But pugnacity comes naturally to Mr. Perrin, a compact man who will talk about his Cajun ancestors and the injustices visited upon them as long as a person will let him.

In the 1990s, he went to battle with the queen of England, pressing her to apologize for the expulsion of the Acadians, the forebears of today’s Cajuns, from Canada in 1755. The queen issued a royal proclamation in 2003 acknowledging the “dark chapter” and calling for a day of commemoration. That proclamation hangs on the wall of Mr. Perrin’s office like a trophy.

Mr. Perrin is one of the 75 or so heirs of Aristide Broussard, who bought 3,000 acres here in Vermilion Parish at the end of the 19th century. The land was perfect for growing sugar cane, raising cattle and trapping alligators. That it was also perfect for drilling the Broussards found out four decades later, when the Texas Company discovered a big deposit underneath.

The company bought the mineral rights, but it had bigger plans, and in 1942 asked to lease an 80-acre plot in one of Mr. Broussard’s cow pastures.

It was an easy decision after the lean days of the Depression: Mr. Broussard leased the land to the company for 75 years, at a rent of $1,600 annually (an amount later renegotiated to $110,000 a year). The company gave him a Cadillac and a lifetime supply of free gas, and it promised jobs for his grandsons.

And it built an enormous gas recycling plant in his backyard.

Even though some members of the family worked on the property — some still do — they have never entirely been aware of what went on there. They knew that there were some places in the pasture where grass did not grow, and that pipelines crossed their land so thickly that Texaco simply paid them not to graze cattle in certain areas.