Legend of Bayou Teche / La Legende du Bayou Teche

The tribe that put its name on this marker is the only one in Louisiana still living on part of its original homeland, a territory that once spread across the Atchafalaya Basin, west toward Lafayette and east toward New Orleans. A war with the French ended with a 1718 peace, but many Chitimacha had been enslaved, and survivors moved west to Grand Lake and the Teche. In 1916 land was placed in trust for the tribe at Charenton. Its constitution was approved in January 1971, and tribal members can learn the language, Sitimaxa.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 5.0 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.
• Vermilionville — 7.2 mi
  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.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 11 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 — 11 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

• History of St. Bernard Catholic School — steps away
• Welcome to Breaux Bridge — steps away
• Breaux Bridge, Louisiana / Pont de Breaux, Louisiane — steps away
• The Bridge of 1852 — steps away