Katie de la Rosa

Sisters Theresa LaRive and Elaine LaRive are Cajuns from Lafayette, but they attended Acadian Culture Day on Sunday anyway. They said there's always a chance for them to learn something about their heritage.

"We already know most of this," Elaine LaRive said about the history on display at the eighth annual event at Vermilionville, "but it's always a good time to come out here."

Dance lessons, cooking demonstrations and oral histories were given throughout the seven-hour-long celebration, which Bayou Vermilion District CEO David Cheramie called "an education process" that more than a thousand people attended.

"With everybody staring at screens these days, the culture isn't passed along as it should be," Cheramie said. "It's great to see all the kids out here. They may not fully understand what they're doing right now, but the signficance will come later."

It's widely believed the Acadians, after they were expelled from Canada, came straight to South Louisiana from Nova Scotia, but that's not true, Chermarie said. The earliest settlers, like Beausoleil Broussard, arrived in 1765, but the majority of the deported Acadians didn't join them here until 20 to 30 years later.

"There was a lot of wandering around before they got here," Cheramie said.

The Acadians have "a history of survival," Cheramie said, and Vermilionville's free event seeks to build upon that and their culture. They had built a "prosperous" living in Nova Scotia, which resulted in what Chermaie said "were likely millionaires of their time" in Louisiana.

One of the 23-acre land's seven preserved homes is the estate of Beausoleil Broussard's son, Armand Broussard. It was valued at $65,000 at the time, Chermaie said.

Over at the water fountain, 15 men and women of all ages picked at their strings for a music jam. Those sounds provided faint background music for Earlene Broussard's demonstration of traditional Cajun washing and drying of clothes. Five little children scrubbed linens on a washboard and then hung them up with closepins on the line as Broussard explained the history.

Cajuns used lye soap for washing clothes, which the women of the households did every Monday, Broussard said. It was a byproduct of "boucherie," which produced the lard from which their soap was made. The butchering of hogs happened only in the winter — as the lard was also the way to perserve the meat before the invention of refrigeration — so Broussard said Cajuns would make enough soap then for the entire year.

"It's not rocket science," said Broussard, who teaches Cajun French at LSU. "It's actually 95 percent perspiration. It's very labor intensive."

Each pale of water weighed about 80 pounds, Broussard said.

"Those women were no wusses," she said. "They were very strong people."

Also in attendance, representatives from Louisiane-Acadie spoke about Grand Reveil Acadian, the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Acadians arriving in Louisiana that will be held across the state in October 2015. The grand finale will be held in Lafayette, with Festivals Acadiens et Créoles hosting the official ending. Board member Redell Comeaux detailed another special event that's not as far away on the calendar but even farther away on the map: The Congres Mondial Acadien 2014 — the international congress of Acadians — from Aug. 8-24 in Maine and New Brunswick.

With all the volunteers and organizations at the culture day, Cheramie said it's "an intricate process" to plan, but one that's vital to the survival of this area's roots.

Vermilionville's Native American Culture Day is set for Sept. 19.