Word: acadian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Their roots are romantic enough. The Cajuns' Acadian (Nova Scotian) ancestors founded a colony on Canada's Bay of Fundy in 1604, and by 1755 had transformed the wilderness into a bucolic countryside. Then came a scheming English Governor who hated the French. In an act of genocide that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow later made a cause célèbre with his poem Evangeline, the British jammed thousands of Acadians onto prison ships and scattered them throughout the Old and New Worlds...
...half who survived, many found their way to Louisiana's "Acadian Coast," a new mecca on the Mississippi. From there, they filtered into the woods, turning into the dialectal "Cajuns" along the way. Those who went south into the swamps became the ancestors of today's fishermen and trappers. Those who retreated still farther, settling Louisiana's western prairies, rode into another part of American folklore: the West...