Cajun Traiteurs

Cajun Traiteurs
Author: Alec Sonnier
Publisher:
Total Pages: 139
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

The purpose of this case study is to understand and explore the Cajun folk healing knowledge of the traiteur that has been passed down for generations within families from southern Louisiana. The Cajun traiteur is a faith healer in the Acadiana parishes of Louisiana, and traiteur is the Cajun French word for treater. The participants comprised my extended family in southern Louisiana, associates of this extended family, and included traiteurs and their patients. Thirteen traiteurs and thirty-one patients were interviewed on the topics of treatment, how the healing tradition is passed down, and modern world effects on the Cajun traiteur. A multigenerational interviewing technique was used that had three generations of interviewers. This collaborative family-based research mode of ethnographic data collection was crucial for the study to assure cooperation of the participants, allowing differing generational perspectives and acceptance of the process by the participants. The interviews were recorded, transcribed collaboratively, and qualitative data was collected employing person-centered ethnography methods and grounded theory data collection and analyzation techniques. Results reveal that the participants believe that the healing ability of the traiteur is a "Gift from God". Prayer is used in all treatments, and all traiteurs use laying on of hands for some treatments. Treatments and prayers are performed in threes or multiples of threes, and no compensation is asked for by the traiteur. The traiteur healing prayers and treatments are transmitted to the next generation by the following methods: the traditional method from older male to younger female or older female to younger male, within families regardless of gender, passing it to anyone whom the traiteur senses has the gift of healing, or transmission by association with traiteurs. Participants state that the following modern world effects have caused the traiteurs' decline: lack of belief in traiteur faith healing, increased use of technology, easily accessible modern medical care, lack of knowledge of the traiteur tradition, and difficulty in finding a successor. Though in decline, there have been recent attempts to increase the awareness of the Cajun traiteur faith healing tradition which is an important cultural heritage that must be preserved.

The Cajun Traiteurs

The Cajun Traiteurs
Author: Shelby Robert
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023
Genre: Cajuns
ISBN:

Traiteurs are traditional folk medicine healers who are a part of the culture of the Cajuns of Louisiana. These people are believed to possess special healing powers given to them by God. They are a significant part of the lifestyle and traditional culture of the Cajuns. The Cajuns are the descendants of the Acadians, a group of French colonists who were forcibly removed from Nova Scotia and dispersed all over North America by the British in 1755. Though the Acadians were able to partially reassemble themselves in Louisiana, they still faced great adversity within the state. This project examines the manner in which Cajuns came to be in Louisiana, the folk healing traditions that they brought with them, and the assimilation that they faced once they arrived. The existing historiography regarding Cajuns has only briefly discussed the traditions, rituals, and practices of the faith healing traiteurs. This project incorporates primary sources from the Louisiana Center for Cajun and Creole studies into the larger historical narrative. This is one of the only exhaustive descriptions and analyses of the traiteur’s tradition within Cajun culture in Louisiana. By creating an analysis of the traiteur, this project is better able to examine the practical implications of assimilation within a small cultural group.

Cajun Country

Cajun Country
Author: Barry Jean Ancelet
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2014-05-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1604736178

This insightful book is by far the broadest examination of traditional Cajun culture ever assembled. It goes beyond the stereotypes and surface treatment given to Cajuns by the popular media and examines the great variety of cultural elements alive in Cajun culture today--cooking, music, storytelling, architecture, arts and crafts, and festivals, as well as traditional occupations such as fishing, hunting, and trapping. It not only gives fascinating descriptions of elements in Cajun life that have been woven into the fabric of American history and folklore; it also explains how they came to be. Cajun Country reveals the historical background of the Cajun people, who migrated to Louisiana as exiles from their Canadian homeland, and it shows their folklife as a living and ongoing legacy that enriches America.

Cooking with Cajun Women

Cooking with Cajun Women
Author: Nicole Denée Fontenot
Publisher: Hippocrene Books
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2002
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 9780781809320

In this treasury of Cajun heritage, the author allows the people who are the very foundations of Cajun culture to tell their own stories. Nicole Denée Fontenot visited Cajun women in their homes and kitchens and gathered over 300 recipes as well as thousands of narrative accounts. Most of these women were raised on small farms and remember times when everything (except coffee, sugar and flour) was home-made. They shared traditional recipes made with modern and simple ingredients.

Acadian to Cajun

Acadian to Cajun
Author: Carl A. Brasseaux
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 280
Release: 1992
Genre: Cajuns
ISBN: 9781617031113

"This work serves as a model for compiling ethnohistories of other nonliterate peoples."--BOOK JACKET.

Bayou Farewell

Bayou Farewell
Author: Mike Tidwell
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0307424928

The Cajun coast of Louisiana is home to a way of life as unique, complex, and beautiful as the terrain itself. As award-winning travel writer Mike Tidwell journeys through the bayou, he introduces us to the food and the language, the shrimp fisherman, the Houma Indians, and the rich cultural history that makes it unlike any other place in the world. But seeing the skeletons of oak trees killed by the salinity of the groundwater, and whole cemeteries sinking into swampland and out of sight, Tidwell also explains why each introduction may be a farewell—as the storied Louisiana coast steadily erodes into the Gulf of Mexico. Part travelogue, part environmental exposé, Bayou Farewell is the richly evocative chronicle of the author's travels through a world that is vanishing before our eyes.

Hoodoo Mysteries

Hoodoo Mysteries
Author: Ray T. Malbrough
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2003
Genre: Hoodoo (Cult)
ISBN: 9780738703503

Conjuring money and attracting love, reversing hexes and stopping slander-it's all in a day's work for the Hoodoo practitioner. This is true American folk magic, colorful and powerful, yet little-known outside of the bayous and backwoods of Louisiana. Let Ray Malbrough take you deep inside the Hoodoo mysteries. You'll learn the secrets of root working and magical baths, the Head Pot and the Medium's necklace. You'll discover how to divine the future with playing cards and cowrie shells, and how to work with the spirits of the dead. Step inside a world of magic and intrigue you never knew existed-enter the hidden world of the Hoodoo.

Buying the Wind

Buying the Wind
Author: Richard M. Dorson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 592
Release: 1964
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226158624

Selection of tales, songs, riddles, proverbs and other items of folklore from seven regional cultures of the U.S.A.

Stone Motel

Stone Motel
Author: Morris Ardoin
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2020-04-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1496827759

In the summers of the early 1970s, Morris Ardoin and his siblings helped run their family's roadside motel in a hot, buggy, bayou town in Cajun Louisiana. The stifling, sticky heat inspired them to find creative ways to stay cool and out of trouble. When they were not doing their chores—handling a colorful cast of customers, scrubbing motel-room toilets, plucking chicken bones and used condoms from under the beds—they played canasta, an old ladies’ game that provided them with a refuge from the sun and helped them avoid their violent, troubled father. Morris was successful at occupying his time with his siblings and the children of families staying in the motel’s kitchenette apartments but was not so successful at keeping clear of his father, a man unable to shake the horrors he had experienced as a child and, later, as a soldier. The preteen would learn as he matured that his father had reserved his most ferocious attacks for him because of an inability to accept a gay or, to his mind, broken, son. It became his dad’s mission to “fix” his son, and Morris’s mission to resist—and survive intact. He was aided in his struggle immeasurably by the love and encouragement of a selfless and generous grandmother, who provides his story with much of its warmth, wisdom, and humor. There’s also suspense, awkward romance, naughty French lessons, and an insider’s take on a truly remarkable, not-yet-homogenized pocket of American culture.