118

The Drama Review 46 3 (T175) Fall 2002 Copyright Oacute 2002

New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Wilderness Theatre

Environmental Tourism andCajun Swamp Tours

Eric Wiley

Bayou Black is one of the myriad interconnecting waterways that ow throughthe lower Mississippi Delta in what is in essence a at swampy maze Along itsbanks grow the usual plants (water lilies elephant ears and marsh grass) but onits surface a strange event takes place each day two rows of tourists seated back-to-back in a boat gaze and occasionally point at the surrounding landscape as ifthey were an audience taking in a show But what show are they seeing Has thenatural environment taken to performing daily twice on weekends And twohours after the boatrsquos departure as it returns to the launch why has the gazingand pointing stopped as if the ldquoshowrdquo has ended After all the lilies and elephantears are still there the same as before

These were the impressions and thoughts that rst stirred my interest in theperformance aspects of Cajun swamp tours It was in the fall of 1994 and I wasa rst-year doctoral student in theatre at Louisiana State University Oddlyenough two fellow students and I had turned to swamp tours to escape suchintrusive thoughts Performance theory towered over us in that rst year like asilo of grain over a trio of force-fed ducks so unrelenting and dense were ourassignments in it But even deep in the swamps on a Saturday afternoon its in- uence stuck with us and soon I set about ldquotheorizingrdquo the swamp tour

The distinctive features of each tour along with their unique locations preventmy describing a typical tour experience except in general terms They are usuallylocated at a dock next to a Cajun restaurant where restrooms telephones re-freshments souvenirs and parking are on hand Departure is in the late afternoonwhen the heat of midday has abated (tours are in summer only when alligatorsare out of hibernation) A boat typically seats 20 to 30 passengers and has anoutboard motor most are pontoon boats with a canopy The tour usually beginsin a residential area and then proceeds past marinas and isolated houses and nally enters an area surrounded by water and subtropical vegetation The guidenarrates for about two hours identifying the ora and fauna relating the waysof local people and stopping to feed alligators or to point out a gas well cap ora sleeping owl The guide delivers a routine narrative but allows spontaneous

Cajun Swamp Tours 119

events and interactions among the tourists to in uence the tour In the end theboat retraces its route back to the launch

While my thinking about Cajun swamp tours has evolved with the years I stilluse as my starting point that rst impression recorded at the beginning of thisessay tour passengers seem to reach (and then to lose) an excited state of awarenessthat resembles the behavior of an audience at a theatrical performance This stateis no doubt found at other intersections of tourism and the natural environmentand may help to explain why these sites are attracting tourists as never before

Natural settings have of course been drawing visitors for decades if not cen-turiesmdashCrater Lake the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls are classic Americantourist magnetsmdashbut environmental tourism is now undergoing an unprece-dented surge in popularity and more importantly its methods for presenting theenvironment have gained in sophistication bringing it closer to a kind of the-atrical performance1 Cajun swamp tours present within the eld of environ-mental tourism an unusually complex case of this new stagecraft for they notonly organize an audience and maintain it for a period of hours but they alsofeature elements of live performance guide-narrators and lunging alligatorsOther theatrical connections may surface in the design of the tour boats inprepared routines and even in the dramatic structuring of entire tours

The rst swamp tour company was founded in 1979 by Annie Miller akaldquoAlligator Annierdquo whose idea for it came from the Terrebone Parish Chamberof Commerce (Miller 2000) Her tour departs from a wharf behind the BayouDelight Restaurant on Bayou Black which lies eight miles outside the small cityof Houma some 60 miles southwest of New Orleans Other locals soon followedMillerrsquos lead and by 1991 there were 20 swamp tours in Louisiana now they

1 Passengers wave fromtheir swamp tour boat onBayou Black AnnieMillerrsquos Sonrsquos SwampTour 1999 (Photo byEric Wiley)

120 Eric Wiley

exceed 30 and new tours continue to open These includemdashin addition to thesmall rural tours such as Millerrsquosmdashthe large air-conditioned boats that tour outof New Orleans tours by seaplane airplane airboat canoe and even by foot2

The Cajun guide has joined the ranks of other Cajun entertainersmdashstand-upcomics singers storytellers preachers and televised chefsmdashas a solo performerof Cajun culture drawing on regional dialects stories and music in the creationof a persona The guide-narrator borrows particularly from the performance tech-niques and thematic material that are the legacy of Cajun storytelling a majorperformance tradition But the guides are not the premiere attraction of theswamp tours it is the swamps themselves And it is the incorporation of a naturalenvironment into the performance that sets these tour narratives apart from thoseof the traditional Cajun raconteur

In ldquoPerformance As Metaphorrdquo theatrical phenomenologist Bert States dis-cusses the hypothetical ability of a framing device to unilaterally confer perfor-mance status on whatever falls within its scope Adopting this notion of framingfrom the work of performance theorists Erving Goffman (1974) and RichardSchechner (1990) States argues that a park or farm may be transformed into aperformance of a park or farm simply by virtue of its designation as a performance(199616) Leaving aside the problems of de nition that concern States this useof framing offers a valuable model of the touristsrsquo experience on a swamp toursince it speaks to the process of envisioning natural areas as performances

The initial demarcation of swamps as something sight-worthy is key but it isnot the rst step in the process by which the swamps acquire elevated status inthe imagination of tourists This singling out of the swamps relies and builds onthe public predisposition to value some natural areas more than others The as-sertion that the wetlands deserve special attention not only creates interest inthem but also re ects a widely felt preexisting interest Thus tour advertisementsappeal to popular views of swamps even as they seek to awaken and direct thepublicrsquos thinking about them But presenting the swamps as sight-worthy andtour-worthy is nonetheless pivotal for it frames them in a way that correspondsto the framing of plays spectacles and other performances Such a touristicldquomarkerrdquo invites the public to apply (to wetlands) a speci c and highly conven-tional mode of viewing3

Tour operators not only frame the wetlands they also establish through ad-vertisements expectations that condition the reception of the toured area Theseadvertisements most often take the form of brochures and are displayed anddistributed at airports train stations hotels and tourist centers throughout theregion The brochures display a complex set of representations of swamplandsthe most recurrent themes of which in order of prominence are wildernessnatural purity scenic beauty and danger

The ldquowildernessrdquo theme de nes the swamplands in fundamental opposition tocivilization Added to this are the secondary quali ers the swamps are non-civilized non-socially constructed ahistorical essentialist ldquonaturerdquo and arecharacterized variously by virginity beauty hostility mystique amorality andtimelessness As part of a marketing strategy geared to tourists from urban andother dry landscapes of North America and Europe these evocative motifs tapinto the great Occidental tradition of perceiving wetlands as exotic and alluring4

One persistent claim of the brochures is ldquonatural purityrdquo giving the impressionthat tourists may actually be among the rst to enter the secluded backwaterenvironment With phrasing such as ldquotruly pristinerdquo ldquountamed wildernessrdquo andldquoprimitive splendorrdquo brochures awaken expectations of a place beyond the reachof human in uence The implied assumption is that the tourists who have alreadyleft home wish to venture still further into a space never before occupied byhumans playing on a popular yearning for escape not only from the personally

Cajun Swamp Tours 121

2 Ron Guidryrsquos pontoonboat A Cajun ManrsquosSwamp Cruise 1998(Photo by Eric Wiley)

familiar but from all that is known This may be the same yearning that sustainsthe science- ction industry conditioned by a nostalgic longing to ldquogo where noone has gone beforerdquo The rhetoric surrounding the swamp tours also resoundswith echoes of traditional pastoral poetry especially the pastoral dramas of theRenaissance A more limited parallel to theatre practices might be drawn to the18th-century English fad of staging rustic settings such as Phillipe Jacques De-Loutherbourgrsquos Omai or a Trip around the World (1785) which presented thetravels of Captain Cook In any event brochures for the swamp tours clearlypromise an openly theatrical presentation of the landscape Romantic imageryplayful hyperbole and humorous names for the tours and guides prepare one fora staged version of the wetlands

This swamp theatre is an example of the ldquovirtual realityrdquo that pervades envi-ronmental tourism a designation used by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett in Des-tination Culture (1998) for many offerings in museums and heritage-based tourismHer analysis of the various methods used to display museum objects and culturaltraditions exposes the determining role these methods have in producing themeaning of exhibitions and in creating ldquovirtualrdquo exhibits with only scant ties toany ldquoactualrdquo counterparts It is in moments when the real swamps come intocon ict with the imagined ones that a swamp tour produces a staged or virtualwilderness in the imagination of the passengers

As one might expect given the tour brochuresrsquo playfulness tourists experienceinterpretive dissonance while on board as when ldquoa unique adventure by boatinto the deep dark swampsrdquo actually takes tourists down an abandoned irrigationcanal dug to hydrate the surrounding sugarcane elds The ldquovirgin swampsrdquo werecleared long ago of their centuries-old cypress trees which were hauled offthrough a network of canals dug by lumber companies in the 19th century Tour-ists nd an environment not ldquoundisturbed by manrdquo as claimed in more than onebrochure but visibly affected by introduced ora and fauna such as the waterhyacinth from Japan which clogs up the canals and bayous and the nutria arodent native to Argentina whose tunneling contributes to erosion

The gradual scaling back of expectations comprises one aspect of the touristsrsquoexperience of the framed environment other setbacks are no doubt greater than

122 Eric Wiley

3 Annie Miller aka ldquoAlli-gator Annierdquo feeds skew-ered meat to a bayoualligator during a swamptour (Photo courtesy of An-nie Miller)

the representational breaches just mentioned The framing of the environmentmay itself prevent tourists from seeing the environment in at least some sensesof what it means to see something Semioticians have proposed along these linesthat the institutional authority that is implicit in the demarcation of sites can beblinding According to Walker Percy instead of directly observing an attractionsuch as wetlands tourists will nd themselves merely seeking to con rm what itis about them that has been deemed sight-worthy He argues in discussing theGrand Canyon that ldquothe thing as it is [] has been appropriated by the symboliccomplex which has already been formed in the sightseerrsquos mind Seeing the can-yon under approved circumstances is seeing the symbolic complex head onrdquo(197547) The swamplands presented on tours following Percyrsquos analysis areconcealed within what Percy terms a ldquocitadel of symbolic investiturerdquo (197551)and the satisfaction of a tourist rests not in ldquothe discovery of the thing beforehimrdquo but rather in the ldquomeasuring up of the thing to the criterion of the pre-

Cajun Swamp Tours 123

formed symbolic complexrdquo (197547) Percy attempts to explain the process thattriggers the perception of a ldquosymbolic complexrdquo which corresponds to theldquoframed performancerdquo of States Goffman and Schechner and to the ldquovirtualrealityrdquo of Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

But there is always the chance that the framing of the swamps as wildernesswill collapse and with it the ldquocitadel of symbolic investiturerdquo A critical rein-forcement of the frame thus appears in the theatrical structure of the tours whichcreates a sense of journeying into danger The swamp tours take place in steps orldquoscenesrdquo which progress from exposition to entry into a remote other worldto a critical encounter with a menacing antagonist to survival and return Thestructure is reminiscent of the archetypal Herorsquos journey described by JosephCampbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) Front and center in this dramaso to speak is the toothy reptile Alligator mississippiensis otherwise known as theAmerican alligator

With its dramatic propensity for violence the alligator stands out as the star ofmany tours as evidenced by its prominence in tour names road signs and bro-chures Some brochures announce ldquolast but not least the erce and dangerousalligatorrdquo or ldquoguaranteed to see live alligatorsrdquo Like a head of state the alligatorembodies the particularity and autonomy of the wetlands environment appearingas its peculiar violent and omnivorous ruler akin to the bear shark and tigerwho lord over other environments Tours invariably pay tribute to the ldquobig lizardrdquoby culminating in ritualized feeding sessions These feature alligators have beenconditioned when called over to the boat to lunge at chicken parts suspendedabove the water (the guide skewers raw legs and thighs one at a time onto a stiffwire attached to the end of a pole) When a 40-year-old bull alligator rises outof the water jaws snapping and its massive head bumps like a boulder againstthe aluminum hull tourists are satis ed especially if some on board have gaspedor started in fear during the episode

Although the feeding sessions corroborate the prom-ise of swamps as dangerous places their impact on thetourists may be contradictory The sight of large dis-colored scars on the head and back of some of the al-ligatorsmdashthe result of gashes in icted by boat enginepropellers as one guide explainedmdashprompts a sympa-thetic outcry from the tourists The alligator is trans-formed from terrifying predator to tragic hero arousingboth pity and fear In any event the alligator functionsas a thematic lightning rod for the theatricalization ofthe surrounding landscape The act of snapping upchicken parts is also a perfectly tragi-farcical debase-ment of these consummate huntersmdashespecially whenfor the sake of photographs the alligator is made tojump at the poultry several times like a trained circusanimal performer

Despite the hints of tragic grandeur the alligatorplays a role in the dramatization of the landscape thatseems closest to that of the beasts of pastoral dramawhich inhabit natural territories lying outside the civ-ilized world In both cases the ldquoplotrdquo centers on makingcontact with a beast that threatens but then fails to doharm Sometimes the potential threat of alligators socrucial to the drama of the tours is put to a test Onetime on Annie Millerrsquos Sonrsquos Swamp Tour as we werescanning the dark waters for our rst glimpse of an

4 Wary swamp touristswatch as guide AnnieMiller feeds an alligator thathas approached the boat(Photo courtesy of AnnieMiller)

124 Eric Wiley

5 A ldquoChristmas Treerdquocapping a natural gas well isone of the attractions on aswamp tour The wells aretypically 16000 feet deepA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

alligator and having been warned to ldquokeep your hands away from the railing atall timesrdquo we came upon a sight our eyes refused to believe a man and two smallchildren were in the water far from shore their heads jutting out of colorful lifejackets as they treaded water waiting while the mother circled back around in amotorboat to give each a turn to water-ski The sight of these children smilingup at us from the water was an outrage and it dispelled our ldquovirtualrdquo world justas if in a theatre someone had brought up the house lights during a play5

The water-skiersrsquo challenge to the tourrsquos ldquowildernessrdquo illuminates the doublefunction of a frame it excludes as well as contains The tours rely for their appealas much on their exclusion of ordinary life as on their inclusion (or creation) ofwilderness Their dramatization of the swamps serves not only to structure a tourand to sustain interest in it but also to divert tourists from their daily lives andto displace temporarily the unsettling concerns associated with them The toursare escapist entertainments To succeed in this genre the tour guides must preventtourists from having thoughts that are disruptive of the virtual wilderness theyhave entered

Another challenge to the toursrsquo framing of the swamps as a wilderness is thestark presence of the oil and natural gas industry pipes pumps transport shipswarning signs posted along the canals and the intricate metallic structures thatcap the natural gas wells called ldquoChristmas treesrdquo What could be more emblem-atic of modernity than pipes ttings bolts and valves This apparatus is emblem-atic of the systematic exploitation of nature Consistent with its poor environ-mental record globally the oil and gas industry has not spared the Louisianawetlands Its damage to the arearsquos ecosystem has included a devastating intake ofsaltwater caused by some 12 thousand miles of canals an accelerated loss of landand a profuse dumping of chemical wastes (Kennedy 199194ndash99) The touristsrsquovision of the environment as a dangerous wilderness zone must overcome the per-vasive actuality of an endangered zone in urgent need of protection On sometours it is true no visible signs of the petrochemical industry appear but its opera-tions heavily inscribe the surrounding region and access roads and condition themost remote wetlands making its presence unavoidable

When one is torn between having an enjoyable fear of alligators on the one

Cajun Swamp Tours 125

hand and a disheartening concern about seepage from toxic waste sites on theother the latter tends to prevail Awareness of the oil and gas industry thus threat-ens to undo the framing of the wetlands as a sightseeing attraction In additionto stealing the thunder of the ldquodangerous alligatorrdquo the scale of the industryrsquosprocedures for extracting minerals dwarfs the staged environment of water treesand marsh grass The natural gas wells for example are about 16000 feet deepcompared to grass that grows to a height of about eight feet and trees that reacha maximum of 60 feet

Perhaps as a hedge against disillusionment tourists are found overwhelminglyto prefer swamp tours that present nature through the hermeneutic of Cajunculture Tourists are enticed not by swamps-as-swamps but by ldquoCajun swampsrdquoldquoAlligatorAnnierdquo ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo and ldquoCajun Jackrdquo are gures who interpretthe wetlands through the medium of Cajun folk culture This intervening per-soni cation is the key to transforming the wetlands into a theatrical experienceSwamp tours in other states such as Texas Mississippi Alabama Georgia andFloridamdashlacking anything comparable to a Cajun communitymdashhave not enjoyedthe booming business of the Louisiana tours although the Seminole-themedtours now open in Florida show some of the same promise The appeal of theCajun guide suggests that tourists desire a strong dose of theatricalization thewetlands on their own would lure few people

Anthropologist Marjorie Esman identi es the Cajun stereotype as one of ldquofun-loving rustic French-speaking folk with a noble peasant past that has not yetdiedrdquo (1984459) Since Esmanrsquos 1984 article the Cajun image has been focusedincreasingly on Cajun cuisine owing to the nationally televised cooking showsof Chef Paul Prudhomme Justin Wilson and Chef John Folse and to the wide-spread marketing of Cajun cookbooks restaurants seasonings and other comes-tibles Swamps are accordingly presented on tours as a source of foodstuffs withguides relating everything from old techniques for catching sh to recent trendsin preparing nutria meat Memorable meals and culinary approaches to game and sh are often woven into tour narratives6 Nearly all of the tours operate out of(and promote) a Cajun restaurant The Cajun ldquoproprietorshiprdquo of swamps unfoldsfurther through a description of traditional uses for various plants Spanish mosswas used to stuff mattresses and cypress trees were burned and carved into pi-rogues small at-bottomed canoes

During the course of a tour the guides integrate the swamps into their per-formance of Cajun culture Their regional accent and gures of speech sustainthis Cajunization The tour boat itself provides a Cajun frame of reference repletewith such cultural markings as snake skins nailed to the canopy supports lami-nated alligator heads prominently displayed (in one case on a box for tips) postedCajun bumper stickers and folksy names for the boats such as ldquoGumbordquo andldquoGator Baitrdquo While most guides con ne themselves to jokes and storytellingRon Guidry aka ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo rams his boat mid-tour into a marshy em-bankment and proceeds to sing songs in Cajun French

The cajunisme of the tours is as theatrical and as far-fetched as their productionof ldquowildernessrdquo It derives from a narrow performance of the cultural idiomcultivated and exaggerated beyond anything found in the local Cajun commu-nities Above all the image of Cajuns as fun-loving people is deceptive Veiledbehind it are a people still reeling from a government-sponsored assault on theirculture and language which arose from a national effort beginning in the 1920sto bring subcultures into greater conformity with the Anglo American main-stream General instruction in the French language was prohibited at Louisianapublic schools in 1924 and in practice this meant that students who used Frenchat school were punished Over time Cajuns came to feel ashamed of their lan-guage and heritage (Solles 19956) The Catholic Church stopped dispatching

126 Eric Wiley

French-speaking priests to the area parents no longerspoke Cajun French to their children and the languageall but vanished (7) The stigma of the Cajuns lastedwell into the 1970s when in the interests of tourismthe cultural heritage of the ldquocoonassesrdquo as Cajuns oftenrefer to themselves became invaluable to the statewhich was then suffering economically from a devas-tated oil industry The Cajuns were suddenly promotedas fun-loving French-speaking people and a futile ef-fort was made to revive their language (9)7

The swamp tours feature a Cajun subtype the so-called ldquoswamp Cajunrdquo whose lifestyle allegedly resultsfrom a long interrelationship with the swamp environ-ment The brochures present Cajun guides chie y asswamp dwellers with little knowledge of the outsideworld one invites visitors to ldquomeet Cajuns who havenever lived in a townrdquo But here again the advertisedimage reveals only part of a long and bitter history Formuch of what is identi ed as swamp Cajunmdashstrongfamily traditions communal values religious devotionsuperstitious beliefs and love of cooking music andstorytellingmdashpredates the latendash18th-century arrival ofthe Cajuns in Louisiana The complex identity of theCajuns rst took root in the Acadian settlements nearNova Scotia in the 17th and 18th centuries Comprisedof villagers from western France these remote settle-ments thrived in their isolation and enjoyed self-rulein most matters for almost 150 years The distinctivecharacter of the Cajun people thus springs from theirpreservation and adaptation of early modern (and per-haps medieval and pagan) cultural traditions (Rushton197971ndash72)8

The swamp tours emphasize the relationship of theCajuns to the swamps excluding not only Acadian his-tory but also many other historical and contemporaryin uences on the Cajun people (including NativeAmerican African English Creole Spanish Germanand Sicilian) (Ancelet 1992261) This sweeping omis-sion of in uences is in keeping with the exaggerationof the ldquonatural purityrdquo and ldquowildernessrdquo motifs whichextend in the brochures to a de nition of local inhab-itants as swamp dwellers But during the tours this ex-pectation too will have to be signi cantly scaled backsince the guides know of course about current affairsand are in possession of the technological wizardry of

modern life such as cellular phones I remember how ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo burstmy own interpretive bubble by casually mentioning that he had performed hissongs in Japan Another guide lamented the loss of the veillee the traditionalevening visit with neighbors explaining that people prefer to stay home nowadaysand watch television

Tourists soon realize that swamp Cajuns exist only in the toursrsquo production ofa virtual wilderness The real guides are performer-narrators whose well-wornstories jokes word choices and gestures have evolved over years of repeatedlypointing out the same things As locals they do display regional manners andhabits of speech But the guides do not commit deeply to their ldquoswamp dwellerrdquo

6 Brochure for CajunJackrsquos Swamp Tours (Pat-terson Louisiana) (Cour-tesy of Jack Herbert)

Cajun Swamp Tours 127

roles as would be expected of employees for example at the nearby AcadianVillage a heritage park that ldquore-createsrdquo the life of an imaginary 19th-centuryCajun settlement Unlike the costumed ldquovillagersrdquo the guides on the swamptours generally shirk the part assigned to them in the shiny brochures Nonewears a costume or adopts the role of a rustic ldquocharacterrdquo except in the tellingof a story or joke Instead they ldquoare themselvesrdquo and never refer to the brochureimages or pronouncements about ldquowildrdquo Cajuns

In fact most guides seem discom ted by the scrutiny of the tourists perhapsfeeling themselves prejudged according to stereotypes including those in theirown brochures There is of course a general legacy ofcondescension in the West toward people indigenousto so-called noncivilized (or simply non-Western) areasof the world ldquoNativerdquo peoples frequently have beenput on display for tourists interested in their ldquoexoti-cismrdquo and the Cajun guides operate partially in thistradition Due to their French origins however Cajunguides are spared some of the more racist and colonialovertones associated with the display of non-Europeanldquonativesrdquo The Cajun swamp dweller is really more ofa Tarzan gure a European who has become semi-wilddue to an unfortunate overexposure to wilderness andnative cultures Although the condescension is com-paratively mild in relation to the heritage industry atlarge it nonetheless seems to provoke some awkwardmoments and periods of strained silence especiallywhen an inexperienced person is lling in as a substi-tute guide The guides also appear slightly embarrassedabout their role whenever locals greet them from theshore or from another boat

When tourists discover that their ldquoauthentic Cajunguiderdquo has a web site or a satellite dish the hope ofescaping civilization may seem dashed leaving themfeeling more entrapped than before To mainstream so-ciety folk cultures such as the Cajuns or the Amishfunction as a kind of rear guard occupying a fallbackposition against a deepening alienation from natureButif the ldquoauthentic Cajun guiderdquo sits home at nightwatching national television where does one nd peo-ple who still identify with nature And what are theconsequences for a tour whose host is a ldquocompromisedrdquoswamp dweller

The short answer is that fortunately for the tour op-erators tourists have bought their tickets and are un-derway before fully realizing that the brochures containonly the proverbial grain of truth The long answermight begin with the observation that the guides donot really relinquish their roles as intermediaries be-tween civilization and the wild until after the feedingsessions during which they meet the expectations ofthis rolemdashin the way they call over and feed the alli-gatorsmdashmore than at any other time on the tour Thedemotion of a tour guide from fabled swamp dwellerto reluctant actor-as-swamp-dweller comes late in thetour when the wilderness ction as a whole is on thewane

7 Brochure for A CajunManrsquos Swamp Cruise(Houma Louisiana)(Courtesy of Ronald JGuidry)

128 Eric Wiley

Whatrsquos left is not ldquoreal wildernessrdquo as promised in the brochures but theatri-cality and virtuality When both guides and tourists willingly suspend their dis-belief the swamps can function as pure wilderness as home to rustic folk asdangerous mysterious and colorful This alluring narrative is loosely organizedas a journey providing the tours with a core ldquoscriptrdquo that can accommodateparticipation and improvisation The journey structure whets the touristsrsquo ap-petite for adventure in the early going and then en route builds up their antici-pation of fearful alligators The script climaxes in the feeding session when thetwo most theatricalized gures in this dramamdashthe guide and the alligatormdashenacta staged encounter

The basic mission of locating and paying tribute to the alligator provides struc-ture to the toursrsquo swamp ldquotheatrerdquo But once it is accomplished and the dramaticquestion resolved (will we nd and safely escape from alligators) the virtualswamps begin to dissipate The guide gives up his or her role as interpreter andwill typically fall silent and concentrate on driving the boat This helps to explainwhy tourists act near the end of a tour as if the ldquoshowrdquo is over Indeed afterthe feedings the tours become little more than a return ride retracing the routeused to get to the feeding site On the journey back the tourists are left to watchthe landscape pass again before their eyes like a slowly rewinding tape

Fatigue sets in further draining the tour of drama The tourists enter thewetlands in a high state of excitement and interest they return subdued and wearyof gazing The rst sighting of a turtle sunning itself on a rock sends ripples ofinterest throughout the boat but on the way back to the dock the same turtledraws barely a glance The sudden ight of a white egret is pointed at with delight

8 Ron Guidry banks hisboat to stop and sing inCajun French during a tourA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

Cajun Swamp Tours 129

by an outbound tourist but warrants only a atly delivered ldquotherersquos another oneof those birdsrdquo on the return leg of the tour

The subdued state of those returning from a tour is a common feature ofenvironmental tourism stemming in part from the traveling required betweensites As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes ldquoone problem with the lifespace is itslow density the dead space between attractionsrdquo (1998145) In theme parks andcities by contrast one passes quickly from one interesting spot to another Tocounter the low density of its rural attractions Louisiana has created ldquoCajuncountryrdquomdasha network of tourist attractions restaurants and overnight accom-modations throughout the southern parishes But density also arises from theinternal richness of an attraction from the variety depth and range of offeringsIn virtual realms such as the ldquoCajun swampsrdquo sites may achieve high internaldensity through the power and reach of the illusions they generate The toursrsquoproduction of ldquoCajun swampsrdquo morphs everyday stuff such as trees and rocksand clouds into ldquoCajun treesrdquo and ldquoCajun rocksrdquo and ldquoCajun cloudsrdquo Theweariness that develops late in a tour is thus attributable in part to the open-ended scope of its virtual realm This tiredness resembles that which overcomespeople whenever offerings are open-ended such as in ldquofamousrdquo cities themeparks museums zoos music festivals and all-you-can-eat buffets

As the touring continues after the ldquoshowrdquo has ended the tourist audiencepasses through an in-between world neither fully real nor fully virtual Perhapsthis homestretch of downtime and dead space provides the escape that touristswanted all along The environment theatricalized as wilderness nally is more ofthe same media glut that people ordinarily experience at home The trip backmay be in contrast what the wetlands really are beautiful and compromised

Once the boat tour is over what awaits the tourists Parked on the gravel lotbeside the dock are the rental cars that brought them out to Bayou Black or toother waters on the dashboards and front seats lay the colorful brochures andtour books which may revive in them the tourism industryrsquos theatricalizationofthe entire region And in their memory is a theatrical experience that involvedwith the help of a swamp dweller looking for nding and feeding alligatorsViewed within the broader context of regional tourismmdashthat is regional the-atricalizationmdashthe swamp tours are vacations within vacations escapes from es-capes theatres inside theatres During the boat ride back one oats within twotheatrical frames one separating wilderness from civilization and the other sepa-rating two hours of touristic theatre from a much larger show called ldquoCajunCountryrdquo

Notes

1 A study by R Tapper reports ldquowhile tourism is growing on average at about 3 percent peryear growth in nature-based tourism is between 5 percentndash10 percent per yearrdquo (in Mow-forth and Munt 199899) On the use of theatrical methods by the tourism industry per-formance theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has astutely observed ldquoMuch that isfamiliar from theater is deployed in some fashion within the tourism industry Indeed theindustry is a kind of museum of theater practice even as it innovates new variations andformsrdquo (19975)

2 On the number of tours in 1991 see Kate Alexander (1991) The gure for 2002 comesfrom the Tour Guide Book of the Louisiana Of ce of Tourism This essay covers tours basedin rural areas only those in the vicinity of New Orleans are not discussed

3 In studies of tourism a great deal has been made of the particular manner in which touristsregard and decode designated tourist attractions Sociologist John Urry has argued thatpeople view tourist attractions with a distinctive ldquotourist gazerdquo He contends that the des-ignation of an attraction begins with an ascription of ldquoothernessrdquo to a site ldquotourism results

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

Cajun Swamp Tours 119

events and interactions among the tourists to in uence the tour In the end theboat retraces its route back to the launch

While my thinking about Cajun swamp tours has evolved with the years I stilluse as my starting point that rst impression recorded at the beginning of thisessay tour passengers seem to reach (and then to lose) an excited state of awarenessthat resembles the behavior of an audience at a theatrical performance This stateis no doubt found at other intersections of tourism and the natural environmentand may help to explain why these sites are attracting tourists as never before

Natural settings have of course been drawing visitors for decades if not cen-turiesmdashCrater Lake the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls are classic Americantourist magnetsmdashbut environmental tourism is now undergoing an unprece-dented surge in popularity and more importantly its methods for presenting theenvironment have gained in sophistication bringing it closer to a kind of the-atrical performance1 Cajun swamp tours present within the eld of environ-mental tourism an unusually complex case of this new stagecraft for they notonly organize an audience and maintain it for a period of hours but they alsofeature elements of live performance guide-narrators and lunging alligatorsOther theatrical connections may surface in the design of the tour boats inprepared routines and even in the dramatic structuring of entire tours

The rst swamp tour company was founded in 1979 by Annie Miller akaldquoAlligator Annierdquo whose idea for it came from the Terrebone Parish Chamberof Commerce (Miller 2000) Her tour departs from a wharf behind the BayouDelight Restaurant on Bayou Black which lies eight miles outside the small cityof Houma some 60 miles southwest of New Orleans Other locals soon followedMillerrsquos lead and by 1991 there were 20 swamp tours in Louisiana now they

1 Passengers wave fromtheir swamp tour boat onBayou Black AnnieMillerrsquos Sonrsquos SwampTour 1999 (Photo byEric Wiley)

120 Eric Wiley

exceed 30 and new tours continue to open These includemdashin addition to thesmall rural tours such as Millerrsquosmdashthe large air-conditioned boats that tour outof New Orleans tours by seaplane airplane airboat canoe and even by foot2

The Cajun guide has joined the ranks of other Cajun entertainersmdashstand-upcomics singers storytellers preachers and televised chefsmdashas a solo performerof Cajun culture drawing on regional dialects stories and music in the creationof a persona The guide-narrator borrows particularly from the performance tech-niques and thematic material that are the legacy of Cajun storytelling a majorperformance tradition But the guides are not the premiere attraction of theswamp tours it is the swamps themselves And it is the incorporation of a naturalenvironment into the performance that sets these tour narratives apart from thoseof the traditional Cajun raconteur

In ldquoPerformance As Metaphorrdquo theatrical phenomenologist Bert States dis-cusses the hypothetical ability of a framing device to unilaterally confer perfor-mance status on whatever falls within its scope Adopting this notion of framingfrom the work of performance theorists Erving Goffman (1974) and RichardSchechner (1990) States argues that a park or farm may be transformed into aperformance of a park or farm simply by virtue of its designation as a performance(199616) Leaving aside the problems of de nition that concern States this useof framing offers a valuable model of the touristsrsquo experience on a swamp toursince it speaks to the process of envisioning natural areas as performances

The initial demarcation of swamps as something sight-worthy is key but it isnot the rst step in the process by which the swamps acquire elevated status inthe imagination of tourists This singling out of the swamps relies and builds onthe public predisposition to value some natural areas more than others The as-sertion that the wetlands deserve special attention not only creates interest inthem but also re ects a widely felt preexisting interest Thus tour advertisementsappeal to popular views of swamps even as they seek to awaken and direct thepublicrsquos thinking about them But presenting the swamps as sight-worthy andtour-worthy is nonetheless pivotal for it frames them in a way that correspondsto the framing of plays spectacles and other performances Such a touristicldquomarkerrdquo invites the public to apply (to wetlands) a speci c and highly conven-tional mode of viewing3

Tour operators not only frame the wetlands they also establish through ad-vertisements expectations that condition the reception of the toured area Theseadvertisements most often take the form of brochures and are displayed anddistributed at airports train stations hotels and tourist centers throughout theregion The brochures display a complex set of representations of swamplandsthe most recurrent themes of which in order of prominence are wildernessnatural purity scenic beauty and danger

The ldquowildernessrdquo theme de nes the swamplands in fundamental opposition tocivilization Added to this are the secondary quali ers the swamps are non-civilized non-socially constructed ahistorical essentialist ldquonaturerdquo and arecharacterized variously by virginity beauty hostility mystique amorality andtimelessness As part of a marketing strategy geared to tourists from urban andother dry landscapes of North America and Europe these evocative motifs tapinto the great Occidental tradition of perceiving wetlands as exotic and alluring4

One persistent claim of the brochures is ldquonatural purityrdquo giving the impressionthat tourists may actually be among the rst to enter the secluded backwaterenvironment With phrasing such as ldquotruly pristinerdquo ldquountamed wildernessrdquo andldquoprimitive splendorrdquo brochures awaken expectations of a place beyond the reachof human in uence The implied assumption is that the tourists who have alreadyleft home wish to venture still further into a space never before occupied byhumans playing on a popular yearning for escape not only from the personally

Cajun Swamp Tours 121

2 Ron Guidryrsquos pontoonboat A Cajun ManrsquosSwamp Cruise 1998(Photo by Eric Wiley)

familiar but from all that is known This may be the same yearning that sustainsthe science- ction industry conditioned by a nostalgic longing to ldquogo where noone has gone beforerdquo The rhetoric surrounding the swamp tours also resoundswith echoes of traditional pastoral poetry especially the pastoral dramas of theRenaissance A more limited parallel to theatre practices might be drawn to the18th-century English fad of staging rustic settings such as Phillipe Jacques De-Loutherbourgrsquos Omai or a Trip around the World (1785) which presented thetravels of Captain Cook In any event brochures for the swamp tours clearlypromise an openly theatrical presentation of the landscape Romantic imageryplayful hyperbole and humorous names for the tours and guides prepare one fora staged version of the wetlands

This swamp theatre is an example of the ldquovirtual realityrdquo that pervades envi-ronmental tourism a designation used by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett in Des-tination Culture (1998) for many offerings in museums and heritage-based tourismHer analysis of the various methods used to display museum objects and culturaltraditions exposes the determining role these methods have in producing themeaning of exhibitions and in creating ldquovirtualrdquo exhibits with only scant ties toany ldquoactualrdquo counterparts It is in moments when the real swamps come intocon ict with the imagined ones that a swamp tour produces a staged or virtualwilderness in the imagination of the passengers

As one might expect given the tour brochuresrsquo playfulness tourists experienceinterpretive dissonance while on board as when ldquoa unique adventure by boatinto the deep dark swampsrdquo actually takes tourists down an abandoned irrigationcanal dug to hydrate the surrounding sugarcane elds The ldquovirgin swampsrdquo werecleared long ago of their centuries-old cypress trees which were hauled offthrough a network of canals dug by lumber companies in the 19th century Tour-ists nd an environment not ldquoundisturbed by manrdquo as claimed in more than onebrochure but visibly affected by introduced ora and fauna such as the waterhyacinth from Japan which clogs up the canals and bayous and the nutria arodent native to Argentina whose tunneling contributes to erosion

The gradual scaling back of expectations comprises one aspect of the touristsrsquoexperience of the framed environment other setbacks are no doubt greater than

122 Eric Wiley

3 Annie Miller aka ldquoAlli-gator Annierdquo feeds skew-ered meat to a bayoualligator during a swamptour (Photo courtesy of An-nie Miller)

the representational breaches just mentioned The framing of the environmentmay itself prevent tourists from seeing the environment in at least some sensesof what it means to see something Semioticians have proposed along these linesthat the institutional authority that is implicit in the demarcation of sites can beblinding According to Walker Percy instead of directly observing an attractionsuch as wetlands tourists will nd themselves merely seeking to con rm what itis about them that has been deemed sight-worthy He argues in discussing theGrand Canyon that ldquothe thing as it is [] has been appropriated by the symboliccomplex which has already been formed in the sightseerrsquos mind Seeing the can-yon under approved circumstances is seeing the symbolic complex head onrdquo(197547) The swamplands presented on tours following Percyrsquos analysis areconcealed within what Percy terms a ldquocitadel of symbolic investiturerdquo (197551)and the satisfaction of a tourist rests not in ldquothe discovery of the thing beforehimrdquo but rather in the ldquomeasuring up of the thing to the criterion of the pre-

Cajun Swamp Tours 123

formed symbolic complexrdquo (197547) Percy attempts to explain the process thattriggers the perception of a ldquosymbolic complexrdquo which corresponds to theldquoframed performancerdquo of States Goffman and Schechner and to the ldquovirtualrealityrdquo of Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

But there is always the chance that the framing of the swamps as wildernesswill collapse and with it the ldquocitadel of symbolic investiturerdquo A critical rein-forcement of the frame thus appears in the theatrical structure of the tours whichcreates a sense of journeying into danger The swamp tours take place in steps orldquoscenesrdquo which progress from exposition to entry into a remote other worldto a critical encounter with a menacing antagonist to survival and return Thestructure is reminiscent of the archetypal Herorsquos journey described by JosephCampbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) Front and center in this dramaso to speak is the toothy reptile Alligator mississippiensis otherwise known as theAmerican alligator

With its dramatic propensity for violence the alligator stands out as the star ofmany tours as evidenced by its prominence in tour names road signs and bro-chures Some brochures announce ldquolast but not least the erce and dangerousalligatorrdquo or ldquoguaranteed to see live alligatorsrdquo Like a head of state the alligatorembodies the particularity and autonomy of the wetlands environment appearingas its peculiar violent and omnivorous ruler akin to the bear shark and tigerwho lord over other environments Tours invariably pay tribute to the ldquobig lizardrdquoby culminating in ritualized feeding sessions These feature alligators have beenconditioned when called over to the boat to lunge at chicken parts suspendedabove the water (the guide skewers raw legs and thighs one at a time onto a stiffwire attached to the end of a pole) When a 40-year-old bull alligator rises outof the water jaws snapping and its massive head bumps like a boulder againstthe aluminum hull tourists are satis ed especially if some on board have gaspedor started in fear during the episode

Although the feeding sessions corroborate the prom-ise of swamps as dangerous places their impact on thetourists may be contradictory The sight of large dis-colored scars on the head and back of some of the al-ligatorsmdashthe result of gashes in icted by boat enginepropellers as one guide explainedmdashprompts a sympa-thetic outcry from the tourists The alligator is trans-formed from terrifying predator to tragic hero arousingboth pity and fear In any event the alligator functionsas a thematic lightning rod for the theatricalization ofthe surrounding landscape The act of snapping upchicken parts is also a perfectly tragi-farcical debase-ment of these consummate huntersmdashespecially whenfor the sake of photographs the alligator is made tojump at the poultry several times like a trained circusanimal performer

Despite the hints of tragic grandeur the alligatorplays a role in the dramatization of the landscape thatseems closest to that of the beasts of pastoral dramawhich inhabit natural territories lying outside the civ-ilized world In both cases the ldquoplotrdquo centers on makingcontact with a beast that threatens but then fails to doharm Sometimes the potential threat of alligators socrucial to the drama of the tours is put to a test Onetime on Annie Millerrsquos Sonrsquos Swamp Tour as we werescanning the dark waters for our rst glimpse of an

4 Wary swamp touristswatch as guide AnnieMiller feeds an alligator thathas approached the boat(Photo courtesy of AnnieMiller)

124 Eric Wiley

5 A ldquoChristmas Treerdquocapping a natural gas well isone of the attractions on aswamp tour The wells aretypically 16000 feet deepA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

alligator and having been warned to ldquokeep your hands away from the railing atall timesrdquo we came upon a sight our eyes refused to believe a man and two smallchildren were in the water far from shore their heads jutting out of colorful lifejackets as they treaded water waiting while the mother circled back around in amotorboat to give each a turn to water-ski The sight of these children smilingup at us from the water was an outrage and it dispelled our ldquovirtualrdquo world justas if in a theatre someone had brought up the house lights during a play5

The water-skiersrsquo challenge to the tourrsquos ldquowildernessrdquo illuminates the doublefunction of a frame it excludes as well as contains The tours rely for their appealas much on their exclusion of ordinary life as on their inclusion (or creation) ofwilderness Their dramatization of the swamps serves not only to structure a tourand to sustain interest in it but also to divert tourists from their daily lives andto displace temporarily the unsettling concerns associated with them The toursare escapist entertainments To succeed in this genre the tour guides must preventtourists from having thoughts that are disruptive of the virtual wilderness theyhave entered

Another challenge to the toursrsquo framing of the swamps as a wilderness is thestark presence of the oil and natural gas industry pipes pumps transport shipswarning signs posted along the canals and the intricate metallic structures thatcap the natural gas wells called ldquoChristmas treesrdquo What could be more emblem-atic of modernity than pipes ttings bolts and valves This apparatus is emblem-atic of the systematic exploitation of nature Consistent with its poor environ-mental record globally the oil and gas industry has not spared the Louisianawetlands Its damage to the arearsquos ecosystem has included a devastating intake ofsaltwater caused by some 12 thousand miles of canals an accelerated loss of landand a profuse dumping of chemical wastes (Kennedy 199194ndash99) The touristsrsquovision of the environment as a dangerous wilderness zone must overcome the per-vasive actuality of an endangered zone in urgent need of protection On sometours it is true no visible signs of the petrochemical industry appear but its opera-tions heavily inscribe the surrounding region and access roads and condition themost remote wetlands making its presence unavoidable

When one is torn between having an enjoyable fear of alligators on the one

Cajun Swamp Tours 125

hand and a disheartening concern about seepage from toxic waste sites on theother the latter tends to prevail Awareness of the oil and gas industry thus threat-ens to undo the framing of the wetlands as a sightseeing attraction In additionto stealing the thunder of the ldquodangerous alligatorrdquo the scale of the industryrsquosprocedures for extracting minerals dwarfs the staged environment of water treesand marsh grass The natural gas wells for example are about 16000 feet deepcompared to grass that grows to a height of about eight feet and trees that reacha maximum of 60 feet

Perhaps as a hedge against disillusionment tourists are found overwhelminglyto prefer swamp tours that present nature through the hermeneutic of Cajunculture Tourists are enticed not by swamps-as-swamps but by ldquoCajun swampsrdquoldquoAlligatorAnnierdquo ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo and ldquoCajun Jackrdquo are gures who interpretthe wetlands through the medium of Cajun folk culture This intervening per-soni cation is the key to transforming the wetlands into a theatrical experienceSwamp tours in other states such as Texas Mississippi Alabama Georgia andFloridamdashlacking anything comparable to a Cajun communitymdashhave not enjoyedthe booming business of the Louisiana tours although the Seminole-themedtours now open in Florida show some of the same promise The appeal of theCajun guide suggests that tourists desire a strong dose of theatricalization thewetlands on their own would lure few people

Anthropologist Marjorie Esman identi es the Cajun stereotype as one of ldquofun-loving rustic French-speaking folk with a noble peasant past that has not yetdiedrdquo (1984459) Since Esmanrsquos 1984 article the Cajun image has been focusedincreasingly on Cajun cuisine owing to the nationally televised cooking showsof Chef Paul Prudhomme Justin Wilson and Chef John Folse and to the wide-spread marketing of Cajun cookbooks restaurants seasonings and other comes-tibles Swamps are accordingly presented on tours as a source of foodstuffs withguides relating everything from old techniques for catching sh to recent trendsin preparing nutria meat Memorable meals and culinary approaches to game and sh are often woven into tour narratives6 Nearly all of the tours operate out of(and promote) a Cajun restaurant The Cajun ldquoproprietorshiprdquo of swamps unfoldsfurther through a description of traditional uses for various plants Spanish mosswas used to stuff mattresses and cypress trees were burned and carved into pi-rogues small at-bottomed canoes

During the course of a tour the guides integrate the swamps into their per-formance of Cajun culture Their regional accent and gures of speech sustainthis Cajunization The tour boat itself provides a Cajun frame of reference repletewith such cultural markings as snake skins nailed to the canopy supports lami-nated alligator heads prominently displayed (in one case on a box for tips) postedCajun bumper stickers and folksy names for the boats such as ldquoGumbordquo andldquoGator Baitrdquo While most guides con ne themselves to jokes and storytellingRon Guidry aka ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo rams his boat mid-tour into a marshy em-bankment and proceeds to sing songs in Cajun French

The cajunisme of the tours is as theatrical and as far-fetched as their productionof ldquowildernessrdquo It derives from a narrow performance of the cultural idiomcultivated and exaggerated beyond anything found in the local Cajun commu-nities Above all the image of Cajuns as fun-loving people is deceptive Veiledbehind it are a people still reeling from a government-sponsored assault on theirculture and language which arose from a national effort beginning in the 1920sto bring subcultures into greater conformity with the Anglo American main-stream General instruction in the French language was prohibited at Louisianapublic schools in 1924 and in practice this meant that students who used Frenchat school were punished Over time Cajuns came to feel ashamed of their lan-guage and heritage (Solles 19956) The Catholic Church stopped dispatching

126 Eric Wiley

French-speaking priests to the area parents no longerspoke Cajun French to their children and the languageall but vanished (7) The stigma of the Cajuns lastedwell into the 1970s when in the interests of tourismthe cultural heritage of the ldquocoonassesrdquo as Cajuns oftenrefer to themselves became invaluable to the statewhich was then suffering economically from a devas-tated oil industry The Cajuns were suddenly promotedas fun-loving French-speaking people and a futile ef-fort was made to revive their language (9)7

The swamp tours feature a Cajun subtype the so-called ldquoswamp Cajunrdquo whose lifestyle allegedly resultsfrom a long interrelationship with the swamp environ-ment The brochures present Cajun guides chie y asswamp dwellers with little knowledge of the outsideworld one invites visitors to ldquomeet Cajuns who havenever lived in a townrdquo But here again the advertisedimage reveals only part of a long and bitter history Formuch of what is identi ed as swamp Cajunmdashstrongfamily traditions communal values religious devotionsuperstitious beliefs and love of cooking music andstorytellingmdashpredates the latendash18th-century arrival ofthe Cajuns in Louisiana The complex identity of theCajuns rst took root in the Acadian settlements nearNova Scotia in the 17th and 18th centuries Comprisedof villagers from western France these remote settle-ments thrived in their isolation and enjoyed self-rulein most matters for almost 150 years The distinctivecharacter of the Cajun people thus springs from theirpreservation and adaptation of early modern (and per-haps medieval and pagan) cultural traditions (Rushton197971ndash72)8

The swamp tours emphasize the relationship of theCajuns to the swamps excluding not only Acadian his-tory but also many other historical and contemporaryin uences on the Cajun people (including NativeAmerican African English Creole Spanish Germanand Sicilian) (Ancelet 1992261) This sweeping omis-sion of in uences is in keeping with the exaggerationof the ldquonatural purityrdquo and ldquowildernessrdquo motifs whichextend in the brochures to a de nition of local inhab-itants as swamp dwellers But during the tours this ex-pectation too will have to be signi cantly scaled backsince the guides know of course about current affairsand are in possession of the technological wizardry of

modern life such as cellular phones I remember how ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo burstmy own interpretive bubble by casually mentioning that he had performed hissongs in Japan Another guide lamented the loss of the veillee the traditionalevening visit with neighbors explaining that people prefer to stay home nowadaysand watch television

Tourists soon realize that swamp Cajuns exist only in the toursrsquo production ofa virtual wilderness The real guides are performer-narrators whose well-wornstories jokes word choices and gestures have evolved over years of repeatedlypointing out the same things As locals they do display regional manners andhabits of speech But the guides do not commit deeply to their ldquoswamp dwellerrdquo

6 Brochure for CajunJackrsquos Swamp Tours (Pat-terson Louisiana) (Cour-tesy of Jack Herbert)

Cajun Swamp Tours 127

roles as would be expected of employees for example at the nearby AcadianVillage a heritage park that ldquore-createsrdquo the life of an imaginary 19th-centuryCajun settlement Unlike the costumed ldquovillagersrdquo the guides on the swamptours generally shirk the part assigned to them in the shiny brochures Nonewears a costume or adopts the role of a rustic ldquocharacterrdquo except in the tellingof a story or joke Instead they ldquoare themselvesrdquo and never refer to the brochureimages or pronouncements about ldquowildrdquo Cajuns

In fact most guides seem discom ted by the scrutiny of the tourists perhapsfeeling themselves prejudged according to stereotypes including those in theirown brochures There is of course a general legacy ofcondescension in the West toward people indigenousto so-called noncivilized (or simply non-Western) areasof the world ldquoNativerdquo peoples frequently have beenput on display for tourists interested in their ldquoexoti-cismrdquo and the Cajun guides operate partially in thistradition Due to their French origins however Cajunguides are spared some of the more racist and colonialovertones associated with the display of non-Europeanldquonativesrdquo The Cajun swamp dweller is really more ofa Tarzan gure a European who has become semi-wilddue to an unfortunate overexposure to wilderness andnative cultures Although the condescension is com-paratively mild in relation to the heritage industry atlarge it nonetheless seems to provoke some awkwardmoments and periods of strained silence especiallywhen an inexperienced person is lling in as a substi-tute guide The guides also appear slightly embarrassedabout their role whenever locals greet them from theshore or from another boat

When tourists discover that their ldquoauthentic Cajunguiderdquo has a web site or a satellite dish the hope ofescaping civilization may seem dashed leaving themfeeling more entrapped than before To mainstream so-ciety folk cultures such as the Cajuns or the Amishfunction as a kind of rear guard occupying a fallbackposition against a deepening alienation from natureButif the ldquoauthentic Cajun guiderdquo sits home at nightwatching national television where does one nd peo-ple who still identify with nature And what are theconsequences for a tour whose host is a ldquocompromisedrdquoswamp dweller

The short answer is that fortunately for the tour op-erators tourists have bought their tickets and are un-derway before fully realizing that the brochures containonly the proverbial grain of truth The long answermight begin with the observation that the guides donot really relinquish their roles as intermediaries be-tween civilization and the wild until after the feedingsessions during which they meet the expectations ofthis rolemdashin the way they call over and feed the alli-gatorsmdashmore than at any other time on the tour Thedemotion of a tour guide from fabled swamp dwellerto reluctant actor-as-swamp-dweller comes late in thetour when the wilderness ction as a whole is on thewane

7 Brochure for A CajunManrsquos Swamp Cruise(Houma Louisiana)(Courtesy of Ronald JGuidry)

128 Eric Wiley

Whatrsquos left is not ldquoreal wildernessrdquo as promised in the brochures but theatri-cality and virtuality When both guides and tourists willingly suspend their dis-belief the swamps can function as pure wilderness as home to rustic folk asdangerous mysterious and colorful This alluring narrative is loosely organizedas a journey providing the tours with a core ldquoscriptrdquo that can accommodateparticipation and improvisation The journey structure whets the touristsrsquo ap-petite for adventure in the early going and then en route builds up their antici-pation of fearful alligators The script climaxes in the feeding session when thetwo most theatricalized gures in this dramamdashthe guide and the alligatormdashenacta staged encounter

The basic mission of locating and paying tribute to the alligator provides struc-ture to the toursrsquo swamp ldquotheatrerdquo But once it is accomplished and the dramaticquestion resolved (will we nd and safely escape from alligators) the virtualswamps begin to dissipate The guide gives up his or her role as interpreter andwill typically fall silent and concentrate on driving the boat This helps to explainwhy tourists act near the end of a tour as if the ldquoshowrdquo is over Indeed afterthe feedings the tours become little more than a return ride retracing the routeused to get to the feeding site On the journey back the tourists are left to watchthe landscape pass again before their eyes like a slowly rewinding tape

Fatigue sets in further draining the tour of drama The tourists enter thewetlands in a high state of excitement and interest they return subdued and wearyof gazing The rst sighting of a turtle sunning itself on a rock sends ripples ofinterest throughout the boat but on the way back to the dock the same turtledraws barely a glance The sudden ight of a white egret is pointed at with delight

8 Ron Guidry banks hisboat to stop and sing inCajun French during a tourA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

Cajun Swamp Tours 129

by an outbound tourist but warrants only a atly delivered ldquotherersquos another oneof those birdsrdquo on the return leg of the tour

The subdued state of those returning from a tour is a common feature ofenvironmental tourism stemming in part from the traveling required betweensites As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes ldquoone problem with the lifespace is itslow density the dead space between attractionsrdquo (1998145) In theme parks andcities by contrast one passes quickly from one interesting spot to another Tocounter the low density of its rural attractions Louisiana has created ldquoCajuncountryrdquomdasha network of tourist attractions restaurants and overnight accom-modations throughout the southern parishes But density also arises from theinternal richness of an attraction from the variety depth and range of offeringsIn virtual realms such as the ldquoCajun swampsrdquo sites may achieve high internaldensity through the power and reach of the illusions they generate The toursrsquoproduction of ldquoCajun swampsrdquo morphs everyday stuff such as trees and rocksand clouds into ldquoCajun treesrdquo and ldquoCajun rocksrdquo and ldquoCajun cloudsrdquo Theweariness that develops late in a tour is thus attributable in part to the open-ended scope of its virtual realm This tiredness resembles that which overcomespeople whenever offerings are open-ended such as in ldquofamousrdquo cities themeparks museums zoos music festivals and all-you-can-eat buffets

As the touring continues after the ldquoshowrdquo has ended the tourist audiencepasses through an in-between world neither fully real nor fully virtual Perhapsthis homestretch of downtime and dead space provides the escape that touristswanted all along The environment theatricalized as wilderness nally is more ofthe same media glut that people ordinarily experience at home The trip backmay be in contrast what the wetlands really are beautiful and compromised

Once the boat tour is over what awaits the tourists Parked on the gravel lotbeside the dock are the rental cars that brought them out to Bayou Black or toother waters on the dashboards and front seats lay the colorful brochures andtour books which may revive in them the tourism industryrsquos theatricalizationofthe entire region And in their memory is a theatrical experience that involvedwith the help of a swamp dweller looking for nding and feeding alligatorsViewed within the broader context of regional tourismmdashthat is regional the-atricalizationmdashthe swamp tours are vacations within vacations escapes from es-capes theatres inside theatres During the boat ride back one oats within twotheatrical frames one separating wilderness from civilization and the other sepa-rating two hours of touristic theatre from a much larger show called ldquoCajunCountryrdquo

Notes

1 A study by R Tapper reports ldquowhile tourism is growing on average at about 3 percent peryear growth in nature-based tourism is between 5 percentndash10 percent per yearrdquo (in Mow-forth and Munt 199899) On the use of theatrical methods by the tourism industry per-formance theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has astutely observed ldquoMuch that isfamiliar from theater is deployed in some fashion within the tourism industry Indeed theindustry is a kind of museum of theater practice even as it innovates new variations andformsrdquo (19975)

2 On the number of tours in 1991 see Kate Alexander (1991) The gure for 2002 comesfrom the Tour Guide Book of the Louisiana Of ce of Tourism This essay covers tours basedin rural areas only those in the vicinity of New Orleans are not discussed

3 In studies of tourism a great deal has been made of the particular manner in which touristsregard and decode designated tourist attractions Sociologist John Urry has argued thatpeople view tourist attractions with a distinctive ldquotourist gazerdquo He contends that the des-ignation of an attraction begins with an ascription of ldquoothernessrdquo to a site ldquotourism results

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

120 Eric Wiley

exceed 30 and new tours continue to open These includemdashin addition to thesmall rural tours such as Millerrsquosmdashthe large air-conditioned boats that tour outof New Orleans tours by seaplane airplane airboat canoe and even by foot2

The Cajun guide has joined the ranks of other Cajun entertainersmdashstand-upcomics singers storytellers preachers and televised chefsmdashas a solo performerof Cajun culture drawing on regional dialects stories and music in the creationof a persona The guide-narrator borrows particularly from the performance tech-niques and thematic material that are the legacy of Cajun storytelling a majorperformance tradition But the guides are not the premiere attraction of theswamp tours it is the swamps themselves And it is the incorporation of a naturalenvironment into the performance that sets these tour narratives apart from thoseof the traditional Cajun raconteur

In ldquoPerformance As Metaphorrdquo theatrical phenomenologist Bert States dis-cusses the hypothetical ability of a framing device to unilaterally confer perfor-mance status on whatever falls within its scope Adopting this notion of framingfrom the work of performance theorists Erving Goffman (1974) and RichardSchechner (1990) States argues that a park or farm may be transformed into aperformance of a park or farm simply by virtue of its designation as a performance(199616) Leaving aside the problems of de nition that concern States this useof framing offers a valuable model of the touristsrsquo experience on a swamp toursince it speaks to the process of envisioning natural areas as performances

The initial demarcation of swamps as something sight-worthy is key but it isnot the rst step in the process by which the swamps acquire elevated status inthe imagination of tourists This singling out of the swamps relies and builds onthe public predisposition to value some natural areas more than others The as-sertion that the wetlands deserve special attention not only creates interest inthem but also re ects a widely felt preexisting interest Thus tour advertisementsappeal to popular views of swamps even as they seek to awaken and direct thepublicrsquos thinking about them But presenting the swamps as sight-worthy andtour-worthy is nonetheless pivotal for it frames them in a way that correspondsto the framing of plays spectacles and other performances Such a touristicldquomarkerrdquo invites the public to apply (to wetlands) a speci c and highly conven-tional mode of viewing3

Tour operators not only frame the wetlands they also establish through ad-vertisements expectations that condition the reception of the toured area Theseadvertisements most often take the form of brochures and are displayed anddistributed at airports train stations hotels and tourist centers throughout theregion The brochures display a complex set of representations of swamplandsthe most recurrent themes of which in order of prominence are wildernessnatural purity scenic beauty and danger

The ldquowildernessrdquo theme de nes the swamplands in fundamental opposition tocivilization Added to this are the secondary quali ers the swamps are non-civilized non-socially constructed ahistorical essentialist ldquonaturerdquo and arecharacterized variously by virginity beauty hostility mystique amorality andtimelessness As part of a marketing strategy geared to tourists from urban andother dry landscapes of North America and Europe these evocative motifs tapinto the great Occidental tradition of perceiving wetlands as exotic and alluring4

One persistent claim of the brochures is ldquonatural purityrdquo giving the impressionthat tourists may actually be among the rst to enter the secluded backwaterenvironment With phrasing such as ldquotruly pristinerdquo ldquountamed wildernessrdquo andldquoprimitive splendorrdquo brochures awaken expectations of a place beyond the reachof human in uence The implied assumption is that the tourists who have alreadyleft home wish to venture still further into a space never before occupied byhumans playing on a popular yearning for escape not only from the personally

Cajun Swamp Tours 121

2 Ron Guidryrsquos pontoonboat A Cajun ManrsquosSwamp Cruise 1998(Photo by Eric Wiley)

familiar but from all that is known This may be the same yearning that sustainsthe science- ction industry conditioned by a nostalgic longing to ldquogo where noone has gone beforerdquo The rhetoric surrounding the swamp tours also resoundswith echoes of traditional pastoral poetry especially the pastoral dramas of theRenaissance A more limited parallel to theatre practices might be drawn to the18th-century English fad of staging rustic settings such as Phillipe Jacques De-Loutherbourgrsquos Omai or a Trip around the World (1785) which presented thetravels of Captain Cook In any event brochures for the swamp tours clearlypromise an openly theatrical presentation of the landscape Romantic imageryplayful hyperbole and humorous names for the tours and guides prepare one fora staged version of the wetlands

This swamp theatre is an example of the ldquovirtual realityrdquo that pervades envi-ronmental tourism a designation used by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett in Des-tination Culture (1998) for many offerings in museums and heritage-based tourismHer analysis of the various methods used to display museum objects and culturaltraditions exposes the determining role these methods have in producing themeaning of exhibitions and in creating ldquovirtualrdquo exhibits with only scant ties toany ldquoactualrdquo counterparts It is in moments when the real swamps come intocon ict with the imagined ones that a swamp tour produces a staged or virtualwilderness in the imagination of the passengers

As one might expect given the tour brochuresrsquo playfulness tourists experienceinterpretive dissonance while on board as when ldquoa unique adventure by boatinto the deep dark swampsrdquo actually takes tourists down an abandoned irrigationcanal dug to hydrate the surrounding sugarcane elds The ldquovirgin swampsrdquo werecleared long ago of their centuries-old cypress trees which were hauled offthrough a network of canals dug by lumber companies in the 19th century Tour-ists nd an environment not ldquoundisturbed by manrdquo as claimed in more than onebrochure but visibly affected by introduced ora and fauna such as the waterhyacinth from Japan which clogs up the canals and bayous and the nutria arodent native to Argentina whose tunneling contributes to erosion

The gradual scaling back of expectations comprises one aspect of the touristsrsquoexperience of the framed environment other setbacks are no doubt greater than

122 Eric Wiley

3 Annie Miller aka ldquoAlli-gator Annierdquo feeds skew-ered meat to a bayoualligator during a swamptour (Photo courtesy of An-nie Miller)

the representational breaches just mentioned The framing of the environmentmay itself prevent tourists from seeing the environment in at least some sensesof what it means to see something Semioticians have proposed along these linesthat the institutional authority that is implicit in the demarcation of sites can beblinding According to Walker Percy instead of directly observing an attractionsuch as wetlands tourists will nd themselves merely seeking to con rm what itis about them that has been deemed sight-worthy He argues in discussing theGrand Canyon that ldquothe thing as it is [] has been appropriated by the symboliccomplex which has already been formed in the sightseerrsquos mind Seeing the can-yon under approved circumstances is seeing the symbolic complex head onrdquo(197547) The swamplands presented on tours following Percyrsquos analysis areconcealed within what Percy terms a ldquocitadel of symbolic investiturerdquo (197551)and the satisfaction of a tourist rests not in ldquothe discovery of the thing beforehimrdquo but rather in the ldquomeasuring up of the thing to the criterion of the pre-

Cajun Swamp Tours 123

formed symbolic complexrdquo (197547) Percy attempts to explain the process thattriggers the perception of a ldquosymbolic complexrdquo which corresponds to theldquoframed performancerdquo of States Goffman and Schechner and to the ldquovirtualrealityrdquo of Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

But there is always the chance that the framing of the swamps as wildernesswill collapse and with it the ldquocitadel of symbolic investiturerdquo A critical rein-forcement of the frame thus appears in the theatrical structure of the tours whichcreates a sense of journeying into danger The swamp tours take place in steps orldquoscenesrdquo which progress from exposition to entry into a remote other worldto a critical encounter with a menacing antagonist to survival and return Thestructure is reminiscent of the archetypal Herorsquos journey described by JosephCampbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) Front and center in this dramaso to speak is the toothy reptile Alligator mississippiensis otherwise known as theAmerican alligator

With its dramatic propensity for violence the alligator stands out as the star ofmany tours as evidenced by its prominence in tour names road signs and bro-chures Some brochures announce ldquolast but not least the erce and dangerousalligatorrdquo or ldquoguaranteed to see live alligatorsrdquo Like a head of state the alligatorembodies the particularity and autonomy of the wetlands environment appearingas its peculiar violent and omnivorous ruler akin to the bear shark and tigerwho lord over other environments Tours invariably pay tribute to the ldquobig lizardrdquoby culminating in ritualized feeding sessions These feature alligators have beenconditioned when called over to the boat to lunge at chicken parts suspendedabove the water (the guide skewers raw legs and thighs one at a time onto a stiffwire attached to the end of a pole) When a 40-year-old bull alligator rises outof the water jaws snapping and its massive head bumps like a boulder againstthe aluminum hull tourists are satis ed especially if some on board have gaspedor started in fear during the episode

Although the feeding sessions corroborate the prom-ise of swamps as dangerous places their impact on thetourists may be contradictory The sight of large dis-colored scars on the head and back of some of the al-ligatorsmdashthe result of gashes in icted by boat enginepropellers as one guide explainedmdashprompts a sympa-thetic outcry from the tourists The alligator is trans-formed from terrifying predator to tragic hero arousingboth pity and fear In any event the alligator functionsas a thematic lightning rod for the theatricalization ofthe surrounding landscape The act of snapping upchicken parts is also a perfectly tragi-farcical debase-ment of these consummate huntersmdashespecially whenfor the sake of photographs the alligator is made tojump at the poultry several times like a trained circusanimal performer

Despite the hints of tragic grandeur the alligatorplays a role in the dramatization of the landscape thatseems closest to that of the beasts of pastoral dramawhich inhabit natural territories lying outside the civ-ilized world In both cases the ldquoplotrdquo centers on makingcontact with a beast that threatens but then fails to doharm Sometimes the potential threat of alligators socrucial to the drama of the tours is put to a test Onetime on Annie Millerrsquos Sonrsquos Swamp Tour as we werescanning the dark waters for our rst glimpse of an

4 Wary swamp touristswatch as guide AnnieMiller feeds an alligator thathas approached the boat(Photo courtesy of AnnieMiller)

124 Eric Wiley

5 A ldquoChristmas Treerdquocapping a natural gas well isone of the attractions on aswamp tour The wells aretypically 16000 feet deepA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

alligator and having been warned to ldquokeep your hands away from the railing atall timesrdquo we came upon a sight our eyes refused to believe a man and two smallchildren were in the water far from shore their heads jutting out of colorful lifejackets as they treaded water waiting while the mother circled back around in amotorboat to give each a turn to water-ski The sight of these children smilingup at us from the water was an outrage and it dispelled our ldquovirtualrdquo world justas if in a theatre someone had brought up the house lights during a play5

The water-skiersrsquo challenge to the tourrsquos ldquowildernessrdquo illuminates the doublefunction of a frame it excludes as well as contains The tours rely for their appealas much on their exclusion of ordinary life as on their inclusion (or creation) ofwilderness Their dramatization of the swamps serves not only to structure a tourand to sustain interest in it but also to divert tourists from their daily lives andto displace temporarily the unsettling concerns associated with them The toursare escapist entertainments To succeed in this genre the tour guides must preventtourists from having thoughts that are disruptive of the virtual wilderness theyhave entered

Another challenge to the toursrsquo framing of the swamps as a wilderness is thestark presence of the oil and natural gas industry pipes pumps transport shipswarning signs posted along the canals and the intricate metallic structures thatcap the natural gas wells called ldquoChristmas treesrdquo What could be more emblem-atic of modernity than pipes ttings bolts and valves This apparatus is emblem-atic of the systematic exploitation of nature Consistent with its poor environ-mental record globally the oil and gas industry has not spared the Louisianawetlands Its damage to the arearsquos ecosystem has included a devastating intake ofsaltwater caused by some 12 thousand miles of canals an accelerated loss of landand a profuse dumping of chemical wastes (Kennedy 199194ndash99) The touristsrsquovision of the environment as a dangerous wilderness zone must overcome the per-vasive actuality of an endangered zone in urgent need of protection On sometours it is true no visible signs of the petrochemical industry appear but its opera-tions heavily inscribe the surrounding region and access roads and condition themost remote wetlands making its presence unavoidable

When one is torn between having an enjoyable fear of alligators on the one

Cajun Swamp Tours 125

hand and a disheartening concern about seepage from toxic waste sites on theother the latter tends to prevail Awareness of the oil and gas industry thus threat-ens to undo the framing of the wetlands as a sightseeing attraction In additionto stealing the thunder of the ldquodangerous alligatorrdquo the scale of the industryrsquosprocedures for extracting minerals dwarfs the staged environment of water treesand marsh grass The natural gas wells for example are about 16000 feet deepcompared to grass that grows to a height of about eight feet and trees that reacha maximum of 60 feet

Perhaps as a hedge against disillusionment tourists are found overwhelminglyto prefer swamp tours that present nature through the hermeneutic of Cajunculture Tourists are enticed not by swamps-as-swamps but by ldquoCajun swampsrdquoldquoAlligatorAnnierdquo ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo and ldquoCajun Jackrdquo are gures who interpretthe wetlands through the medium of Cajun folk culture This intervening per-soni cation is the key to transforming the wetlands into a theatrical experienceSwamp tours in other states such as Texas Mississippi Alabama Georgia andFloridamdashlacking anything comparable to a Cajun communitymdashhave not enjoyedthe booming business of the Louisiana tours although the Seminole-themedtours now open in Florida show some of the same promise The appeal of theCajun guide suggests that tourists desire a strong dose of theatricalization thewetlands on their own would lure few people

Anthropologist Marjorie Esman identi es the Cajun stereotype as one of ldquofun-loving rustic French-speaking folk with a noble peasant past that has not yetdiedrdquo (1984459) Since Esmanrsquos 1984 article the Cajun image has been focusedincreasingly on Cajun cuisine owing to the nationally televised cooking showsof Chef Paul Prudhomme Justin Wilson and Chef John Folse and to the wide-spread marketing of Cajun cookbooks restaurants seasonings and other comes-tibles Swamps are accordingly presented on tours as a source of foodstuffs withguides relating everything from old techniques for catching sh to recent trendsin preparing nutria meat Memorable meals and culinary approaches to game and sh are often woven into tour narratives6 Nearly all of the tours operate out of(and promote) a Cajun restaurant The Cajun ldquoproprietorshiprdquo of swamps unfoldsfurther through a description of traditional uses for various plants Spanish mosswas used to stuff mattresses and cypress trees were burned and carved into pi-rogues small at-bottomed canoes

During the course of a tour the guides integrate the swamps into their per-formance of Cajun culture Their regional accent and gures of speech sustainthis Cajunization The tour boat itself provides a Cajun frame of reference repletewith such cultural markings as snake skins nailed to the canopy supports lami-nated alligator heads prominently displayed (in one case on a box for tips) postedCajun bumper stickers and folksy names for the boats such as ldquoGumbordquo andldquoGator Baitrdquo While most guides con ne themselves to jokes and storytellingRon Guidry aka ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo rams his boat mid-tour into a marshy em-bankment and proceeds to sing songs in Cajun French

The cajunisme of the tours is as theatrical and as far-fetched as their productionof ldquowildernessrdquo It derives from a narrow performance of the cultural idiomcultivated and exaggerated beyond anything found in the local Cajun commu-nities Above all the image of Cajuns as fun-loving people is deceptive Veiledbehind it are a people still reeling from a government-sponsored assault on theirculture and language which arose from a national effort beginning in the 1920sto bring subcultures into greater conformity with the Anglo American main-stream General instruction in the French language was prohibited at Louisianapublic schools in 1924 and in practice this meant that students who used Frenchat school were punished Over time Cajuns came to feel ashamed of their lan-guage and heritage (Solles 19956) The Catholic Church stopped dispatching

126 Eric Wiley

French-speaking priests to the area parents no longerspoke Cajun French to their children and the languageall but vanished (7) The stigma of the Cajuns lastedwell into the 1970s when in the interests of tourismthe cultural heritage of the ldquocoonassesrdquo as Cajuns oftenrefer to themselves became invaluable to the statewhich was then suffering economically from a devas-tated oil industry The Cajuns were suddenly promotedas fun-loving French-speaking people and a futile ef-fort was made to revive their language (9)7

The swamp tours feature a Cajun subtype the so-called ldquoswamp Cajunrdquo whose lifestyle allegedly resultsfrom a long interrelationship with the swamp environ-ment The brochures present Cajun guides chie y asswamp dwellers with little knowledge of the outsideworld one invites visitors to ldquomeet Cajuns who havenever lived in a townrdquo But here again the advertisedimage reveals only part of a long and bitter history Formuch of what is identi ed as swamp Cajunmdashstrongfamily traditions communal values religious devotionsuperstitious beliefs and love of cooking music andstorytellingmdashpredates the latendash18th-century arrival ofthe Cajuns in Louisiana The complex identity of theCajuns rst took root in the Acadian settlements nearNova Scotia in the 17th and 18th centuries Comprisedof villagers from western France these remote settle-ments thrived in their isolation and enjoyed self-rulein most matters for almost 150 years The distinctivecharacter of the Cajun people thus springs from theirpreservation and adaptation of early modern (and per-haps medieval and pagan) cultural traditions (Rushton197971ndash72)8

The swamp tours emphasize the relationship of theCajuns to the swamps excluding not only Acadian his-tory but also many other historical and contemporaryin uences on the Cajun people (including NativeAmerican African English Creole Spanish Germanand Sicilian) (Ancelet 1992261) This sweeping omis-sion of in uences is in keeping with the exaggerationof the ldquonatural purityrdquo and ldquowildernessrdquo motifs whichextend in the brochures to a de nition of local inhab-itants as swamp dwellers But during the tours this ex-pectation too will have to be signi cantly scaled backsince the guides know of course about current affairsand are in possession of the technological wizardry of

modern life such as cellular phones I remember how ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo burstmy own interpretive bubble by casually mentioning that he had performed hissongs in Japan Another guide lamented the loss of the veillee the traditionalevening visit with neighbors explaining that people prefer to stay home nowadaysand watch television

Tourists soon realize that swamp Cajuns exist only in the toursrsquo production ofa virtual wilderness The real guides are performer-narrators whose well-wornstories jokes word choices and gestures have evolved over years of repeatedlypointing out the same things As locals they do display regional manners andhabits of speech But the guides do not commit deeply to their ldquoswamp dwellerrdquo

6 Brochure for CajunJackrsquos Swamp Tours (Pat-terson Louisiana) (Cour-tesy of Jack Herbert)

Cajun Swamp Tours 127

roles as would be expected of employees for example at the nearby AcadianVillage a heritage park that ldquore-createsrdquo the life of an imaginary 19th-centuryCajun settlement Unlike the costumed ldquovillagersrdquo the guides on the swamptours generally shirk the part assigned to them in the shiny brochures Nonewears a costume or adopts the role of a rustic ldquocharacterrdquo except in the tellingof a story or joke Instead they ldquoare themselvesrdquo and never refer to the brochureimages or pronouncements about ldquowildrdquo Cajuns

In fact most guides seem discom ted by the scrutiny of the tourists perhapsfeeling themselves prejudged according to stereotypes including those in theirown brochures There is of course a general legacy ofcondescension in the West toward people indigenousto so-called noncivilized (or simply non-Western) areasof the world ldquoNativerdquo peoples frequently have beenput on display for tourists interested in their ldquoexoti-cismrdquo and the Cajun guides operate partially in thistradition Due to their French origins however Cajunguides are spared some of the more racist and colonialovertones associated with the display of non-Europeanldquonativesrdquo The Cajun swamp dweller is really more ofa Tarzan gure a European who has become semi-wilddue to an unfortunate overexposure to wilderness andnative cultures Although the condescension is com-paratively mild in relation to the heritage industry atlarge it nonetheless seems to provoke some awkwardmoments and periods of strained silence especiallywhen an inexperienced person is lling in as a substi-tute guide The guides also appear slightly embarrassedabout their role whenever locals greet them from theshore or from another boat

When tourists discover that their ldquoauthentic Cajunguiderdquo has a web site or a satellite dish the hope ofescaping civilization may seem dashed leaving themfeeling more entrapped than before To mainstream so-ciety folk cultures such as the Cajuns or the Amishfunction as a kind of rear guard occupying a fallbackposition against a deepening alienation from natureButif the ldquoauthentic Cajun guiderdquo sits home at nightwatching national television where does one nd peo-ple who still identify with nature And what are theconsequences for a tour whose host is a ldquocompromisedrdquoswamp dweller

The short answer is that fortunately for the tour op-erators tourists have bought their tickets and are un-derway before fully realizing that the brochures containonly the proverbial grain of truth The long answermight begin with the observation that the guides donot really relinquish their roles as intermediaries be-tween civilization and the wild until after the feedingsessions during which they meet the expectations ofthis rolemdashin the way they call over and feed the alli-gatorsmdashmore than at any other time on the tour Thedemotion of a tour guide from fabled swamp dwellerto reluctant actor-as-swamp-dweller comes late in thetour when the wilderness ction as a whole is on thewane

7 Brochure for A CajunManrsquos Swamp Cruise(Houma Louisiana)(Courtesy of Ronald JGuidry)

128 Eric Wiley

Whatrsquos left is not ldquoreal wildernessrdquo as promised in the brochures but theatri-cality and virtuality When both guides and tourists willingly suspend their dis-belief the swamps can function as pure wilderness as home to rustic folk asdangerous mysterious and colorful This alluring narrative is loosely organizedas a journey providing the tours with a core ldquoscriptrdquo that can accommodateparticipation and improvisation The journey structure whets the touristsrsquo ap-petite for adventure in the early going and then en route builds up their antici-pation of fearful alligators The script climaxes in the feeding session when thetwo most theatricalized gures in this dramamdashthe guide and the alligatormdashenacta staged encounter

The basic mission of locating and paying tribute to the alligator provides struc-ture to the toursrsquo swamp ldquotheatrerdquo But once it is accomplished and the dramaticquestion resolved (will we nd and safely escape from alligators) the virtualswamps begin to dissipate The guide gives up his or her role as interpreter andwill typically fall silent and concentrate on driving the boat This helps to explainwhy tourists act near the end of a tour as if the ldquoshowrdquo is over Indeed afterthe feedings the tours become little more than a return ride retracing the routeused to get to the feeding site On the journey back the tourists are left to watchthe landscape pass again before their eyes like a slowly rewinding tape

Fatigue sets in further draining the tour of drama The tourists enter thewetlands in a high state of excitement and interest they return subdued and wearyof gazing The rst sighting of a turtle sunning itself on a rock sends ripples ofinterest throughout the boat but on the way back to the dock the same turtledraws barely a glance The sudden ight of a white egret is pointed at with delight

8 Ron Guidry banks hisboat to stop and sing inCajun French during a tourA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

Cajun Swamp Tours 129

by an outbound tourist but warrants only a atly delivered ldquotherersquos another oneof those birdsrdquo on the return leg of the tour

The subdued state of those returning from a tour is a common feature ofenvironmental tourism stemming in part from the traveling required betweensites As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes ldquoone problem with the lifespace is itslow density the dead space between attractionsrdquo (1998145) In theme parks andcities by contrast one passes quickly from one interesting spot to another Tocounter the low density of its rural attractions Louisiana has created ldquoCajuncountryrdquomdasha network of tourist attractions restaurants and overnight accom-modations throughout the southern parishes But density also arises from theinternal richness of an attraction from the variety depth and range of offeringsIn virtual realms such as the ldquoCajun swampsrdquo sites may achieve high internaldensity through the power and reach of the illusions they generate The toursrsquoproduction of ldquoCajun swampsrdquo morphs everyday stuff such as trees and rocksand clouds into ldquoCajun treesrdquo and ldquoCajun rocksrdquo and ldquoCajun cloudsrdquo Theweariness that develops late in a tour is thus attributable in part to the open-ended scope of its virtual realm This tiredness resembles that which overcomespeople whenever offerings are open-ended such as in ldquofamousrdquo cities themeparks museums zoos music festivals and all-you-can-eat buffets

As the touring continues after the ldquoshowrdquo has ended the tourist audiencepasses through an in-between world neither fully real nor fully virtual Perhapsthis homestretch of downtime and dead space provides the escape that touristswanted all along The environment theatricalized as wilderness nally is more ofthe same media glut that people ordinarily experience at home The trip backmay be in contrast what the wetlands really are beautiful and compromised

Once the boat tour is over what awaits the tourists Parked on the gravel lotbeside the dock are the rental cars that brought them out to Bayou Black or toother waters on the dashboards and front seats lay the colorful brochures andtour books which may revive in them the tourism industryrsquos theatricalizationofthe entire region And in their memory is a theatrical experience that involvedwith the help of a swamp dweller looking for nding and feeding alligatorsViewed within the broader context of regional tourismmdashthat is regional the-atricalizationmdashthe swamp tours are vacations within vacations escapes from es-capes theatres inside theatres During the boat ride back one oats within twotheatrical frames one separating wilderness from civilization and the other sepa-rating two hours of touristic theatre from a much larger show called ldquoCajunCountryrdquo

Notes

1 A study by R Tapper reports ldquowhile tourism is growing on average at about 3 percent peryear growth in nature-based tourism is between 5 percentndash10 percent per yearrdquo (in Mow-forth and Munt 199899) On the use of theatrical methods by the tourism industry per-formance theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has astutely observed ldquoMuch that isfamiliar from theater is deployed in some fashion within the tourism industry Indeed theindustry is a kind of museum of theater practice even as it innovates new variations andformsrdquo (19975)

2 On the number of tours in 1991 see Kate Alexander (1991) The gure for 2002 comesfrom the Tour Guide Book of the Louisiana Of ce of Tourism This essay covers tours basedin rural areas only those in the vicinity of New Orleans are not discussed

3 In studies of tourism a great deal has been made of the particular manner in which touristsregard and decode designated tourist attractions Sociologist John Urry has argued thatpeople view tourist attractions with a distinctive ldquotourist gazerdquo He contends that the des-ignation of an attraction begins with an ascription of ldquoothernessrdquo to a site ldquotourism results

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

Cajun Swamp Tours 121

2 Ron Guidryrsquos pontoonboat A Cajun ManrsquosSwamp Cruise 1998(Photo by Eric Wiley)

familiar but from all that is known This may be the same yearning that sustainsthe science- ction industry conditioned by a nostalgic longing to ldquogo where noone has gone beforerdquo The rhetoric surrounding the swamp tours also resoundswith echoes of traditional pastoral poetry especially the pastoral dramas of theRenaissance A more limited parallel to theatre practices might be drawn to the18th-century English fad of staging rustic settings such as Phillipe Jacques De-Loutherbourgrsquos Omai or a Trip around the World (1785) which presented thetravels of Captain Cook In any event brochures for the swamp tours clearlypromise an openly theatrical presentation of the landscape Romantic imageryplayful hyperbole and humorous names for the tours and guides prepare one fora staged version of the wetlands

This swamp theatre is an example of the ldquovirtual realityrdquo that pervades envi-ronmental tourism a designation used by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett in Des-tination Culture (1998) for many offerings in museums and heritage-based tourismHer analysis of the various methods used to display museum objects and culturaltraditions exposes the determining role these methods have in producing themeaning of exhibitions and in creating ldquovirtualrdquo exhibits with only scant ties toany ldquoactualrdquo counterparts It is in moments when the real swamps come intocon ict with the imagined ones that a swamp tour produces a staged or virtualwilderness in the imagination of the passengers

As one might expect given the tour brochuresrsquo playfulness tourists experienceinterpretive dissonance while on board as when ldquoa unique adventure by boatinto the deep dark swampsrdquo actually takes tourists down an abandoned irrigationcanal dug to hydrate the surrounding sugarcane elds The ldquovirgin swampsrdquo werecleared long ago of their centuries-old cypress trees which were hauled offthrough a network of canals dug by lumber companies in the 19th century Tour-ists nd an environment not ldquoundisturbed by manrdquo as claimed in more than onebrochure but visibly affected by introduced ora and fauna such as the waterhyacinth from Japan which clogs up the canals and bayous and the nutria arodent native to Argentina whose tunneling contributes to erosion

The gradual scaling back of expectations comprises one aspect of the touristsrsquoexperience of the framed environment other setbacks are no doubt greater than

122 Eric Wiley

3 Annie Miller aka ldquoAlli-gator Annierdquo feeds skew-ered meat to a bayoualligator during a swamptour (Photo courtesy of An-nie Miller)

the representational breaches just mentioned The framing of the environmentmay itself prevent tourists from seeing the environment in at least some sensesof what it means to see something Semioticians have proposed along these linesthat the institutional authority that is implicit in the demarcation of sites can beblinding According to Walker Percy instead of directly observing an attractionsuch as wetlands tourists will nd themselves merely seeking to con rm what itis about them that has been deemed sight-worthy He argues in discussing theGrand Canyon that ldquothe thing as it is [] has been appropriated by the symboliccomplex which has already been formed in the sightseerrsquos mind Seeing the can-yon under approved circumstances is seeing the symbolic complex head onrdquo(197547) The swamplands presented on tours following Percyrsquos analysis areconcealed within what Percy terms a ldquocitadel of symbolic investiturerdquo (197551)and the satisfaction of a tourist rests not in ldquothe discovery of the thing beforehimrdquo but rather in the ldquomeasuring up of the thing to the criterion of the pre-

Cajun Swamp Tours 123

formed symbolic complexrdquo (197547) Percy attempts to explain the process thattriggers the perception of a ldquosymbolic complexrdquo which corresponds to theldquoframed performancerdquo of States Goffman and Schechner and to the ldquovirtualrealityrdquo of Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

But there is always the chance that the framing of the swamps as wildernesswill collapse and with it the ldquocitadel of symbolic investiturerdquo A critical rein-forcement of the frame thus appears in the theatrical structure of the tours whichcreates a sense of journeying into danger The swamp tours take place in steps orldquoscenesrdquo which progress from exposition to entry into a remote other worldto a critical encounter with a menacing antagonist to survival and return Thestructure is reminiscent of the archetypal Herorsquos journey described by JosephCampbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) Front and center in this dramaso to speak is the toothy reptile Alligator mississippiensis otherwise known as theAmerican alligator

With its dramatic propensity for violence the alligator stands out as the star ofmany tours as evidenced by its prominence in tour names road signs and bro-chures Some brochures announce ldquolast but not least the erce and dangerousalligatorrdquo or ldquoguaranteed to see live alligatorsrdquo Like a head of state the alligatorembodies the particularity and autonomy of the wetlands environment appearingas its peculiar violent and omnivorous ruler akin to the bear shark and tigerwho lord over other environments Tours invariably pay tribute to the ldquobig lizardrdquoby culminating in ritualized feeding sessions These feature alligators have beenconditioned when called over to the boat to lunge at chicken parts suspendedabove the water (the guide skewers raw legs and thighs one at a time onto a stiffwire attached to the end of a pole) When a 40-year-old bull alligator rises outof the water jaws snapping and its massive head bumps like a boulder againstthe aluminum hull tourists are satis ed especially if some on board have gaspedor started in fear during the episode

Although the feeding sessions corroborate the prom-ise of swamps as dangerous places their impact on thetourists may be contradictory The sight of large dis-colored scars on the head and back of some of the al-ligatorsmdashthe result of gashes in icted by boat enginepropellers as one guide explainedmdashprompts a sympa-thetic outcry from the tourists The alligator is trans-formed from terrifying predator to tragic hero arousingboth pity and fear In any event the alligator functionsas a thematic lightning rod for the theatricalization ofthe surrounding landscape The act of snapping upchicken parts is also a perfectly tragi-farcical debase-ment of these consummate huntersmdashespecially whenfor the sake of photographs the alligator is made tojump at the poultry several times like a trained circusanimal performer

Despite the hints of tragic grandeur the alligatorplays a role in the dramatization of the landscape thatseems closest to that of the beasts of pastoral dramawhich inhabit natural territories lying outside the civ-ilized world In both cases the ldquoplotrdquo centers on makingcontact with a beast that threatens but then fails to doharm Sometimes the potential threat of alligators socrucial to the drama of the tours is put to a test Onetime on Annie Millerrsquos Sonrsquos Swamp Tour as we werescanning the dark waters for our rst glimpse of an

4 Wary swamp touristswatch as guide AnnieMiller feeds an alligator thathas approached the boat(Photo courtesy of AnnieMiller)

124 Eric Wiley

5 A ldquoChristmas Treerdquocapping a natural gas well isone of the attractions on aswamp tour The wells aretypically 16000 feet deepA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

alligator and having been warned to ldquokeep your hands away from the railing atall timesrdquo we came upon a sight our eyes refused to believe a man and two smallchildren were in the water far from shore their heads jutting out of colorful lifejackets as they treaded water waiting while the mother circled back around in amotorboat to give each a turn to water-ski The sight of these children smilingup at us from the water was an outrage and it dispelled our ldquovirtualrdquo world justas if in a theatre someone had brought up the house lights during a play5

The water-skiersrsquo challenge to the tourrsquos ldquowildernessrdquo illuminates the doublefunction of a frame it excludes as well as contains The tours rely for their appealas much on their exclusion of ordinary life as on their inclusion (or creation) ofwilderness Their dramatization of the swamps serves not only to structure a tourand to sustain interest in it but also to divert tourists from their daily lives andto displace temporarily the unsettling concerns associated with them The toursare escapist entertainments To succeed in this genre the tour guides must preventtourists from having thoughts that are disruptive of the virtual wilderness theyhave entered

Another challenge to the toursrsquo framing of the swamps as a wilderness is thestark presence of the oil and natural gas industry pipes pumps transport shipswarning signs posted along the canals and the intricate metallic structures thatcap the natural gas wells called ldquoChristmas treesrdquo What could be more emblem-atic of modernity than pipes ttings bolts and valves This apparatus is emblem-atic of the systematic exploitation of nature Consistent with its poor environ-mental record globally the oil and gas industry has not spared the Louisianawetlands Its damage to the arearsquos ecosystem has included a devastating intake ofsaltwater caused by some 12 thousand miles of canals an accelerated loss of landand a profuse dumping of chemical wastes (Kennedy 199194ndash99) The touristsrsquovision of the environment as a dangerous wilderness zone must overcome the per-vasive actuality of an endangered zone in urgent need of protection On sometours it is true no visible signs of the petrochemical industry appear but its opera-tions heavily inscribe the surrounding region and access roads and condition themost remote wetlands making its presence unavoidable

When one is torn between having an enjoyable fear of alligators on the one

Cajun Swamp Tours 125

hand and a disheartening concern about seepage from toxic waste sites on theother the latter tends to prevail Awareness of the oil and gas industry thus threat-ens to undo the framing of the wetlands as a sightseeing attraction In additionto stealing the thunder of the ldquodangerous alligatorrdquo the scale of the industryrsquosprocedures for extracting minerals dwarfs the staged environment of water treesand marsh grass The natural gas wells for example are about 16000 feet deepcompared to grass that grows to a height of about eight feet and trees that reacha maximum of 60 feet

Perhaps as a hedge against disillusionment tourists are found overwhelminglyto prefer swamp tours that present nature through the hermeneutic of Cajunculture Tourists are enticed not by swamps-as-swamps but by ldquoCajun swampsrdquoldquoAlligatorAnnierdquo ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo and ldquoCajun Jackrdquo are gures who interpretthe wetlands through the medium of Cajun folk culture This intervening per-soni cation is the key to transforming the wetlands into a theatrical experienceSwamp tours in other states such as Texas Mississippi Alabama Georgia andFloridamdashlacking anything comparable to a Cajun communitymdashhave not enjoyedthe booming business of the Louisiana tours although the Seminole-themedtours now open in Florida show some of the same promise The appeal of theCajun guide suggests that tourists desire a strong dose of theatricalization thewetlands on their own would lure few people

Anthropologist Marjorie Esman identi es the Cajun stereotype as one of ldquofun-loving rustic French-speaking folk with a noble peasant past that has not yetdiedrdquo (1984459) Since Esmanrsquos 1984 article the Cajun image has been focusedincreasingly on Cajun cuisine owing to the nationally televised cooking showsof Chef Paul Prudhomme Justin Wilson and Chef John Folse and to the wide-spread marketing of Cajun cookbooks restaurants seasonings and other comes-tibles Swamps are accordingly presented on tours as a source of foodstuffs withguides relating everything from old techniques for catching sh to recent trendsin preparing nutria meat Memorable meals and culinary approaches to game and sh are often woven into tour narratives6 Nearly all of the tours operate out of(and promote) a Cajun restaurant The Cajun ldquoproprietorshiprdquo of swamps unfoldsfurther through a description of traditional uses for various plants Spanish mosswas used to stuff mattresses and cypress trees were burned and carved into pi-rogues small at-bottomed canoes

During the course of a tour the guides integrate the swamps into their per-formance of Cajun culture Their regional accent and gures of speech sustainthis Cajunization The tour boat itself provides a Cajun frame of reference repletewith such cultural markings as snake skins nailed to the canopy supports lami-nated alligator heads prominently displayed (in one case on a box for tips) postedCajun bumper stickers and folksy names for the boats such as ldquoGumbordquo andldquoGator Baitrdquo While most guides con ne themselves to jokes and storytellingRon Guidry aka ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo rams his boat mid-tour into a marshy em-bankment and proceeds to sing songs in Cajun French

The cajunisme of the tours is as theatrical and as far-fetched as their productionof ldquowildernessrdquo It derives from a narrow performance of the cultural idiomcultivated and exaggerated beyond anything found in the local Cajun commu-nities Above all the image of Cajuns as fun-loving people is deceptive Veiledbehind it are a people still reeling from a government-sponsored assault on theirculture and language which arose from a national effort beginning in the 1920sto bring subcultures into greater conformity with the Anglo American main-stream General instruction in the French language was prohibited at Louisianapublic schools in 1924 and in practice this meant that students who used Frenchat school were punished Over time Cajuns came to feel ashamed of their lan-guage and heritage (Solles 19956) The Catholic Church stopped dispatching

126 Eric Wiley

French-speaking priests to the area parents no longerspoke Cajun French to their children and the languageall but vanished (7) The stigma of the Cajuns lastedwell into the 1970s when in the interests of tourismthe cultural heritage of the ldquocoonassesrdquo as Cajuns oftenrefer to themselves became invaluable to the statewhich was then suffering economically from a devas-tated oil industry The Cajuns were suddenly promotedas fun-loving French-speaking people and a futile ef-fort was made to revive their language (9)7

The swamp tours feature a Cajun subtype the so-called ldquoswamp Cajunrdquo whose lifestyle allegedly resultsfrom a long interrelationship with the swamp environ-ment The brochures present Cajun guides chie y asswamp dwellers with little knowledge of the outsideworld one invites visitors to ldquomeet Cajuns who havenever lived in a townrdquo But here again the advertisedimage reveals only part of a long and bitter history Formuch of what is identi ed as swamp Cajunmdashstrongfamily traditions communal values religious devotionsuperstitious beliefs and love of cooking music andstorytellingmdashpredates the latendash18th-century arrival ofthe Cajuns in Louisiana The complex identity of theCajuns rst took root in the Acadian settlements nearNova Scotia in the 17th and 18th centuries Comprisedof villagers from western France these remote settle-ments thrived in their isolation and enjoyed self-rulein most matters for almost 150 years The distinctivecharacter of the Cajun people thus springs from theirpreservation and adaptation of early modern (and per-haps medieval and pagan) cultural traditions (Rushton197971ndash72)8

The swamp tours emphasize the relationship of theCajuns to the swamps excluding not only Acadian his-tory but also many other historical and contemporaryin uences on the Cajun people (including NativeAmerican African English Creole Spanish Germanand Sicilian) (Ancelet 1992261) This sweeping omis-sion of in uences is in keeping with the exaggerationof the ldquonatural purityrdquo and ldquowildernessrdquo motifs whichextend in the brochures to a de nition of local inhab-itants as swamp dwellers But during the tours this ex-pectation too will have to be signi cantly scaled backsince the guides know of course about current affairsand are in possession of the technological wizardry of

modern life such as cellular phones I remember how ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo burstmy own interpretive bubble by casually mentioning that he had performed hissongs in Japan Another guide lamented the loss of the veillee the traditionalevening visit with neighbors explaining that people prefer to stay home nowadaysand watch television

Tourists soon realize that swamp Cajuns exist only in the toursrsquo production ofa virtual wilderness The real guides are performer-narrators whose well-wornstories jokes word choices and gestures have evolved over years of repeatedlypointing out the same things As locals they do display regional manners andhabits of speech But the guides do not commit deeply to their ldquoswamp dwellerrdquo

6 Brochure for CajunJackrsquos Swamp Tours (Pat-terson Louisiana) (Cour-tesy of Jack Herbert)

Cajun Swamp Tours 127

roles as would be expected of employees for example at the nearby AcadianVillage a heritage park that ldquore-createsrdquo the life of an imaginary 19th-centuryCajun settlement Unlike the costumed ldquovillagersrdquo the guides on the swamptours generally shirk the part assigned to them in the shiny brochures Nonewears a costume or adopts the role of a rustic ldquocharacterrdquo except in the tellingof a story or joke Instead they ldquoare themselvesrdquo and never refer to the brochureimages or pronouncements about ldquowildrdquo Cajuns

In fact most guides seem discom ted by the scrutiny of the tourists perhapsfeeling themselves prejudged according to stereotypes including those in theirown brochures There is of course a general legacy ofcondescension in the West toward people indigenousto so-called noncivilized (or simply non-Western) areasof the world ldquoNativerdquo peoples frequently have beenput on display for tourists interested in their ldquoexoti-cismrdquo and the Cajun guides operate partially in thistradition Due to their French origins however Cajunguides are spared some of the more racist and colonialovertones associated with the display of non-Europeanldquonativesrdquo The Cajun swamp dweller is really more ofa Tarzan gure a European who has become semi-wilddue to an unfortunate overexposure to wilderness andnative cultures Although the condescension is com-paratively mild in relation to the heritage industry atlarge it nonetheless seems to provoke some awkwardmoments and periods of strained silence especiallywhen an inexperienced person is lling in as a substi-tute guide The guides also appear slightly embarrassedabout their role whenever locals greet them from theshore or from another boat

When tourists discover that their ldquoauthentic Cajunguiderdquo has a web site or a satellite dish the hope ofescaping civilization may seem dashed leaving themfeeling more entrapped than before To mainstream so-ciety folk cultures such as the Cajuns or the Amishfunction as a kind of rear guard occupying a fallbackposition against a deepening alienation from natureButif the ldquoauthentic Cajun guiderdquo sits home at nightwatching national television where does one nd peo-ple who still identify with nature And what are theconsequences for a tour whose host is a ldquocompromisedrdquoswamp dweller

The short answer is that fortunately for the tour op-erators tourists have bought their tickets and are un-derway before fully realizing that the brochures containonly the proverbial grain of truth The long answermight begin with the observation that the guides donot really relinquish their roles as intermediaries be-tween civilization and the wild until after the feedingsessions during which they meet the expectations ofthis rolemdashin the way they call over and feed the alli-gatorsmdashmore than at any other time on the tour Thedemotion of a tour guide from fabled swamp dwellerto reluctant actor-as-swamp-dweller comes late in thetour when the wilderness ction as a whole is on thewane

7 Brochure for A CajunManrsquos Swamp Cruise(Houma Louisiana)(Courtesy of Ronald JGuidry)

128 Eric Wiley

Whatrsquos left is not ldquoreal wildernessrdquo as promised in the brochures but theatri-cality and virtuality When both guides and tourists willingly suspend their dis-belief the swamps can function as pure wilderness as home to rustic folk asdangerous mysterious and colorful This alluring narrative is loosely organizedas a journey providing the tours with a core ldquoscriptrdquo that can accommodateparticipation and improvisation The journey structure whets the touristsrsquo ap-petite for adventure in the early going and then en route builds up their antici-pation of fearful alligators The script climaxes in the feeding session when thetwo most theatricalized gures in this dramamdashthe guide and the alligatormdashenacta staged encounter

The basic mission of locating and paying tribute to the alligator provides struc-ture to the toursrsquo swamp ldquotheatrerdquo But once it is accomplished and the dramaticquestion resolved (will we nd and safely escape from alligators) the virtualswamps begin to dissipate The guide gives up his or her role as interpreter andwill typically fall silent and concentrate on driving the boat This helps to explainwhy tourists act near the end of a tour as if the ldquoshowrdquo is over Indeed afterthe feedings the tours become little more than a return ride retracing the routeused to get to the feeding site On the journey back the tourists are left to watchthe landscape pass again before their eyes like a slowly rewinding tape

Fatigue sets in further draining the tour of drama The tourists enter thewetlands in a high state of excitement and interest they return subdued and wearyof gazing The rst sighting of a turtle sunning itself on a rock sends ripples ofinterest throughout the boat but on the way back to the dock the same turtledraws barely a glance The sudden ight of a white egret is pointed at with delight

8 Ron Guidry banks hisboat to stop and sing inCajun French during a tourA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

Cajun Swamp Tours 129

by an outbound tourist but warrants only a atly delivered ldquotherersquos another oneof those birdsrdquo on the return leg of the tour

The subdued state of those returning from a tour is a common feature ofenvironmental tourism stemming in part from the traveling required betweensites As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes ldquoone problem with the lifespace is itslow density the dead space between attractionsrdquo (1998145) In theme parks andcities by contrast one passes quickly from one interesting spot to another Tocounter the low density of its rural attractions Louisiana has created ldquoCajuncountryrdquomdasha network of tourist attractions restaurants and overnight accom-modations throughout the southern parishes But density also arises from theinternal richness of an attraction from the variety depth and range of offeringsIn virtual realms such as the ldquoCajun swampsrdquo sites may achieve high internaldensity through the power and reach of the illusions they generate The toursrsquoproduction of ldquoCajun swampsrdquo morphs everyday stuff such as trees and rocksand clouds into ldquoCajun treesrdquo and ldquoCajun rocksrdquo and ldquoCajun cloudsrdquo Theweariness that develops late in a tour is thus attributable in part to the open-ended scope of its virtual realm This tiredness resembles that which overcomespeople whenever offerings are open-ended such as in ldquofamousrdquo cities themeparks museums zoos music festivals and all-you-can-eat buffets

As the touring continues after the ldquoshowrdquo has ended the tourist audiencepasses through an in-between world neither fully real nor fully virtual Perhapsthis homestretch of downtime and dead space provides the escape that touristswanted all along The environment theatricalized as wilderness nally is more ofthe same media glut that people ordinarily experience at home The trip backmay be in contrast what the wetlands really are beautiful and compromised

Once the boat tour is over what awaits the tourists Parked on the gravel lotbeside the dock are the rental cars that brought them out to Bayou Black or toother waters on the dashboards and front seats lay the colorful brochures andtour books which may revive in them the tourism industryrsquos theatricalizationofthe entire region And in their memory is a theatrical experience that involvedwith the help of a swamp dweller looking for nding and feeding alligatorsViewed within the broader context of regional tourismmdashthat is regional the-atricalizationmdashthe swamp tours are vacations within vacations escapes from es-capes theatres inside theatres During the boat ride back one oats within twotheatrical frames one separating wilderness from civilization and the other sepa-rating two hours of touristic theatre from a much larger show called ldquoCajunCountryrdquo

Notes

1 A study by R Tapper reports ldquowhile tourism is growing on average at about 3 percent peryear growth in nature-based tourism is between 5 percentndash10 percent per yearrdquo (in Mow-forth and Munt 199899) On the use of theatrical methods by the tourism industry per-formance theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has astutely observed ldquoMuch that isfamiliar from theater is deployed in some fashion within the tourism industry Indeed theindustry is a kind of museum of theater practice even as it innovates new variations andformsrdquo (19975)

2 On the number of tours in 1991 see Kate Alexander (1991) The gure for 2002 comesfrom the Tour Guide Book of the Louisiana Of ce of Tourism This essay covers tours basedin rural areas only those in the vicinity of New Orleans are not discussed

3 In studies of tourism a great deal has been made of the particular manner in which touristsregard and decode designated tourist attractions Sociologist John Urry has argued thatpeople view tourist attractions with a distinctive ldquotourist gazerdquo He contends that the des-ignation of an attraction begins with an ascription of ldquoothernessrdquo to a site ldquotourism results

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

122 Eric Wiley

3 Annie Miller aka ldquoAlli-gator Annierdquo feeds skew-ered meat to a bayoualligator during a swamptour (Photo courtesy of An-nie Miller)

the representational breaches just mentioned The framing of the environmentmay itself prevent tourists from seeing the environment in at least some sensesof what it means to see something Semioticians have proposed along these linesthat the institutional authority that is implicit in the demarcation of sites can beblinding According to Walker Percy instead of directly observing an attractionsuch as wetlands tourists will nd themselves merely seeking to con rm what itis about them that has been deemed sight-worthy He argues in discussing theGrand Canyon that ldquothe thing as it is [] has been appropriated by the symboliccomplex which has already been formed in the sightseerrsquos mind Seeing the can-yon under approved circumstances is seeing the symbolic complex head onrdquo(197547) The swamplands presented on tours following Percyrsquos analysis areconcealed within what Percy terms a ldquocitadel of symbolic investiturerdquo (197551)and the satisfaction of a tourist rests not in ldquothe discovery of the thing beforehimrdquo but rather in the ldquomeasuring up of the thing to the criterion of the pre-

Cajun Swamp Tours 123

formed symbolic complexrdquo (197547) Percy attempts to explain the process thattriggers the perception of a ldquosymbolic complexrdquo which corresponds to theldquoframed performancerdquo of States Goffman and Schechner and to the ldquovirtualrealityrdquo of Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

But there is always the chance that the framing of the swamps as wildernesswill collapse and with it the ldquocitadel of symbolic investiturerdquo A critical rein-forcement of the frame thus appears in the theatrical structure of the tours whichcreates a sense of journeying into danger The swamp tours take place in steps orldquoscenesrdquo which progress from exposition to entry into a remote other worldto a critical encounter with a menacing antagonist to survival and return Thestructure is reminiscent of the archetypal Herorsquos journey described by JosephCampbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) Front and center in this dramaso to speak is the toothy reptile Alligator mississippiensis otherwise known as theAmerican alligator

With its dramatic propensity for violence the alligator stands out as the star ofmany tours as evidenced by its prominence in tour names road signs and bro-chures Some brochures announce ldquolast but not least the erce and dangerousalligatorrdquo or ldquoguaranteed to see live alligatorsrdquo Like a head of state the alligatorembodies the particularity and autonomy of the wetlands environment appearingas its peculiar violent and omnivorous ruler akin to the bear shark and tigerwho lord over other environments Tours invariably pay tribute to the ldquobig lizardrdquoby culminating in ritualized feeding sessions These feature alligators have beenconditioned when called over to the boat to lunge at chicken parts suspendedabove the water (the guide skewers raw legs and thighs one at a time onto a stiffwire attached to the end of a pole) When a 40-year-old bull alligator rises outof the water jaws snapping and its massive head bumps like a boulder againstthe aluminum hull tourists are satis ed especially if some on board have gaspedor started in fear during the episode

Although the feeding sessions corroborate the prom-ise of swamps as dangerous places their impact on thetourists may be contradictory The sight of large dis-colored scars on the head and back of some of the al-ligatorsmdashthe result of gashes in icted by boat enginepropellers as one guide explainedmdashprompts a sympa-thetic outcry from the tourists The alligator is trans-formed from terrifying predator to tragic hero arousingboth pity and fear In any event the alligator functionsas a thematic lightning rod for the theatricalization ofthe surrounding landscape The act of snapping upchicken parts is also a perfectly tragi-farcical debase-ment of these consummate huntersmdashespecially whenfor the sake of photographs the alligator is made tojump at the poultry several times like a trained circusanimal performer

Despite the hints of tragic grandeur the alligatorplays a role in the dramatization of the landscape thatseems closest to that of the beasts of pastoral dramawhich inhabit natural territories lying outside the civ-ilized world In both cases the ldquoplotrdquo centers on makingcontact with a beast that threatens but then fails to doharm Sometimes the potential threat of alligators socrucial to the drama of the tours is put to a test Onetime on Annie Millerrsquos Sonrsquos Swamp Tour as we werescanning the dark waters for our rst glimpse of an

4 Wary swamp touristswatch as guide AnnieMiller feeds an alligator thathas approached the boat(Photo courtesy of AnnieMiller)

124 Eric Wiley

5 A ldquoChristmas Treerdquocapping a natural gas well isone of the attractions on aswamp tour The wells aretypically 16000 feet deepA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

alligator and having been warned to ldquokeep your hands away from the railing atall timesrdquo we came upon a sight our eyes refused to believe a man and two smallchildren were in the water far from shore their heads jutting out of colorful lifejackets as they treaded water waiting while the mother circled back around in amotorboat to give each a turn to water-ski The sight of these children smilingup at us from the water was an outrage and it dispelled our ldquovirtualrdquo world justas if in a theatre someone had brought up the house lights during a play5

The water-skiersrsquo challenge to the tourrsquos ldquowildernessrdquo illuminates the doublefunction of a frame it excludes as well as contains The tours rely for their appealas much on their exclusion of ordinary life as on their inclusion (or creation) ofwilderness Their dramatization of the swamps serves not only to structure a tourand to sustain interest in it but also to divert tourists from their daily lives andto displace temporarily the unsettling concerns associated with them The toursare escapist entertainments To succeed in this genre the tour guides must preventtourists from having thoughts that are disruptive of the virtual wilderness theyhave entered

Another challenge to the toursrsquo framing of the swamps as a wilderness is thestark presence of the oil and natural gas industry pipes pumps transport shipswarning signs posted along the canals and the intricate metallic structures thatcap the natural gas wells called ldquoChristmas treesrdquo What could be more emblem-atic of modernity than pipes ttings bolts and valves This apparatus is emblem-atic of the systematic exploitation of nature Consistent with its poor environ-mental record globally the oil and gas industry has not spared the Louisianawetlands Its damage to the arearsquos ecosystem has included a devastating intake ofsaltwater caused by some 12 thousand miles of canals an accelerated loss of landand a profuse dumping of chemical wastes (Kennedy 199194ndash99) The touristsrsquovision of the environment as a dangerous wilderness zone must overcome the per-vasive actuality of an endangered zone in urgent need of protection On sometours it is true no visible signs of the petrochemical industry appear but its opera-tions heavily inscribe the surrounding region and access roads and condition themost remote wetlands making its presence unavoidable

When one is torn between having an enjoyable fear of alligators on the one

Cajun Swamp Tours 125

hand and a disheartening concern about seepage from toxic waste sites on theother the latter tends to prevail Awareness of the oil and gas industry thus threat-ens to undo the framing of the wetlands as a sightseeing attraction In additionto stealing the thunder of the ldquodangerous alligatorrdquo the scale of the industryrsquosprocedures for extracting minerals dwarfs the staged environment of water treesand marsh grass The natural gas wells for example are about 16000 feet deepcompared to grass that grows to a height of about eight feet and trees that reacha maximum of 60 feet

Perhaps as a hedge against disillusionment tourists are found overwhelminglyto prefer swamp tours that present nature through the hermeneutic of Cajunculture Tourists are enticed not by swamps-as-swamps but by ldquoCajun swampsrdquoldquoAlligatorAnnierdquo ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo and ldquoCajun Jackrdquo are gures who interpretthe wetlands through the medium of Cajun folk culture This intervening per-soni cation is the key to transforming the wetlands into a theatrical experienceSwamp tours in other states such as Texas Mississippi Alabama Georgia andFloridamdashlacking anything comparable to a Cajun communitymdashhave not enjoyedthe booming business of the Louisiana tours although the Seminole-themedtours now open in Florida show some of the same promise The appeal of theCajun guide suggests that tourists desire a strong dose of theatricalization thewetlands on their own would lure few people

Anthropologist Marjorie Esman identi es the Cajun stereotype as one of ldquofun-loving rustic French-speaking folk with a noble peasant past that has not yetdiedrdquo (1984459) Since Esmanrsquos 1984 article the Cajun image has been focusedincreasingly on Cajun cuisine owing to the nationally televised cooking showsof Chef Paul Prudhomme Justin Wilson and Chef John Folse and to the wide-spread marketing of Cajun cookbooks restaurants seasonings and other comes-tibles Swamps are accordingly presented on tours as a source of foodstuffs withguides relating everything from old techniques for catching sh to recent trendsin preparing nutria meat Memorable meals and culinary approaches to game and sh are often woven into tour narratives6 Nearly all of the tours operate out of(and promote) a Cajun restaurant The Cajun ldquoproprietorshiprdquo of swamps unfoldsfurther through a description of traditional uses for various plants Spanish mosswas used to stuff mattresses and cypress trees were burned and carved into pi-rogues small at-bottomed canoes

During the course of a tour the guides integrate the swamps into their per-formance of Cajun culture Their regional accent and gures of speech sustainthis Cajunization The tour boat itself provides a Cajun frame of reference repletewith such cultural markings as snake skins nailed to the canopy supports lami-nated alligator heads prominently displayed (in one case on a box for tips) postedCajun bumper stickers and folksy names for the boats such as ldquoGumbordquo andldquoGator Baitrdquo While most guides con ne themselves to jokes and storytellingRon Guidry aka ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo rams his boat mid-tour into a marshy em-bankment and proceeds to sing songs in Cajun French

The cajunisme of the tours is as theatrical and as far-fetched as their productionof ldquowildernessrdquo It derives from a narrow performance of the cultural idiomcultivated and exaggerated beyond anything found in the local Cajun commu-nities Above all the image of Cajuns as fun-loving people is deceptive Veiledbehind it are a people still reeling from a government-sponsored assault on theirculture and language which arose from a national effort beginning in the 1920sto bring subcultures into greater conformity with the Anglo American main-stream General instruction in the French language was prohibited at Louisianapublic schools in 1924 and in practice this meant that students who used Frenchat school were punished Over time Cajuns came to feel ashamed of their lan-guage and heritage (Solles 19956) The Catholic Church stopped dispatching

126 Eric Wiley

French-speaking priests to the area parents no longerspoke Cajun French to their children and the languageall but vanished (7) The stigma of the Cajuns lastedwell into the 1970s when in the interests of tourismthe cultural heritage of the ldquocoonassesrdquo as Cajuns oftenrefer to themselves became invaluable to the statewhich was then suffering economically from a devas-tated oil industry The Cajuns were suddenly promotedas fun-loving French-speaking people and a futile ef-fort was made to revive their language (9)7

The swamp tours feature a Cajun subtype the so-called ldquoswamp Cajunrdquo whose lifestyle allegedly resultsfrom a long interrelationship with the swamp environ-ment The brochures present Cajun guides chie y asswamp dwellers with little knowledge of the outsideworld one invites visitors to ldquomeet Cajuns who havenever lived in a townrdquo But here again the advertisedimage reveals only part of a long and bitter history Formuch of what is identi ed as swamp Cajunmdashstrongfamily traditions communal values religious devotionsuperstitious beliefs and love of cooking music andstorytellingmdashpredates the latendash18th-century arrival ofthe Cajuns in Louisiana The complex identity of theCajuns rst took root in the Acadian settlements nearNova Scotia in the 17th and 18th centuries Comprisedof villagers from western France these remote settle-ments thrived in their isolation and enjoyed self-rulein most matters for almost 150 years The distinctivecharacter of the Cajun people thus springs from theirpreservation and adaptation of early modern (and per-haps medieval and pagan) cultural traditions (Rushton197971ndash72)8

The swamp tours emphasize the relationship of theCajuns to the swamps excluding not only Acadian his-tory but also many other historical and contemporaryin uences on the Cajun people (including NativeAmerican African English Creole Spanish Germanand Sicilian) (Ancelet 1992261) This sweeping omis-sion of in uences is in keeping with the exaggerationof the ldquonatural purityrdquo and ldquowildernessrdquo motifs whichextend in the brochures to a de nition of local inhab-itants as swamp dwellers But during the tours this ex-pectation too will have to be signi cantly scaled backsince the guides know of course about current affairsand are in possession of the technological wizardry of

modern life such as cellular phones I remember how ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo burstmy own interpretive bubble by casually mentioning that he had performed hissongs in Japan Another guide lamented the loss of the veillee the traditionalevening visit with neighbors explaining that people prefer to stay home nowadaysand watch television

Tourists soon realize that swamp Cajuns exist only in the toursrsquo production ofa virtual wilderness The real guides are performer-narrators whose well-wornstories jokes word choices and gestures have evolved over years of repeatedlypointing out the same things As locals they do display regional manners andhabits of speech But the guides do not commit deeply to their ldquoswamp dwellerrdquo

6 Brochure for CajunJackrsquos Swamp Tours (Pat-terson Louisiana) (Cour-tesy of Jack Herbert)

Cajun Swamp Tours 127

roles as would be expected of employees for example at the nearby AcadianVillage a heritage park that ldquore-createsrdquo the life of an imaginary 19th-centuryCajun settlement Unlike the costumed ldquovillagersrdquo the guides on the swamptours generally shirk the part assigned to them in the shiny brochures Nonewears a costume or adopts the role of a rustic ldquocharacterrdquo except in the tellingof a story or joke Instead they ldquoare themselvesrdquo and never refer to the brochureimages or pronouncements about ldquowildrdquo Cajuns

In fact most guides seem discom ted by the scrutiny of the tourists perhapsfeeling themselves prejudged according to stereotypes including those in theirown brochures There is of course a general legacy ofcondescension in the West toward people indigenousto so-called noncivilized (or simply non-Western) areasof the world ldquoNativerdquo peoples frequently have beenput on display for tourists interested in their ldquoexoti-cismrdquo and the Cajun guides operate partially in thistradition Due to their French origins however Cajunguides are spared some of the more racist and colonialovertones associated with the display of non-Europeanldquonativesrdquo The Cajun swamp dweller is really more ofa Tarzan gure a European who has become semi-wilddue to an unfortunate overexposure to wilderness andnative cultures Although the condescension is com-paratively mild in relation to the heritage industry atlarge it nonetheless seems to provoke some awkwardmoments and periods of strained silence especiallywhen an inexperienced person is lling in as a substi-tute guide The guides also appear slightly embarrassedabout their role whenever locals greet them from theshore or from another boat

When tourists discover that their ldquoauthentic Cajunguiderdquo has a web site or a satellite dish the hope ofescaping civilization may seem dashed leaving themfeeling more entrapped than before To mainstream so-ciety folk cultures such as the Cajuns or the Amishfunction as a kind of rear guard occupying a fallbackposition against a deepening alienation from natureButif the ldquoauthentic Cajun guiderdquo sits home at nightwatching national television where does one nd peo-ple who still identify with nature And what are theconsequences for a tour whose host is a ldquocompromisedrdquoswamp dweller

The short answer is that fortunately for the tour op-erators tourists have bought their tickets and are un-derway before fully realizing that the brochures containonly the proverbial grain of truth The long answermight begin with the observation that the guides donot really relinquish their roles as intermediaries be-tween civilization and the wild until after the feedingsessions during which they meet the expectations ofthis rolemdashin the way they call over and feed the alli-gatorsmdashmore than at any other time on the tour Thedemotion of a tour guide from fabled swamp dwellerto reluctant actor-as-swamp-dweller comes late in thetour when the wilderness ction as a whole is on thewane

7 Brochure for A CajunManrsquos Swamp Cruise(Houma Louisiana)(Courtesy of Ronald JGuidry)

128 Eric Wiley

Whatrsquos left is not ldquoreal wildernessrdquo as promised in the brochures but theatri-cality and virtuality When both guides and tourists willingly suspend their dis-belief the swamps can function as pure wilderness as home to rustic folk asdangerous mysterious and colorful This alluring narrative is loosely organizedas a journey providing the tours with a core ldquoscriptrdquo that can accommodateparticipation and improvisation The journey structure whets the touristsrsquo ap-petite for adventure in the early going and then en route builds up their antici-pation of fearful alligators The script climaxes in the feeding session when thetwo most theatricalized gures in this dramamdashthe guide and the alligatormdashenacta staged encounter

The basic mission of locating and paying tribute to the alligator provides struc-ture to the toursrsquo swamp ldquotheatrerdquo But once it is accomplished and the dramaticquestion resolved (will we nd and safely escape from alligators) the virtualswamps begin to dissipate The guide gives up his or her role as interpreter andwill typically fall silent and concentrate on driving the boat This helps to explainwhy tourists act near the end of a tour as if the ldquoshowrdquo is over Indeed afterthe feedings the tours become little more than a return ride retracing the routeused to get to the feeding site On the journey back the tourists are left to watchthe landscape pass again before their eyes like a slowly rewinding tape

Fatigue sets in further draining the tour of drama The tourists enter thewetlands in a high state of excitement and interest they return subdued and wearyof gazing The rst sighting of a turtle sunning itself on a rock sends ripples ofinterest throughout the boat but on the way back to the dock the same turtledraws barely a glance The sudden ight of a white egret is pointed at with delight

8 Ron Guidry banks hisboat to stop and sing inCajun French during a tourA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

Cajun Swamp Tours 129

by an outbound tourist but warrants only a atly delivered ldquotherersquos another oneof those birdsrdquo on the return leg of the tour

The subdued state of those returning from a tour is a common feature ofenvironmental tourism stemming in part from the traveling required betweensites As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes ldquoone problem with the lifespace is itslow density the dead space between attractionsrdquo (1998145) In theme parks andcities by contrast one passes quickly from one interesting spot to another Tocounter the low density of its rural attractions Louisiana has created ldquoCajuncountryrdquomdasha network of tourist attractions restaurants and overnight accom-modations throughout the southern parishes But density also arises from theinternal richness of an attraction from the variety depth and range of offeringsIn virtual realms such as the ldquoCajun swampsrdquo sites may achieve high internaldensity through the power and reach of the illusions they generate The toursrsquoproduction of ldquoCajun swampsrdquo morphs everyday stuff such as trees and rocksand clouds into ldquoCajun treesrdquo and ldquoCajun rocksrdquo and ldquoCajun cloudsrdquo Theweariness that develops late in a tour is thus attributable in part to the open-ended scope of its virtual realm This tiredness resembles that which overcomespeople whenever offerings are open-ended such as in ldquofamousrdquo cities themeparks museums zoos music festivals and all-you-can-eat buffets

As the touring continues after the ldquoshowrdquo has ended the tourist audiencepasses through an in-between world neither fully real nor fully virtual Perhapsthis homestretch of downtime and dead space provides the escape that touristswanted all along The environment theatricalized as wilderness nally is more ofthe same media glut that people ordinarily experience at home The trip backmay be in contrast what the wetlands really are beautiful and compromised

Once the boat tour is over what awaits the tourists Parked on the gravel lotbeside the dock are the rental cars that brought them out to Bayou Black or toother waters on the dashboards and front seats lay the colorful brochures andtour books which may revive in them the tourism industryrsquos theatricalizationofthe entire region And in their memory is a theatrical experience that involvedwith the help of a swamp dweller looking for nding and feeding alligatorsViewed within the broader context of regional tourismmdashthat is regional the-atricalizationmdashthe swamp tours are vacations within vacations escapes from es-capes theatres inside theatres During the boat ride back one oats within twotheatrical frames one separating wilderness from civilization and the other sepa-rating two hours of touristic theatre from a much larger show called ldquoCajunCountryrdquo

Notes

1 A study by R Tapper reports ldquowhile tourism is growing on average at about 3 percent peryear growth in nature-based tourism is between 5 percentndash10 percent per yearrdquo (in Mow-forth and Munt 199899) On the use of theatrical methods by the tourism industry per-formance theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has astutely observed ldquoMuch that isfamiliar from theater is deployed in some fashion within the tourism industry Indeed theindustry is a kind of museum of theater practice even as it innovates new variations andformsrdquo (19975)

2 On the number of tours in 1991 see Kate Alexander (1991) The gure for 2002 comesfrom the Tour Guide Book of the Louisiana Of ce of Tourism This essay covers tours basedin rural areas only those in the vicinity of New Orleans are not discussed

3 In studies of tourism a great deal has been made of the particular manner in which touristsregard and decode designated tourist attractions Sociologist John Urry has argued thatpeople view tourist attractions with a distinctive ldquotourist gazerdquo He contends that the des-ignation of an attraction begins with an ascription of ldquoothernessrdquo to a site ldquotourism results

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

Cajun Swamp Tours 123

formed symbolic complexrdquo (197547) Percy attempts to explain the process thattriggers the perception of a ldquosymbolic complexrdquo which corresponds to theldquoframed performancerdquo of States Goffman and Schechner and to the ldquovirtualrealityrdquo of Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

But there is always the chance that the framing of the swamps as wildernesswill collapse and with it the ldquocitadel of symbolic investiturerdquo A critical rein-forcement of the frame thus appears in the theatrical structure of the tours whichcreates a sense of journeying into danger The swamp tours take place in steps orldquoscenesrdquo which progress from exposition to entry into a remote other worldto a critical encounter with a menacing antagonist to survival and return Thestructure is reminiscent of the archetypal Herorsquos journey described by JosephCampbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) Front and center in this dramaso to speak is the toothy reptile Alligator mississippiensis otherwise known as theAmerican alligator

With its dramatic propensity for violence the alligator stands out as the star ofmany tours as evidenced by its prominence in tour names road signs and bro-chures Some brochures announce ldquolast but not least the erce and dangerousalligatorrdquo or ldquoguaranteed to see live alligatorsrdquo Like a head of state the alligatorembodies the particularity and autonomy of the wetlands environment appearingas its peculiar violent and omnivorous ruler akin to the bear shark and tigerwho lord over other environments Tours invariably pay tribute to the ldquobig lizardrdquoby culminating in ritualized feeding sessions These feature alligators have beenconditioned when called over to the boat to lunge at chicken parts suspendedabove the water (the guide skewers raw legs and thighs one at a time onto a stiffwire attached to the end of a pole) When a 40-year-old bull alligator rises outof the water jaws snapping and its massive head bumps like a boulder againstthe aluminum hull tourists are satis ed especially if some on board have gaspedor started in fear during the episode

Although the feeding sessions corroborate the prom-ise of swamps as dangerous places their impact on thetourists may be contradictory The sight of large dis-colored scars on the head and back of some of the al-ligatorsmdashthe result of gashes in icted by boat enginepropellers as one guide explainedmdashprompts a sympa-thetic outcry from the tourists The alligator is trans-formed from terrifying predator to tragic hero arousingboth pity and fear In any event the alligator functionsas a thematic lightning rod for the theatricalization ofthe surrounding landscape The act of snapping upchicken parts is also a perfectly tragi-farcical debase-ment of these consummate huntersmdashespecially whenfor the sake of photographs the alligator is made tojump at the poultry several times like a trained circusanimal performer

Despite the hints of tragic grandeur the alligatorplays a role in the dramatization of the landscape thatseems closest to that of the beasts of pastoral dramawhich inhabit natural territories lying outside the civ-ilized world In both cases the ldquoplotrdquo centers on makingcontact with a beast that threatens but then fails to doharm Sometimes the potential threat of alligators socrucial to the drama of the tours is put to a test Onetime on Annie Millerrsquos Sonrsquos Swamp Tour as we werescanning the dark waters for our rst glimpse of an

4 Wary swamp touristswatch as guide AnnieMiller feeds an alligator thathas approached the boat(Photo courtesy of AnnieMiller)

124 Eric Wiley

5 A ldquoChristmas Treerdquocapping a natural gas well isone of the attractions on aswamp tour The wells aretypically 16000 feet deepA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

alligator and having been warned to ldquokeep your hands away from the railing atall timesrdquo we came upon a sight our eyes refused to believe a man and two smallchildren were in the water far from shore their heads jutting out of colorful lifejackets as they treaded water waiting while the mother circled back around in amotorboat to give each a turn to water-ski The sight of these children smilingup at us from the water was an outrage and it dispelled our ldquovirtualrdquo world justas if in a theatre someone had brought up the house lights during a play5

The water-skiersrsquo challenge to the tourrsquos ldquowildernessrdquo illuminates the doublefunction of a frame it excludes as well as contains The tours rely for their appealas much on their exclusion of ordinary life as on their inclusion (or creation) ofwilderness Their dramatization of the swamps serves not only to structure a tourand to sustain interest in it but also to divert tourists from their daily lives andto displace temporarily the unsettling concerns associated with them The toursare escapist entertainments To succeed in this genre the tour guides must preventtourists from having thoughts that are disruptive of the virtual wilderness theyhave entered

Another challenge to the toursrsquo framing of the swamps as a wilderness is thestark presence of the oil and natural gas industry pipes pumps transport shipswarning signs posted along the canals and the intricate metallic structures thatcap the natural gas wells called ldquoChristmas treesrdquo What could be more emblem-atic of modernity than pipes ttings bolts and valves This apparatus is emblem-atic of the systematic exploitation of nature Consistent with its poor environ-mental record globally the oil and gas industry has not spared the Louisianawetlands Its damage to the arearsquos ecosystem has included a devastating intake ofsaltwater caused by some 12 thousand miles of canals an accelerated loss of landand a profuse dumping of chemical wastes (Kennedy 199194ndash99) The touristsrsquovision of the environment as a dangerous wilderness zone must overcome the per-vasive actuality of an endangered zone in urgent need of protection On sometours it is true no visible signs of the petrochemical industry appear but its opera-tions heavily inscribe the surrounding region and access roads and condition themost remote wetlands making its presence unavoidable

When one is torn between having an enjoyable fear of alligators on the one

Cajun Swamp Tours 125

hand and a disheartening concern about seepage from toxic waste sites on theother the latter tends to prevail Awareness of the oil and gas industry thus threat-ens to undo the framing of the wetlands as a sightseeing attraction In additionto stealing the thunder of the ldquodangerous alligatorrdquo the scale of the industryrsquosprocedures for extracting minerals dwarfs the staged environment of water treesand marsh grass The natural gas wells for example are about 16000 feet deepcompared to grass that grows to a height of about eight feet and trees that reacha maximum of 60 feet

Perhaps as a hedge against disillusionment tourists are found overwhelminglyto prefer swamp tours that present nature through the hermeneutic of Cajunculture Tourists are enticed not by swamps-as-swamps but by ldquoCajun swampsrdquoldquoAlligatorAnnierdquo ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo and ldquoCajun Jackrdquo are gures who interpretthe wetlands through the medium of Cajun folk culture This intervening per-soni cation is the key to transforming the wetlands into a theatrical experienceSwamp tours in other states such as Texas Mississippi Alabama Georgia andFloridamdashlacking anything comparable to a Cajun communitymdashhave not enjoyedthe booming business of the Louisiana tours although the Seminole-themedtours now open in Florida show some of the same promise The appeal of theCajun guide suggests that tourists desire a strong dose of theatricalization thewetlands on their own would lure few people

Anthropologist Marjorie Esman identi es the Cajun stereotype as one of ldquofun-loving rustic French-speaking folk with a noble peasant past that has not yetdiedrdquo (1984459) Since Esmanrsquos 1984 article the Cajun image has been focusedincreasingly on Cajun cuisine owing to the nationally televised cooking showsof Chef Paul Prudhomme Justin Wilson and Chef John Folse and to the wide-spread marketing of Cajun cookbooks restaurants seasonings and other comes-tibles Swamps are accordingly presented on tours as a source of foodstuffs withguides relating everything from old techniques for catching sh to recent trendsin preparing nutria meat Memorable meals and culinary approaches to game and sh are often woven into tour narratives6 Nearly all of the tours operate out of(and promote) a Cajun restaurant The Cajun ldquoproprietorshiprdquo of swamps unfoldsfurther through a description of traditional uses for various plants Spanish mosswas used to stuff mattresses and cypress trees were burned and carved into pi-rogues small at-bottomed canoes

During the course of a tour the guides integrate the swamps into their per-formance of Cajun culture Their regional accent and gures of speech sustainthis Cajunization The tour boat itself provides a Cajun frame of reference repletewith such cultural markings as snake skins nailed to the canopy supports lami-nated alligator heads prominently displayed (in one case on a box for tips) postedCajun bumper stickers and folksy names for the boats such as ldquoGumbordquo andldquoGator Baitrdquo While most guides con ne themselves to jokes and storytellingRon Guidry aka ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo rams his boat mid-tour into a marshy em-bankment and proceeds to sing songs in Cajun French

The cajunisme of the tours is as theatrical and as far-fetched as their productionof ldquowildernessrdquo It derives from a narrow performance of the cultural idiomcultivated and exaggerated beyond anything found in the local Cajun commu-nities Above all the image of Cajuns as fun-loving people is deceptive Veiledbehind it are a people still reeling from a government-sponsored assault on theirculture and language which arose from a national effort beginning in the 1920sto bring subcultures into greater conformity with the Anglo American main-stream General instruction in the French language was prohibited at Louisianapublic schools in 1924 and in practice this meant that students who used Frenchat school were punished Over time Cajuns came to feel ashamed of their lan-guage and heritage (Solles 19956) The Catholic Church stopped dispatching

126 Eric Wiley

French-speaking priests to the area parents no longerspoke Cajun French to their children and the languageall but vanished (7) The stigma of the Cajuns lastedwell into the 1970s when in the interests of tourismthe cultural heritage of the ldquocoonassesrdquo as Cajuns oftenrefer to themselves became invaluable to the statewhich was then suffering economically from a devas-tated oil industry The Cajuns were suddenly promotedas fun-loving French-speaking people and a futile ef-fort was made to revive their language (9)7

The swamp tours feature a Cajun subtype the so-called ldquoswamp Cajunrdquo whose lifestyle allegedly resultsfrom a long interrelationship with the swamp environ-ment The brochures present Cajun guides chie y asswamp dwellers with little knowledge of the outsideworld one invites visitors to ldquomeet Cajuns who havenever lived in a townrdquo But here again the advertisedimage reveals only part of a long and bitter history Formuch of what is identi ed as swamp Cajunmdashstrongfamily traditions communal values religious devotionsuperstitious beliefs and love of cooking music andstorytellingmdashpredates the latendash18th-century arrival ofthe Cajuns in Louisiana The complex identity of theCajuns rst took root in the Acadian settlements nearNova Scotia in the 17th and 18th centuries Comprisedof villagers from western France these remote settle-ments thrived in their isolation and enjoyed self-rulein most matters for almost 150 years The distinctivecharacter of the Cajun people thus springs from theirpreservation and adaptation of early modern (and per-haps medieval and pagan) cultural traditions (Rushton197971ndash72)8

The swamp tours emphasize the relationship of theCajuns to the swamps excluding not only Acadian his-tory but also many other historical and contemporaryin uences on the Cajun people (including NativeAmerican African English Creole Spanish Germanand Sicilian) (Ancelet 1992261) This sweeping omis-sion of in uences is in keeping with the exaggerationof the ldquonatural purityrdquo and ldquowildernessrdquo motifs whichextend in the brochures to a de nition of local inhab-itants as swamp dwellers But during the tours this ex-pectation too will have to be signi cantly scaled backsince the guides know of course about current affairsand are in possession of the technological wizardry of

modern life such as cellular phones I remember how ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo burstmy own interpretive bubble by casually mentioning that he had performed hissongs in Japan Another guide lamented the loss of the veillee the traditionalevening visit with neighbors explaining that people prefer to stay home nowadaysand watch television

Tourists soon realize that swamp Cajuns exist only in the toursrsquo production ofa virtual wilderness The real guides are performer-narrators whose well-wornstories jokes word choices and gestures have evolved over years of repeatedlypointing out the same things As locals they do display regional manners andhabits of speech But the guides do not commit deeply to their ldquoswamp dwellerrdquo

6 Brochure for CajunJackrsquos Swamp Tours (Pat-terson Louisiana) (Cour-tesy of Jack Herbert)

Cajun Swamp Tours 127

roles as would be expected of employees for example at the nearby AcadianVillage a heritage park that ldquore-createsrdquo the life of an imaginary 19th-centuryCajun settlement Unlike the costumed ldquovillagersrdquo the guides on the swamptours generally shirk the part assigned to them in the shiny brochures Nonewears a costume or adopts the role of a rustic ldquocharacterrdquo except in the tellingof a story or joke Instead they ldquoare themselvesrdquo and never refer to the brochureimages or pronouncements about ldquowildrdquo Cajuns

In fact most guides seem discom ted by the scrutiny of the tourists perhapsfeeling themselves prejudged according to stereotypes including those in theirown brochures There is of course a general legacy ofcondescension in the West toward people indigenousto so-called noncivilized (or simply non-Western) areasof the world ldquoNativerdquo peoples frequently have beenput on display for tourists interested in their ldquoexoti-cismrdquo and the Cajun guides operate partially in thistradition Due to their French origins however Cajunguides are spared some of the more racist and colonialovertones associated with the display of non-Europeanldquonativesrdquo The Cajun swamp dweller is really more ofa Tarzan gure a European who has become semi-wilddue to an unfortunate overexposure to wilderness andnative cultures Although the condescension is com-paratively mild in relation to the heritage industry atlarge it nonetheless seems to provoke some awkwardmoments and periods of strained silence especiallywhen an inexperienced person is lling in as a substi-tute guide The guides also appear slightly embarrassedabout their role whenever locals greet them from theshore or from another boat

When tourists discover that their ldquoauthentic Cajunguiderdquo has a web site or a satellite dish the hope ofescaping civilization may seem dashed leaving themfeeling more entrapped than before To mainstream so-ciety folk cultures such as the Cajuns or the Amishfunction as a kind of rear guard occupying a fallbackposition against a deepening alienation from natureButif the ldquoauthentic Cajun guiderdquo sits home at nightwatching national television where does one nd peo-ple who still identify with nature And what are theconsequences for a tour whose host is a ldquocompromisedrdquoswamp dweller

The short answer is that fortunately for the tour op-erators tourists have bought their tickets and are un-derway before fully realizing that the brochures containonly the proverbial grain of truth The long answermight begin with the observation that the guides donot really relinquish their roles as intermediaries be-tween civilization and the wild until after the feedingsessions during which they meet the expectations ofthis rolemdashin the way they call over and feed the alli-gatorsmdashmore than at any other time on the tour Thedemotion of a tour guide from fabled swamp dwellerto reluctant actor-as-swamp-dweller comes late in thetour when the wilderness ction as a whole is on thewane

7 Brochure for A CajunManrsquos Swamp Cruise(Houma Louisiana)(Courtesy of Ronald JGuidry)

128 Eric Wiley

Whatrsquos left is not ldquoreal wildernessrdquo as promised in the brochures but theatri-cality and virtuality When both guides and tourists willingly suspend their dis-belief the swamps can function as pure wilderness as home to rustic folk asdangerous mysterious and colorful This alluring narrative is loosely organizedas a journey providing the tours with a core ldquoscriptrdquo that can accommodateparticipation and improvisation The journey structure whets the touristsrsquo ap-petite for adventure in the early going and then en route builds up their antici-pation of fearful alligators The script climaxes in the feeding session when thetwo most theatricalized gures in this dramamdashthe guide and the alligatormdashenacta staged encounter

The basic mission of locating and paying tribute to the alligator provides struc-ture to the toursrsquo swamp ldquotheatrerdquo But once it is accomplished and the dramaticquestion resolved (will we nd and safely escape from alligators) the virtualswamps begin to dissipate The guide gives up his or her role as interpreter andwill typically fall silent and concentrate on driving the boat This helps to explainwhy tourists act near the end of a tour as if the ldquoshowrdquo is over Indeed afterthe feedings the tours become little more than a return ride retracing the routeused to get to the feeding site On the journey back the tourists are left to watchthe landscape pass again before their eyes like a slowly rewinding tape

Fatigue sets in further draining the tour of drama The tourists enter thewetlands in a high state of excitement and interest they return subdued and wearyof gazing The rst sighting of a turtle sunning itself on a rock sends ripples ofinterest throughout the boat but on the way back to the dock the same turtledraws barely a glance The sudden ight of a white egret is pointed at with delight

8 Ron Guidry banks hisboat to stop and sing inCajun French during a tourA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

Cajun Swamp Tours 129

by an outbound tourist but warrants only a atly delivered ldquotherersquos another oneof those birdsrdquo on the return leg of the tour

The subdued state of those returning from a tour is a common feature ofenvironmental tourism stemming in part from the traveling required betweensites As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes ldquoone problem with the lifespace is itslow density the dead space between attractionsrdquo (1998145) In theme parks andcities by contrast one passes quickly from one interesting spot to another Tocounter the low density of its rural attractions Louisiana has created ldquoCajuncountryrdquomdasha network of tourist attractions restaurants and overnight accom-modations throughout the southern parishes But density also arises from theinternal richness of an attraction from the variety depth and range of offeringsIn virtual realms such as the ldquoCajun swampsrdquo sites may achieve high internaldensity through the power and reach of the illusions they generate The toursrsquoproduction of ldquoCajun swampsrdquo morphs everyday stuff such as trees and rocksand clouds into ldquoCajun treesrdquo and ldquoCajun rocksrdquo and ldquoCajun cloudsrdquo Theweariness that develops late in a tour is thus attributable in part to the open-ended scope of its virtual realm This tiredness resembles that which overcomespeople whenever offerings are open-ended such as in ldquofamousrdquo cities themeparks museums zoos music festivals and all-you-can-eat buffets

As the touring continues after the ldquoshowrdquo has ended the tourist audiencepasses through an in-between world neither fully real nor fully virtual Perhapsthis homestretch of downtime and dead space provides the escape that touristswanted all along The environment theatricalized as wilderness nally is more ofthe same media glut that people ordinarily experience at home The trip backmay be in contrast what the wetlands really are beautiful and compromised

Once the boat tour is over what awaits the tourists Parked on the gravel lotbeside the dock are the rental cars that brought them out to Bayou Black or toother waters on the dashboards and front seats lay the colorful brochures andtour books which may revive in them the tourism industryrsquos theatricalizationofthe entire region And in their memory is a theatrical experience that involvedwith the help of a swamp dweller looking for nding and feeding alligatorsViewed within the broader context of regional tourismmdashthat is regional the-atricalizationmdashthe swamp tours are vacations within vacations escapes from es-capes theatres inside theatres During the boat ride back one oats within twotheatrical frames one separating wilderness from civilization and the other sepa-rating two hours of touristic theatre from a much larger show called ldquoCajunCountryrdquo

Notes

1 A study by R Tapper reports ldquowhile tourism is growing on average at about 3 percent peryear growth in nature-based tourism is between 5 percentndash10 percent per yearrdquo (in Mow-forth and Munt 199899) On the use of theatrical methods by the tourism industry per-formance theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has astutely observed ldquoMuch that isfamiliar from theater is deployed in some fashion within the tourism industry Indeed theindustry is a kind of museum of theater practice even as it innovates new variations andformsrdquo (19975)

2 On the number of tours in 1991 see Kate Alexander (1991) The gure for 2002 comesfrom the Tour Guide Book of the Louisiana Of ce of Tourism This essay covers tours basedin rural areas only those in the vicinity of New Orleans are not discussed

3 In studies of tourism a great deal has been made of the particular manner in which touristsregard and decode designated tourist attractions Sociologist John Urry has argued thatpeople view tourist attractions with a distinctive ldquotourist gazerdquo He contends that the des-ignation of an attraction begins with an ascription of ldquoothernessrdquo to a site ldquotourism results

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

124 Eric Wiley

5 A ldquoChristmas Treerdquocapping a natural gas well isone of the attractions on aswamp tour The wells aretypically 16000 feet deepA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

alligator and having been warned to ldquokeep your hands away from the railing atall timesrdquo we came upon a sight our eyes refused to believe a man and two smallchildren were in the water far from shore their heads jutting out of colorful lifejackets as they treaded water waiting while the mother circled back around in amotorboat to give each a turn to water-ski The sight of these children smilingup at us from the water was an outrage and it dispelled our ldquovirtualrdquo world justas if in a theatre someone had brought up the house lights during a play5

The water-skiersrsquo challenge to the tourrsquos ldquowildernessrdquo illuminates the doublefunction of a frame it excludes as well as contains The tours rely for their appealas much on their exclusion of ordinary life as on their inclusion (or creation) ofwilderness Their dramatization of the swamps serves not only to structure a tourand to sustain interest in it but also to divert tourists from their daily lives andto displace temporarily the unsettling concerns associated with them The toursare escapist entertainments To succeed in this genre the tour guides must preventtourists from having thoughts that are disruptive of the virtual wilderness theyhave entered

Another challenge to the toursrsquo framing of the swamps as a wilderness is thestark presence of the oil and natural gas industry pipes pumps transport shipswarning signs posted along the canals and the intricate metallic structures thatcap the natural gas wells called ldquoChristmas treesrdquo What could be more emblem-atic of modernity than pipes ttings bolts and valves This apparatus is emblem-atic of the systematic exploitation of nature Consistent with its poor environ-mental record globally the oil and gas industry has not spared the Louisianawetlands Its damage to the arearsquos ecosystem has included a devastating intake ofsaltwater caused by some 12 thousand miles of canals an accelerated loss of landand a profuse dumping of chemical wastes (Kennedy 199194ndash99) The touristsrsquovision of the environment as a dangerous wilderness zone must overcome the per-vasive actuality of an endangered zone in urgent need of protection On sometours it is true no visible signs of the petrochemical industry appear but its opera-tions heavily inscribe the surrounding region and access roads and condition themost remote wetlands making its presence unavoidable

When one is torn between having an enjoyable fear of alligators on the one

Cajun Swamp Tours 125

hand and a disheartening concern about seepage from toxic waste sites on theother the latter tends to prevail Awareness of the oil and gas industry thus threat-ens to undo the framing of the wetlands as a sightseeing attraction In additionto stealing the thunder of the ldquodangerous alligatorrdquo the scale of the industryrsquosprocedures for extracting minerals dwarfs the staged environment of water treesand marsh grass The natural gas wells for example are about 16000 feet deepcompared to grass that grows to a height of about eight feet and trees that reacha maximum of 60 feet

Perhaps as a hedge against disillusionment tourists are found overwhelminglyto prefer swamp tours that present nature through the hermeneutic of Cajunculture Tourists are enticed not by swamps-as-swamps but by ldquoCajun swampsrdquoldquoAlligatorAnnierdquo ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo and ldquoCajun Jackrdquo are gures who interpretthe wetlands through the medium of Cajun folk culture This intervening per-soni cation is the key to transforming the wetlands into a theatrical experienceSwamp tours in other states such as Texas Mississippi Alabama Georgia andFloridamdashlacking anything comparable to a Cajun communitymdashhave not enjoyedthe booming business of the Louisiana tours although the Seminole-themedtours now open in Florida show some of the same promise The appeal of theCajun guide suggests that tourists desire a strong dose of theatricalization thewetlands on their own would lure few people

Anthropologist Marjorie Esman identi es the Cajun stereotype as one of ldquofun-loving rustic French-speaking folk with a noble peasant past that has not yetdiedrdquo (1984459) Since Esmanrsquos 1984 article the Cajun image has been focusedincreasingly on Cajun cuisine owing to the nationally televised cooking showsof Chef Paul Prudhomme Justin Wilson and Chef John Folse and to the wide-spread marketing of Cajun cookbooks restaurants seasonings and other comes-tibles Swamps are accordingly presented on tours as a source of foodstuffs withguides relating everything from old techniques for catching sh to recent trendsin preparing nutria meat Memorable meals and culinary approaches to game and sh are often woven into tour narratives6 Nearly all of the tours operate out of(and promote) a Cajun restaurant The Cajun ldquoproprietorshiprdquo of swamps unfoldsfurther through a description of traditional uses for various plants Spanish mosswas used to stuff mattresses and cypress trees were burned and carved into pi-rogues small at-bottomed canoes

During the course of a tour the guides integrate the swamps into their per-formance of Cajun culture Their regional accent and gures of speech sustainthis Cajunization The tour boat itself provides a Cajun frame of reference repletewith such cultural markings as snake skins nailed to the canopy supports lami-nated alligator heads prominently displayed (in one case on a box for tips) postedCajun bumper stickers and folksy names for the boats such as ldquoGumbordquo andldquoGator Baitrdquo While most guides con ne themselves to jokes and storytellingRon Guidry aka ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo rams his boat mid-tour into a marshy em-bankment and proceeds to sing songs in Cajun French

The cajunisme of the tours is as theatrical and as far-fetched as their productionof ldquowildernessrdquo It derives from a narrow performance of the cultural idiomcultivated and exaggerated beyond anything found in the local Cajun commu-nities Above all the image of Cajuns as fun-loving people is deceptive Veiledbehind it are a people still reeling from a government-sponsored assault on theirculture and language which arose from a national effort beginning in the 1920sto bring subcultures into greater conformity with the Anglo American main-stream General instruction in the French language was prohibited at Louisianapublic schools in 1924 and in practice this meant that students who used Frenchat school were punished Over time Cajuns came to feel ashamed of their lan-guage and heritage (Solles 19956) The Catholic Church stopped dispatching

126 Eric Wiley

French-speaking priests to the area parents no longerspoke Cajun French to their children and the languageall but vanished (7) The stigma of the Cajuns lastedwell into the 1970s when in the interests of tourismthe cultural heritage of the ldquocoonassesrdquo as Cajuns oftenrefer to themselves became invaluable to the statewhich was then suffering economically from a devas-tated oil industry The Cajuns were suddenly promotedas fun-loving French-speaking people and a futile ef-fort was made to revive their language (9)7

The swamp tours feature a Cajun subtype the so-called ldquoswamp Cajunrdquo whose lifestyle allegedly resultsfrom a long interrelationship with the swamp environ-ment The brochures present Cajun guides chie y asswamp dwellers with little knowledge of the outsideworld one invites visitors to ldquomeet Cajuns who havenever lived in a townrdquo But here again the advertisedimage reveals only part of a long and bitter history Formuch of what is identi ed as swamp Cajunmdashstrongfamily traditions communal values religious devotionsuperstitious beliefs and love of cooking music andstorytellingmdashpredates the latendash18th-century arrival ofthe Cajuns in Louisiana The complex identity of theCajuns rst took root in the Acadian settlements nearNova Scotia in the 17th and 18th centuries Comprisedof villagers from western France these remote settle-ments thrived in their isolation and enjoyed self-rulein most matters for almost 150 years The distinctivecharacter of the Cajun people thus springs from theirpreservation and adaptation of early modern (and per-haps medieval and pagan) cultural traditions (Rushton197971ndash72)8

The swamp tours emphasize the relationship of theCajuns to the swamps excluding not only Acadian his-tory but also many other historical and contemporaryin uences on the Cajun people (including NativeAmerican African English Creole Spanish Germanand Sicilian) (Ancelet 1992261) This sweeping omis-sion of in uences is in keeping with the exaggerationof the ldquonatural purityrdquo and ldquowildernessrdquo motifs whichextend in the brochures to a de nition of local inhab-itants as swamp dwellers But during the tours this ex-pectation too will have to be signi cantly scaled backsince the guides know of course about current affairsand are in possession of the technological wizardry of

modern life such as cellular phones I remember how ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo burstmy own interpretive bubble by casually mentioning that he had performed hissongs in Japan Another guide lamented the loss of the veillee the traditionalevening visit with neighbors explaining that people prefer to stay home nowadaysand watch television

Tourists soon realize that swamp Cajuns exist only in the toursrsquo production ofa virtual wilderness The real guides are performer-narrators whose well-wornstories jokes word choices and gestures have evolved over years of repeatedlypointing out the same things As locals they do display regional manners andhabits of speech But the guides do not commit deeply to their ldquoswamp dwellerrdquo

6 Brochure for CajunJackrsquos Swamp Tours (Pat-terson Louisiana) (Cour-tesy of Jack Herbert)

Cajun Swamp Tours 127

roles as would be expected of employees for example at the nearby AcadianVillage a heritage park that ldquore-createsrdquo the life of an imaginary 19th-centuryCajun settlement Unlike the costumed ldquovillagersrdquo the guides on the swamptours generally shirk the part assigned to them in the shiny brochures Nonewears a costume or adopts the role of a rustic ldquocharacterrdquo except in the tellingof a story or joke Instead they ldquoare themselvesrdquo and never refer to the brochureimages or pronouncements about ldquowildrdquo Cajuns

In fact most guides seem discom ted by the scrutiny of the tourists perhapsfeeling themselves prejudged according to stereotypes including those in theirown brochures There is of course a general legacy ofcondescension in the West toward people indigenousto so-called noncivilized (or simply non-Western) areasof the world ldquoNativerdquo peoples frequently have beenput on display for tourists interested in their ldquoexoti-cismrdquo and the Cajun guides operate partially in thistradition Due to their French origins however Cajunguides are spared some of the more racist and colonialovertones associated with the display of non-Europeanldquonativesrdquo The Cajun swamp dweller is really more ofa Tarzan gure a European who has become semi-wilddue to an unfortunate overexposure to wilderness andnative cultures Although the condescension is com-paratively mild in relation to the heritage industry atlarge it nonetheless seems to provoke some awkwardmoments and periods of strained silence especiallywhen an inexperienced person is lling in as a substi-tute guide The guides also appear slightly embarrassedabout their role whenever locals greet them from theshore or from another boat

When tourists discover that their ldquoauthentic Cajunguiderdquo has a web site or a satellite dish the hope ofescaping civilization may seem dashed leaving themfeeling more entrapped than before To mainstream so-ciety folk cultures such as the Cajuns or the Amishfunction as a kind of rear guard occupying a fallbackposition against a deepening alienation from natureButif the ldquoauthentic Cajun guiderdquo sits home at nightwatching national television where does one nd peo-ple who still identify with nature And what are theconsequences for a tour whose host is a ldquocompromisedrdquoswamp dweller

The short answer is that fortunately for the tour op-erators tourists have bought their tickets and are un-derway before fully realizing that the brochures containonly the proverbial grain of truth The long answermight begin with the observation that the guides donot really relinquish their roles as intermediaries be-tween civilization and the wild until after the feedingsessions during which they meet the expectations ofthis rolemdashin the way they call over and feed the alli-gatorsmdashmore than at any other time on the tour Thedemotion of a tour guide from fabled swamp dwellerto reluctant actor-as-swamp-dweller comes late in thetour when the wilderness ction as a whole is on thewane

7 Brochure for A CajunManrsquos Swamp Cruise(Houma Louisiana)(Courtesy of Ronald JGuidry)

128 Eric Wiley

Whatrsquos left is not ldquoreal wildernessrdquo as promised in the brochures but theatri-cality and virtuality When both guides and tourists willingly suspend their dis-belief the swamps can function as pure wilderness as home to rustic folk asdangerous mysterious and colorful This alluring narrative is loosely organizedas a journey providing the tours with a core ldquoscriptrdquo that can accommodateparticipation and improvisation The journey structure whets the touristsrsquo ap-petite for adventure in the early going and then en route builds up their antici-pation of fearful alligators The script climaxes in the feeding session when thetwo most theatricalized gures in this dramamdashthe guide and the alligatormdashenacta staged encounter

The basic mission of locating and paying tribute to the alligator provides struc-ture to the toursrsquo swamp ldquotheatrerdquo But once it is accomplished and the dramaticquestion resolved (will we nd and safely escape from alligators) the virtualswamps begin to dissipate The guide gives up his or her role as interpreter andwill typically fall silent and concentrate on driving the boat This helps to explainwhy tourists act near the end of a tour as if the ldquoshowrdquo is over Indeed afterthe feedings the tours become little more than a return ride retracing the routeused to get to the feeding site On the journey back the tourists are left to watchthe landscape pass again before their eyes like a slowly rewinding tape

Fatigue sets in further draining the tour of drama The tourists enter thewetlands in a high state of excitement and interest they return subdued and wearyof gazing The rst sighting of a turtle sunning itself on a rock sends ripples ofinterest throughout the boat but on the way back to the dock the same turtledraws barely a glance The sudden ight of a white egret is pointed at with delight

8 Ron Guidry banks hisboat to stop and sing inCajun French during a tourA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

Cajun Swamp Tours 129

by an outbound tourist but warrants only a atly delivered ldquotherersquos another oneof those birdsrdquo on the return leg of the tour

The subdued state of those returning from a tour is a common feature ofenvironmental tourism stemming in part from the traveling required betweensites As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes ldquoone problem with the lifespace is itslow density the dead space between attractionsrdquo (1998145) In theme parks andcities by contrast one passes quickly from one interesting spot to another Tocounter the low density of its rural attractions Louisiana has created ldquoCajuncountryrdquomdasha network of tourist attractions restaurants and overnight accom-modations throughout the southern parishes But density also arises from theinternal richness of an attraction from the variety depth and range of offeringsIn virtual realms such as the ldquoCajun swampsrdquo sites may achieve high internaldensity through the power and reach of the illusions they generate The toursrsquoproduction of ldquoCajun swampsrdquo morphs everyday stuff such as trees and rocksand clouds into ldquoCajun treesrdquo and ldquoCajun rocksrdquo and ldquoCajun cloudsrdquo Theweariness that develops late in a tour is thus attributable in part to the open-ended scope of its virtual realm This tiredness resembles that which overcomespeople whenever offerings are open-ended such as in ldquofamousrdquo cities themeparks museums zoos music festivals and all-you-can-eat buffets

As the touring continues after the ldquoshowrdquo has ended the tourist audiencepasses through an in-between world neither fully real nor fully virtual Perhapsthis homestretch of downtime and dead space provides the escape that touristswanted all along The environment theatricalized as wilderness nally is more ofthe same media glut that people ordinarily experience at home The trip backmay be in contrast what the wetlands really are beautiful and compromised

Once the boat tour is over what awaits the tourists Parked on the gravel lotbeside the dock are the rental cars that brought them out to Bayou Black or toother waters on the dashboards and front seats lay the colorful brochures andtour books which may revive in them the tourism industryrsquos theatricalizationofthe entire region And in their memory is a theatrical experience that involvedwith the help of a swamp dweller looking for nding and feeding alligatorsViewed within the broader context of regional tourismmdashthat is regional the-atricalizationmdashthe swamp tours are vacations within vacations escapes from es-capes theatres inside theatres During the boat ride back one oats within twotheatrical frames one separating wilderness from civilization and the other sepa-rating two hours of touristic theatre from a much larger show called ldquoCajunCountryrdquo

Notes

1 A study by R Tapper reports ldquowhile tourism is growing on average at about 3 percent peryear growth in nature-based tourism is between 5 percentndash10 percent per yearrdquo (in Mow-forth and Munt 199899) On the use of theatrical methods by the tourism industry per-formance theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has astutely observed ldquoMuch that isfamiliar from theater is deployed in some fashion within the tourism industry Indeed theindustry is a kind of museum of theater practice even as it innovates new variations andformsrdquo (19975)

2 On the number of tours in 1991 see Kate Alexander (1991) The gure for 2002 comesfrom the Tour Guide Book of the Louisiana Of ce of Tourism This essay covers tours basedin rural areas only those in the vicinity of New Orleans are not discussed

3 In studies of tourism a great deal has been made of the particular manner in which touristsregard and decode designated tourist attractions Sociologist John Urry has argued thatpeople view tourist attractions with a distinctive ldquotourist gazerdquo He contends that the des-ignation of an attraction begins with an ascription of ldquoothernessrdquo to a site ldquotourism results

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

Cajun Swamp Tours 125

hand and a disheartening concern about seepage from toxic waste sites on theother the latter tends to prevail Awareness of the oil and gas industry thus threat-ens to undo the framing of the wetlands as a sightseeing attraction In additionto stealing the thunder of the ldquodangerous alligatorrdquo the scale of the industryrsquosprocedures for extracting minerals dwarfs the staged environment of water treesand marsh grass The natural gas wells for example are about 16000 feet deepcompared to grass that grows to a height of about eight feet and trees that reacha maximum of 60 feet

Perhaps as a hedge against disillusionment tourists are found overwhelminglyto prefer swamp tours that present nature through the hermeneutic of Cajunculture Tourists are enticed not by swamps-as-swamps but by ldquoCajun swampsrdquoldquoAlligatorAnnierdquo ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo and ldquoCajun Jackrdquo are gures who interpretthe wetlands through the medium of Cajun folk culture This intervening per-soni cation is the key to transforming the wetlands into a theatrical experienceSwamp tours in other states such as Texas Mississippi Alabama Georgia andFloridamdashlacking anything comparable to a Cajun communitymdashhave not enjoyedthe booming business of the Louisiana tours although the Seminole-themedtours now open in Florida show some of the same promise The appeal of theCajun guide suggests that tourists desire a strong dose of theatricalization thewetlands on their own would lure few people

Anthropologist Marjorie Esman identi es the Cajun stereotype as one of ldquofun-loving rustic French-speaking folk with a noble peasant past that has not yetdiedrdquo (1984459) Since Esmanrsquos 1984 article the Cajun image has been focusedincreasingly on Cajun cuisine owing to the nationally televised cooking showsof Chef Paul Prudhomme Justin Wilson and Chef John Folse and to the wide-spread marketing of Cajun cookbooks restaurants seasonings and other comes-tibles Swamps are accordingly presented on tours as a source of foodstuffs withguides relating everything from old techniques for catching sh to recent trendsin preparing nutria meat Memorable meals and culinary approaches to game and sh are often woven into tour narratives6 Nearly all of the tours operate out of(and promote) a Cajun restaurant The Cajun ldquoproprietorshiprdquo of swamps unfoldsfurther through a description of traditional uses for various plants Spanish mosswas used to stuff mattresses and cypress trees were burned and carved into pi-rogues small at-bottomed canoes

During the course of a tour the guides integrate the swamps into their per-formance of Cajun culture Their regional accent and gures of speech sustainthis Cajunization The tour boat itself provides a Cajun frame of reference repletewith such cultural markings as snake skins nailed to the canopy supports lami-nated alligator heads prominently displayed (in one case on a box for tips) postedCajun bumper stickers and folksy names for the boats such as ldquoGumbordquo andldquoGator Baitrdquo While most guides con ne themselves to jokes and storytellingRon Guidry aka ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo rams his boat mid-tour into a marshy em-bankment and proceeds to sing songs in Cajun French

The cajunisme of the tours is as theatrical and as far-fetched as their productionof ldquowildernessrdquo It derives from a narrow performance of the cultural idiomcultivated and exaggerated beyond anything found in the local Cajun commu-nities Above all the image of Cajuns as fun-loving people is deceptive Veiledbehind it are a people still reeling from a government-sponsored assault on theirculture and language which arose from a national effort beginning in the 1920sto bring subcultures into greater conformity with the Anglo American main-stream General instruction in the French language was prohibited at Louisianapublic schools in 1924 and in practice this meant that students who used Frenchat school were punished Over time Cajuns came to feel ashamed of their lan-guage and heritage (Solles 19956) The Catholic Church stopped dispatching

126 Eric Wiley

French-speaking priests to the area parents no longerspoke Cajun French to their children and the languageall but vanished (7) The stigma of the Cajuns lastedwell into the 1970s when in the interests of tourismthe cultural heritage of the ldquocoonassesrdquo as Cajuns oftenrefer to themselves became invaluable to the statewhich was then suffering economically from a devas-tated oil industry The Cajuns were suddenly promotedas fun-loving French-speaking people and a futile ef-fort was made to revive their language (9)7

The swamp tours feature a Cajun subtype the so-called ldquoswamp Cajunrdquo whose lifestyle allegedly resultsfrom a long interrelationship with the swamp environ-ment The brochures present Cajun guides chie y asswamp dwellers with little knowledge of the outsideworld one invites visitors to ldquomeet Cajuns who havenever lived in a townrdquo But here again the advertisedimage reveals only part of a long and bitter history Formuch of what is identi ed as swamp Cajunmdashstrongfamily traditions communal values religious devotionsuperstitious beliefs and love of cooking music andstorytellingmdashpredates the latendash18th-century arrival ofthe Cajuns in Louisiana The complex identity of theCajuns rst took root in the Acadian settlements nearNova Scotia in the 17th and 18th centuries Comprisedof villagers from western France these remote settle-ments thrived in their isolation and enjoyed self-rulein most matters for almost 150 years The distinctivecharacter of the Cajun people thus springs from theirpreservation and adaptation of early modern (and per-haps medieval and pagan) cultural traditions (Rushton197971ndash72)8

The swamp tours emphasize the relationship of theCajuns to the swamps excluding not only Acadian his-tory but also many other historical and contemporaryin uences on the Cajun people (including NativeAmerican African English Creole Spanish Germanand Sicilian) (Ancelet 1992261) This sweeping omis-sion of in uences is in keeping with the exaggerationof the ldquonatural purityrdquo and ldquowildernessrdquo motifs whichextend in the brochures to a de nition of local inhab-itants as swamp dwellers But during the tours this ex-pectation too will have to be signi cantly scaled backsince the guides know of course about current affairsand are in possession of the technological wizardry of

modern life such as cellular phones I remember how ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo burstmy own interpretive bubble by casually mentioning that he had performed hissongs in Japan Another guide lamented the loss of the veillee the traditionalevening visit with neighbors explaining that people prefer to stay home nowadaysand watch television

Tourists soon realize that swamp Cajuns exist only in the toursrsquo production ofa virtual wilderness The real guides are performer-narrators whose well-wornstories jokes word choices and gestures have evolved over years of repeatedlypointing out the same things As locals they do display regional manners andhabits of speech But the guides do not commit deeply to their ldquoswamp dwellerrdquo

6 Brochure for CajunJackrsquos Swamp Tours (Pat-terson Louisiana) (Cour-tesy of Jack Herbert)

Cajun Swamp Tours 127

roles as would be expected of employees for example at the nearby AcadianVillage a heritage park that ldquore-createsrdquo the life of an imaginary 19th-centuryCajun settlement Unlike the costumed ldquovillagersrdquo the guides on the swamptours generally shirk the part assigned to them in the shiny brochures Nonewears a costume or adopts the role of a rustic ldquocharacterrdquo except in the tellingof a story or joke Instead they ldquoare themselvesrdquo and never refer to the brochureimages or pronouncements about ldquowildrdquo Cajuns

In fact most guides seem discom ted by the scrutiny of the tourists perhapsfeeling themselves prejudged according to stereotypes including those in theirown brochures There is of course a general legacy ofcondescension in the West toward people indigenousto so-called noncivilized (or simply non-Western) areasof the world ldquoNativerdquo peoples frequently have beenput on display for tourists interested in their ldquoexoti-cismrdquo and the Cajun guides operate partially in thistradition Due to their French origins however Cajunguides are spared some of the more racist and colonialovertones associated with the display of non-Europeanldquonativesrdquo The Cajun swamp dweller is really more ofa Tarzan gure a European who has become semi-wilddue to an unfortunate overexposure to wilderness andnative cultures Although the condescension is com-paratively mild in relation to the heritage industry atlarge it nonetheless seems to provoke some awkwardmoments and periods of strained silence especiallywhen an inexperienced person is lling in as a substi-tute guide The guides also appear slightly embarrassedabout their role whenever locals greet them from theshore or from another boat

When tourists discover that their ldquoauthentic Cajunguiderdquo has a web site or a satellite dish the hope ofescaping civilization may seem dashed leaving themfeeling more entrapped than before To mainstream so-ciety folk cultures such as the Cajuns or the Amishfunction as a kind of rear guard occupying a fallbackposition against a deepening alienation from natureButif the ldquoauthentic Cajun guiderdquo sits home at nightwatching national television where does one nd peo-ple who still identify with nature And what are theconsequences for a tour whose host is a ldquocompromisedrdquoswamp dweller

The short answer is that fortunately for the tour op-erators tourists have bought their tickets and are un-derway before fully realizing that the brochures containonly the proverbial grain of truth The long answermight begin with the observation that the guides donot really relinquish their roles as intermediaries be-tween civilization and the wild until after the feedingsessions during which they meet the expectations ofthis rolemdashin the way they call over and feed the alli-gatorsmdashmore than at any other time on the tour Thedemotion of a tour guide from fabled swamp dwellerto reluctant actor-as-swamp-dweller comes late in thetour when the wilderness ction as a whole is on thewane

7 Brochure for A CajunManrsquos Swamp Cruise(Houma Louisiana)(Courtesy of Ronald JGuidry)

128 Eric Wiley

Whatrsquos left is not ldquoreal wildernessrdquo as promised in the brochures but theatri-cality and virtuality When both guides and tourists willingly suspend their dis-belief the swamps can function as pure wilderness as home to rustic folk asdangerous mysterious and colorful This alluring narrative is loosely organizedas a journey providing the tours with a core ldquoscriptrdquo that can accommodateparticipation and improvisation The journey structure whets the touristsrsquo ap-petite for adventure in the early going and then en route builds up their antici-pation of fearful alligators The script climaxes in the feeding session when thetwo most theatricalized gures in this dramamdashthe guide and the alligatormdashenacta staged encounter

The basic mission of locating and paying tribute to the alligator provides struc-ture to the toursrsquo swamp ldquotheatrerdquo But once it is accomplished and the dramaticquestion resolved (will we nd and safely escape from alligators) the virtualswamps begin to dissipate The guide gives up his or her role as interpreter andwill typically fall silent and concentrate on driving the boat This helps to explainwhy tourists act near the end of a tour as if the ldquoshowrdquo is over Indeed afterthe feedings the tours become little more than a return ride retracing the routeused to get to the feeding site On the journey back the tourists are left to watchthe landscape pass again before their eyes like a slowly rewinding tape

Fatigue sets in further draining the tour of drama The tourists enter thewetlands in a high state of excitement and interest they return subdued and wearyof gazing The rst sighting of a turtle sunning itself on a rock sends ripples ofinterest throughout the boat but on the way back to the dock the same turtledraws barely a glance The sudden ight of a white egret is pointed at with delight

8 Ron Guidry banks hisboat to stop and sing inCajun French during a tourA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

Cajun Swamp Tours 129

by an outbound tourist but warrants only a atly delivered ldquotherersquos another oneof those birdsrdquo on the return leg of the tour

The subdued state of those returning from a tour is a common feature ofenvironmental tourism stemming in part from the traveling required betweensites As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes ldquoone problem with the lifespace is itslow density the dead space between attractionsrdquo (1998145) In theme parks andcities by contrast one passes quickly from one interesting spot to another Tocounter the low density of its rural attractions Louisiana has created ldquoCajuncountryrdquomdasha network of tourist attractions restaurants and overnight accom-modations throughout the southern parishes But density also arises from theinternal richness of an attraction from the variety depth and range of offeringsIn virtual realms such as the ldquoCajun swampsrdquo sites may achieve high internaldensity through the power and reach of the illusions they generate The toursrsquoproduction of ldquoCajun swampsrdquo morphs everyday stuff such as trees and rocksand clouds into ldquoCajun treesrdquo and ldquoCajun rocksrdquo and ldquoCajun cloudsrdquo Theweariness that develops late in a tour is thus attributable in part to the open-ended scope of its virtual realm This tiredness resembles that which overcomespeople whenever offerings are open-ended such as in ldquofamousrdquo cities themeparks museums zoos music festivals and all-you-can-eat buffets

As the touring continues after the ldquoshowrdquo has ended the tourist audiencepasses through an in-between world neither fully real nor fully virtual Perhapsthis homestretch of downtime and dead space provides the escape that touristswanted all along The environment theatricalized as wilderness nally is more ofthe same media glut that people ordinarily experience at home The trip backmay be in contrast what the wetlands really are beautiful and compromised

Once the boat tour is over what awaits the tourists Parked on the gravel lotbeside the dock are the rental cars that brought them out to Bayou Black or toother waters on the dashboards and front seats lay the colorful brochures andtour books which may revive in them the tourism industryrsquos theatricalizationofthe entire region And in their memory is a theatrical experience that involvedwith the help of a swamp dweller looking for nding and feeding alligatorsViewed within the broader context of regional tourismmdashthat is regional the-atricalizationmdashthe swamp tours are vacations within vacations escapes from es-capes theatres inside theatres During the boat ride back one oats within twotheatrical frames one separating wilderness from civilization and the other sepa-rating two hours of touristic theatre from a much larger show called ldquoCajunCountryrdquo

Notes

1 A study by R Tapper reports ldquowhile tourism is growing on average at about 3 percent peryear growth in nature-based tourism is between 5 percentndash10 percent per yearrdquo (in Mow-forth and Munt 199899) On the use of theatrical methods by the tourism industry per-formance theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has astutely observed ldquoMuch that isfamiliar from theater is deployed in some fashion within the tourism industry Indeed theindustry is a kind of museum of theater practice even as it innovates new variations andformsrdquo (19975)

2 On the number of tours in 1991 see Kate Alexander (1991) The gure for 2002 comesfrom the Tour Guide Book of the Louisiana Of ce of Tourism This essay covers tours basedin rural areas only those in the vicinity of New Orleans are not discussed

3 In studies of tourism a great deal has been made of the particular manner in which touristsregard and decode designated tourist attractions Sociologist John Urry has argued thatpeople view tourist attractions with a distinctive ldquotourist gazerdquo He contends that the des-ignation of an attraction begins with an ascription of ldquoothernessrdquo to a site ldquotourism results

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

126 Eric Wiley

French-speaking priests to the area parents no longerspoke Cajun French to their children and the languageall but vanished (7) The stigma of the Cajuns lastedwell into the 1970s when in the interests of tourismthe cultural heritage of the ldquocoonassesrdquo as Cajuns oftenrefer to themselves became invaluable to the statewhich was then suffering economically from a devas-tated oil industry The Cajuns were suddenly promotedas fun-loving French-speaking people and a futile ef-fort was made to revive their language (9)7

The swamp tours feature a Cajun subtype the so-called ldquoswamp Cajunrdquo whose lifestyle allegedly resultsfrom a long interrelationship with the swamp environ-ment The brochures present Cajun guides chie y asswamp dwellers with little knowledge of the outsideworld one invites visitors to ldquomeet Cajuns who havenever lived in a townrdquo But here again the advertisedimage reveals only part of a long and bitter history Formuch of what is identi ed as swamp Cajunmdashstrongfamily traditions communal values religious devotionsuperstitious beliefs and love of cooking music andstorytellingmdashpredates the latendash18th-century arrival ofthe Cajuns in Louisiana The complex identity of theCajuns rst took root in the Acadian settlements nearNova Scotia in the 17th and 18th centuries Comprisedof villagers from western France these remote settle-ments thrived in their isolation and enjoyed self-rulein most matters for almost 150 years The distinctivecharacter of the Cajun people thus springs from theirpreservation and adaptation of early modern (and per-haps medieval and pagan) cultural traditions (Rushton197971ndash72)8

The swamp tours emphasize the relationship of theCajuns to the swamps excluding not only Acadian his-tory but also many other historical and contemporaryin uences on the Cajun people (including NativeAmerican African English Creole Spanish Germanand Sicilian) (Ancelet 1992261) This sweeping omis-sion of in uences is in keeping with the exaggerationof the ldquonatural purityrdquo and ldquowildernessrdquo motifs whichextend in the brochures to a de nition of local inhab-itants as swamp dwellers But during the tours this ex-pectation too will have to be signi cantly scaled backsince the guides know of course about current affairsand are in possession of the technological wizardry of

modern life such as cellular phones I remember how ldquoThe Cajun Manrdquo burstmy own interpretive bubble by casually mentioning that he had performed hissongs in Japan Another guide lamented the loss of the veillee the traditionalevening visit with neighbors explaining that people prefer to stay home nowadaysand watch television

Tourists soon realize that swamp Cajuns exist only in the toursrsquo production ofa virtual wilderness The real guides are performer-narrators whose well-wornstories jokes word choices and gestures have evolved over years of repeatedlypointing out the same things As locals they do display regional manners andhabits of speech But the guides do not commit deeply to their ldquoswamp dwellerrdquo

6 Brochure for CajunJackrsquos Swamp Tours (Pat-terson Louisiana) (Cour-tesy of Jack Herbert)

Cajun Swamp Tours 127

roles as would be expected of employees for example at the nearby AcadianVillage a heritage park that ldquore-createsrdquo the life of an imaginary 19th-centuryCajun settlement Unlike the costumed ldquovillagersrdquo the guides on the swamptours generally shirk the part assigned to them in the shiny brochures Nonewears a costume or adopts the role of a rustic ldquocharacterrdquo except in the tellingof a story or joke Instead they ldquoare themselvesrdquo and never refer to the brochureimages or pronouncements about ldquowildrdquo Cajuns

In fact most guides seem discom ted by the scrutiny of the tourists perhapsfeeling themselves prejudged according to stereotypes including those in theirown brochures There is of course a general legacy ofcondescension in the West toward people indigenousto so-called noncivilized (or simply non-Western) areasof the world ldquoNativerdquo peoples frequently have beenput on display for tourists interested in their ldquoexoti-cismrdquo and the Cajun guides operate partially in thistradition Due to their French origins however Cajunguides are spared some of the more racist and colonialovertones associated with the display of non-Europeanldquonativesrdquo The Cajun swamp dweller is really more ofa Tarzan gure a European who has become semi-wilddue to an unfortunate overexposure to wilderness andnative cultures Although the condescension is com-paratively mild in relation to the heritage industry atlarge it nonetheless seems to provoke some awkwardmoments and periods of strained silence especiallywhen an inexperienced person is lling in as a substi-tute guide The guides also appear slightly embarrassedabout their role whenever locals greet them from theshore or from another boat

When tourists discover that their ldquoauthentic Cajunguiderdquo has a web site or a satellite dish the hope ofescaping civilization may seem dashed leaving themfeeling more entrapped than before To mainstream so-ciety folk cultures such as the Cajuns or the Amishfunction as a kind of rear guard occupying a fallbackposition against a deepening alienation from natureButif the ldquoauthentic Cajun guiderdquo sits home at nightwatching national television where does one nd peo-ple who still identify with nature And what are theconsequences for a tour whose host is a ldquocompromisedrdquoswamp dweller

The short answer is that fortunately for the tour op-erators tourists have bought their tickets and are un-derway before fully realizing that the brochures containonly the proverbial grain of truth The long answermight begin with the observation that the guides donot really relinquish their roles as intermediaries be-tween civilization and the wild until after the feedingsessions during which they meet the expectations ofthis rolemdashin the way they call over and feed the alli-gatorsmdashmore than at any other time on the tour Thedemotion of a tour guide from fabled swamp dwellerto reluctant actor-as-swamp-dweller comes late in thetour when the wilderness ction as a whole is on thewane

7 Brochure for A CajunManrsquos Swamp Cruise(Houma Louisiana)(Courtesy of Ronald JGuidry)

128 Eric Wiley

Whatrsquos left is not ldquoreal wildernessrdquo as promised in the brochures but theatri-cality and virtuality When both guides and tourists willingly suspend their dis-belief the swamps can function as pure wilderness as home to rustic folk asdangerous mysterious and colorful This alluring narrative is loosely organizedas a journey providing the tours with a core ldquoscriptrdquo that can accommodateparticipation and improvisation The journey structure whets the touristsrsquo ap-petite for adventure in the early going and then en route builds up their antici-pation of fearful alligators The script climaxes in the feeding session when thetwo most theatricalized gures in this dramamdashthe guide and the alligatormdashenacta staged encounter

The basic mission of locating and paying tribute to the alligator provides struc-ture to the toursrsquo swamp ldquotheatrerdquo But once it is accomplished and the dramaticquestion resolved (will we nd and safely escape from alligators) the virtualswamps begin to dissipate The guide gives up his or her role as interpreter andwill typically fall silent and concentrate on driving the boat This helps to explainwhy tourists act near the end of a tour as if the ldquoshowrdquo is over Indeed afterthe feedings the tours become little more than a return ride retracing the routeused to get to the feeding site On the journey back the tourists are left to watchthe landscape pass again before their eyes like a slowly rewinding tape

Fatigue sets in further draining the tour of drama The tourists enter thewetlands in a high state of excitement and interest they return subdued and wearyof gazing The rst sighting of a turtle sunning itself on a rock sends ripples ofinterest throughout the boat but on the way back to the dock the same turtledraws barely a glance The sudden ight of a white egret is pointed at with delight

8 Ron Guidry banks hisboat to stop and sing inCajun French during a tourA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

Cajun Swamp Tours 129

by an outbound tourist but warrants only a atly delivered ldquotherersquos another oneof those birdsrdquo on the return leg of the tour

The subdued state of those returning from a tour is a common feature ofenvironmental tourism stemming in part from the traveling required betweensites As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes ldquoone problem with the lifespace is itslow density the dead space between attractionsrdquo (1998145) In theme parks andcities by contrast one passes quickly from one interesting spot to another Tocounter the low density of its rural attractions Louisiana has created ldquoCajuncountryrdquomdasha network of tourist attractions restaurants and overnight accom-modations throughout the southern parishes But density also arises from theinternal richness of an attraction from the variety depth and range of offeringsIn virtual realms such as the ldquoCajun swampsrdquo sites may achieve high internaldensity through the power and reach of the illusions they generate The toursrsquoproduction of ldquoCajun swampsrdquo morphs everyday stuff such as trees and rocksand clouds into ldquoCajun treesrdquo and ldquoCajun rocksrdquo and ldquoCajun cloudsrdquo Theweariness that develops late in a tour is thus attributable in part to the open-ended scope of its virtual realm This tiredness resembles that which overcomespeople whenever offerings are open-ended such as in ldquofamousrdquo cities themeparks museums zoos music festivals and all-you-can-eat buffets

As the touring continues after the ldquoshowrdquo has ended the tourist audiencepasses through an in-between world neither fully real nor fully virtual Perhapsthis homestretch of downtime and dead space provides the escape that touristswanted all along The environment theatricalized as wilderness nally is more ofthe same media glut that people ordinarily experience at home The trip backmay be in contrast what the wetlands really are beautiful and compromised

Once the boat tour is over what awaits the tourists Parked on the gravel lotbeside the dock are the rental cars that brought them out to Bayou Black or toother waters on the dashboards and front seats lay the colorful brochures andtour books which may revive in them the tourism industryrsquos theatricalizationofthe entire region And in their memory is a theatrical experience that involvedwith the help of a swamp dweller looking for nding and feeding alligatorsViewed within the broader context of regional tourismmdashthat is regional the-atricalizationmdashthe swamp tours are vacations within vacations escapes from es-capes theatres inside theatres During the boat ride back one oats within twotheatrical frames one separating wilderness from civilization and the other sepa-rating two hours of touristic theatre from a much larger show called ldquoCajunCountryrdquo

Notes

1 A study by R Tapper reports ldquowhile tourism is growing on average at about 3 percent peryear growth in nature-based tourism is between 5 percentndash10 percent per yearrdquo (in Mow-forth and Munt 199899) On the use of theatrical methods by the tourism industry per-formance theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has astutely observed ldquoMuch that isfamiliar from theater is deployed in some fashion within the tourism industry Indeed theindustry is a kind of museum of theater practice even as it innovates new variations andformsrdquo (19975)

2 On the number of tours in 1991 see Kate Alexander (1991) The gure for 2002 comesfrom the Tour Guide Book of the Louisiana Of ce of Tourism This essay covers tours basedin rural areas only those in the vicinity of New Orleans are not discussed

3 In studies of tourism a great deal has been made of the particular manner in which touristsregard and decode designated tourist attractions Sociologist John Urry has argued thatpeople view tourist attractions with a distinctive ldquotourist gazerdquo He contends that the des-ignation of an attraction begins with an ascription of ldquoothernessrdquo to a site ldquotourism results

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

Cajun Swamp Tours 127

roles as would be expected of employees for example at the nearby AcadianVillage a heritage park that ldquore-createsrdquo the life of an imaginary 19th-centuryCajun settlement Unlike the costumed ldquovillagersrdquo the guides on the swamptours generally shirk the part assigned to them in the shiny brochures Nonewears a costume or adopts the role of a rustic ldquocharacterrdquo except in the tellingof a story or joke Instead they ldquoare themselvesrdquo and never refer to the brochureimages or pronouncements about ldquowildrdquo Cajuns

In fact most guides seem discom ted by the scrutiny of the tourists perhapsfeeling themselves prejudged according to stereotypes including those in theirown brochures There is of course a general legacy ofcondescension in the West toward people indigenousto so-called noncivilized (or simply non-Western) areasof the world ldquoNativerdquo peoples frequently have beenput on display for tourists interested in their ldquoexoti-cismrdquo and the Cajun guides operate partially in thistradition Due to their French origins however Cajunguides are spared some of the more racist and colonialovertones associated with the display of non-Europeanldquonativesrdquo The Cajun swamp dweller is really more ofa Tarzan gure a European who has become semi-wilddue to an unfortunate overexposure to wilderness andnative cultures Although the condescension is com-paratively mild in relation to the heritage industry atlarge it nonetheless seems to provoke some awkwardmoments and periods of strained silence especiallywhen an inexperienced person is lling in as a substi-tute guide The guides also appear slightly embarrassedabout their role whenever locals greet them from theshore or from another boat

When tourists discover that their ldquoauthentic Cajunguiderdquo has a web site or a satellite dish the hope ofescaping civilization may seem dashed leaving themfeeling more entrapped than before To mainstream so-ciety folk cultures such as the Cajuns or the Amishfunction as a kind of rear guard occupying a fallbackposition against a deepening alienation from natureButif the ldquoauthentic Cajun guiderdquo sits home at nightwatching national television where does one nd peo-ple who still identify with nature And what are theconsequences for a tour whose host is a ldquocompromisedrdquoswamp dweller

The short answer is that fortunately for the tour op-erators tourists have bought their tickets and are un-derway before fully realizing that the brochures containonly the proverbial grain of truth The long answermight begin with the observation that the guides donot really relinquish their roles as intermediaries be-tween civilization and the wild until after the feedingsessions during which they meet the expectations ofthis rolemdashin the way they call over and feed the alli-gatorsmdashmore than at any other time on the tour Thedemotion of a tour guide from fabled swamp dwellerto reluctant actor-as-swamp-dweller comes late in thetour when the wilderness ction as a whole is on thewane

7 Brochure for A CajunManrsquos Swamp Cruise(Houma Louisiana)(Courtesy of Ronald JGuidry)

128 Eric Wiley

Whatrsquos left is not ldquoreal wildernessrdquo as promised in the brochures but theatri-cality and virtuality When both guides and tourists willingly suspend their dis-belief the swamps can function as pure wilderness as home to rustic folk asdangerous mysterious and colorful This alluring narrative is loosely organizedas a journey providing the tours with a core ldquoscriptrdquo that can accommodateparticipation and improvisation The journey structure whets the touristsrsquo ap-petite for adventure in the early going and then en route builds up their antici-pation of fearful alligators The script climaxes in the feeding session when thetwo most theatricalized gures in this dramamdashthe guide and the alligatormdashenacta staged encounter

The basic mission of locating and paying tribute to the alligator provides struc-ture to the toursrsquo swamp ldquotheatrerdquo But once it is accomplished and the dramaticquestion resolved (will we nd and safely escape from alligators) the virtualswamps begin to dissipate The guide gives up his or her role as interpreter andwill typically fall silent and concentrate on driving the boat This helps to explainwhy tourists act near the end of a tour as if the ldquoshowrdquo is over Indeed afterthe feedings the tours become little more than a return ride retracing the routeused to get to the feeding site On the journey back the tourists are left to watchthe landscape pass again before their eyes like a slowly rewinding tape

Fatigue sets in further draining the tour of drama The tourists enter thewetlands in a high state of excitement and interest they return subdued and wearyof gazing The rst sighting of a turtle sunning itself on a rock sends ripples ofinterest throughout the boat but on the way back to the dock the same turtledraws barely a glance The sudden ight of a white egret is pointed at with delight

8 Ron Guidry banks hisboat to stop and sing inCajun French during a tourA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

Cajun Swamp Tours 129

by an outbound tourist but warrants only a atly delivered ldquotherersquos another oneof those birdsrdquo on the return leg of the tour

The subdued state of those returning from a tour is a common feature ofenvironmental tourism stemming in part from the traveling required betweensites As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes ldquoone problem with the lifespace is itslow density the dead space between attractionsrdquo (1998145) In theme parks andcities by contrast one passes quickly from one interesting spot to another Tocounter the low density of its rural attractions Louisiana has created ldquoCajuncountryrdquomdasha network of tourist attractions restaurants and overnight accom-modations throughout the southern parishes But density also arises from theinternal richness of an attraction from the variety depth and range of offeringsIn virtual realms such as the ldquoCajun swampsrdquo sites may achieve high internaldensity through the power and reach of the illusions they generate The toursrsquoproduction of ldquoCajun swampsrdquo morphs everyday stuff such as trees and rocksand clouds into ldquoCajun treesrdquo and ldquoCajun rocksrdquo and ldquoCajun cloudsrdquo Theweariness that develops late in a tour is thus attributable in part to the open-ended scope of its virtual realm This tiredness resembles that which overcomespeople whenever offerings are open-ended such as in ldquofamousrdquo cities themeparks museums zoos music festivals and all-you-can-eat buffets

As the touring continues after the ldquoshowrdquo has ended the tourist audiencepasses through an in-between world neither fully real nor fully virtual Perhapsthis homestretch of downtime and dead space provides the escape that touristswanted all along The environment theatricalized as wilderness nally is more ofthe same media glut that people ordinarily experience at home The trip backmay be in contrast what the wetlands really are beautiful and compromised

Once the boat tour is over what awaits the tourists Parked on the gravel lotbeside the dock are the rental cars that brought them out to Bayou Black or toother waters on the dashboards and front seats lay the colorful brochures andtour books which may revive in them the tourism industryrsquos theatricalizationofthe entire region And in their memory is a theatrical experience that involvedwith the help of a swamp dweller looking for nding and feeding alligatorsViewed within the broader context of regional tourismmdashthat is regional the-atricalizationmdashthe swamp tours are vacations within vacations escapes from es-capes theatres inside theatres During the boat ride back one oats within twotheatrical frames one separating wilderness from civilization and the other sepa-rating two hours of touristic theatre from a much larger show called ldquoCajunCountryrdquo

Notes

1 A study by R Tapper reports ldquowhile tourism is growing on average at about 3 percent peryear growth in nature-based tourism is between 5 percentndash10 percent per yearrdquo (in Mow-forth and Munt 199899) On the use of theatrical methods by the tourism industry per-formance theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has astutely observed ldquoMuch that isfamiliar from theater is deployed in some fashion within the tourism industry Indeed theindustry is a kind of museum of theater practice even as it innovates new variations andformsrdquo (19975)

2 On the number of tours in 1991 see Kate Alexander (1991) The gure for 2002 comesfrom the Tour Guide Book of the Louisiana Of ce of Tourism This essay covers tours basedin rural areas only those in the vicinity of New Orleans are not discussed

3 In studies of tourism a great deal has been made of the particular manner in which touristsregard and decode designated tourist attractions Sociologist John Urry has argued thatpeople view tourist attractions with a distinctive ldquotourist gazerdquo He contends that the des-ignation of an attraction begins with an ascription of ldquoothernessrdquo to a site ldquotourism results

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

128 Eric Wiley

Whatrsquos left is not ldquoreal wildernessrdquo as promised in the brochures but theatri-cality and virtuality When both guides and tourists willingly suspend their dis-belief the swamps can function as pure wilderness as home to rustic folk asdangerous mysterious and colorful This alluring narrative is loosely organizedas a journey providing the tours with a core ldquoscriptrdquo that can accommodateparticipation and improvisation The journey structure whets the touristsrsquo ap-petite for adventure in the early going and then en route builds up their antici-pation of fearful alligators The script climaxes in the feeding session when thetwo most theatricalized gures in this dramamdashthe guide and the alligatormdashenacta staged encounter

The basic mission of locating and paying tribute to the alligator provides struc-ture to the toursrsquo swamp ldquotheatrerdquo But once it is accomplished and the dramaticquestion resolved (will we nd and safely escape from alligators) the virtualswamps begin to dissipate The guide gives up his or her role as interpreter andwill typically fall silent and concentrate on driving the boat This helps to explainwhy tourists act near the end of a tour as if the ldquoshowrdquo is over Indeed afterthe feedings the tours become little more than a return ride retracing the routeused to get to the feeding site On the journey back the tourists are left to watchthe landscape pass again before their eyes like a slowly rewinding tape

Fatigue sets in further draining the tour of drama The tourists enter thewetlands in a high state of excitement and interest they return subdued and wearyof gazing The rst sighting of a turtle sunning itself on a rock sends ripples ofinterest throughout the boat but on the way back to the dock the same turtledraws barely a glance The sudden ight of a white egret is pointed at with delight

8 Ron Guidry banks hisboat to stop and sing inCajun French during a tourA Cajun Manrsquos SwampCruise 1998 (Photo byEric Wiley)

Cajun Swamp Tours 129

by an outbound tourist but warrants only a atly delivered ldquotherersquos another oneof those birdsrdquo on the return leg of the tour

The subdued state of those returning from a tour is a common feature ofenvironmental tourism stemming in part from the traveling required betweensites As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes ldquoone problem with the lifespace is itslow density the dead space between attractionsrdquo (1998145) In theme parks andcities by contrast one passes quickly from one interesting spot to another Tocounter the low density of its rural attractions Louisiana has created ldquoCajuncountryrdquomdasha network of tourist attractions restaurants and overnight accom-modations throughout the southern parishes But density also arises from theinternal richness of an attraction from the variety depth and range of offeringsIn virtual realms such as the ldquoCajun swampsrdquo sites may achieve high internaldensity through the power and reach of the illusions they generate The toursrsquoproduction of ldquoCajun swampsrdquo morphs everyday stuff such as trees and rocksand clouds into ldquoCajun treesrdquo and ldquoCajun rocksrdquo and ldquoCajun cloudsrdquo Theweariness that develops late in a tour is thus attributable in part to the open-ended scope of its virtual realm This tiredness resembles that which overcomespeople whenever offerings are open-ended such as in ldquofamousrdquo cities themeparks museums zoos music festivals and all-you-can-eat buffets

As the touring continues after the ldquoshowrdquo has ended the tourist audiencepasses through an in-between world neither fully real nor fully virtual Perhapsthis homestretch of downtime and dead space provides the escape that touristswanted all along The environment theatricalized as wilderness nally is more ofthe same media glut that people ordinarily experience at home The trip backmay be in contrast what the wetlands really are beautiful and compromised

Once the boat tour is over what awaits the tourists Parked on the gravel lotbeside the dock are the rental cars that brought them out to Bayou Black or toother waters on the dashboards and front seats lay the colorful brochures andtour books which may revive in them the tourism industryrsquos theatricalizationofthe entire region And in their memory is a theatrical experience that involvedwith the help of a swamp dweller looking for nding and feeding alligatorsViewed within the broader context of regional tourismmdashthat is regional the-atricalizationmdashthe swamp tours are vacations within vacations escapes from es-capes theatres inside theatres During the boat ride back one oats within twotheatrical frames one separating wilderness from civilization and the other sepa-rating two hours of touristic theatre from a much larger show called ldquoCajunCountryrdquo

Notes

1 A study by R Tapper reports ldquowhile tourism is growing on average at about 3 percent peryear growth in nature-based tourism is between 5 percentndash10 percent per yearrdquo (in Mow-forth and Munt 199899) On the use of theatrical methods by the tourism industry per-formance theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has astutely observed ldquoMuch that isfamiliar from theater is deployed in some fashion within the tourism industry Indeed theindustry is a kind of museum of theater practice even as it innovates new variations andformsrdquo (19975)

2 On the number of tours in 1991 see Kate Alexander (1991) The gure for 2002 comesfrom the Tour Guide Book of the Louisiana Of ce of Tourism This essay covers tours basedin rural areas only those in the vicinity of New Orleans are not discussed

3 In studies of tourism a great deal has been made of the particular manner in which touristsregard and decode designated tourist attractions Sociologist John Urry has argued thatpeople view tourist attractions with a distinctive ldquotourist gazerdquo He contends that the des-ignation of an attraction begins with an ascription of ldquoothernessrdquo to a site ldquotourism results

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

Cajun Swamp Tours 129

by an outbound tourist but warrants only a atly delivered ldquotherersquos another oneof those birdsrdquo on the return leg of the tour

The subdued state of those returning from a tour is a common feature ofenvironmental tourism stemming in part from the traveling required betweensites As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes ldquoone problem with the lifespace is itslow density the dead space between attractionsrdquo (1998145) In theme parks andcities by contrast one passes quickly from one interesting spot to another Tocounter the low density of its rural attractions Louisiana has created ldquoCajuncountryrdquomdasha network of tourist attractions restaurants and overnight accom-modations throughout the southern parishes But density also arises from theinternal richness of an attraction from the variety depth and range of offeringsIn virtual realms such as the ldquoCajun swampsrdquo sites may achieve high internaldensity through the power and reach of the illusions they generate The toursrsquoproduction of ldquoCajun swampsrdquo morphs everyday stuff such as trees and rocksand clouds into ldquoCajun treesrdquo and ldquoCajun rocksrdquo and ldquoCajun cloudsrdquo Theweariness that develops late in a tour is thus attributable in part to the open-ended scope of its virtual realm This tiredness resembles that which overcomespeople whenever offerings are open-ended such as in ldquofamousrdquo cities themeparks museums zoos music festivals and all-you-can-eat buffets

As the touring continues after the ldquoshowrdquo has ended the tourist audiencepasses through an in-between world neither fully real nor fully virtual Perhapsthis homestretch of downtime and dead space provides the escape that touristswanted all along The environment theatricalized as wilderness nally is more ofthe same media glut that people ordinarily experience at home The trip backmay be in contrast what the wetlands really are beautiful and compromised

Once the boat tour is over what awaits the tourists Parked on the gravel lotbeside the dock are the rental cars that brought them out to Bayou Black or toother waters on the dashboards and front seats lay the colorful brochures andtour books which may revive in them the tourism industryrsquos theatricalizationofthe entire region And in their memory is a theatrical experience that involvedwith the help of a swamp dweller looking for nding and feeding alligatorsViewed within the broader context of regional tourismmdashthat is regional the-atricalizationmdashthe swamp tours are vacations within vacations escapes from es-capes theatres inside theatres During the boat ride back one oats within twotheatrical frames one separating wilderness from civilization and the other sepa-rating two hours of touristic theatre from a much larger show called ldquoCajunCountryrdquo

Notes

1 A study by R Tapper reports ldquowhile tourism is growing on average at about 3 percent peryear growth in nature-based tourism is between 5 percentndash10 percent per yearrdquo (in Mow-forth and Munt 199899) On the use of theatrical methods by the tourism industry per-formance theorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has astutely observed ldquoMuch that isfamiliar from theater is deployed in some fashion within the tourism industry Indeed theindustry is a kind of museum of theater practice even as it innovates new variations andformsrdquo (19975)

2 On the number of tours in 1991 see Kate Alexander (1991) The gure for 2002 comesfrom the Tour Guide Book of the Louisiana Of ce of Tourism This essay covers tours basedin rural areas only those in the vicinity of New Orleans are not discussed

3 In studies of tourism a great deal has been made of the particular manner in which touristsregard and decode designated tourist attractions Sociologist John Urry has argued thatpeople view tourist attractions with a distinctive ldquotourist gazerdquo He contends that the des-ignation of an attraction begins with an ascription of ldquoothernessrdquo to a site ldquotourism results

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

130 Eric Wiley

from a basic binary division between the ordinaryeveryday and the extraordinaryrdquo(199011)

4 For most of Western civilization wilderness has meant forests but in North America withits vast wetlands swamps have an exceptional place in the cultural imagination For furtherreading see Robert Pogue Harrisonrsquos Forests The Shadow of Civilization (1992) and DavidC Millerrsquos Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture (1989)

5 European explorers were similarly shocked when they came upon Native Americans swim-ming with alligators Father Paul du Ru wrote of his travels on the Mississippi River in1700 ldquoThis beast which passes for something so terrible in Europe is seen here as another sh the Savages while bathing play with it without coming to any harmrdquo (in Glasgow19911) Even without such ldquoreality checksrdquo it is dif cult for tourists to maintain an in atedfear of alligators given the social climate of fear that enshrouds Louisiana Violence in greatvariety (environmental racial economic domestic criminal and vehicular) strikes daily atresidents and visitors making an area with alligators as its greatest threat seem like a safehaven by comparison

6 I am reminded of a joke told during a walking tour (Swamp Gardens in Gibson Louisiana)according to which at a regular zoo you have a cage with an animal inside and in fronttherersquos a plaque saying what kind of animal it is and where it comes from and so on Butat a Cajun zoo you have a cage with an animal in it and on the plaque in front a recipe

7 ldquoIrsquom a coonass Daddyrdquo said a young woman in our group to the elderly guide during awalking tour after he had discussed the at black turtle in his hands ldquobut I didnrsquot knowyou could make soup out of themrdquo ldquoCoonassrdquo is a regional term for the Cajun people thatranges in modern usage from the affectionate to the denigrating Of uncertain origin theterm re ects the shifting identity of Cajuns over the past half-century both intra- as well asinter-culturally with its mixed and sometimes provocative meanings First popular in the1940s ldquocoonassrdquo appears originally to have been a term of derision used by outsiders butthe Cajuns themselves later adopted it and in the 1960s it became in some circles almosta rallying cry for ethnic pride The leaders of most Cajun cultural institutions deplore theterm and discourage its use (Ancelet nd)

As to efforts to revive Cajun French this began with the founding in 1968 of the Councilfor the Development of French in Louisiana which was approved unanimously by theLouisiana State Legislature ldquofor the cultural economic and tourist bene t of the staterdquo (inSolles 19959)

8 The story of the migration of the Acadian settlers to the swamps of Louisiana is scarcelymentioned in the tourism accounts of Cajun history perhaps because it involved a diasporaencompassing decades of hardship and grief (and so detracts from the fun-loving image)They were dispelled from Acadia by the English in 1755 shipped out by force and oftenwithout warning so that parents were separated from their children and siblings from eachother and so forth and then dispersed to seaports hundreds and even thousands of milesapartmdashMaine Maryland South Carolina England and France were major destinationsmdashwhere typically they lived in destitute camps Only after some 20 years was Louisiana madeavailable to the Acadians as a new home their survival as a people under these conditionsis evidence of their rmly established cultural identity

References

Alexander Kate1991 ldquoInto the Swampsrdquo New Orleans Times-Picayune 31 MayL16 +

Ancelet Barry Jean1992 ldquoCultural Tourism in Cajun Country Shotgun Wedding or Marriage Made in

Heavenrdquo Southern Folklore 49256ndash66nd On Coonass Unpublished manuscript

Campbell Joseph1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces New York Pantheon Books

Esman Marjorie R1984 ldquoTourism As Ethnic Preservation The Cajuns of Louisianardquo Annals of Tourism

Research 11451ndash67

Cajun Swamp Tours 131

Glasgow Vaughn L1991 A Social History of the Alligator New York St Martinrsquos Press

Goffman Erving1974 Frame Analysis New York Harper Colophon Books

Harrison Robert Pogue1992 Forests The Shadow of Civilization Chicago Univerity of Chicago Press

Kennedy June C1991 A View from the Heart Thibodaux LA Blue Heron Press

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Barbara1997 ldquoAfterlivesrdquo Performance Research 2 1ndash91998 Destination Culture Berkeley University of California Press

Louisiana Of ce of Tourism2002 Tour Guide Book Baton Rouge Louisiana Of ce of Tourism

Miller Annie2000 Personal correspondence 22 January

Miller David C1989 Dark Eden The Swamp in Nineteenth Century American Culture Cambridge Cam-

bridge University Press

Mowforth Martin and Ian Munt1998 Tourism and Sustainability New Tourism in the Third World London Routledge

Percy Walker1975 The Message in the Bottle How Queer Man Is How Queer Language Is and What

One Has to Do with the Other New York Farrar Strauss

Rushton William Faulkner1979 The Cajuns From Acadia to Louisiana New York Farrar Straus amp Giroux

Schechner Richard1990 ldquoMagnitudes of Performancerdquo In By Means of Performance Intercultural Studies of

Theatre and Ritual edited by Richard Schechner and Willa Appel 19ndash49 Cam-bridge Cambridge University Press

Solles Michele1995 ldquoThe Teaching of French in Louisiana since the Creation of CODOFIL in 1968

Success or Failurerdquo Unpublished Memoire de Maotildetrise Universite de Toulousede Mirail

States Bert O1996 ldquoPerformance As Metaphorrdquo Theatre Journal 481ndash26

Urry John1990 The Tourist Gaze Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies London Sage

Eric Wiley is Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of TexasndashPan AmericanHis writings have appeared in Theatre InSight and Theatre Studies