Folk Tradition at the Creole Red River

Abstract

Recognized by the National Park Service, the Cane River Creole National Historical Park area of Natchitoches, Louisiana serves as a main intercultural backdrop of history as American, French, Spanish, and Native American traditions once occupied its banks. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Federal Writers’ Project, a byproduct of the New Deal documented new oral histories from the region. Nineteenth-century folklore from the Natchitoches Cane River area reveals that French, Cajun, and more importantly African influences cast allegories for the spiritual journey they interpreted. My paper uses African oral origin traditions in places like Natchitoches and elsewhere in colonial America to argue on behalf of a “Time Capsule Hypothesis” where forgetting history happens when the past is obscured and the future is apocalyptic. Preservation of landmark heritage sites through the Cane River’s origin folklore, architecture, and ecological history become a new esoteric medium. Reminiscent structures, such as the famous Magnolia and Melrose plantations on the Cane River have preserved a different history that focuses on conservation and cooperation. For us to understand the history of Natchitoches, Louisiana requires a new perspective on historical memory and technological sublime topics merging oral history and esotericism into an ecological time machine of Natchitoches. Creole Catholics emerged from Louisiana archdioceses and Black Christians became free by transforming mythic identities in their present moment to embrace creativity, literature, and technological acumen over their environment.