[attachment 16694 CJS-MardiG88-2.jpg]
[attachment 16695 pardon.jpg]
[attachment 16697 Riders.jpg]
Dance for a Chicken: The Cajun Mardi Gras (This Ain't Bourbon Street!)
By Pat Mire (prounounced Meer)
Mardi Gras celebrations assume the shape of a community and immediately reflect the strong conservative and innovative spirit needed for a healthy society. One Mardi Gras tradition which is often misunderstood and usually profoundly affects the sensibilities of outsiders is the rural Mardi Gras run of Southwest Louisiana prairies and bordering woodlands. The Mamou run has been extensively documented and reported to the public which has created the false impression that all runs are similar. Recent research has revealed that while there are similarities, in reality Mardi Gras traditions vary from community to community.
Many aspects of the Mardi Gras celebration in L'Anse Maigre, a community north of Eunice are typical of other communities. Cultural Catholicism still binds the community together, and collecting ingredients for a communal gumbo remains central to their run. They work hard all year, but they also celebrate life abundantly because their faith teaches them that life has been redeemed and Mardi Gras day provides the opportunity to embrace the totality of human life. Led by a flag-bearing capitaine, this colorful and noisy procession of masked and costumed men on horses and wagons go from house to house in the countryside asking for charity in return for a performance of dancing and buffoonery. The participants are earnestly employed chasing chickens, the most valued offering, and they pride themselves on their ability to collect enough "live chickens" to feed the entire community "free of charge."
At an organizational meeting before Mardi Gras, Wendell Manuel instructs the group, "when you get to a man's house . . . get off that horse and dance for him and beg to him . . . . Do whatever you have to do to get his chickens or his sausage or his rice or his money . . . . Anything we can do to get the goods for the supper." Mardi Gras is after all a redistribution of wealth and beneath its many layers of exotic behavior lies a serious message of survival which goes back to pre-Christian festivals and ancient rites of passage.
During this festival where everyone gives and everyone receives, which supports the egalitarian values of Cajun culture, humanity's story of sharing is told over and over in the course of the day. In one of mankind's oldest games of trying to fool your closest neighbors and best friends, these masked beggars symbolize anyone who may be hungry. The idea is that when they visit someone, those visited should share. Theft is part of the tension in the drama of this ritual play, but has no problem turning into "enforced charity" when the runners feel that the homeowner is not giving enough.
Like many other small communities on the prairie, L'Anse Maigre is for the most part socially unpretentious and its members do not indulge in conspicuous consumption. They dress and talk alike, live in modest dwellings, most drive pick-up trucks, and all know each other and treat each other the same, regardless of economic circumstances. Thus, it is difficult for an outsider to recognize who is expected to give more or less on Mardi Gras day. It is no wonder why outside image makers, journalists, and even some researchers-who lack evidence about how the community functions the rest of the year and are invading insider ritual space-have blurred vision and miss important details. They are often not well acquainted with the larger culture's subtleties and survival strategies much less the varying degrees of interdependence from one neighborhood to the next, so they misinform the public by consistently reporting on the crust while missing the pie filling completely.
Two distinctly different questing songs exist with numerous variations. Some communities require the runners to sing their version of the song in French, which discourages outsider participation. But other runs encourage outsider participation. It is amusing to watch an outsider wearing a mask imitating locals trying to conceal their identity when no one would recognize them if they participated without masks.
All successful runs have a core group of key players who have internalized the game's rules and know instinctively what to do and how far they can push the boundaries that create the tension necessary to propel this disorderly contrivance towards its appeal for communal equity. A couple of runs have almost turned into trail rides and seem more interested in returning to town on time for scheduled parades than fulfilling the event's original mission. One run in particular lost its meaning when their culturally dysfunctional capitaine passed up a homeowner standing in his yard with chicken in hand which is an inconceivable act to most communities.
The Tee Mamou's run was not interrupted during World War II as it was in most other communities and Mamou has been credited with the first revived run, but actually six Eunice men and capitaine Tobert Frug
