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       Finally after months of work, here is the new Bonfouca.Org website. I am excited by the new nature videos in the Environment section. I can safely promise there are more videos coming here and on YouTube.
My Childhood Creole Cabin
Childhood Home on Bayou Liberty
       Another new feature it the Pichon Pirogue Museum. Thanks to the efforts of Michael Pichon, son of Armand Pichon Jr., many family heirloom tools and documents were rescued from the ravages of Katrina.    
       Mike's efforts included a heroic dive into rising water to save a dugout canoe from floating off, at the height of Katrina's maelstrom. The family's collection of pirogues is extensive. Many are in pristine condition.
While recording these piroges the idea for the Pichon Museum took root.
       So now we have a virtual museum, hopefully its a step towards a real museum.
Learn about Bonfouca.Org      Bonfouca is located across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. Situated on Bayou Liberty, Bonfouca (bon foo ka, rimes with America) was one of the first Creole settlements after the founding of New Orleans. Bonfouca is a Creole French Choctaw word meaning 'Good People'.
     However, Indian
shell middens dating over 2000 years old are found up and down the bayous of Bonfouca. Acolapissa were living in Bonfouca when the
first Frenchmen arrived, but the Choctaw moved to the area and absorbed them.
       The Chacta, as the Choctaw called themselves, lived peacefully with the Whitemen, taking food, tobacco and woven baskets of every description across the lake on schooners, to the Indian Market in New Orleans .
Live Gulf Coast Radar    Along with Bayou Lacombe to the west, these two settlements provide building material for the new city. First with tar and lumber, then with bricks.  Later dozens of shipyards sprang up to build the schooners that transported goods across the lake. Early Bonfouca was a potpourri of peoples: French, Spanish and Choctaw Indians, as well as freemen and slaves of African descent. Together they created a major industrial complex on the North Shore.
Diary Of Sidoine Pichon
       Bonfouca was a strong Confederate stronghold and was repeatedly invaded by Union gunboats. The plantation owners that pledged their fortunes to the South ended up with little more than their land. Many gave land to their freed slaves, who continued to work for them and took their family name.
        Bonfouca has been very fortunate that on of its citizens, Sidoine Pichon kept a diary from 1848 to 1886. Sidoine was a ships caulker by trade, but his diary shows he was forced to farm and hunt to put food on the table for his large family and slaves.
        Month by month, Sidoine lists his jobs, the places he travelled and the ships that he worked on. Every month he stoically listed those friends, neighbors and relatives that died due mostly to mosquito borne disease.
        It is very interesting and available in Slidell, La from Dudley Smith Printers.     
    Until the end of WW I, Bonfouca served as a summer haven for people from New Orleans escaping from the mosquito borne plagues. Before the Civil War they would flee in schooners and steam ferries, crossing the lake to the Ozone Woods. After the railroad bridge was built across the lake, Bonfouca lost its economic competitiveness.
Bonfouca dwindled as the years past, becoming the sleepy little fishing village that I grew up in.
        After WWII Bonfouca grew because of the Baby Boomer families and an increase of commuters who liked the tranquility and beauty of Bonfouca, but worked in New Orleans.

        Katrina changed everything, but the story of Bonfouca continues.

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