Bayou Country   Look at any map of the Gulf of Mexico, or more specifically, the Gulf Coast of the United States, and you’ll immediately see how Louisiana stands out—literally. The Gulf forms an oval, with sandy beaches in Mexico and Texas—then comes the bulge of Louisiana—and then more sandy beaches in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. The reason for Louisiana’s protrusion into the Gulf is of course the Mississippi River and its delta, and the action of the river over thousands of years in bringing bits and pieces of Minnesota, Iowa, Tennessee, and the other states slowly flowing downstream as silt and sediment, to form Southern Louisiana. Over the last 5,000 years, the Mississippi has caused the coastline of Louisiana to extend into the Gulf between 15 and 50 miles, or 24 to 80 kilometers.

Because it carries this load, the Muddy Mississippi meanders. As it gradually fills its own bed with the silt and sediment it carries, it seeks lower and steeper ground to move to. In other words, the Mississippi changes its course.

Historically, state lines between those states bordering the Mississippi were defined as being in the middle of the riverbed. But the river has since shifted, usually by the formation of oxbows. If there had been a loop in the river, and the Mississippi had and has many, often the new course of the river cuts off that bulge of land inside the loop, and voilà, a piece of Tennessee is now west of the new riverbed, and this little enclave is physically surrounded by Arkansas. In this way, it seems that parts of a number of states are suddenly on the “wrong” side of the river. The Mississippi runs through ten states, and eight have these shifted borders: Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi.

But the other phenomenon caused by this silt and sediment is even more interesting, and affects only Louisiana: delta switching, which will be described below after we establish some background. Some rivers enter oceans quite calmly and quietly, but there are many rivers in the world that form deltas; the Nile comes prominently to mind. Just look at the coast of Egypt and you’ll see where the Nile breaks up into many small streams and forms a delta, a fan of land in the Mediterranean. But while discussing the Mississippi delta, I’d like to also discuss what the Rhine does. I’ll be discussing the upper Rhine around Switzerland in July, and I feel it appropriate to discuss the lower end of the Rhine here and now along with the Mississippi.

I first need to bring up a new, and quite accurate word I’ve just learned. It is common knowledge that a smaller river entering a larger one is called a tributary, based on the fact that it “brings tribute” to the larger river in the form of inflow. But there are also rivers that EMERGE from bigger rivers, taking outflow with them, and often these are casually also called these tributaries. I now find that the correct word here though is distributary, since it helps distribute the water flow.

The delta situation in Belgium and the Netherlands is confusing, since in actuality, THREE rivers come together here and blend their outflow, the Schelde, the Maas (Meuse), and the Rhine, into a tangle of distributaries, often with changes of name. But here we’ll just discuss the Rhine.

It’s Rhein in German, and Rijn in Dutch (think of Rembrandt van Rijn), but in the Netherlands that name is misleading—see below. (Incidentally, in past centuries shortcuts were dug to straighten the river, and the manmade changes today are indistinguishable from the rest.)

The Rhein stays unified until just after it crosses into the Netherlands, where it’s at its widest point. It then splits into three major distributaries. The major part of its flow, two-thirds, is then called the Waal, which later does merge with the Maas (Meuse). Of the remaining third, two-thirds of it is now called the Nederrijn (Lower Rhine)—but after a while, this changes its name to the Lek; and the remaining third becomes the IJssel (remember IJ is a single letter in Dutch, and is capitalized as you see here). To show it as a ratio between these three distributaries, it’s 6:2:1. The Rhein splits 6 parts to the Waal, 2 to the Nederrijn/Lek, 1 to the IJssel.

Three points of interest: (1) There are other minor distributaries, including very historic ones: the Oude Rijn/Old Rhine once carried the main flow of the river. (2) I said the name Rijn was misleading in the Netherlands, since that name is no longer associated with the main flow there, which goes into the Waal. (3) In the northeastern United States, in the area between the Hudson and the Delaware rivers, there is a local river called the Wallkill flowing into the Hudson’s west bank at about Kingston. The Wallkill is unusual in that it flows roughly north (actually, northeast) between these two major south-flowing rivers. But look carefully at the name Wallkill. It was named by Dutch settlers in the Hudson Valley after the Waal. If you remember your Dutch spelling, it would have originally been the Waal Kil, or Waal Creek.

You would expect that in the case of the Mississippi and its delta area there were fewer complications than with the Rhine delta area. And you would be right—to a point. But now we can talk about bayous and bayou country.

The Mississippi flows generally south, but in southern Louisiana it suddenly veers southeast, past Baton Rouge, past New Orleans, and then proceeds down that long, thin strip of land it’s formed for itself into the Gulf. But why doesn’t it continue more directly south into the Gulf? Aha. It once did. And it may do so again. We can now get back to the topic of delta switching, which is what formed this broad width of southern Louisiana, which I’ll also refer to as Bayou Country.

Every thousand years or so, that same buildup of silt and sediment that causes oxbows to form will cause an entire change in the course of the Mississippi down in its delta region. As the old main channel gets more and more clogged, the river seeks a new one. But the new one doesn’t get ALL the outflow. While the old channel does diminish considerably in volume, it usually doesn’t disappear (think Oude Rijn). It becomes just a minor distributary.

Let me now mention three other waterways of interest in this region. I will try and explain where these are located, but it would be most helpful to follow along on a map of Louisiana.

Look at where the state line between Louisiana and Mississippi joins the east bank of the Mississippi River. At that point, just across on the west bank and totally within Louisiana, a distributary called the Atchafalaya (at.CHA.fa.la.ya) River leaves the Mississippi. It then turns southeast, so typical for waterways in this area, but reaches the Gulf in only 170 miles / 270 kilometers, much more directly than the Mississippi does.

To the WEST of the Atchafalaya, Bayou Teche takes off somewhat indirectly from the Atchafalaya (and is therefore indirectly a distributary of the Mississippi as well) and winds its way in that typical southeast direction through such towns as Saint Martinville and New Iberia, but doesn’t reach the Gulf directly. Instead, near Morgan City, it rejoins the Atchafalaya. Bayou Teche therefore has the rather unique status of both a distributary, then later a tributary, of the Atchafalaya. It runs for 125 miles / 201 kilometers.

Finally, to the EAST of the Atchafalaya, Bayou Lafourche takes off as a distributary of the Mississippi, and runs, to the southeast as usual, some 120 miles / 193 kilometers past towns such as Napoleonville into the Gulf. Therefore, in west-to-east order, the four waterways we’re talking about are Bayou Teche, Atchafalaya River, Bayou Lafourche, Mississippi River, lined up like four fingers on a hand. One thing they all have in common other than flowing uniformly southeast is their muddiness, since silt and sediment coming down the rivers are what built this entire area.

Some comments on the word “bayou”, used all along the Gulf coast from Texas to Florida, but so often associated with Louisiana. A bayou is typically smaller than a river, is often brown in color, and is slow-moving, often dreamily so. Bayous unfortunately tend to have a negative image to outsiders, associated with swampland and danger. Although there is considerable swampland in the area, especially given that this is all historically Mississippi delta land, this image is far from the typical reality, since bayous are just as attractive as any other stream. The word comes from an Indian word, via French. The French influence is indicated by the typical French spelling of OU rather than the English OO in bayou (also in Lafourche). Also typical of French spelling is the use of CH to indicate SH in Teche and Lafourche (as it is in “Michigan” and “Chicago”).

For some reason, people tend to find the word “bayou” humorous. One example is in the old vaudeville routine with Yiddish overtones:

Even locals seem to like to play with the word. At dinner at Nottoway Plantation House, one guest told of a local bed and breakfast where most of the units were in the main house, but one unit was in a separate cottage. The name of the cottage? Bayou Self.

Let’s now talk about specifics about these four waterways, particularly delta switching, and see what the future might hold. It is a fact that every thousand years or so, the Mississippi River changes its delta. It is also a fact that the gentle Bayou Teche (TESH) was the Mississippi River’s main course between 2800 and 4500 years ago. Although the main flow long ago shifted away, any water today entering from the Mississippi is carefully regulated artificially.

The French word for “fork” is “fourchette”, but that actually refers to a little “fourche”; this latter word describes a fork in the road, or, as in Bayou Lafourche, more a fork in the waterways. The name is pronounced la.FOURSH, although I heard locals leaving the R out: la.FOOSH. As with Bayou Teche, Bayou Lafourche was formerly a distributary of the Mississippi, but the main flow shifted. Water still entered it into the 20C, and I saw a picture at Madewood Plantation House of steamships coming up Bayou Lafourche right across the road. But in 1905, the outflow from the Mississippi was dammed, resulting in a much reduced flow into Bayou Lafourche. This also cut off nourishment and replenishment of a huge area of wetlands. There is currently a reconstruction project being designed to regulate a higher water discharge into Bayou Lafourche.

So we see the past and present: delta switching of the main flow of water in this area has moved between from Bayou Teche, Bayou Lafourche, and the current bed of the Mississippi passing Baton Rouge and New Orleans. But what does the future hold?

The Atchafalaya River includes a significant shipping channel up to Morgan City, and continues to form a delta for itself. Furthermore, in the 1950’s scientists determined that in the last hundred years, the Mississippi has been divesting more of its flow to the Atchafalaya, since it offers a steeper path to the Gulf then the Mississippi now has, and that eventually, the Atchafalaya would “capture” the Mississippi and become the main channel, leaving Baton Rouge and New Orleans on a side channel (but not high and dry!). To try to counteract this, the Army Corps of Engineers in 1963 built a floodgate structure where the two rivers (channels?) diverge. The ratio of flow had already reached quite significantly 70% Mississippi and 30% Atchafalaya, and the purpose of the floodgate was and is to maintain this ratio of water distribution (there certainly is no question of reversing it). Also, in times of high water and danger of flooding, more flow can be sent down the Atchafalaya to help protect Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

But do note this very significant point: the likelihood of a natural shift of the flow into the Atchafalaya increases each year and will eventually happen in spite of human efforts.

The Rhine parallels are interesting. The Rhine (1) splits right after the German/Dutch border, and (2) the bulk of its flow, 67%, goes down the Waal, with (3) the channel that maintains “Rijn” in its name now being one of the minor channels. The Mississippi is preparing its split (1) also at a border, the one between Louisiana and (the State of) Mississippi and at present, maintains (2) a mere 70% of the flow for itself, the balance going to the Atchafalaya, and if the flow should change, (3) the channel maintaining the name “Mississippi” could become the secondary channel. Even the percentages of flow are similar between the Rhine and the Mississippi. We shall have to see what happens with the rivers, but at least the historical basis of the two of the bayous discussed in bayou country becomes clearer.

Acadia   As the uniqueness of the regional geography presents us with bayous, the uniqueness of the regional ethnicity presents us with Cajuns. And therein lies a tale.

In the 17C, in addition to the French settlers who founded the colony of Québec, other French settlers had founded the colony of Acadia (French: l’Acadie) in what is now Nova Scotia below Cape Bréton Island. However, the area was taken over by the British, and the Acadians (les Acadiens) by the mid-18C were felt to be a disloyal element within the population. This resulted in the Great Upheaval of 1755, lasting until 1763, which was also known as the Great Expulsion or the Acadian Expulsion (French: le Grand Dérangement). At first, some 6,000-7,000 people, about ¾ of the Acadian population, were rounded up as prisoners and forced onto ships. Some were bound for Europe, or for the British colonies to the south. Some Acadians did end up in nearby Québec. Families were split up in this upheaval, and nearly half the Acadians died en route. By 1763, 10,000 had been deported.

[We may think of ethnic cleansing as a product of the 20C, but the forced population transfer of the Acadians happened in the 18C. Lest there be too much finger pointing at the British, it’s worth reminding about the “Trail of Tears” in the US in the 19C. In 1830, the Indian Removal Act had been signed, which called for the removal of all Indians in the East to areas west of the Mississippi River. In 1838, 16,000 Cherokee Indians were forcibly removed from their homes in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia and brought to what was then called Indian Territory, and is now Oklahoma. 4,000 Cherokees died as a result.]

In later times, many Acadians did return to the area of their homeland, but today, the largest concentration of Acadians in Canada lives not in Nova Scotia, but in New Brunswick to the north.

Many Acadians settled in French-speaking Louisiana after 1764, ironically just at the point when the historically French area became a Spanish colony for a period of time, but they were welcomed nevertheless. They settled in the Atchafalaya Basin and the prairie lands to the west, and reestablished their culture. Thus bayou country is frequently associated with the Acadians (Cajuns). This region in general is also associated with the Creoles, who are ethnically mixed French, African, and Native American, and both Creole and Cajun cuisine help define both New Orleans and Bayou Country.

But we need a word about the alteration of the name. Losing an initial syllable is not rare. “Around” can become “ ‘round”, “beneath” can appear as “ ‘neath”, “it was” is poetically “ ‘twas”. So “Acadian” shortens to “Cadian” (in French as well: Acadien / Cadien). Then something else takes place. It is also not unheard of for the sound combination DY to appear as J in casual speech. “Indians” appears as “Injuns”. Even “India” during the Raj was pronounced by some British as “Injah”, and so “Cadian” becomes “Cajun” (although this is the standard spelling, “Cajan” would have been more accurate, as would “Injan” have been). An exact parallel to the two changes taking place from “Acadian” to “Cajun” involves the inhabitants of Barbados. “Barbadian” also loses its first syllable and shows the internal change when it appears as “Bajan”, and the Bajans sensibly avoid the -UN/-AN spelling problem.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the word Acadian was extended to form Acadiana, and this term has become the term of choice to the region otherwise referred to as “Cajun Country”. Although all other states are divided into counties, Louisiana famously refers to its 64 subdivisions as parishes. In 1971, the Louisiana state legislature officially recognized 22 parishes, or about 1/3 of the total, under the regional name of Acadiana. These 22 parishes start just west of New Orleans and run all the way to the border with Texas, as well as 100 miles / 160 kilometers inland. Therefore, everywhere I would be visiting west of New Orleans on this trip is not only in Bayou Country, it’s also in Acadiana (Cajun Country). There is also a frequent association by outsiders of Cajuns with a primitive life surrounded by swampland, but most of Acadiana is prairie land interlaced with pleasantly flowing bayous.

Of special interest is what is referred to as the Cajun Heartland, the eight parishes right in the center of Acadiana where the Acadians originally settled. Two of these parishes have interesting names, Acadia Parish and Evangeline Parish, (this latter name will be discussed shortly). The larger city in Acadiana, right in the Cajun Hartland, is Lafayette, in Lafayette Parish, but the places I wanted to see would not take me that far.

I would have three days west of New Orleans. The first day was the most fulfilling and enjoyable. It was west of the Atchafalaya and along Bayou Teche in New Iberia and Avery Island, both in Iberia Parish, and in Saint Martinville, in Saint Martin Parish. The following two days, almost as enjoyable, were east of the Atchafalaya along the Mississippi River and Bayou Fourche.

Avery Island   The association of Tabasco pepper sauce with Avery Island is what has been drawing me for decades to this area in the first place. After the long driving day to the Gulf Coast, I’d then come in to New Iberia late that night.. Not having found online any accommodations of special interest, I’d booked a Holiday Inn on the south edge of New Iberia for the two nights. It was right on the highway, and surrounded by fast-food places and gas stations. It didn’t portend well for New Iberia, but I was in for a surprise. At any rate, the drive south to Avery Island the next morning took no more than fifteen minutes, after which a small rise in the flat prairie land could be seen, and I was there.

We start with a misnomer, since Avery Island is not an island. It is a salt dome, which results when a thick bed of rock salt has been left through evaporation from an ancient sea, and was then covered by sediment. The density of the salt being less than the sediment, the salt began to rise underground, forming a dome, causing the land to rise with it. Avery Island had once been an island in the ancient sea, but due to changes in sea level, it is now three miles / five kilometers inland. It is one of five salt domes in Louisiana, and rises 163 feet / 50 meters above sea level. Wildlife thrives on Avery Island: egrets, ibises, herons, ducks, geese, alligators, deer, raccoons, along with azaleas, camellias, bamboo, and more. Edward McIlhenny, who first prepared Tabasco Sauce, founded a 250-acre / 101-hectare sanctuary here in the 1890’s, where in season, there would be a lot to see. One of the world’s largest salt mines continues to operate on the Island, producing 2.5 million tons of salt per year that is 98.9% pure.

Tabasco   Since 1868 Tabasco Pepper Sauce has been a part of Avery Island. Edward McIlhenny had been a New Orleans banker who married an Avery, whose family had lived on Avery Island since 1818 raising cotton. He moved there, and in 1868 obtained pepper seeds from Mexico or Central America and planted them. He then created a pepper sauce to enliven bland food with spice and flavor. At the time, he took the reddest peppers, aged them thirty days in Avery Island salt, then added French white wine vinegar and aged them thirty days more. He strained and bottled them in some disused perfume bottles he’d come across (the same size and type still used today). He got a patent in 1870 and by the end of that decade, the sauce was already popular throughout the US and the UK.

Tabasco is a Mexican state on the southern end of the Gulf of Mexico, west of the Yucatán Peninsula. It’s roughly opposite Louisiana on the north side. (To visualize it around the Gulf, picture Louisiana at 12 o’clock, the Yucatán at 6, and Tabasco at 7.) The name of this Mexican state is the name McIlhenny chose for his pepper sauce, perhaps for its sound, since there’s no record as this being the original source of either the peppers (which was Central America) or any recipe. My guess is he wanted to take advantage of Mexico’s reputation for spicy food, and chose a pleasant, easily-pronounced name across the Gulf.

A tabasco pepper is a variety of chili pepper, or capiscum pepper. These come from the capiscum plant, whose smaller, hotter fruits are called chili peppers, and whose larger, milder ones are called (simply according to color), green, red, or yellow peppers, and also bell peppers in the US, sweet peppers in Canada and the British Isles, and, capiscum in Australia, New Zealand, and India. In Europe, this pepper is called a paprika, as is a hotter version of the red bell pepper that is dried and ground into a spice.

Nowadays, the tabasco peppers are picked, mashed, and mixed with Avery Island salt mined below, and aged up to three YEARS in oak barrels. They are then inspected by a McIlhenny family member to see if the curing is complete (Paul McIlhenny, the present President, is sixth generation), and are then blended with vinegar. Four weeks later, the pulp is strained from the liquid three times, and the sauce is bottled, labeled in one of 22 languages, and sold in over 160 countries.

In 1965 they ran out of growing room on Avery Island; only 10% of the peppers are grown there today. The rest are grown in Latin America from Avery Island seeds. After picking and initial processing, the barrels of peppers come back to Avery Island for curing and final processing.

The oak barrels used for curing are obtained from the Jack Daniels distillery, which uses each barrel only once. McIlhenny then uses them for up to twenty years, after which they are once again for sale. The dried pulp is also for sale, is quite potent, and is used in cooking, especially bulk cooking.

Young tabasco peppers are green, then turn yellow, orange, and finally deep red, the juiciest stage, as they age. They do not ripen uniformly, and a plant will have peppers of many colors on it, so several pickings are needed. Pickers can gauge the correct shade of red for picking by comparing them with “le petit bâton rouge” that they carry with them, a hand-sized dowel stick half of which is painted “tabasco red”.

Following each year’s crop on Avery Island, the family selects the best plants during the harvest. Their seeds are treated and dried, then stored on the Island AND in a local bank’s vault as a hedge against disaster. The next year, they are then used on both the Island and abroad.

Disaster has come close, and only recently at that. On 24 September 2005, the first time something like this ever happened, the storm surge from Hurricane Rita came up to the plant and almost to the production floor, which is just 8.5 feet / 2.6 meters above sea level, but all went well.

My visit to the Island was a delight. You drive around a bit to the visiting area, but no pepper fields were in sight. Given the extent of the worldwide operation, the factory seems tiny. It’s an attractive, low brick building with a Flemish stepped-roof. It has only 200 employees, half of which live on the Island. A small museum shows that Tabasco bottles had tiny corks until 1928. The present octagonal plastic caps are copyrighted, as are the bottles and the typical diamond-shaped labels. I enjoyed seeing a 1905 London ad for Tabasco that was on display, with an endorsement by Lord Kitchener. The ad went on to emphasize that Tabasco was not as expensive as it may seem, since it was not to be used like sugar, but sparingly, like salt.

I had commented to the guide that, given the international nature of the product, there weren’t more items in other languages on display, which she took note of. However, as soon as we were on the bottling line, we could see that the current batch of bottles were being labeled in Arabic. Small world. Yet it continued to amaze me that, even given the diminutive size of the product, this small plant could supply the world.

Next door was a large gift shop in the style of a “Country Store”. It had the obligatory T-shirts and all the usual stuff (you could also buy your own petit bâton rouge), but rather unusual was a chandelier made entirely of hundreds of (empty) Tabasco bottles. Still more interesting was the tasting station at the back. You could dip small pretzels into all varieties of Tabasco Sauce, into spiced mayonnaise and mustard, and related items. Most unusual were samples of two kinds of spicy ice cream, and a spicy cola drink.

They were also promoting their chipotle sauce, which I find I like. This sauce is pourable, like a meat sauce. Chipotles are from Mexico, where jalapeños (not Tabasco peppers) are kept on the vine beyond their familiar green stage and into redness, allowed to dry out before picking, and then are smoked over wood fires before being made into a sauce. The word chipotle is pronounced chi.PO.tle, and includes the familiar TL combination seen in many Mexican words of Indian origin. I suppose a chipotle could be defined as an overripened, smoke-dried jalapeño.

Anyone interested in peppers of any sort, but especially hot ones, should be aware of two terms: capsaicin and Scoville Heat Units. Capsaicin (kap.SAY.i.sin) is the chemical compound in the fruits of the capsicum pepper plant that give the peppers their piquancy. In 1912, pharmacist Wilbur Scoville devised a method of measuring the amount of capsaicin contained in a pepper, and a corresponding scale of piquancy. The method used has since been made much more precise, but continues to be converted into the Scoville Heat Units. Of course plants vary, and different strains of the same pepper will test out somewhat differently, so Scoville units are always given as a range. Very roughly speaking, a Scoville rating of 1,000 means that the pepper extract would have to be diluted 1,000 times before any capsaicin present is undetectable.

A bell pepper (“green pepper”) has a recessive gene that prevents capsaicin from being produced. With no capsaicin at all, it thus has a Scoville rating of zero. A pimento, used as an olive stuffing, has a Scoville rating of only 100-500. A poblano pepper is 1,000-1,500. Getting hotter, a jalapeño is 2,500-8,000. A tabasco pepper, and also a Cayenne pepper, is 30,000-50,000; A habanero is 100,000-350,000. This is the upper range of peppers that are customarily encountered.

But it doesn’t stop there. For those with the same morbid interest in these statistics that I have, the Red Savina habanero is a habanero that has been specially bred to increase spiciness; it’s rating is 350,000-577,000. It was listed in Guinness World Records as the hottest pepper from 1994 to 2006. In 2007, it was displaced by the Naga Jolokia pepper from India which lists from 855,000 up to the record 1,041,427.

Additionally, for the record, standard pepper spray used in self-defense runs between 2,000,000 and 5,300,000, and pure capsaicin between 15,000,000 and 16,000,000.

Coming down from these heights, let’s get back to Avery Island and to practicalities. Again, peppers and the sauces made from them will not have the same rating. Tabasco Green Sauce is a mere 600-800, not much more than a pimento; Tabasco Garlic Sauce 1200-1800; Chipotle Sauce 2000-2500; Original (Red) Tabasco Sauce 2500-5000; Tabasco Habanero Sauce 7000-8000.

The similarities struck me between some of the processes of creating these pepper sauces and processing champagne and other wines. I think of the long time champagne ages in barrels, as do the peppers. I also think of the dessert wines called Trockenbeerenauslese (trocken is dry; Beeren are berries, meaning the grapes; Auslese is selection). The process of grapes being allowed to dry out on the vine like raisins in order to get sweet enough for a dessert wine reminds of the similar aging of the jalapeños in the field to make chipotles.

My morning on Avery Island ended with sitting a few minutes in a rocker on the front porch of the “Country Store” enjoying the mild Louisiana weather amid the live-oak trees with some recorded Cajun music in the background, before moving on to additional enjoyable visits during the day.