The Roundup: New Orleans
How did everyone spend their Memorial Day weekend? My friends and I spent five days and four nights in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans and boy did we have fun! We arrived on Friday morning and immediately fell in love with our Airbnb, which was tucked in a residential area of Treme that was a 15 minute walk to the French Quarter. After getting on some sunscreen and bug spray, we trekked out to the French Quarter for our 2:00 PM tour!
New Orleans has a long history that is ensnared with that of the European French, the Spanish, the Canadian French, and the Choctaw Indians. From 1800 to 1860 New Orleans was settled as a French colony. From 1860 to 1900 New Orleans was under Spanish rule. Here are some of the highlights from our French Quarter tour:
Jackson Square This square features a lovely green space and is adjacent to the Cabildo, the St. Louis Cathedral, and the Presbytere. Gilberto Guillemard, who designed these three buildings, had a daughter who was shot four times by her father-in-law in a ploy to acquire her family's fortune. Her husband was a baron in France but, after such a traumatizing incident, she returned to New Orleans and filed for a divorce. She ended up erecting the brick row houses that line the side of the square - now that is a femme fatale if I've ever heard of one!
Great Fires Where the Jamie Hayes Gallery now stands there used to be the home of Don Vincente Jose Nuñez. Nuñez was an exceptionally religious man who oftentimes prayed in his home. On Good Friday in 1788, Nuñez lit 50 candles and was said to have worked himself into such a fervor praying that he didn't notice when one of the curtains caught on fire from the candles' flames. Nuñez allegedly ran to the nearby church to have the nuns ring the bells alerting the rest of the city to the fire, but because it was Good Friday they refused to ring the bells. Other lore says that the nuns had wrapped burlap around the bells to prevent them from clanging together accidentally on that windy day. Either way, the fire destroyed 850 buildings because most French Quarter buildings were constructed with highly flammable Cypress wood. Most of the current buildings in the French Quarter are actually constructed in the Spanish style (brick and stucco).
Bourbon Street This raucous area of the city is named after the Bourbon family (of which King Louis was a member) and actually used to be considered the fancy part of town. People would often go to Bourbon Street to attend the opera or have an upscale dinner.
Pirate Alley The Lafitte brothers were powerful pirates with thousands of operatives doing their dirty work back in the 1800s. The first governor of Louisiana, Governor Claiborne, put a $500 bounty on the brothers. In return, the brothers put a $1500 bounty on Claiborne. St. Anthony's Garden is propped up adjacent to the alley and is where men would fight duels with their swords. Originally, a duel fought with swords would end with the first to draw blood as the victor. After the Americans came and brought gunpowder. duels became shoot-to-kill. Legend has it that Bernard de Marigny (founder of the Marigny neighborhood) once challenged an American who interrupted him during one of his speeches to a duel. The American proposed such absurd terms for the duel that Marigny called off the duel and took him out to lunch because he enjoyed his sense of humor so much.
Louis Armstrong Park This park used to be called Congo Square and was where slaves would play music and dance on Sundays (their one day off). This type of freedom for slaves was very rare in the 1830s. We revisited the park during our voodoo tour the following day. Our tour guide, Robi, is a voodoo priest and will be returning to Haiti next summer to be ordained as an official voodoo doctor. Robi explained that voodooism is a religion and that voodooist practice hoodoo (magic).beauregard-keyes house
Beauregard-Keyes House In the early 1900s, Italians brought the mafia to New Orleans. One mafia elite was said to have lived in the Beauregard-Keyes House during this time period. The city's police chief, Hennessy, was killed with a shotgun in the middle of the night. Of the 100 Italian men that were rounded up on the night of the shooting, 19 were indicted. The following day, a mob formed in the French Quarter. The mob stormed the prisons and killed nearly all of the Italians as retribution.
Later that night at around 7:30 PM we went on a ghost tour of the city. Our tour guide had plenty of colorful stories regarding the many haunted buildings around the city. The first governor of the city had lost many of his men to cannibalistic native women who purportedly lurked in the swamps of the Mississippi River. As such, the governor asked for more women to be sent from Paris so that his soldiers who had suitable wives. In return, they were sent nuns, criminals, prostitutes, and insane asylum patients. Thus, New Orleans is born.
In 1803, Napoleon reclaims New Orleans from the Spanish and sells it off to Jefferson in the Louisiana Purchase. The Early American period was the golden age of New Orleans. The steamboat and cotton gin were invented, and the process for granulating sugar was perfected. Plantation owners accumulated a large amount of wealth after this, which is where we get the term sugar daddy. Despite these leaps in progress, yellow fever epidemics struck the city every summer in the 1900s. One in every 10-30 people would succumb to these bouts and the city would lose more than 10% of its population annually. The French Quarter became a melting pot for immigrants as the French creoles began moving into the suburbs of the city.
In the early 1900s, Storyville sprang up. This was 16 square blocks of legalized prostitution and gambling. There was rampant gang violence, but Storyville is also said to be the birthplace of modern jazz music. As we continued our walking tour, we passed by the Pharmacy Museum, which pays tribute to the first registered pharmacist in the US who owned an apothecary shop where the museum now stands. While the original owner was loved by his community, his practice was eventually taken over by a doctor from the South of France in 1856. This doctor converted the second floor of the pharmacy into an examination room. He was rumored to be a practitioner of voodoo and one of New Orleans' first serial killers.
The doctor started giving people stronger dosages of medications in attempt to find a cure for syphilis (from which he suffered) and often preyed on hitchhikers and prostitutes as his test subjects. Neighbors reported him to the local authorities, who eventually found corpses in the attic. Evidently the good doctor would stuff corpses through the trapdoor to load them into a carriage waiting in the carriageway below. The carriage would then take the remains to the Mississippi River to be disposed of and swept away. Authorities also allegedly found a jar of 50 fingers.
Our ghost tour guide also mentioned that New Orleans is home to 42 above-ground cemeteries. Mark Twain called them 'Cities of the Dead.' Marie Laveau, a famous voodoo queen, has the second-most visited tomb in America (the first is Elvis Presley and the third is JFK). For the low, low price of $50,000 you can purchase an above-ground tomb. Our guide explained that this is actually a worthwhile investment because entire families can go into a single tomb. The tombs are sealed for 1 year and 1 day - this is both the appropriate mourning period and what, at the time, seemed to prevent yellow fever transmission from the dead to the living. The mortuary will then take the remains, place them in a bag, burn the empty coffin, and place bag back into tomb to be shoved down shaft at backside. This is where we derive fun idioms such as "getting the shaft" and "wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole."
In the 1800s, symptoms of yellow fever include fever, stomach hemorrhage (i.e., throwing up blood), and jaundice. Oftentimes patients would fall into a deep coma, which can be mistaken for death. As a result, many patients were buried alive. Upon reopening the tombs, caretakers would find blood around the person's mouth and scratch marks on the inside of tombs - thus, the origins of vampire lore! Nuns would walk through the cemeteries and listen for bells from second-chance coffins and save folks that had been buried alive. You guessed it - this is where we derive the saying "saved by the bell."
What was my favorite tour of our entire trip, you ask? Without a doubt, my favorite was our voodoo tour. The fact that our tour guide, Robi, was a practitioner of hoodoo and an avid voodooist lent so much authenticity to the experience. Robi explained to us that voodooist would often go to the voodoo queen or voodoo doctor to perform rituals out of survival. For example, okra, tomatoes, and cucumbers were grown on slave plantations. Oftentimes, the head farmer would ask the head voodoo queen to make sure their crops didn't spoil during blistering hot summers.
Voodoo rituals always involve key priests and priestesses. This ritual, for example, would call on the male and female spirit of the ocean to ask for wind and rain. The head drum player of the group would set the and keep the tone for the entirety of the ritual so that the voodoo queen and doctor can maintain possession. In voodooism, men control air (destruction) and fire (anger) while women control water and earth.
My favorite story of Robi's, though, was one of deception and misdirection - it is the story of Marie Laveau. Marie Laveau was a free woman of color because her father was white and her mother was a quadroon (i.e., 25% black and 75% white). Laveau owned her own property and eventually began doing hair for the wives of the city's richest politicians. These ladies would gossip about one another and about their husbands during their hair appointments with Laveau. When Laveau accidentally let it slip that she was a voodoo priestess, she realized that she could only proceed one of two ways - either admit to committing a crime (because practicing anything other than Roman Catholicism was illegal at the time) or use her occult background to her advantage. She told people that she was a fortune teller and shocked them when she perfectly recounted the gossip that she had heard these women spilling for the past 15 years.
Soon, politicians and other members of the city's elite were showing up at Laveau's door to have their fortunes told. In actuality, Robi says, the head voodoo queen was telling Laveau which politicians to advocate for during elections. Laveau would tell the constituents of the city which man they could trust based on her "ability to see into the future." Eventually, voodoo became more mainstream and politicians changed the code noir to make voodoo legal.
Robi also shared his opinion on voodoo dolls with us - he believes that Hollywood has painted a wildly inaccurate caricature of the practice. In reality, he says, he practice is much different. If, for example, you cut your arm, you might take a small rose thorn and poke a voodoo doll in the same arm, apply a combination of mint + Spanish moss + citrus rind to the cut, and use the doll as a compress on the arm. Robi said this is essentially the equivalent of applying Neosporin to the cut since mint + Spanish moss + citrus rind have cooling and analgesic properties. Robi also showed us an example of a gris-gris bag. His was filled with okra seeds, watermelon seeds, mint, lavender, rosemary, sage, and thyme. He said this was a special mix for endurance and stamina.
All that being said, we did manage to go on 5 walking tours throughout the city. This was all made possible thanks to Free Tours by Foot: New Orleans. These folks have some wonderful guides and multiple tours each day throughout the city - check them out if you're visiting any major city in the US! We also ate more amazing food than I can possibly describe in one post. Favorites include Acme Oyster House, Willie Mae's Scotch House, Irene's Cuisine, Coop's Place, and Cafe du Monde!
Whew, that was a lot of traveling! May has been jammed pack with adventures, but now I'm preparing for my next big chapter: moving to Cleveland! I'll be driving to Cleveland, OH on June 11th with all my belongings in tow, ready to start medical school all wide-eyed and bushy-tailed :)
