Eyes of an Eagle: Jean-Pierre Cenac, Patriarch: An Illustrated History of Early Houma-Terrebonne

2. Descending the Mountains

Jean-Pierre Cenac left his ancestral French village of Barbazan-Debat in the pays Basque (Basque country) of the High Pyrenees sometime before February 1860, and made his way to the port city of Bordeaux. In this southwestern French metropolis wrapped around a crescent section of the Garonne River, he had his first taste of life in a large city. In Bordeaux, he was surrounded by a planned classical cityscape. There he saw the first stone bridge built over the Garonne, completed in 1822. He also encountered cultures other than the rural French Basque who lived in his native mountainous region near the French-Spanish border. Because of the bustling Port de la Lune (the port of the moon, from the crescentshaped river bend dominating the city), he had to meet not only urban dwellers, but also those of other European and African citizenship. Bordeaux was a major point of sea departure for many nationalities besides Jean-Pierre’s fellow Frenchmen. In Bordeaux Pierre lived at 95 Rue Montaigne. It was there that he made the final decision to leave his country for America. As he worked in a bakery and walked the city’s crowded streets, Pierre was no doubt weighing familiarity against the unknown. Economic survival, better prospects and perhaps wanderlust were considerations, but this had to be balanced against his family roots, which ran deep. Pierre could trace by name four generations of Cenacs who had lived in Barbazan-Debat; there had been Cenacs in Barbazan before 1723, when his greatgrandfather was born. Pierre had grown up in the same village, in a household of parents and seven children. The Cenac name is derived from the ancient Basque surname De L[a] Atzena’ko, from the word Atzena, according to Basque scholar Michel Antoine Goitia-Nicolas in a 2010 interview.1 In the Romance languages, the terms de, de la, and du frequently connote nobility, meaning of the noble house or place of preceding a family name. In this case the de la is dropped because of the connecting A in Atzena’ko. Most Basque names were geographically-referenced, and the ancient form of Cenac, Atzenac, means “at the rear of town,” possibly indicating the high ground away from a town’s waterfront.1 The family names Abadie, Carrere, Cenac, Labat, Lemoine, and Marmande are found in the region of Spanish Navarra, CHAPTER 2 Descending the Mountains 29 Chapter 2 French Basse-Navarre, and Soulé. These particular familiar south Louisiana names are registered as noble names in Basque nomentary records.2 In the 1941 novel The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel, mention is made that the visionary Bernadette Soubirous, during her interrogations by civil authorities, was taken into the “elegant” house of the Cénac family, “who, like the Lafittes, Millets, Lacrampes, and Baups, belonged to the patrician group of Lourdes.” With the Celts of more northerly regions, the Basque population was the oldest race, civilization and culture of Europe, predating the arrival of the Romans and later, the IndoEuropeans from countries of southern Eurasia. Romans found the 1,000-year-old Basque civilization already ensconced in the Pyrenees, and bestowed universal nobility upon the entire Basque people.3 This subsequently enabled Basques to apply for positions—regardless of their economic status—which would have been denied them otherwise because of their previous “peasant” status; this became especially important in the feudal system which dominated Medieval Europe, when moving above one’s “caste” level was all but impossible. Although all Basque names are in the Registry of Noble Names in France and Spain, the people themselves came to occupy all strata of society, including the peasantry. The Basque character could be described as predominantly hard working isolationists who often became prosperous because of their determination. Typical physical features of Basques were “anvil” faces wider at the eyes, narrower at the jawline, heavy eyebrows and often large ears.3 Although they are commonly thought of as Spanish, Basques were original to France, with those in Spain being “spillovers” from what are now the boundaries of France. People where Pierre grew up would have spoken Basque and the dialectical French of the region.3 In 1860, as many as 65 percent of Napoleon III’s Second Empire spoke the separate languages of St.Bernadette(MarieBernarde) SoubirousandtheMaisonCenac inLourdesc.1904,above Aboveandright,countrypeasants intheHautesPyrénées 30 EYES OF AN EAGLE the peripheral provinces, not “Parisian” French. Most...