and flower -- was recognized as the Gulf Coast's premier resort. A prominent island attraction was the Ocean Club, then one of America's ritziest hotels. With a planned addition, its capacity would have increased to 1,000 guests; it also featured a trolley that ran to beachside bathhouses, along with billiard rooms, bowling alleys, and an observatory.

In 1893, however, a devastating hurricane severely damaged the Ocean Club and all the other Grand Isle tourist attractions. The hotel was never rebuilt in its original grand manner.

More canals crisscrossed the region after south Louisiana's first oil-producing well was drilled in August 1901. Use of submersible drilling barges, which needed canals to float, began in 1934, and in October 1937, the Gulf of Mexico had its first successful well.

Dredges sometimes had to remove more than one million cubic feet of sediment per mile to build the intricate canal system for oil and gas exploration. More canals were dug for shipping and navigation, but these channels would alter the water's natural flow and become expressways for saltwater intrusion into freshwater swamps.

In 1794, sugarcane became the area's agricultural mainstay when planter Etienne de Boré crystallized cane juice to make sugar. And by the year 1860, when Louisiana supported 1,500 mills, sugarcane was the region's major crop. Concentrated along the Mississippi's banks, some plantation-style operations had sugar mills, private railways, and even shipyards to build cane-carrying barges. Ruins from an 1820's mill operation that produced 300,000 pounds of sugar in 1845 still rest on Grand Terre Island.

Although Barataria-Terrebonne provided fertile soil for growing sugarcane, cotton, corn, soybeans, and even Easter lilies, the terrain posed big problems for farmers. This was a land of prairie "tremblancs," also known as "shaking earth." Starting before World War I, large tracts of land were diked, or levied, and drained to put to the plow. Drainage and natural flooding caused planters the worst problems, creating a greater need to build and maintain more levees, and more changes to water's natural flow.

The lands and waters of Barataria-Terrebonne were used for many purposes. The infamous pirate Jean Lafitte even took advantage of the area's unique geography to bypass paying high American import taxes. But commerce and navigation would become the most important use of the Mississippi River.

The Mississippi was first structurally altered to improve navigation in 1875. At the river's mouth, engineer James Buchanan Eads built jetties to channel the river's force and wash away an impeding sandbar. Later, jetties would be extended, and maintenance dredging would forever keep the mouth open.

Throughout its history, the Mississippi River has been an unruly waterway. To prevent destruction from the river's constant flooding, its seemed logical to expand its naturally created levees. Consequently, man-made levees man-made leeves bordered most major bayous in Barataaria-Terrebonne. Leveeing forced the river within its bank, but it also constrained high spring waters. As the water flow grew faster and pressure increased, it would sometimes result in a levee break called a crevasse, causing massive amounts of water to flood entire regions.

Bayou Lafourche, an outlet for the river, was dammed from its source in 1904 after the Hymelia Crevasse ruined much of the sugar crop. But when the levee broke in 1927, over 25,000 square miles along the lower Mississippi were flooded. Citizens from Port Allen, Plaquemine, and Gross Tete were among the 637,000 people forced from their homes. Old Man River had once again shown its might. Man's response was to build higher levees and more levees and to divert the river with constructed spillways.

Leveeing the Mississippi not only helps to prevent destruction from flooding, it also accommodates international commerce in one of the world's most extensive port systems. This portion of the river is home to three of the ten highest-volume ports in the United States: the Ports of Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and South Louisiana.

But channelization of the river forces tons of sediment off the Gulf's outer continental shelf while depriving Barataria-Terrebonne of valuable land-building silt. Without the river's sediment to replenish it, the land quickly erodes.

Since 1932, Barataria-Terrebonne has lost about half the size of Rhode Island -- over 400,000 acres -- in highly productive wetlands and coastal marshes. In addition to depleted sediments, subsidence and a rise in sea level contribute to the alarming land-loss rates.

Map graphics depict the loss of Louisiana wetlands. Click for full size image - 114K.

Barrier island beaches are being washed away into the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists predict that beach erosion rates can reach 120 feet in years with hurricanes. When coastlands and barrier islands disappear, so does the land behind them. Unprotected, more fragile marshes and estuaries are exposed to tidal surges, storms, and hurricanes. After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, rolled-up pieces of marsh, or "marsh balls," were scattered across the coast.

As Louisiana loses its productive wetlands, resources are depleted and the state's economy is threatened. Barataria-Terrebonne currently provides nearly $1 billion a year in commercial seafood landings, sport fishing, and hunting. Barataria-Terrebonne-based industries -- including shipping, oil and gas, and agriculture -- produce millions of dollars for Louisiana and the nation. Estuaries, bays, and marshes serve as spawning and nursery grounds for young fish and shellfish, and habitat to migrating waterfowl.

All of these resources are the threads of Barataria-Terrebonne's culture, and the lifeline of its survival. The future of the area will be determined with a historical perspective of this fascinating past.

To truly understand the life of the Barataria-Terrebonne Estuary, you must look back thousands of years to learn how south Louisiana was formed. When sea level became relatively stable 7,000 years ago, coastlands of the Mississippi Deltaic Plain were formed by the river's constant change in course.

Because it drains two-thirds of the United States and two Canadian Provinces, the Mississippi River carries tons of washed-away sediments to south Louisiana. Historically, sediments were deposited along the river's banks, forming deltas, or land lobes.

Former paths of the Mississippi River. Click for full size image - 55K.

Like a worm, the Mississippi wiggled back and forth every thousand years or so, depositing silt and sediments, forming deltas and associated wetland environments, until a whole series of stacking deltas built south Louisiana. This process, called deltaic switching, occurred because as the river built up land, it had to switch courses to find a faster and steeper route to the Gulf of Mexico.

When the river moved its powerful current to a new path, the old channel narrowed and became shallow; thus, bayous were formed. Today's Barataria-Terrebonne encompasses portions of the river's ancient delta regions.

Bayou Teche was the Mississippi's main course when it developed a delta about, 2,800 to 4,500 years ago. Most of St. Bernard Delta was created during the time from about 1,500 to 3,500 years ago when the river used Bayou Terre Aux Boeufs. The last active delta of the Mississippi was associated with Bayou Lafourche, building the Barataria-Terrebonne system between approximately 300 and 2,400 years ago. A more recent delta. Plaquemines-Modern, was developed in the past 1,000 years.

Barrier island erosion at Isle Dernieres. Click for full size image - 55K.

As the deltas retreated, the coarser sediments were reworked by the Gulf of Mexico's forces to build Louisiana's barrier islands, such as Grand Isle, Grand Terre, and Last and Fifi islands.

Land-building processes continued throughout Louisiana's history and still continue in the Atchafalaya Basin. Before being altered, Barataria-Terrebonne's rivers and bayous overflowed their banks each spring and dropped sediments. This natural flooding has been shaping land in Louisiana for centuries. Rivers' heavier sediments would fall close to their edges, forming natural ridges or levees (raised areas), and less dense silt fell even farther away.

Before the American Revolution, Cajun cowboys used these natural levees for driving longhorn cattle to markets. "One of the major changes that you have from the first inhabitants till right now is that [we] have very little high land -- no ridges -- where maybe a hundred years ago [there were] natural ridges almost all the way to the Gulf," says Windell Curole, General Manager of the South Lafourche Levee District.

Beyond high-ground ridges, or " frontlands," were backlands made of freshwater cypress swamps, coastal marshes, and productive estuaries. Here, an abundance of wetland resources could be harvested. Silty ridges and watery terrain made up Barataria-Terrebonne's geographic environment, and it dictated the lifestyle and culture that were to evolve.

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