What is a Cajun?

From Acadia to the bayou: the story of a people who turned exile into one of America's most beloved cultures.

Cajuns trace their roots to Acadie — modern-day Nova Scotia — where French settlers farmed for generations before the British expelled them in the 1750s. The Great Upheaval scattered them across the Atlantic, and many eventually found their way to the swamps and prairies of south Louisiana.

There, isolated and resourceful, they built a new life. They adapted French cooking to local ingredients — crawfish, rice, alligator, okra — and developed a music and a French dialect all their own. The word “Cajun” is itself a shortening of “Acadien.”

Cajun and Creole are often confused, but they are distinct. Creole culture grew up in and around New Orleans from a mix of French, Spanish, African, and Caribbean influences; Cajun culture took root in the rural southwest among the exiled Acadians and their neighbors.

Our swamp tours glide through the heart of Cajun country, where the bayou still feeds families and the accent still sounds like home. It is the landscape that shaped a people — and the people who shaped it back.