Evangeline: Acadian Icon

The myth was enhanced by a Louisiana author, Felix Voorhies (voe'reez), whose 1895-1907 publications claimed that the main characters of Longfellow's classic represented a pair of betrothed Acadians named Emmeline Labiche and Louis Arceneaux. According to Voorhies, the milkmaid and her beau were not yet married but happily engaged prior to their separation in the 1755 expulsion from Nova Scotia. After her fiance's deportation to an unknown fate in the American colonies, Emmeline was adopted by a kindhearted widow who gave her the nickname meaning "God's little angel". Emmeline/Evangeline and the Borda family were among a group exiled to Maryland and eventually emigrated to Louisiana. Like so many other dissociated Acadians, she continually sought the whereabouts of her beloved. According to Longfellow's poem, she became a nun and eventually reached his deathbed at a hospital in New England. The Voorhies version asserts that Emmeline/Evangeline reunited with Louis/Gabriel under the oak tree along the Bayou Teche in St. Martinville; although he was found in good health, her joy was short-lived because he had married another woman. Whether fact or fiction, the heartbroken young Acadian heroine's sanity was destroyed by her ultimate loss.

In a scholarly book aptly titled "In Search of Evangeline", Louisiana historian Dr. Carl Brasseaux examines the legend and its impact. The appealing drama of Evangeline's tragic perseverance inspired efforts of reunification and cultural renewal among the Acadian exiles and their progeny. The myth was transformed into a viable heirloom in the collective memory of Acadians, and the story of Evangeline remains an inherent tradition in Cajun culture.

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