The history of this region is filled with stories of the early Midwestern Settlers from Kansas, Illinois and Iowa to the French Canadians ( Cajuns ) to Jean Lafitte's pirates along the Old Spanish Trail.

One of the first Cajuns to settle in south Louisiana along with his brother Alexandre, in 1765.

The Cajuns of Louisiana also believed in a similar creature with the variant name of Rougarou.

In the rural Acadiana area, many Cajuns celebrate with the Courir de Mardi Gras, a tradition that dates to medieval celebrations in France.

Not all Cajuns descend solely from Acadian exiles who settled in south Louisiana in the 18th century, as many have intermarried with other groups.

Outside the city, Cajuns and Creoles often intermingle socially and culturally, and chances are that the cooking of Cajuns and Creoles living in Lawtell for example, have more in common with each other than the Creole dishes of a Lawtell resident and one from Isle Brevelle.

Today Easter is still celebrated by Cajuns with the traditional game of ' paque ', but is now also celebrated in the same fashion as Christians throughout the United States with candy-filled baskets, " Easter bunny " stories, dyed eggs, and Easter Egg hunts.

There has been a true multicultural community in St. Martinville, with Cajuns, Creoles ( French coming via the French West Islands-Guadeloupe, Martinique and Santo Domingo ), French, Spaniards, Africans and African Americans.

The Creoles are a community with varied non-Anglo ancestry, mostly descendant of people who lived in Louisiana before its purchase by the U. S. The Cajuns are a group of Francophones who arrived in Louisiana after leaving Acadia in Canada.

Jazz's roots come from the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, populated by Cajuns and black Creoles, who combined the French-Canadian culture of the Cajuns with their own styles of music in the 19th century.

A pirogue is a small, flat-bottomed boat of a design associated particularly with the Cajuns of the Louisiana marsh.

Treen worked with the Lafayette delegation, including Representatives Mike Thompson and Ron Gomez, for construction of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Ragin ' Cajuns stadium, the Cajundome.

The Cajuns and Creoles of Louisiana have long constituted a distinct minority with their own cultural identity.

In his college career, Bako caught for the Ragin ' Cajuns during two consecutive conference championship seasons: 1991 in the American South Conference, when they finished with a 49 – 20 record, 14th-best among Division I squads ; and 1992 in the Sun Belt Conference, when Southwestern Louisiana's pitching staff amassed a 3. 50 earned run average, 29th-best in Division I.

The Acadia region to which modern Cajuns trace their origin consisted largely of what are now Nova Scotia and the other Maritime provinces, plus parts of eastern Quebec and northern Maine.

The Cajuns retain a unique dialect of the French language and numerous other cultural traits that distinguish them as an ethnic group.

* La Grande Boucherie des Cajuns-sponsored by La Grande Boucherie des Cajuns, Inc., a Louisiana non-profit organization benefiting the youth of St. Martinville and other civic projects

Although many Cajuns use the word in regard to themselves, other Cajuns view the term as an ethnic slur against the Cajun people, especially when used by non-Cajuns.

* Cajun governor of Louisiana Edwin Edwards often used the word " coonass " in reference to himself and other Cajuns.

Since their establishment in Louisiana the Cajuns have developed their own dialect, Cajun French, and developed a vibrant culture including folkways, music, and cuisine.

State Senator Dudley LeBlanc (" Coozan Dud ", a Cajun slang nickname for " Cousin Dudley ") took a group of Cajuns to Nova Scotia in 1955 for the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the expulsion.

Sociologists Jacques Henry and Carl L. Bankston III have maintained that the preservation of Cajun ethnic identity is a result of the social class of Cajuns.

Recent documentation has been made of Cajun English, a French-influenced dialect of English spoken by Cajuns, either as a second language, in the case of the older members of the community, or as a first language by younger Cajuns.

However, there are still many who contend that the " Standard French " taught in French Immersion classes at Pierre Part Elementary School is the best chance that local Cajuns have at preserving their language and culture, since there is no written standard for teaching the Cajun dialect of the French language.

** Cajun Field, nicknamed " the Swamp ," home to the Louisiana – Lafayette Ragin ' Cajuns football team.

" Cajun " combinations were common in southwestern Louisiana, which was populated primarily by Cajuns, descendants of the French-speaking settlers expelled from Acadia ( in northeastern North America ) in the mid-18th century.

By 1800, a few wealthy Cajun families in Louisiana had purchased slaves, though the majority of Cajuns did not own slaves.

Cajun jambalaya is known as ' Brown jambalaya ' in the New Orleans area ; to Cajuns it is simply known as ' jambalaya.

The white French Creoles introduced jambalaya to the Cajuns, but since tomatoes were rarely used in Cajun cooking, they omitted them, browning the meat for color instead.

For example, he condemned use of the epithet " coonass " as a synonym for " Cajun ," and he criticized humorists like Justin Wilson, who he thought portrayed Cajuns as ignorant.

While there has been an influx of Cajuns into the city since the oil boom of the later 20th century and while there are some similarities due to shared roots, Cajun culture has had relatively little influence upon Creole culture and thus Yat culture.

Ragin ' Cajuns football players and their opponents enter Cajun Field through an underground tunnel from the UL Lafayette athletics complex.

After Williams released his version, Cajuns recorded the song again using Cajun instruments.

Domengeaux asserted that Frenchmen used the term in reference to Cajun soldiers serving in France during World War II, and that Anglo-American soldiers overheard the term, transformed it into " coonass " and brought it back to the U. S. as a disparaging term for Cajuns.

People living in Acadia, and sometimes former residents and their descendants, are called Acadians, also later known as Cajuns after resettlement in Louisiana.

Today, the Cajuns make up a significant portion of south Louisiana's population, and have exerted an enormous impact on the state's culture.

Many Cajuns also have ancestors who were not French.

Since the mid-1950s, relations between the Cajuns of the U. S. Gulf Coast and Acadians in the Maritimes and New England have been renewed, forming an Acadian identity common to Louisiana, New England, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.

However, Protestant and Evangelical Christian denominations have made inroads among Cajuns, but not without controversy — many Cajuns will shun family members if they convert to any form of Protestantism because of the extreme persecution the Cajuns were subjected to by Protestants during the Great Expulsion of 1755, and throughout their history for maintaining their Catholicism.

Jake and Gumbo both come from the bayou and have a cajun accent most reminiscent of Cajuns in the New Orleans, Louisiana locale.

For instance, some Cajuns in south Louisiana use the term to refer to area whites who do not have Francophone backgrounds.

" Somehow, his brashness and arrogance over the years, traits that would have destroyed the average politician, have only seemed to endear him to his core constituency: minorities, organized labor, Cajuns and lower-income voters.

In the Fall of 2007, Ragin ' Cajuns athletics added a new building for all teams to have access to practice.

Louisiana Creole, a creole which developed long before Haitian immigrants arrived in Louisiana, largely developed as the tongue of the Louisiana Creole community and a significant portion of self-identified Cajuns. However, linguists now believe that the Colonial and Acadian dialects have largely merged into modern Louisiana French, but remain distinct from Louisiana Creole.

The origins of " coonass " are obscure, and Cajuns have put forth several folk etymologies in an effort to explain the word's origin.