Pecan Island : Vermilion Parish Towns & Cities, Louisiana Submitted by Kathy LaCombe-Tell Source: Jim Bradshaw; Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, 6/24/1997 Submitted August 2004 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** Pecan Island Pecan Island is a cheniere made up of three sandy ridges sitting about 6 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, covered with pecan and live oak trees. For many years it was an isolated place, difficult to get to, and, because of that, an attractive place for people who--for whatever reason--wanted to be left alone. The old stories make it a hiding place for pirates, and say that there is untold wealth buried there. If that is true, it is buried deep, because treasure hunters have scoured the island and found little for their work. Another tale says it was once strewn with human bones because (take your choice) pirates brought their prisoners here to murder them, or because man-eating Attakapas Indians used it as a feasting place. According to one imaginative description "Attakapas Indians ...brought their prisoners here where they butchered them, cooked them up with clams and other products of the sea, and feasted to their hearts', or rather their stomachs' content." There is no evidence that either pirates or Indians left piles of human bones behind; there is more evidence that the bones belonged to animals that trod on four legs. Jacob Cole was likely the first settler on Pecan Island. He wandered in from Texas about 1840, looking for grazing land for his cattle. He stopped first at Grand Cheniere (Cameron Parish), at that time the first coastal settlement east of the Sabine River, and hired two guides to take him to the ridges further east. It was tough going. There were no trails through the marsh. Cane and sawgrass were as high as a man on horseback. The men hacked their way through, under constant attack by swarms of mosquitoes, sometimes finding alligators 12 to 14 feet long, sometimes as many as 25 of them in one hole. The men got as far as the ridge known as Long Island before the guides said,'No more." Cole went back to Texas. He and two slaves returned two weeks later, worked their way again to Long Island, then to another ridge, where they found huge oak, fruit and pecan trees, and good grazing land. They spent the next four years clearing reeds, cutting grass, and building a palmetto-thatched log cabin. Then Cole returned to Texas with a handful of pecans to prove that he had found the land that he was looking for. He named the ridge Pecan Island. He returned to Louisiana with his cattle and more of his belongings. Then, the next spring, he drove the cattle across the marsh to market. Cole also claimed that when he first reached Pecan Island he found the cheniere's surface covered with bleached, human bones. Historian William Henry Perrin picked up the story of the bones, and reported it in 1891: Located as (Pecan Island) is, it is difficult of approach by the stranger, as well as dangerous, and hard to find. ...The island is said to be like unto the valley of dry bones, a veritable Golgotha, and that great quantities of human bones are to be found here. ...It is understood that the land embraced in Pecan Island is soon to be put upon the market, and when it is, then perhaps some of the traditions may be unraveled. Who will live upon this island, however, for the ghosts of the murdered ones doubtless haunt the island at least in the minds of the superstitious? If the island is filled with the ghosts of slaughtered men, who will want to make it his home? Indian mounds can still be found on the island. Until the 1950's, the only way to get to Pecan Island was by boat from Abbeville, down the Vermillion River, through the Intracoastal Canal, across White Lake, then through narrow canals to a private landing north of the cheniere. A visitor could board the mail boat which made deliveries three times a week and took eight hours or could hire a "speed boat" which took three hours. A road was built in 1953 from Little Prairie through Pecan Island, connecting with the Grande Cheniere-Cameron highway. That brought electric power with it and telephone service not too long after. Lenora Vaughn, who wrote a news column for the Abbeville Meridional for many years, told about the beginning of Pecan Island school: "Some time during the spring of 1871, my father and uncle decided to have a teacher for us. They hired a lady from New Orleans, who had to come to the island for a few months' to stay. A little log house was built with two rooms. The teacher and her husband would live in it, and Sister and I would board with them. The house was floored with puncheons (framing timbers) made by splitting logs, and hewing them off smooth. The cracks between the logs were. daubed with a mixture of gray moss and clay. The chimney was made of this material, the roof was thatched with palmetto, heavy doors were hung on home-made wooden hinges, window shutters were hung the same way. Desks and benches were made from logs smoothed the same way the floor was. Thus the school house was ready for use. "There were six of us, each with a slate and pencil, an oaken home-made rule, Webster's blue-backed spelling book, McGuffy's reader and arithmetic. "We gathered in the morning in that little back room and as soon as we were all there (we had no clock or watch), school took up and believe me, we studied. "When the sun got 'straight in the door' in sunny weather and when the teacher got hungry ... we were turned out for dinner. ...When teacher guessed it to be one o'clock we were called in and proceeded us fill our little 'gourds' (as Father called our heads) with knowledge." The school lasted only three months as the teacher got lonesome for New Orleans and left. Lenora Vaughn and her sister were then sent to Cheniere au Tigre to board and to attend a public school, which operated three months a year.