Coussan House (La Maison Coussan)

Bousillage is a mix of locally collected clay or loess and a plant binder such as Spanish moss or straw. In the torche entre poteaux method, builders packed handfuls onto horizontal strips of wood set between the studs, and the walls could be about a foot thick. Rolls about two feet long were laid over pins, smoothed by hand and whitewashed. The writer George Washington Cable recorded people of Acadian descent trampling clay and moss in a pit. Before air conditioning the thick walls regulated humidity and blocked radiant heat.

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 — 5.8 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

• Beau Bassin House (La Maison Beau Bassin) — steps away
• School House (L'école) — steps away
• Mouton Kitchen (La Cuisine de Maison Mouton) — steps away
• Trappers Cabin & Boat Shed — steps away