Speaker 1: The stretch that the fought. The battle was taken is
Speaker 1: by a mile. So the boat was going and they
Speaker 1: was with the machine gun and the people from Delhiphot
Speaker 1: were shooting over the level, you know, just shooting the
Speaker 1: shot gun, the rifles whatever they had. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of them with bird shot, lot on wood buckshot would
Speaker 1: kill the machine gun man. I don't know. I guess
Speaker 1: just just shot them up with the way I understand.
Speaker 1: The mortar was all shot up the boat. The cabin
Speaker 1: on the boat was all shot up with bullet holes.
Speaker 1: I guess that's what I could see, you know.
Speaker 2: On this episode, we're getting into the nitty gritty details
Speaker 2: of the November nineteen twenty six one day. It is
Speaker 2: Laanio's Trappers War in South Louisiana over muskrat trapping rights.
Speaker 2: We'll hear from two men whose fathers were involved in
Speaker 2: the war. But a bigger question to me is why
Speaker 2: is this region of the country known for producing corrupt leaders?
Speaker 2: And is that even a fair question? This is a
Speaker 2: look into human nature when it's corrupted by power and muskrats.
Speaker 2: I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 2: And for anyone new to the bear Grease Feed. We
Speaker 2: have multiple podcasts on this feed, bear Grease, The Render,
Speaker 2: Brent's Country Life and Lake Pickles Backwoods University. The complexity
Speaker 2: can be daunting, but the good times just keep rolling.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed this episode. My name is klay
Speaker 2: Nukem and this is the bear Grease Podcast where we'll
Speaker 2: explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely
Speaker 2: places and where will tell the story of Americans who
Speaker 2: lived their lives close to the land. Presented by f
Speaker 2: HF gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear
Speaker 2: as designed to be as rugged as the places we explore.
Speaker 2: We established in the last episode the culture of the
Speaker 2: Islamios trappers camps on Delacroix Island in Louisiana in the
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties and how muskrat soared in value, making formerly
Speaker 2: almost worthless swampland extremely valuable. This is Placamine Parish's Paul Legard.
Speaker 3: In those days, there wasn't no you owned this piece
Speaker 3: of land, and now the guy I owned up. It
Speaker 3: was all opened priory. It was just like Wild West.
Speaker 3: And when you know when a story at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the season, you went out Dan, you picked out
Speaker 3: spot and you put your trap on out and people
Speaker 3: honored each other's areas. You know. You said. That went
Speaker 3: on for a few years, and the politicians got involved
Speaker 3: with it, but what they wanted to do was take
Speaker 3: a percentage away from each trapper, and they wouldn't go
Speaker 3: for it. People have been trapping at Landfa at that
Speaker 3: time almost one hundred and fifty years, you know, and
Speaker 3: now they had camps. People used to build camps in
Speaker 3: the priory for they could. The whole family went out
Speaker 3: there and uh in some cases, and they spent the winter,
Speaker 3: you know, trapping, and the women were cooking to take
Speaker 3: care of as far as the men we're in up
Speaker 3: properly working well. They pushed them on those camps and
Speaker 3: they brought in trappers from West Louisiana are Texas. They
Speaker 3: brought in own trappers and put them into camps.
Speaker 2: What Paul is calling the prairie is what I understand
Speaker 2: to be Swampland the people who had trapped here for
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty years were getting pushed out by
Speaker 2: the politicians bringing in trappers from the outside. They'd been
Speaker 2: double crossed by one of their own, a man named
Speaker 2: Leander Perez, who had become the chairman of the Trappers Association.
Speaker 2: He was also a judge in Plaquemine Parish. But when
Speaker 2: he saw an opportunity to make a bunch of money,
Speaker 2: he pushed out his own people and brought in new
Speaker 2: trappers that played by his rules, paid more money for
Speaker 2: the trapping leases, and sold the furs to him. The
Speaker 2: Islanos were not gonna take this from Perez. Here's what
Speaker 2: they did to the new trappers that were now in
Speaker 2: their old camps.
Speaker 3: My grandfather told them that those camps were not but
Speaker 3: more or less a platform. They build a big platform
Speaker 3: and they put a top paper shack around it, and
Speaker 3: he said they they're waiting a gang of fellas, not
Speaker 3: one guy, but a bunch of fellaws. Would wait until
Speaker 3: say ten o'clock in the morning, when all the men
Speaker 3: were out in the in the prairie trapping, and they
Speaker 3: go and they take tell them, women, take all your
Speaker 3: stuff and make it. They told us they didn't try
Speaker 3: to hurt those people because they were working people, just
Speaker 3: like they were. They make them take everything out the camp,
Speaker 3: their supplies, their beds there, whatever they had, and they
Speaker 3: you know, they had fifteen twenty guys. They picked that camp.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to buy the whole camp. We're going to
Speaker 3: buy you. So when that happened, they brought into Texas
Speaker 3: Rangers to protect them, and uh, that's when the real
Speaker 3: trouble started.
Speaker 2: The real trouble started as Perez hired mercenaries to kill
Speaker 2: and intimidate the eslonos. I'm trying to make sense of
Speaker 2: how trapping muskrats could bring a community to bloodshed. We're
Speaker 2: not talking about gold or black dirt, farmland or oil,
Speaker 2: but a rat. We've been backed into a corner here, folks,
Speaker 2: We've got to talk just a little bit about muskrats.
Speaker 1: My name is Martin Cooker.
Speaker 4: I work for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fishers in
Speaker 4: Parks and I currently serve as the Nuisance Species program
Speaker 4: Bologist and also the Furbearer Program Bologist.
Speaker 2: This guy is a muskrat expert.
Speaker 4: A rare breed, but the muskrat is in the rodent family,
Speaker 4: native to the US and Canada. In the US, it
Speaker 4: has at least fourteen different subspecies Virginia, Rocky Mountain, the
Speaker 4: Oregon Coast, Nevada, the Great Plains, So there are subspecies
Speaker 4: really depending on location, they're going to be about nine
Speaker 4: fourteen inches long with a with a tail anywhere from
Speaker 4: seven to twelve inches, so you're talking about twenty four
Speaker 4: twenty six inches head to the end of the tail.
Speaker 1: They're going to weigh.
Speaker 4: Anywhere from like a pounds and a half to four
Speaker 4: and a half pounds. Muskrats weren't really seeing that much
Speaker 4: in Louisiana until like the late eighteen hundreds, especially like
Speaker 4: in the coastal parishes. One of the things that they
Speaker 4: put forth is that the decline in alligators due to
Speaker 4: hunting and with the burning of the marshes to locate
Speaker 4: the alligators, and also with the reduction in minx, all
Speaker 4: were linked to the muskrat increase. Now, after that the
Speaker 4: predators were gone away, the habitat's gone up, and then
Speaker 4: the mush rats appeared in the millions. It was just
Speaker 4: like a population explosion. It was an article in the
Speaker 4: nineteen oh two in the New York Times. The headline
Speaker 4: was the muskrat is the principal fur producer in America.
Speaker 4: There was a quote from the I think the Fort
Speaker 4: Worth Star in nineteen oh eight in this stated that
Speaker 4: Louisiana has the largest fur trade in the world, all right,
Speaker 4: And that now that is verifiable if you go back
Speaker 4: and look at the records in Louisiana was the fur
Speaker 4: trapping capital of the US fourth it was more first
Speaker 4: coming from Louisiana anywhere else.
Speaker 2: The muskrat trade peaked around nineteen twenty five, when they
Speaker 2: were worth a dollar thirty each and a good trapper
Speaker 2: could catch as many as one hundred and fifty day,
Speaker 2: yielding thousands of dollars during the seventy five day season,
Speaker 2: and several millions of dollars worth of muskrat firs were
Speaker 2: flowing through Placamine Parish alone. I could see Steve Ranella
Speaker 2: wanting to get in on that. Here is Wimpy Serenae.
Speaker 2: He's eighty four years old and was raised on Delacroix
Speaker 2: Island in the trapping camps. He's going to take us
Speaker 2: right into the One Day War.
Speaker 1: What happened with Perez in that it was long before parting,
Speaker 1: you know, get out, but uh, Perez gathered up cagunes
Speaker 1: from the west part of Louisiana, Texans gunslingers at that time,
Speaker 1: it was really gun slingers, and he formed like a
Speaker 1: little army. He monitored a machine gun on oyster board.
Speaker 1: I think it was either boat. You know. What happened
Speaker 1: before they attacked the people from Dinna crew found out
Speaker 1: about it, that they were planning this thing. Matter of fact,
Speaker 1: my dad used to have relatives in what they called
Speaker 1: Kinnharven and uh, these Texans and that was hanging around
Speaker 1: the ballrooms there, you know, and you heard overheard them saying,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make some Spanish shop. Body these jokes down here,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, so they found out about that day.
Speaker 2: Who was your dad involved in finding out about it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he found out about it, and I guess other
Speaker 1: people did too, because they had relatives in Knoven And
Speaker 1: this is what these guys used to hang on when
Speaker 1: they was starting to get together, you know, and going
Speaker 1: to barrooms in that and I guess they talked and
Speaker 1: sort of people from Della Cruill find out that they
Speaker 1: will come in.
Speaker 2: After almost one hundred years, the people from Delacroix Island
Speaker 2: still recalled the words that started this war and maybe
Speaker 2: saved their lives. They overheard someone saying that they were
Speaker 2: going to make some Spanish soup. And if you remember,
Speaker 2: the Islanios were originally from the Canary islands off the
Speaker 2: coast of Spain. So this region, this island, they spoke Spanish.
Speaker 2: Here's filmmaker David Dubos who made the film Delta Justice,
Speaker 2: the Islanios trappers.
Speaker 5: War word filtered down from They got into a bar
Speaker 5: not too far from where the Islanians were, and it
Speaker 5: was literally just guys bragging in a bar that they
Speaker 5: were going to go down to Ela Crow and make
Speaker 5: Spanish soup out of the Islanios and just loud, drunken
Speaker 5: stupidity and arrogance, and was overheard. And they went back
Speaker 5: and told them what was happening, and you know that
Speaker 5: was it.
Speaker 2: So this this gunboat with these Texas Rangers, this machine
Speaker 2: gun mounted on the boat come down, comes down the bayou.
Speaker 2: There's a levee, yeah, which is like a damn that's
Speaker 2: keeping the bayou from going into the onto the land.
Speaker 2: And behind the levee is the Islanio's houses.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: Author Glenn Jeanson estimated there to be four hundred armed
Speaker 2: Islanios on the levee waiting on this gun boat when
Speaker 2: it arrived. The machine gun was essentially a gatling gun
Speaker 2: like on a World War two boat, and the captain
Speaker 2: of the boat was J. H Asher, a former Texas
Speaker 2: ranger from Dallas. They had no idea they were going
Speaker 2: to be met with resistance. They thought they were just
Speaker 2: going to take the boat down the bayou and just
Speaker 2: splattered the Islaono's camps with rounds from that machine gun.
Speaker 2: Who knew these people were so passionate about muskrats.
Speaker 1: And the way I understand it, they moneled the machine
Speaker 1: gun on the boat, and so they monited and they
Speaker 1: came up what they called gentility. It was, you know,
Speaker 1: the island, like I said, with the with the machine
Speaker 1: gun and all of the Texans in that. But the
Speaker 1: people from down there was ready. So they got their
Speaker 1: shot gun. There was a levee whe whether if you
Speaker 1: go down there, you can see the road is on
Speaker 1: the levee the highway, and it was a higher levee
Speaker 1: than what it is today because everything's singing, but anyway,
Speaker 1: it was much higher. So they got behind the limit
Speaker 1: with the shot and guns and whatever guns that they had,
Speaker 1: and when they made the turn into the Bayer Terra
Speaker 1: buff you know, they started with the machine gun, but
Speaker 1: they also went I got back up a little bit.
Speaker 1: It took the machine gun the night before and set
Speaker 1: it to shoot over the levee, over the bank, you know,
Speaker 1: to buying the bank. But what happened when they attacked
Speaker 1: the next morning, the tide went down.
Speaker 5: So they had to fix the machine gun, but it
Speaker 5: couldn't reach the Islanios because.
Speaker 2: They couldn't angle upwards correct.
Speaker 5: So they were kind of stuck.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: They tried to get it up and hang it up,
Speaker 5: but that those things were enormously heavy. And then you're
Speaker 5: in the line of fire too.
Speaker 1: You have to remember that. So so when they couldn't
Speaker 1: adjust it, that machine gun like the dude and did
Speaker 1: it kind of so when they would shoot, it was
Speaker 1: hitting the levee instead of hitting the people because the
Speaker 1: tide went down, and so they would hit the bank. So,
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't the machine gun didn't do them
Speaker 1: too much good. And of Coastal had the other people
Speaker 1: with their pistols and guns and what have you, and
Speaker 1: they started that they wore right there and they they
Speaker 1: shot up the the machine gun boat. They killed the
Speaker 1: the only one was killed, the gun, the guy that
Speaker 1: was running the machine gun boat. You know, quite a
Speaker 1: few guns, quite a few guns.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: The stretch that the fought the battle was taken is
Speaker 1: about let's see, about a mile, so you know where
Speaker 1: where the battle took place, where they was at, where
Speaker 1: they were.
Speaker 2: Set shooting that whole mile down the canal this gun ship.
Speaker 1: As to what our vision, the boat was going, and
Speaker 1: they was with the machine gun and the people from
Speaker 1: Delapert were shooting over the level, you know, just shooting.
Speaker 1: They shot guns and rifles whatever they had. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: because a lot of them had just shotguns, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of them with bird shot, a lot of
Speaker 1: them with buckshot, you know, and would killed the machine
Speaker 1: gun man.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess just just shot them up with the way
Speaker 1: I understand that the mortar was all shot up the boat.
Speaker 1: The cabin on the boat was all shining up with
Speaker 1: bullet holes. I guess that's what I could see.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the man who was killed, Sam Galland, was reported
Speaker 2: by the coroner they had seventeen bullet holes in his body.
Speaker 5: But these leios had, you know, the trajectory sort of
Speaker 5: like a forty five degree trajectory angle on that boat
Speaker 5: where they could just fire away. And yeah, they wounded
Speaker 5: several of them and killed one. But yeah, that's like
Speaker 5: you're literally walking into a I mean, I don't know
Speaker 5: what you would call them. In the military. Sometimes in
Speaker 5: these wars, they you know, you get trapped like that,
Speaker 5: you're just you just just no way out.
Speaker 2: So you have studied about this and talked to all
Speaker 2: these different people, who do you think fired the first shot?
Speaker 5: Probably the Islanios. Probably they weren't gonna sit there and
Speaker 5: let them fire a machine gun at him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: One, only one person was killed, one Texas ranger whose
Speaker 5: last name was Gowland, Sam Gowland. He was the one
Speaker 5: operating the machine gun. The other ones were driven away
Speaker 5: and they went looking for Perez. They were going to
Speaker 5: kill him. That's how angry they were, as you can imagine.
Speaker 5: And Perez escaped and managed to get out of town
Speaker 5: literally by getting over into New Orleans and getting out
Speaker 5: of the parish.
Speaker 2: Was Perez wasn't on the boat though.
Speaker 5: No, he was not, of course not. No, those were
Speaker 5: his hired guns. Literally, he was nowhere near the boat.
Speaker 5: He's not gonna get his hands dirty, He's not going
Speaker 5: to get shot at. And I'm sure he had people
Speaker 5: around him protecting him.
Speaker 1: It was your dad.
Speaker 2: There was your father there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was there, yea. And like I was seeing
Speaker 1: my dad had went to something happened, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what it was. I just told these things that
Speaker 1: these Texans and gunsling as well. When they started getting
Speaker 1: shot at, they started running through the march and they
Speaker 1: shot him up, you know, but they didn't kill them all.
Speaker 1: And they got all shot up, and one of them
Speaker 1: was coming swimming across the bay. And this is when
Speaker 1: I'm one of the incident. I was told and a
Speaker 1: friend of my dad they said, look, that's the guy
Speaker 1: that tried to beat you up and off in the couch.
Speaker 1: And uh, my dad had an Elsie Smith shot double
Speaker 1: shotgun and I didn't know, but he had it in
Speaker 1: the in our attic and he never did use it.
Speaker 1: I used to go up there and I could see
Speaker 1: it and the stock was cracked, you know. And somebody
Speaker 1: else told me that my dad hit that guy with
Speaker 1: the stock of a shotgun and they broke the stock.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, And I remember the shotgun. It was an
Speaker 1: old Elsie Smith and the stock was broken.
Speaker 2: Paul told me the same story about Whimpy's dad breaking
Speaker 2: a gun stock off one of the boatman's heads. Here
Speaker 2: is Paul with an unusual story of a first hand
Speaker 2: account from a man on the boat involving a wild
Speaker 2: coincidence with the dog and a guy named to What's
Speaker 2: Yep to What's.
Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you another little story of cut
Speaker 3: fits right into this. My daddy used to buy crabs
Speaker 3: before he died. My daddy died when he was thirty
Speaker 3: eight years old. I was fifteen fifteen is on when
Speaker 3: he died, and we used to go to old on
Speaker 3: Highway eleven. They had a family over there. They were
Speaker 3: s stands. The old man was Pete and he had
Speaker 3: a son that was Pete. One of them was towards
Speaker 3: uh old man, Old Man Pete. His daddy was on
Speaker 3: the boat when they shot it up. Like I said,
Speaker 3: those people had no education and they looked to make
Speaker 3: a dollar whatever they could make a dollar. And he
Speaker 3: wasn't from Dela Crown. But they come there the trap.
Speaker 3: When the trapping was good, they stayed. He said, well,
Speaker 3: some kind of way he got mixed up and got
Speaker 3: on that boat. He must They must have gave him
Speaker 3: a job, that can of whatever, and he got on
Speaker 3: that boat. And he told me, he said, when they
Speaker 3: started shooting that boat, the cast net LEDs were bouncing off,
Speaker 3: And I asked him, said the cast that they said, Yeah,
Speaker 3: they take a cast net ledge. It's got a whole
Speaker 3: clean through it, you know, the castle. Yeah, And they
Speaker 3: had smashed the end of that and they put that
Speaker 3: in the shotgun shell he said. He said, the cast
Speaker 3: that LEDs were bouncing off. He said, But them steel jackinson,
Speaker 3: them rifle shells was going clean through red boat. And
Speaker 3: it wasn't no steel boat late they had. There was
Speaker 3: a wood boat, he said. And he said, what happened,
Speaker 3: he was sleeping on the other side of the motor away.
Speaker 3: It happened early in the morning. He's sleeping on the
Speaker 3: other side of the motor and he said, three or
Speaker 3: four of them Texas Rangers jumped on top of him,
Speaker 3: trying to get away from getting behind that motor you said,
Speaker 3: getting trying to get away from there. And uh, well,
Speaker 3: let me back up a minute. We used to go
Speaker 3: over there and buy crabs. We'd buy crabs or fifty
Speaker 3: two pounds hamp of crabs for four dollars of hamper
Speaker 3: number ones and uh but anyway, we were over there
Speaker 3: buying him and old man, old man Pete was there.
Speaker 3: He had a bunch of old cars and trucks stuff.
Speaker 3: You know junk, and they had a dog in there,
Speaker 3: and that dog come out wanting to eat or something.
Speaker 3: He told, told that dog, go let down. Dog. The
Speaker 3: doge went it was button back and laid down. And
Speaker 3: he told me saying, no, that dog is now I
Speaker 3: can't remember exiety. It was sixteen at eighteen years old,
Speaker 3: he said, I've been having that dog a long time,
Speaker 3: the old dog. We went in the house, he told
Speaker 3: told a story about that being behind that mode and
Speaker 3: them Texas rangers and all jumping on top of him
Speaker 3: and all. And when we come out of there to leave,
Speaker 3: that dog was dead. I'll never forget that the dog
Speaker 3: was laying their dead. He died. Why he told that story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's odd the things you remember that seemed completely disconnected.
Speaker 2: But I think these are mechanisms in our mind to
Speaker 2: help us remember the important stuff. Like an eighteen year
Speaker 2: old dog dying while the man was telling you about
Speaker 2: being on the gun ship. That's just odds. What I'm
Speaker 2: here for, Paul, good story here is wimpy. I'm trying
Speaker 2: to understand, like how the thing could escalate to where
Speaker 2: lander Perez was willing.
Speaker 1: To kill people?
Speaker 3: Yeah, how did that?
Speaker 1: How does that happen. The only thing I can understand
Speaker 1: is that he told these guys, all these people that
Speaker 1: he's hired, Look, uh, we have to take care of
Speaker 1: the people at Dental Croil, and you're going to have
Speaker 1: the all this trapping lands and you can trap it
Speaker 1: as long as you give me a percentage of whatever
Speaker 1: you're catching all that, and you're going to have the
Speaker 1: land instead of instead of and we got to run
Speaker 1: them all and even if we have to kill Wow.
Speaker 2: That was so he just had that that strong of
Speaker 2: an iron fist. He was isolated enough down in the
Speaker 2: deep Delta that he just thought, I can I can
Speaker 2: do anything.
Speaker 1: That's why I kind of consider him a dictator. You know,
Speaker 1: he had that Powell and he thought he can just
Speaker 1: do anything until he faced the people from Golacron. What
Speaker 1: about his.
Speaker 2: Reputation here, Like if you were to go on the street,
Speaker 2: like when we drove here, we drove down.
Speaker 1: Perez Drive, Yeah, in the Pere Rive, well, a lot
Speaker 1: of the politicians were with you in Saint Benod.
Speaker 2: Perez Drive was named after Leander Perez in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: but in the late nineteen nineties, after history had kind
Speaker 2: of showed who this guy was and had judged him.
Speaker 2: The name of the road was changed to be named
Speaker 2: after a more likable judge named Melvin Perez, so it
Speaker 2: remains Perez Drive. It's just a different Perez. What tell
Speaker 2: me how your dad handled the trappers war? So he
Speaker 2: he is actually there on the levee with a gun,
Speaker 2: did he? He didn't view that it's like something real
Speaker 2: honorable that he had done, like he had defended his people.
Speaker 2: Or was it just kind of like something he didn't
Speaker 2: want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Right, He didn't talk about it too much. I guess
Speaker 1: he felt like it was survival. He had to fight
Speaker 1: to savive.
Speaker 2: Like it wasn't a cool story to him, like today
Speaker 2: it was today one hundred years later, we're like, wow.
Speaker 1: Wow, this is what happened. Oh, it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: no big honor or nothing like that. It was just
Speaker 1: something that he had to do that he didn't want
Speaker 1: to do, but he had to do it to savive.
Speaker 1: Isn't either kill or be killed.
Speaker 2: It's interesting in the history because it's real easy to
Speaker 2: like kind of glorify something good and bad one hundred
Speaker 2: years later, and but back in the day, we might
Speaker 2: have thought this was the least interesting thing that ever happened.
Speaker 2: We're just like this is a bad thing, Like this
Speaker 2: shows kind of the the evil of mankind. What what
Speaker 2: do you think about that?
Speaker 1: Uh? I think about what a person with power would
Speaker 1: try to do to maintain that power. That would be
Speaker 1: land a parath even if he had to kill to
Speaker 1: do any he did it. That's how I look at it.
Speaker 1: As far as a lot of people liked land in Parrett,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't cry.
Speaker 2: It's it's kind of wild to think about people having
Speaker 2: a right trying to kill each other over a muskrat, right,
Speaker 2: you know that's today.
Speaker 1: You look at it, man and people killed him something
Speaker 1: or mushkranchy a well living you know, you had to survive.
Speaker 2: Here's a simple version of how the conflict reached its
Speaker 2: final resolution. It involved a guy named Manuel Malaro that
Speaker 2: was in Islanias. So the people went to Manuel Malario.
Speaker 2: He was an educated man with money, successful, They said,
Speaker 2: can you help us? He buys the lane?
Speaker 1: Right he and what does he do? He just wanted
Speaker 1: to In other words, he was a good businessman. Also,
Speaker 1: let's face that, you know. So what he did is
Speaker 1: he went and where and formed Delacrat Corporation named it
Speaker 1: after Delacrot, and he bought it, and then people would
Speaker 1: trap for him because he would buy it afar. Delacro
Speaker 1: Corporation would buy it afar. Okay, Okay, Like I said,
Speaker 1: he's a businessman, you know, true businessman. So he buys
Speaker 1: all this land. Okay, okay, this is the only way
Speaker 1: I can do it. You know, I'll buy the land
Speaker 1: we bought it from. I got it. I don't. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't know, but I'd have to think that he had
Speaker 1: to make some kind of arrangement with Leeann the Reds.
Speaker 1: But talking to his granddaughter, they hated land the press,
Speaker 1: you know, and I thought, wow, how can he buy
Speaker 1: this land when out going through the dictator of Plagamin Parish.
Speaker 1: I couldn't answer that. But he didn't buy it, and
Speaker 1: then he sold it to the trappers, the people from Delacrow.
Speaker 2: So he sold the land back to them. He didn't
Speaker 2: lease it to him.
Speaker 1: No, we could some of them. Some people didn't buy land,
Speaker 1: but they're all. Even if you bought the land, you
Speaker 1: had to sell you for the Delacrat Corperation.
Speaker 2: So Malario ended up being the good guy. The only
Speaker 2: difference between he and Perez is that he was fair
Speaker 2: in his dealings with the Islanos. But I think we
Speaker 2: have got to take a closer look at Leander Perez.
Speaker 2: He was born in eighteen ninety one and Placuamine Parish
Speaker 2: and raised in a wealthy Catholic family. Graduated from lsu
Speaker 2: with the Law in nineteen fourteen at the age of
Speaker 2: twenty three, and was appointed judge of Plaquemine Parish by
Speaker 2: his cousin in nineteen nineteen. Early on, he was accused
Speaker 2: of being corrupt. An example of that corruption he once
Speaker 2: scheduled as judge. He scheduled seven murder cases to be
Speaker 2: tried on the same day. All of the accused were
Speaker 2: murderers involved in the illegal trade of liquor. They were bootleggers,
Speaker 2: and it's alleged that Leander Perez wanted to protect them.
Speaker 2: As I understand it, all of them were acquitted because
Speaker 2: of the shortness of the trial. That's pretty slick if
Speaker 2: you're wanting to be corrupt. Then later in nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 2: while he was still really young, there was an impeachment
Speaker 2: petition charged against him to impeach him as judge, and
Speaker 2: there were twenty three specific charges against him that included
Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff. But one of them on the
Speaker 2: list was that he had a pearl handled revolver on
Speaker 2: his person during court hearings. People didn't like that. Another
Speaker 2: one was that he used county money to take people
Speaker 2: to the restaurants of his friends, avoiding his political enemies
Speaker 2: who owned restaurants. That's interesting, but most of them involved finances.
Speaker 2: He would ultimately be acquitted when he and this is
Speaker 2: when he was a young man, which empowered him even
Speaker 2: more for the rest of his life. He kind of
Speaker 2: got away with it and he thought, I will do
Speaker 2: whatever I want in this place, and he did. But
Speaker 2: what he would become most known for was his stance
Speaker 2: on racial issues. But as with all people, everyone had
Speaker 2: a different opinion of Leander Perez. Here's Paul, I've read
Speaker 2: a book about Leander Perez. You knew the man or
Speaker 2: met him?
Speaker 1: Yeah, quite a few times.
Speaker 2: He perceived around here. Is he a hero or is
Speaker 2: he a vig?
Speaker 3: They don't even know him no more.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: I think he was a I think basically he was
Speaker 3: a good man. He uh he was a segregationist completely
Speaker 3: and he ran that parish with a pretty stiff hand.
Speaker 3: But it was a good parish. It was a uh
Speaker 3: it was well, it was the wealthiest. It was the
Speaker 3: wealthiest parish in the United States.
Speaker 2: He kind of had the reputation of being like a
Speaker 2: crooked politician.
Speaker 3: I mean, uh yeah, I said, hey, well crook, I say,
Speaker 3: all of them will crooked. It was like the cowboys
Speaker 3: days down here. And but they had good points to
Speaker 3: him too, you know, they claim he was he was
Speaker 3: such a bad man with the black people. I had
Speaker 3: a buddy of mine, he me and he was in
Speaker 3: army together, went through basic training and all but friends, all,
Speaker 3: you know, till he died. And he told he was
Speaker 3: in the ballroom down there, and when day his motor
Speaker 3: had broke down in his boat. He's oyster fisherman and
Speaker 3: his motor has broken his boat. And the ballrooms down
Speaker 3: there had had imaginary line running through the middle of them.
Speaker 3: The white people stood on one side and the black
Speaker 3: people stood on the other side. And he was in
Speaker 3: the ballroom by the bar, and Leanda Press walked in
Speaker 3: and he asked him. He said, Paul, what now, what's
Speaker 3: the matter? You're not working? You wanted he wanted a
Speaker 3: burdy working when people making a living for himself, and
Speaker 3: he said, well, my motor's broken. My boat, Judge, he says,
Speaker 3: I can't work. He said, right now until I can
Speaker 3: make some money and get another motor. And uh he
Speaker 3: told me, he said, Paul, he said, go up to
Speaker 3: Donovan that was the main place where you got your
Speaker 3: motives and all up in the city. He said, put
Speaker 3: get your the motor you need and put it on
Speaker 3: my charge account. He said, but I want you to
Speaker 3: pay me. He said, you're come and pay me. He said, okay, judge.
Speaker 2: So and this this, Paul, this is the guy that
Speaker 2: you knew, Yeah, when I was in army and he
Speaker 2: was the black guy.
Speaker 3: Black yeah, yeah, a fine boy, fine man. He wasn't
Speaker 3: no boy. He was a man, a piece of man too.
Speaker 3: But anyway, yeah, he uh, he had a lot. He
Speaker 3: had He had everybody. Everybody's got good and bad in him.
Speaker 3: You know, it's what's good to one personally be bad
Speaker 3: for somebody else. Looking at a situation, when did you
Speaker 3: meet Leander Press When I was a child, a kid,
Speaker 3: fourteen twelve, fourteen, fifteen years old, Leander Peret brought the
Speaker 3: first charlet bull from Mexico in here and he sent
Speaker 3: an oyster boat with the with the they had pens
Speaker 3: on oyster boat. The whole oyster's on the deck. They
Speaker 3: put the pens up and went down there and got
Speaker 3: him a bull and he brought it to Idle Wall
Speaker 3: that's on the other side of the river. That was
Speaker 3: his his place on the other side of the river.
Speaker 3: And old man the Bella took us. I can remember
Speaker 3: him taking this there and the judge was sitting on
Speaker 3: the front porch and he all at the judge, he said, well,
Speaker 3: look at the boat. Yeah, right back then look at
Speaker 3: it like that big, big animal. Boy. You know what
Speaker 3: he had asked you. You caught you on the street
Speaker 3: being good. Oh boy, you're being good? Oh boy, yeah, judge,
Speaker 3: you know you'd asked if he was being good.
Speaker 2: You know, that was the time when Hughey Long was
Speaker 2: the governor, and so there was like there was just
Speaker 2: a lot of kind of these big, strong politicians that
Speaker 2: just ruled the land.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, he told you. He told you Long. He said,
Speaker 3: if I could take Packham in Parish and push it
Speaker 3: off into the Gulf and get away from the United States,
Speaker 3: I do it. And you along told him I wish
Speaker 3: you could.
Speaker 2: He wanted it to be like his own nations.
Speaker 3: It was it was I tell you what, there wasn't
Speaker 3: a piece of trash on that road. You couldn't found
Speaker 3: a cigarette butter on that road. Cleanest place I want
Speaker 3: to see in your life. Beautiful.
Speaker 2: Here's David responding to Paul's story of Leander helping the
Speaker 2: guy out with the boat motor and.
Speaker 5: Look, there's not to say that, you know, Leander was
Speaker 5: not incapable of doing the occasional kind gesture for someone.
Speaker 5: But he made his bones, you know, using African Americans
Speaker 5: as targets of you know, prejudice and bigotry and scaring
Speaker 5: white people into saying, you know, I'm going to keep
Speaker 5: them out of the parish kind of thing, or I'm
Speaker 5: going to control them, they're not going to let them vote,
Speaker 5: or so. Yeah, he could occasionally throw a bone to someone,
Speaker 5: a kind gesture here or there, but mainly he was not.
Speaker 1: A good person.
Speaker 5: He was I think a very greedy, selfish, arrogant man
Speaker 5: who he was basically an amoral.
Speaker 2: Leander Perez became nationally known during the Civil rights movement
Speaker 2: as being a staunch segregationist and just classic good old
Speaker 2: fashioned bigot and David's movie Delta Justice. They played a
Speaker 2: clip of Leander on William F. Buckley's national talk show
Speaker 2: where he was asked directly about being a bigot, and
Speaker 2: Leander's answer was so repulsive Noah had permission to play it.
Speaker 2: It was just too grubby and I couldn't do it.
Speaker 2: But I'm glad that David put it on his movie.
Speaker 5: That's why I put the William A Fuckwee clip in there,
Speaker 5: because I said, I didn't make this up here he is.
Speaker 5: Here's here's the guy himself confessing on national television his beliefs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: But other than that, people, I'll tell you my story.
Speaker 5: When we released the film on DVD. It was during
Speaker 5: the Islnios Festival, which was in April of the following year,
Speaker 5: which would have been twenty sixteen, and this elderly African
Speaker 5: American gentleman came in and he said, are you mister Dubos.
Speaker 5: I said yes, I am. He said, you're the gentleman
Speaker 5: who made the movie about the trappers war. I said yes.
Speaker 5: He said you're selling those DVDs. I said yes, sir,
Speaker 5: and I said I'll take ten of them. He pulls
Speaker 5: out one hundred dollars pill because we were like ten
Speaker 5: bucks each. And I said, can I ask why A
Speaker 5: you're buying ten of them? He said, I want to
Speaker 5: give them to my grandchildren. Because I went to see
Speaker 5: your movie at the film festival. He said, I came
Speaker 5: back and started your film three times. I watched you
Speaker 5: do your Q and A after every he said, and
Speaker 5: I just wanted to thank you for showing what kind
Speaker 5: of person Leandon Perez was. And he said, I want
Speaker 5: to teach that to my children and grandchildren. But you know,
Speaker 5: so they're people's people are complicated. I think Leander was
Speaker 5: in some ways complicated, but in other ways, I think
Speaker 5: he saw a way to use his power and his
Speaker 5: wealth and his influence to a negative degree. So much so,
Speaker 5: like Carville said in the film, he's the most odious
Speaker 5: person in the history of Luisiana. And that says a
Speaker 5: lot because there's been a lot of people going through
Speaker 5: this state that have been notorious people.
Speaker 2: What about this part of the world produces kind of
Speaker 2: these dictator type leaders.
Speaker 5: We've had a colorful history of politicians here. Perez is
Speaker 5: just one of them. Edwin Edwards was our governor for
Speaker 5: many years. I think he served three terms, and he
Speaker 5: was a very colorful Cajun Democrat governor. He was on
Speaker 5: Sixty Minutes. He just meant Edwin was he was kind
Speaker 5: of like Clinton magnified. He loved women, he loved drinking,
Speaker 5: he loved gambling. He got caught carrying a suitcase of
Speaker 5: a million dollars into a casino one time. Sixty Minutes
Speaker 5: asked him about it, and he said, they said, you know,
Speaker 5: that's quite unusual for a governor to be carrying Goes misity.
Speaker 1: It's unusual.
Speaker 5: And I just kind of like stopped and they looked up, like, well,
Speaker 5: don't you think that's he Goes. I don't know if
Speaker 5: it's illegal, it's unusual, but you know, it just kind
Speaker 5: of like brushed it off with the seventies and then
Speaker 5: again in the eighties. It was a race in eighty
Speaker 5: eight when he ran against David Duke, who was the
Speaker 5: notorious clansman who ran for governor, and Edwin had to
Speaker 5: come back and said, there used to be a famous
Speaker 5: bumper sticker said vote for the crook, meaning Edwin, it's
Speaker 5: important over Duke.
Speaker 2: Vote for the crook. It's important. Yeah, wow, what about
Speaker 2: Huey Long.
Speaker 5: Huey Long was another and again on Randy Newman's there's
Speaker 5: a song called the Kingfish. It was about Huey Long.
Speaker 5: He was a very highly respected and very popular populist governor,
Speaker 5: so he would be the equivalent of kind of uh,
Speaker 5: a more moderate version of Bernie Sanders might be a
Speaker 5: good description of him. He was very much giving back
Speaker 5: to the people. But if you ever saw All the
Speaker 5: King's Men, which is a famous Hollywood movie with Broderick Crawford,
Speaker 5: he played essentially Huey Long. That was a Pulitzerprise winning book,
Speaker 5: and they did a remake with Sean Penn which wasn't good.
Speaker 5: But the original film is wonderful and it's about Huey Long,
Speaker 5: and it's about how even the best intentioned person, once
Speaker 5: they get to power, you know, absolute power corrups absolutely.
Speaker 3: Kind of thing.
Speaker 5: And Huey Long, you know, he did kick out stand
Speaker 5: oil from essentially, you know, stealing the oil from the
Speaker 5: land owners was kind of like a bigger version of
Speaker 5: the Trappers War. But Hughey was again a colorful character.
Speaker 5: And then his brother, Earl Long. They made a movie
Speaker 5: about him called Blaze with Paul Newman in the eighties,
Speaker 5: and Earl was quite a character. Earl was institutionalized while
Speaker 5: he was governor, and then he so the.
Speaker 2: Two brothers both were governors at different times.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, let me tell you this quick story about
Speaker 5: Earl Long. So he's in a mental institution because the
Speaker 5: people wanted to take over the state threw him in there,
Speaker 5: and then he found a loophole where called the guy
Speaker 5: in charge of mental institutions. He said, is this so
Speaker 5: and so on the line who runs the mental institution
Speaker 5: I'm currently in. Yes it is this is the governor
Speaker 5: Earl Long. You're fired. I'm here by appointing you know
Speaker 5: so and so to being which was his friend. He says,
Speaker 5: I here by release ear Along. You know, very famous
Speaker 5: story which is hit it in the movie with Paul Newman. Yeah,
Speaker 5: Earl was a character Huey was. You know, he had
Speaker 5: his handle a lot of pockets. Again, when you're in
Speaker 5: charge of a state like Louisiana, which at the time
Speaker 5: was oil rich, mineral rich. Today even I think something
Speaker 5: like forty percent or it might be as high as
Speaker 5: sixty percent of the natural gas in the country comes
Speaker 5: from here. I mean, Louisiana is one of the most
Speaker 5: important states we in terms of providing services for the
Speaker 5: country and so when you are the governor of this state,
Speaker 5: you have a lot of power and even but back
Speaker 5: then it was magnified because there wasn't a lot of
Speaker 5: oil drilling, but the ones that were being done in
Speaker 5: Louisiana were, I mean it was. It was unbelievably rich.
Speaker 2: A lot of people made a lot of money. And
Speaker 2: they didn't have the Internet, no tell on people, they
Speaker 2: didn't have nothing cell phones and email communications. It was
Speaker 2: just an environment that I guess lended itself to potentially.
Speaker 5: Look, man, when you are in charge of something and
Speaker 5: if you are tempted by millions of dollars and the
Speaker 5: power to get away with it, human nature is going
Speaker 5: to dictate that. That's hard to resist because look what's
Speaker 5: going on now, what look at all the things that
Speaker 5: have happened in our country over the last fifty years,
Speaker 5: just from politicians going to jail, whether it was Watergate
Speaker 5: or all the things, you know, and he never sees
Speaker 5: sometimes the people in charge, like a lot of people
Speaker 5: around Clinton and Trump went to jail, but they didn't,
Speaker 5: you know. So yeah, you got to wonder, you know,
Speaker 5: keep their hands clean. Everybody else is going to dirty
Speaker 5: them for them, you know. So they've learned a lot
Speaker 5: since then. Here we long was assassinated by the way
Speaker 5: in the state capitol, on the steps of the capitol.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of conspiracy theories about.
Speaker 2: That, but he was really I mean, the same story
Speaker 2: on a very small scale involving muskrats that happened with
Speaker 2: Leander Perez.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I mean it's like, yeah, at some level, you talk
Speaker 2: about a story about big oil money and governing a state,
Speaker 2: this was Leander Perez just had his parish that he
Speaker 2: was the king of.
Speaker 5: He was the dictator of his own parish for sure.
Speaker 2: So it's this thing scales inside of people power scales.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: You've seen the film, yes, do you remember the last
Speaker 5: shot of the film, So the ending shot is of
Speaker 5: what looks like a muskrat. I ended the film with
Speaker 5: that image because it's like all of this fighting, all
Speaker 5: of this bloodshed and warfare and animosity over this creature,
Speaker 5: and it's just sort of the matter of factness of
Speaker 5: the animal who's just oblivious to its environment, you know.
Speaker 2: You know, it also shows the frivolity of human nature too,
Speaker 2: that's right, that we were willing to kill in order
Speaker 2: to get this little little animal. Yeah, that's not even
Speaker 2: nobody wants fur coats, nobody. I mean, fur trade's kind
Speaker 2: of coming back just a little bit in some places.
Speaker 2: But it was this fashion trend, you know, that pushed
Speaker 2: people in this time to do this kind of extreme stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Here humans are fighting over money and land, and
Speaker 5: here are these animals. They're just still oblivious to the
Speaker 5: insanity that we are producting in our daily lives and
Speaker 5: they're just going about their business.
Speaker 2: Is there something that we can learn about human nature?
Speaker 2: About people? Like, what's the what's the value in this story?
Speaker 1: I'd have to look at leand the Perez's position that
Speaker 1: some men, I guess I would want that power to
Speaker 1: do what they want to do.
Speaker 2: So that's that shows you that there's kind of dangerous
Speaker 2: people out there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well Leander wasn't the first one. It is
Speaker 1: not going to be the last one. There's always some
Speaker 1: people like that out there. You know that they just
Speaker 1: when they get a certain amount of power, it just
Speaker 1: upsets them, you know, I guess m hm. So you know,
Speaker 1: somebody mentions LeAnn the Perez that's this is all I
Speaker 1: can think of. He tried to kill more people. H Yeah,
Speaker 1: other people may look at him different, but I can
Speaker 1: it's sad.
Speaker 2: Looking into the lives of humans is wildly interesting and
Speaker 2: to me, especially when it overlaps with wildlife, even muskrats.
Speaker 2: But inside of these stories, I think that we can
Speaker 2: learn so much. And as a final thought in regards
Speaker 2: to the animals, today, muskrats are almost completely gone out
Speaker 2: of Louisiana. They have been ecologically replaced by the invasive nutria.
Speaker 2: In the last few years, less than four hundred muskrats
Speaker 2: were trapped annually in the whole state, down from millions
Speaker 2: one hundred years ago. Things are always changing and Wimpy
Speaker 2: Serenai and Paul Leguard's family land on Delacroix Island, where
Speaker 2: their families used to trap, are now almost completely underwater
Speaker 2: as South Louisiana continues to sink. It's a wild story.
Speaker 2: I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease Brins,
Speaker 2: This Country Life and Lakes Backwoods University. Please leave us
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