Acadian House (Maison Acadienne)

Traiteurs follow rules. A patient must ask, naming the illness and giving a baptismal name, and the traiteur does not volunteer. Payment is refused, though gifts are accepted, and the patient does not say thank you. Prayers are whispered, often three times at 15-minute intervals, while visitors in the kitchen keep quiet. Remedies run from whiskey and camphor for shingles to teas of coral bean and orange flower. One traiteur, Eunice Duhon, says her father taught her to treat everyone regardless of race. The practice sits alongside medicine and has not replaced it.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vermilionville — steps away
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 5.7 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 12 mi
  A bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
• St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 12 mi
  The Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.

More markers nearby

• Mouton Kitchen (La Cuisine de Maison Mouton) — steps away
• School House (L'école) — steps away
• Attakapas Chapel (Chapelle des Attakapas) — steps away
• Beau Bassin House (La Maison Beau Bassin) — steps away