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...
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