Isle de Jean Charles

Terrebonne Parish, LA
 

"Today, the decline in Louisiana鈥檚 Indian population is matched by the deterioration and outright destruction of the state鈥檚 once magnificent natural environments. Many tribes have disappeared; the rest are decimated. The likelihood of their eventual demise is strengthened by environmental ruin. The problem is one for all Louisianans. Irreparable ecological damage can be tolerated no longer, and the Indian, like his neighbors, has begun to demand protection."

— The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana, from 1542 to the Present, by Fred B. Kniffen, Hiram F. Gregory, and George A. Stokes (1987)

Characterized by barrier islands, ridges, forested wetlands, natural levees, and marshes, the Isle de Jean Charles, which lies in Louisiana鈥檚 Mississippi Delta, became a sanctuary to Native Americans escaping slavery and the horrors of the infamous Trail of Tears (1830鈥�1839). Descended from French settlers, the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw community has kept their cultural lifeways alive for more than 170 years, engaging in subsistence living on their ancestral lands. But the arrival of the fossil fuel industry in the 1950s and the growing ferocity of storms in the wake of global warming have hastened the loss of one of the last Native American cultural landscapes in the region.

History

Located in Terrebonne Parish, some 80 miles southwest of New Orleans at the southernmost reaches of Louisiana, the Isle de Jean Charles is first mentioned in oral histories as an uninhabited swampland. Situated between Bayou Terrebonne and Pointe-aux-Chenes, Terrebonne Parish was cleaved from the Lafourche Interior Parish by the Bayou Saint Jean Charles in 1822. Reachable by wagon only during low tide, the island remained effectively isolated from the mainland for more than a century, making it an ideal refuge for native peoples fleeing the forced relocations of the mid-1800s.

Isle de Jean Charles Children enjoying a moment of leisure in the Isle de Jean Charles (date unknown); photo courtesy Chantel Comardelle.

The Mississippi River Delta was inhabited by the Chitimacha tribe for several millennia before the arrival of Europeans. Occupying the Atchafalaya Basin, one of the richest estuaries in the region, the Chitimacha villages once covered bayou, swamps, and rivers, an environment that provided natural defenses against enemy attack. Agricultural produce such as corn, beans, squash, and melons were grown and supplemented by hunting. Winter grains were stored in elevated granaries, and dugout cypress canoes were used for transport to the mainland.

When Columbus arrived in America, the Chitimacha numbered approximately 20,000. Although the tribes did not interact with colonists directly for nearly two centuries, measles, smallpox, and typhoid fever found them, nevertheless, often spread through trade, with the Chitim