How could a snake's grave be so pretty

In naming Bayou Teche the first National Water Trail in Louisiana, the National Park Service got it right, taking note of something that has been known and remarked upon for years: Not only do the bayou and the countryside along it rank among the prettiest spots in the South, the stream has been a key to the settlement and commerce of much of Acadiana.
From the early steamboat days, the Teche was the link to the world for the towns and villages on its banks. It was our highway to the commerce and culture of New Orleans, carrying out the sugarcane and other crops that brought us wealth, carrying in the opera, finery and manners of the Creole culture that allowed St. Martinville to proclaim itself a little Versailles.
The national designation was sought by the TECHE Project, a nonprofit group formed in 2009 that has led projects to clean up the bayou and display its charms. Conni Castille, executive director, says the national designation will boost chances for funding for future projects and will help bring visitors to the area.
That’s good because, to paraphrase the television commercial, once those visitors get here, “we’ve got ’em.” Studies show that people who come to Acadiana once tend to come back again and again to enjoy our music, food, culture, and scenery.
There’s no surprise in that; visitors have proclaimed the beauties of the Teche since they first discovered it. Longfellow described it as a stream “o’ershadowed by oaks, from whose branches garlands of Spanish moss and of mystic mistletoe flaunted,” and that seems to be a recurring theme among others who have written about it.
In the spring of 1849, publisher William Dennett of the Franklin Planters’ Banner described its “verdant forests clothed in luxuriant foliage,” its “venerable oaks whose giant arms stretch far over the still waters of the bayou, their foliage ever green, and their locks of hanging, waving moss reminding one that these fathers of the forest have stood here for centuries.”
A visitor from New Orleans in the spring of 1885 called the Teche country “the most charming and picturesque portion of Louisiana, if not of the South.” In April, that anonymous visitor wrote to the New Iberia newspaper, “the live oak, the water oak, the white oak, the magnolia, the catalpa, the pecan, the orange and the myrtle will vie with each other in displaying their varied charms, and feathered songsters will make vocal every branch and spray.”
When Tulane professor Alcee Fortier visited the area in 1890, he was so taken by “the tranquil waters of the Teche, its banks covered with moss-grown live-oaks,” that he began to “imagine what must have been the feelings of the Acadians when they saw for the first time ... the beautiful Attakapas country.”
In later years the noted Louisiana writer Harnett Kane was also captivated by the oak-lined Teche. “Magnolias and other trees can be found also,” he wrote, “but the oaks are the mark of the Teche. Some are fantastically twisted giants, thirty feet or more in girth, of a heavy fiber that seems impenetrable. The arms often stretch out practically at right angles from the trunk, 150 feet or so, and from each hangs the moss that is sometimes a yard or … longer, trailing to the water. Among the trees … sing the cardinals and the mockingbirds.”
According to Chitimacha legend, Bayou Teche was once a huge snake with its head at Morgan City and its tail at Port Barre. It was a mean and deadly snake that terrorized the tribe. But, finally, Indian bowmen overcame it, and as it turned and coiled and twisted in death throes, it carved the place where it died into a long and winding bayou.
Some linguists and historians think there must be another reason for the name – they have had a hard time finding a Chitimacha word for “snake” that sounds anything like “Teche.” I don’t know about all of that, but I wonder about the name also. I just can’t see how such a pretty bayou could be named for a mean, nasty snake.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589..