Grand Chenier; history, Cameron, Louisiana	
Andrew Sweeney remembered by his nephew
Submitted by W. T. Block, Historian
Submitted: July 10, 2004

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Dear Jerry: 

Back during the middle 1920s, I used to sit on a horse, old Prince, 
in front of Uncle Andrew Sweeney, when we rode out into the pasture 
to round up the milk cows for the afternoon milking. And by the time 
Uncle Andrew had quit talking about Grand Chenier and Johnson's Bayou, 
I thought they were that place called Heaven, that the preachers were 
always talking about.

	The way he described it, I can still see the fields of sea 
island cotton, each stalk five or more feet high, and loaded with a 
hundred boles of the silkiest fiber imaginable, which were always in 
great demand at premium prices by the cotton mills. He often mentioned 
that at daylight, he and Cousin Trav Sweeney would start at one end of 
the turning row, dragging a 10-foot cotton sack, and by dark each of 
them would have already dropped more than 400 pounds of the fluffy, 
white boles into the wagon.

	Uncle Andrew always said that the soil in Grandpa Jim Sweeney's 
cotton field would make good fertilizer for any place in Texas. 
And oranges! He said one of his neighbors had a huge satsuma tree in 
his orange orchard so big that one year it had 10,000 oranges on it. 
And Uncle Andrew was hired  to pick the oranges off of it because Capt. 
Sturlese' schooner Two Brothers  was waiting to leave for Galveston 
with a load of oranges. And after a half-day's work, Uncle Andrew 
said he had not even made a dent in the number of oranges that were 
on that tree.

	He added that one day he and his friend 'Peeteegason' (that's 
Petit Garcon) sailed on a lumber schooner to Galveston, and the captain 
took them into a silent movie theater. They were sitting on the front 
row, when suddenly a big locomotive, puffing clouds of steam, flashed 
on the screen, and it was coming straight at them. It scared him and 
Peetee so bad that they ran out of that theater and all the way back 
to the schooner.
 
	One time about 1895 Grandma Sweeney handed him and Uncle 
Austin Sweeney the shotgun, and told them to go kill her about 4 
ducks for dinner. They walked into the Front Marsh at a spot where 
the sea cane was about 15 feet high and blown over at an angle by 
the strong south winds. Beneath the sea cane it was like the inside 
of a teepee, and about 50 ducks were flying about trying to get out. 
They killed 5 ducks by hitting them with the shotgun barrel, and 
Grandma could not understand why they had fired no shots.

	One winter day in 1896 when Mama (Sarah Jane Sweeney) was 
12 years old, she had caught 9 minks in her traps; and just as she 
reached the ridge, she spied a wildcat chasing a rabbit. It scared 
Mama so badly that she dropped her minks in the edge of the marsh. 
Later she and Uncle Andrew returned to retrieve the minks before they 
disappeared. Mama caught 500 minks that year, which she sold to Mr. 
Miller for 60 cents a hide.
 
	I remember too the black panther tales that Grandma Ellen 
Sweeney used to tell me when I was small. She said that near the 
end of the Civil WAr, all of the Chenier's able-bodied men were 
away in the Confederate Army, and there was no one left on the 
ridge except women, children and a few old men. Grandma said the 
house she lived in was built of upright cypress planks with no 
glass windows, only wooden shutters. And at night they had to 
close the shutters to keep out as many mosquitoes as possible. 
(Uncle Ike Bonsall and Uncle Bill McCall of the Chenier were both 
killed at the Battle of Mansfield on Apr. 8, 1864)

	Uncle Austin told me too about the time in 1867 when 
Grandpa and Uncle John sailed to Negro Island in the Mermentau, 
hoping to put in a crop of cotton there. They found dozens of 
skulls, arm and leg bones, the latter bones with  iron shackles 
still  attached to them. It seemed that a slave ship abandoned 
the slaves there when the captain learned that the slaves had 
been freed.
 
	But mosquitoes were not the biggest threat to human life 
after dark; it was the black panthers in the Front Marsh, where 
one could also find herds of deer and even an occasional bear or 
buffalo. Grandma said that soon after they closed the shutters, 
one could hear the panthers walking toward the Chenier ridge, and 
screaming like a woman in agony. The Chenier folks had to keep 
their horses, mules and milk cows locked up in barns at night, 
safe from the big cats, but the sheep, goats, chickens and hogs 
were left outside.
 
	She added that often they could hear a panther, growling 
as it walked across the front gallery or as it prowled around the 
yard. The next morning her folks could always find traces of blood, 
where a panther had drug a goat or hog away to be eaten in the 
safety of the marsh. After the soldiers returned home, they killed 
off most of the big cats in the Front Marsh. Grandma also added that 
long after the war was over, night riders that were sometimes called 
Jayhawkers rode up and down the Front Ridge at night, robbing, 
terrifying, even sometimes killing the settlers.


	Jerry, the next time I write, I will try to shorten my letter, 
but alas, you know how windy I am when telling a story. Now I am not 
so sure that Grand Chenier was always the Heaven that Uncle Andrew 
painted it to be. Grandma said some of the mosquitoes there were 
big enough to fly off with the baby chicks. Finally the Jim Sweeney 
family had to move to Texas, seeking marriage partners, because their 
children were already double first cousins to everyone on the island.
 
	Cordially, W. T. Block