6 Don't-Miss Cajun Culture Experiences

Whether your Louisiana vacation is a three-day weekend, a weeklong leisure adventure or free time tacked to a business trip, enjoy this crash course in Cajun culture and history so you can revel in seeing, doing, hearing and tasting those things found only in Louisiana.

Cajun is a derivative of Acadian. The Acadians were French colonists who were expelled by the British from Nova Scotia and French Canada in the 1700s. The largest concentration of fleeing Acadians found home in flat, grassy prairies, swamps, bayous and marshlands in south Louisiana. They adapted to the topography by farming crops such as rice and sugar cane, and lived off the region’s bounty of animal crops, ranging from wild game and Gulf seafood to alligators and crawfish.

Three centuries later, the Cajuns still call the area we refer to as Acadiana home. Cajun culture remains surprisingly intact, readily identifiable and easy for a traveler to find. Many residents still speak fluent French as a second language. The region’s two indigenous music genres—Cajun and zydeco—can be heard nightly at venues in larger cities such as Lafayette, Lake Charles and Houma as well as in small outlying and in-between towns. Indigenous Cajun cuisine can be tasted any time of day in and between those locales.

Six ways to experience Cajun culture, history, food and music in Louisiana:

1. The Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve. The Acadian Cultural Center in Lafayette has exhibits and artifacts focusing on the history and culture of Cajuns. It also offers a theater that shows films on Cajun subjects. The Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center in Thibodaux focuses on the geographic sub-regions reflected in its name. It offers guided boat tours on Bayou Lafourche and open jam sessions with local musicians.
2. The Bayou Terrebonne Waterlife Museum in Houma. This museum, with a charming back porch overlooking the bayou, emphasizes its connection to the seafood industry.
3. LARC’s Acadian Village and Vermilionville in Lafayette. Both communities are reproduced Cajun colonial villages that allow visitors the opportunity to experience the daily lives of early Cajun settlers. At Vermilionville, stay for lunch at La Cuisine de Maman to taste the flavors of Acadiana.
4. The Acadian Museum in Erath. This museum discusses Cajun history but delves deeper than the Louisiana story with exhibits that include the history of Acadia, a colony of New France in northeastern North America, in the early 1600s.
5. The Acadian Memorial in St. Martinville. The memorial has a 30-foot-by-12-foot mural depicting the arrival of the Cajuns in Louisiana. Artist Robert Dafford is said to have used descendants of the region’s first Cajun families as models when he created the mural.
6. Louisiana State Museums. There is an exceptional exhibit on south Louisiana's Courir de Mardi Gras tradition at The Presbytere, a Louisiana State Museum property on Jackson Square in New Orleans. Another great stop for Cajun history and culture outside of the region is Capitol Park Museum in downtown Baton Rouge.