Piroguers

As indigenous to the bayou country as Mardi Gras are pirogues (canoes dug out of cypress logs). Louisiana's first mode of transportation, pirogues are still used by Cajun and Baratarian trappers to navigate the swamps and bayous south of New Orleans. Pirogues weigh from 50 to 100 pounds, are 18 inches wide, six to 20 feet long. Among Cajuns and Baratarians (descendants of Pirate Jean Lafitte's band of buccaneers) a pirogue is a family heirloom, the result of two or three years of painstaking labor. First the tree trunk is scooped out with a mattock and fire, then chipped with a hand-ax and machete, finally scraped with a piece of broken glass until it is as smooth as a wooden salad bowl.

On the glassy Bayou Barataria last week, 70 of these homemade vessels lined up for the third annual four-mile race to determine the No. 1 piroguer of the U. S. Favorite with the 5,000 spectators who gathered under the ancient, moss draped oaks was 19-year-old Adam Billiot, winner in 1936 and 1937.

Sitting in the centre of his pirogue, with one leg doubled under him, Adam Billiot furiously dug in his homemade paddle when he heard the starting bomb, jumped into a five-yard lead, zoomed past the fishermen's huts along the banks, crossed the finish line first, amid piercing pirogue yells of "Ay-la-baaa." But the first prize of $200 was not for Adam Billiot. After finishing his four-mile sprint he discovered that the bomb that sent him off was a prankster's firecracker.

Winner of the $200 was another Billiot named Israel, who won the official race an hour and a half later. Dipping his paddle 52 times a minute for the first two miles, 50 times a minute for the last two, Israel covered the distance in 45 min., 45 sec. Adam, who was too tired and disgusted to start in the official race, did not even get one of the 69 merchandise prizes that included two pigs and a bull.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.