Winding through Time: The Forgotten History and Present-Day Peril of Bayou Manchac

1. What Is Manchac?

5   What Is Manchac? LOUISIANA’S RIVERS AND BAYOUS have been integral forces in the history and development of the state, as water transport was the most efficient way to move goods and people over any distance. In verdant south Louisiana, much of the land was swampy, covered with dense overgrowth, or mucky underfoot. Its waterways served as not only arteries of transportation but also as the sites of villages and sources of food. Bayous are, by definition, a particular kind of stream, usually narrow, winding, barely moving. Some are black-water meanders The bayou and nearby landmarks today WINDING THROUGH TIME 6 through pristine landscapes; others resemble water highways, dynamic with boat traffic, their banks lined with houses, docks, and businesses, their channels spanned by bridges. The character of Bayou Manchac lies somewhere between.  Like many other place names in Louisiana, the word Manchac is derived, at least indirectly, from a Native American language. The French, first to explore and settle the area, adapted it from imashaka, the combination of two Choctaw words—im, roughly translated as“behind it,” and šaka for“rear.”* The natives may have also referred to the bayou as“Ascantia.” What became known as Bayou Manchac was a narrow waterway that offered the first link in a chain of waterways that comprised a “back route” linking the Mississippi River with the Gulf of Mexico. This passage followed Manchac, the Amite River, and Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas to the Gulf, significantly shortening the distance, by approximately 25 miles, rather than following the meandering Mississippi down to its mouth. This back route would also have facilitated a part of the upriver journey before steam-powered boats conquered the formidable Mississippi River current. Indian natives shared the existence of this back route with Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville, who, with his brother JeanBaptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, had been dispatched by French king Louis XIV to chart the mouth of the Mississippi. In Iberville’s journal of his 699 expedition is the first written documentation of the bayou’s existence. Shortly thereafter the little * According to linguistic scholar William Bright, in his article“Native American Place Names in the Louisiana Purchase.” 7 stream became a prominent feature on maps of the Louisiana territory , beginning with Guillame De l’Isle’s 702 map,“Carte de la Louisiane et cours du Mississipi.” Early colonial maps labeled the thin line winding between the Mississippi and the Amite rivers as the Iberville River, variously spelled“Ibberville”and“Ibbeville,”or Manchac. (During the British colonial period, Iberville River also often referred to Bayou Manchac and the lower Amite River together.) Occasionally the stream was identified as Ascantia, or a misspelled version,Akankia, or was translated as Manchacq or Manchaque,Mashake Creek,or Massiac. But it invariably appeared on maps of the territory. The name Manchac must have greatly appealed to Europeans’ sensibilities, however, because they applied it liberally. Manchac was the designation of both British and Spanish governmental jurisdictions during the colonial period—the Manchac District, and the District of Manchac or Iberville.A tiny British settlement named Manchac was tenuously planted in 763 on the upper bank of the bayou at its junction with the Mississippi and existed for thirty years. It was replaced in the mid-nineteenth century by a namesake settlement approximately a mile and a half north of the previous community. This one boasted a post office, a railway depot, and, by 895, a population of 26. But it met with destruction during the early twentieth century, undermined by a great spring flood. A Spanish post established in 767 on the downriver bank of the bayou at its junction with the Mississippi was called Fort San Gabriel de Manchac. The Catholic church nearby, completed in 776, was first known as the Manchac Church or San Gabriel of Manchac, or Manchak, or Manchack. In 805, a mail stage between New Orleans and St. Francisville (north of Baton Rouge) stopped at Manchac, which was neither What Is Manchac? WINDING THROUGH TIME 8 the early British settlement nor the later American village. The stage passed through the downriver community where the Spanish church was located, the predecessor village to what is now the small town of St. Gabriel. The name Manchac also designates Mississippi River landmarks , including Manchac Bend—the arcing river curve from which the bayou begins—and Manchac Point, the...