The Petticoat Rebellion
Page 1
This work is released in commemoration of the Tricentennial of the Founding of New Orleans by Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville. For three hundred years New Orleans has been proclaimed as America’s Most Interesting City. An exotic city on America’s Third Coast, New Orleans enjoys a culture, a cuisine, and a reputation unlike any other North American city. This work celebrates and chronicles the colonial capital of one third of North America and the roots of its famous cuisine. Join us in this celebration of the only city for which the United States risked a constitutional crises. New Orleans had to be American because in Thomas Jefferson’s words. . .
“There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans …”
BON APPETIT !
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jon Laiche, (aka Jerry), a retired teacher and active scholar and writer, is co-author with his wife Elizabeth, of The Petticoat Rebellion: A Culinary History of French Colonial Louisiana. His teaching career included presenting courses in Louisiana, American, and World History He is currently a member of the Louisiana Historical Association and the Historic New Orleans Collection. Natives of New Orleans, Jerry and Beth’s current projects also include managing the website 1718: A TriCentennial Memo http://1718neworleans.com. In addition to his background as an historian, Jerry taught Religion in the High Schools of the Archdiocese of New Orleans and was adjunct professor of Computer Ethics and Internet Technology at Tulane University. Along with his academic duties, Jerry has served his schools as a technology coordinator, network administrator, librarian, and Internet guru. During his teaching tenure, Jerry wrote and received two grants from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. The grants enabled his school to establish the first High School Women’s Studies program in New Orleans. He was the founding Director of the Archdiocesan Teacher Learning Center (Computers in the Classroom). For three years, he owned and operated “The Philosopher’s Stone” a bookstore on the Northshore specializing in rare and antiquarian volumes.
Jerry and Beth currently reside at Beltane Meadow, a fifteen acre meadow 30 miles north of New Orleans’ Lake Pontchartrain.
Jon & Elizabeth Laiche
The Petticoat Rebellion:
A Culinary History of French Colonial Louisiana
ISBN - 978-0-9907376-9-6
Copyright © Technical Support Services, Inc., 2014. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © Elizabeth G. Laiche & Jon G. Laiche, 2014. All Rights Reserved.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.
Produced in the United States of America.
Published by The 1718 Project, a division of Technical Support Services, Inc. 17188 Sanders Rd. , Franklinton, LA 70438 USA.
February 2014: First Edition.
Revision History for the First Edition:
V. 1.1, April 30, 2014. Version 1.2, 2014, Version 1.5, 02/2015
First Print Edition. September, 2014. Reprint, February, 2015.
DEDICATION
To Elizabeth,
my friend, lover, life-partner, and wife. None of the following would have been possible without her constant love, patience, and support. She is named co-author of this book not just because her toils have provided the groceries and rent while this work was produced, but also because of her photography which peppers the following chapters, her editing of the work, her rewrites, and her constant suggestions which always improved the stories. Now on to Volume 2, wherein our play, our work, our life and our love continue to intertwine and become deeper and richer than ever.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 FRENCH AND INDIAN BREAD
2 FRÉRE GERARD DISCOVERS SAGAMITE
3 AN ORIGINAL RECIPE
4 A VOYAGE UP THE BAYOU
5 CREOLE CORN STEW
6 BEANS AND RICE
7 FRÉRE GERARD DISCOVERS THE PACCAN
8 CHRISTMAS WITH THE URSULINES
9 GRILLADES AND GRITS
10 RIVER SHRIMP AT LENT
11 SOME CALAS IN THE “FRENCH MARKET”
12 A BOUCAN FOR PENTECOST
13 THE HOUMAS VISIT
14 FRÉRE GERARD’S POTAGER
15 LES SAUSSES - THE 3 SAUCES MERES
16 MARKETS, MARSHES, & MEAT
17 LES PARTISANS DE LA CHASSEUSE
18 A SMUGGLER’S PARADISE
19 MAKING SAUSAGE ON THE CÔTE DES ALLEMANDS
20 NEW ORLEANS COFFEE
THE PETTICOAT REBELLION
This culinary history is named after a small but significant “rebellion” that occurred in Louisiana's earliest days as a European colony. Soon after the “men” - sent by the French monarchy to explore the northern coast of the Mexican Gulf and to punch a hole in the Spanish hegemony of North America - had found the mouths of the Mississippi and built some settlements along the coast east of the great river, they began to feel the need for some European women to help populate the new colonial enterprise. The male French and Canadian settlers of Louisiana were soon accommodated as follows:
The first mention of the incident on record is in the Journal of Benard de La Harpe, who wrote his Journal after his return to France in the 1720's.
Entry for July 24, 1704: “ . . . the Pelican, arrived at Dauphine Island from France. . . . Also on board were two Gray nuns with twenty-three poor girls . . . The girls were married within the month to several Canadians.”
Translated and Edited at USL in Lafayette, LA in 1971 which provides . . .Footnote 4. Bienville records the marriage of the girls in his lengthy letter to the Compte de Ponchartrain (AC., C13a, 1: 449-465), dated September 6, 1704. (La Harpe, p. 67)
My note: this is probably the letter where the so-called “Petticoat Rebellion” is chronicled.
The first classical Louisiana historian to mention the Petticoat Rebellion is Charles Gayarre writing in 1847, his take on the affair is as follows:
“The history of Louisiana, in her early days, presents a Shakespearean mixture of the terrible and of the ludicrous. What can be more harrowing than the massacre of the French settlement on the Wabash in 1705; and in 1706, what more comical than the threatened insurrection of the French girls, who had come to settle in the country, under allurements which proved deceptive, and who were particularly indignant at being fed on corn? This fact is mentioned in these terms in one of Bienville's dispatches: "The males in the colony begin, through habit, to be reconciled to corn, as an article of nourishment; but the females, who are mostly Parisians, have for this kind of food a dogged aversion, which has not yet been subdued. Hence, they inveigh bitterly against his grace, the Bishop of Quebec, who, they say, has enticed them away from home, under the pretext of sending them to enjoy the milk and honey of the land of promise." Enraged at having thus been deceived, they swore that they would force their way out of the colony, on the first opportunity. This was called the petticoat insurrection.”
History of Louisiana by Charles Gayarré
in the edition publ. by William J. Widdleton, New York, 1867. The text is in the public domain.
The modern histories of Louisiana expand upon the tale and provide its current interpretation. Mel Leavitt in his “popular history” of New Orleans, probably offers the best variant on the tale.
“ In 1704, the Bishop of Quebec dispatched 23 young women to the Mobile colony to provide wives for its men. The colonists were exultant, but the women quickly showed a distaste for Indian maize, or corn, and threatened to leave the colony unless they could have French bread. Bi
enville's gifted housekeeper, Madame Langlois, took the lady rebels aside and introduced them to the secrets of grinding meal for cornbread and preparing hominy and grits and succotash, and the rebellion was soon abandoned.” (Leavitt, p.17)
Leavitt continues the episode with a humorous snippet, but one that has special import for this cookbook/history about the origins of Creole food.
“Bienville's food problems were not all so frivolous.The sandy Gulf Coast littoral is generally infertile. Supply from France was undependable, and provisions were many months in arriving. Bienville tried to alleviate periodic privation by sending his men on extended hunting trips, to live as best they could among the Indians. In 1707, the situation was relieved when a large supply ship arrived. Bienville {announced} that the new ship had brought Bordeaux wine. 'The excellent French wine,' (wrote Penicault), 'consoled us for the loss of favors from the girls . . . who were angered at our long trips hunting.” (Leavitt, p.17-18).
Finally, another cookbook about New Orleans cuisine offers the following:
“A group of about fifty young wives marched on {Bienville’s} mansion, carrying the weapons of their craft in their hands. They vigorously pounded frying pans with metal spoons and caused quite a hubbub. They protested to the governor that they were tired of a diet of corn meal mush and that something had to be done to improve the food situation. Fortunately the governor had the solution to the problem right under his own roof. His housekeeper, a Madame Langlois, had been among the Choctaw Indians and had learned from their squaws many of their cooking secrets: how to make lye hominy and grits; how to use powdered sassafras (file’) and make gumbo; how to make corn bread, cook rice, and make jambalaya; how to cook fish, crabs, shrimp, crawfish, and wild game. Bienville put the petticoat rebels under the charge of Madame Langlois, who opened a cooking class and taught them all these bright new ideas. Creole cookery was off to a rousing start.”
Howard Mitcham. Creole Gumbo and All That Jazz, 1978, p. 4.
This “Petticoat Rebellion” is now considered to have been the affair behind the creation of the very first “cooking school” in North America. Madame Langlois' efforts to help the New Orleans ladies (or at least the Louisiana ladies) deal with their usually awful food situation can be taken as nothing less than the birth of Creole Cuisine. The talents and techniques of these European and African women in turning the often meager culinary resources they found in the colony into flavorful and nutritious sustenance for their families is indeed the very stuff and spirit of Louisiana cooking that has made it the unique food culture that we find here today.
Further references to what would become the basis of Creole cuisine appear as early as Iberville’s journal of his explorations in 1699. On his way, literally, to discover the mouths of the Mississippi, he noted that he and his men dined on “some rather tasty oysters”. Of course, this could not have been “creole” food, since a Creole is a person born in the New World of parents from the Old World. So, by extension, Creole food must be food created by both Old and New World cooks and ingredients IN THE NEW WORLD, using ingredients available to them in the “colonies”.
Today, almost every conversation in New Orleans usually in some way involves food. Every event, no matter how small, will involve food. When eating breakfast, New Orleanians consider what to eat for lunch, and while eating lunch, discussions about the upcoming dinner hour are common. Food from all cultures are welcomed in this food-obsessed city, but it is the local ingredients and recipes that define Creole cuisine.
The culinary enterprise was not always this easy, though. In the early 1720’s, colonists were faced with a myriad of problems involving their food. By 1735, though, French Colonial Louisiana had settled into somewhat of a routine. Regarding the production and consumption of food, several known factors had fallen into place. Farms had been established all through the colony from Mobile Bay to the Bayou St. John village to the Tchoupitoulas and German Coasts upriver from New Orleans. Every concessionaire (planter) in
the region, as well as all the homes in New Orleans itself had a potager ( a household or kitchen garden) in the yard.
The various Indian towns and villages provided an ongoing supply of crops and wild game, large and small. Domestic meat production was also underway, including hogs, cattle, and poultry. Fishermen, both Native and colonials, were busy supplying the colony with seafood. The Ursuline convent and kitchen had a steady supply of foodstuffs to feed their sisters, boarders, and charges. None of this, however, should be understood as a time of plenty.
There were constant food shortages, poor harvests, corrupt food supply chains, and individual cheating and stealing of food. The much fabled French Market existed but was not regulated at all. New Orleans would have to wait for Spanish rule for a real organized market. Along the river landings of the city, the French and German farmers, the Indians, and even the African slaves bartered and sold various food products on a daily basis. Through all of this activity, the foundations of Creole Cuisine were being laid.
PREAMBLE:
“The Council for the Company of the Indies, “… adopted the Ordinance of May 16, 1722, for the establishment of the Capuchins in Louisiana” (part of which reads).
“ . . . the Capuchin Fathers of the Province of Champagne (were ordered to send) the number of religious which will be necessary there. We have agreed and accepted Frather Bruno of Langres, Father Christopher of Chaumont, Father Filobert of Viaudon, and Brother Eusebius of Chaumont. Giving them all authority under the Bishop of Quebec to establish a convent of their Order at New Orleans situated by the river of St. Louis (aka the Mississippi) in the country of Louisiana to fulfill by the superior of this Covent the Pastoral functions at the town, and to send missionaries to all the company's settlements.”
The Year of Our Lord 1701, saw me born to my dear mother in our cottage on the southern end of the Lac des Vieilles Forges in the Great Ardennes Forest. Those years was not good for France. Two massive defeats of the armies of our great king, Louis XIV, by the heathen Protestants of the Grand Alliance, left France as crippled as the many soldiers who wandered back into our towns, villages, and farmsteads as the high mid-winter festivals were beginning. My father called me Gerard after his favorite uncle, and since he was a smith, I was Gerard La Forge. In a way, my name and background were a foretelling of my life come, among the iron kettles, pans, trivets, firedogs, and spits of my trade. By the time I reached 14 years of age, things had not gotten better in France. Le Le Roi-Soleil, our great king had died. Neither of my parents nor their brothers and sisters, nor anyone in our village had ever known a time when Louis wasn't the king. The great war which had been waging since before I was born, ended in defeat. Even so, my parents
thought it better that I go to the friar's convent at nearby Charleville, rather than end up without a leg like my cousin, Geoffrey.
So, after the Easter Mass of 1717, I set off with Georges, the iron trader, for Charleville. At the convent, the Capuchin fathers put me, like most of the poor forest boys sent to them, into the kitchen. Little did I know that I would never leave the warmth of the hearth during my lifetime.
Moreso, I could never have imagined that the warmth of the hearth would be multiplied beyond measure in the steamy swamps of Louisiana!
FRERE GERARD IS PURE FICTION
Throughout this culinary history, Frére Gerard will serve as the fictional glue between the disparate aspects of markets, gardens, kitchens, and recipes that form the “meat” of the story. Such a character is in a position to also introduce the reader to the real personalties of 18th Century New Orleans. Frere Gerard serves to give the reader an “everyman’s” point of view of local groups like the military, the administration, the Indians, the Africans (slave and free), the Orders of priests, nuns, and brothers traveling to and through the city. All in all, the good brother brings the historical facts and more amorphous concepts of culture and society into a sharp focus, allowing us to partake more fully in the foodie activities of the
birthplace of Creole cuisine.
His order, the Capuchin monks, a reform minded sect of the Franciscan Order, is real. His position, a lay brother in charge of the kitchen and potager, is also real. The Capuchins of the Champagne Province of France were sent to New Orleans in 1722 to serve the pastoral and spiritual needs of the Lower Louisiana colony. Three priests and one lay brother debarked at Dauphin Island in early September of 1722. One week later, on September 11, a hurricane swept through the area and demolished most, if not all, of the buildings in the new settlement at New Orleans.
A basic understanding of the culinary conditions someone like Frere Gerard would have found in early New Orleans can be gained from the following paraphrase from the Franciscan historian Father Claude Vogel:
“At the end of 1721, New Orleans consisted of about 100 huts and three buildings. There were 470 people, of which 277 were European. The population included thirty six horned cattle and nine horses. Trade had been established in tar and furs, maize, millet, beans, potatoes, melons, gourds, rice, and tobacco. These goods were exchanged among the settlers and with the Natives, and (of most importance for this work*) also with the Spanish of Pensacola.
(p. 20)
In May of 1722 Louisiana was divided into three church provinces. The Capuchins' territory was west of the Mississippi from the Gulf to the Ohio confluence, and headquartered in New Orleans. The Carmelites (already in Mobile since 1702) were given Louisiana east of the river up to the Ohio. The Jesuits got Upper Louisiana, sometimes called the Illinois country. This was between the Ohio, the Mississippi, and New France. Their headquarters were in Kaskaskia. Church politics shortly altered the situation to give the Capuchins administrative control of the Carmelite territory in Louisiana east of the river. (p. 23)