Speaker 1: There's a war they didn't teach us about in American history,
Speaker 1: and the spoils of the conflict were unlikely characters. This
Speaker 1: war wasn't fought over oil or political ideology, but rather muskrats.
Speaker 1: It's called the Islanios Trappers War, and it took place
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty six in South Louisiana. And on this episode,
Speaker 1: we're setting up the context for the war, why it happened,
Speaker 1: and meeting the men whose families fought in it. The
Speaker 1: flavors of South Louisiana will be flying high as we
Speaker 1: hear from a New Orleans filmmaker, a fur handler, and
Speaker 1: even the raging Cajun himself, James Carvill. I really doubt
Speaker 1: that you're gonna want to miss this one, And don't forget.
Speaker 1: The Bear Grease feed continues to complexify and get better.
Speaker 1: We now have on this feed Bear Grease, Brins, this
Speaker 1: Country Life Podcast, and Lake Pickles, New Backwoods University. I've
Speaker 1: heard this called the Great Southern Takeover of Meat Eater. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something like that. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 2: So powerful people said, well, this is not right that
Speaker 2: little people should be making all this money when really
Speaker 2: it's rich people that really need money, and that's always
Speaker 2: happened in the world, that rich people are going to
Speaker 2: take the labor and work of poor people and moneturize
Speaker 2: it and make more money on it.
Speaker 3: That's not new man.
Speaker 2: That didn't start in nineteen twenty, and it ain't ending
Speaker 2: in twenty fourteen, and it's not going to end in
Speaker 2: twenty one fourteen.
Speaker 3: It is the sort of inherent.
Speaker 2: Right of power to acquire powered money, to acquire more
Speaker 2: powered money, and it played out right there in front
Speaker 2: of my very eyes.
Speaker 1: My name is Klay Nukem, and this is the Bear
Speaker 1: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 1: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 1: story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
Speaker 1: Presented by f HF Gear, American made, purpose built hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as
Speaker 1: the places we explore.
Speaker 4: Can y'all hear me?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay, you can hear yourself?
Speaker 2: Good?
Speaker 1: Do you hear me?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't know where to start on this one. I
Speaker 1: guess we'll just start by introducing our first character, the Muskrats.
Speaker 4: Okay, Mushkrat. It's nothing but a small rat. It's a rat.
Speaker 4: It's a vegetarian, doesn't eat meat. It's the body on us,
Speaker 4: about twelve to sixteen inches long. Usually a big rats
Speaker 4: around fourteen inches between two fourteen sixteen inches. I'd say
Speaker 4: it's got a triangular tail. They don't have no round
Speaker 4: tail like a gut a rat. Your tails are more
Speaker 4: of a triangle. It's small in the bottom and it
Speaker 4: goes up a little higher and it comes to point
Speaker 4: on the top. And the tail is usually about another
Speaker 4: twelve fourteen inches long. And they live in a prairie,
Speaker 4: a wet prairie. I used to work in the firehouse
Speaker 4: my dad, my grandfather bought for us.
Speaker 1: Also, that's the voice of Paul Leguard of Placabon Parish, Louisiana,
Speaker 1: character number two. So there's two sets of characters on
Speaker 1: this episode, the muskrats and the living people. They're one
Speaker 1: set like Paul, and then the folks now deceased who
Speaker 1: were actually involved in the trappers war. Here is character
Speaker 1: number three of the first group.
Speaker 5: How's this this good level? Okay, So I'm going to
Speaker 5: talk about the movie. Let me turn my phone off.
Speaker 1: Here we go.
Speaker 5: My name is David Dubos. I'm a screenwriter, producer, filmmaker
Speaker 5: from New Orleans, Louisiana, which is where I currently reside,
Speaker 5: mainly because of the movie tax credits that are here
Speaker 5: in Louisiana and that are a big draw for Hollywood
Speaker 5: movies and even international films to come and film here.
Speaker 5: And my main source of income is through screenwriting. I've
Speaker 5: got four projects in various stages of development, one of
Speaker 5: which is going to be filming this year in later
Speaker 5: twenty twenty five called Chainsaw Confidential, which is about the
Speaker 5: making of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre film in the
Speaker 5: early seventies.
Speaker 1: Now that's interesting. New Orleans filmmaker David Dubo's also made
Speaker 1: a film about the Trappers War in twenty fifteen called
Speaker 1: Delta Justice Theeslanios Trappers War. He's going to help us
Speaker 1: out a lot. Now here is our fourth living character.
Speaker 6: All right, there you go, there you go?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, pull it up, there we go. Can you
Speaker 1: hear me again? Yeah? You comfortable? Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 6: Well, my name is Lloyd Serenade, better known as Wimpy.
Speaker 6: And the reason why I got that nickname when I
Speaker 6: was a kid and my siblings told them that all
Speaker 6: I wanted to do was eat Hamburgers. So I told him,
Speaker 6: and Dave would read the comics to me. You know,
Speaker 6: never had TV, but anyway, it would read the comics.
Speaker 6: And that character Whimpy, I thought he it was hamplers,
Speaker 6: you know. So I told him to call me Wimpy
Speaker 6: and I would go out and play. And if my
Speaker 6: mother would call me by my real name, Laud, I
Speaker 6: wouldn't answer. She called me, and I answered. So I
Speaker 6: just sto Wimpy all my life, so everybody know when
Speaker 6: it is Whimpy. Of course, I was born down in Delacroile,
Speaker 6: you know. And y'all wanted to talk about the Trappers Warm,
Speaker 6: I'm only gonna tell you.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna tell you what I was telling.
Speaker 1: The connection between Paul, David, Wimpy and the Muskrats is
Speaker 1: that they all had family involved in the Trappers War.
Speaker 1: So now we're going to go to the second cast
Speaker 1: of characters from the actual nineteen twenty sixth war. On
Speaker 1: one side was a judge named Leander Perez. Some called
Speaker 1: him a dictator. He was in Placamon in Saint Bernard
Speaker 1: Parish in Louisiana, just south of New Orleans. The other
Speaker 1: side of the war was the Islanios, people of Delacroix Island,
Speaker 1: who had trapped there for almost one hundred and fifty years,
Speaker 1: and their main man advocate was named Manuel Malaro. But
Speaker 1: the ironic part is that Leander Perez, the parish bad boy,
Speaker 1: was in Islanios too.
Speaker 5: So Leander Perez was a highly educated Islanios and he
Speaker 5: saw a way to usurp the land from the Islanios.
Speaker 5: He would have his cousins and you know, buy up
Speaker 5: the land and then turn around and lease it back
Speaker 5: to the Islanios, but then start charging them more and
Speaker 5: more money, and eventually got to the point to where
Speaker 5: they couldn't afford it. And they said, yeah, Perez is
Speaker 5: coming in and finagling and you know, shaking hand with
Speaker 5: the Islanios and then stabbing them in the back and
Speaker 5: with his other hand. And his idea was to monopolize
Speaker 5: the industry and make the money for himself and pay
Speaker 5: them pennies on the dollar kind of thing. So the Islanios,
Speaker 5: they were very poor but hardworking people, and to them
Speaker 5: a dollar fifty two dollars a pelt for a muskrat
Speaker 5: was a lot of money. They could go out and
Speaker 5: trap and make and bring in anywhere from fifty to
Speaker 5: two hundred muskrat a day. So they were making plenty money. Well, eventually,
Speaker 5: when you start making a lot of money, it calls
Speaker 5: attention to itself. And so Leander Perez, who was then
Speaker 5: the district attorney in Blackman's Parish, but he was also
Speaker 5: in Islanios, and he looked at the situation and he
Speaker 5: decided he wanted a piece of that.
Speaker 1: The antagonist, Leander Perez, wanted to take over the muskrat
Speaker 1: fur trade by controlling the trapping leases and jacking up
Speaker 1: the prices. History would remember Perez for his stances on segregation.
Speaker 1: Many said he was a high octane bigot, but he
Speaker 1: was also loved by a lot of people. We're about
Speaker 1: to hear from James Carvill, the Louisiana political advisor who
Speaker 1: rose to national prominence in the Clinton era. Yep, James Carvill.
Speaker 1: This clip was used by permission from David's Delta Justice movie.
Speaker 1: Carvill is talking about Leander Perez.
Speaker 2: I've heard that be said that there's some good in everybody,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure there was some in him. To my knowledge,
Speaker 2: it never manifested itself.
Speaker 3: In any way.
Speaker 2: Not surprisingly given my sort of political persuasion, I think
Speaker 2: he's one of the most odious people in the history
Speaker 2: of the state.
Speaker 1: Now saying a right, Perez was a real stinker. Later
Speaker 1: we'll get into some bizarre detail on the man, but
Speaker 1: for now, you just need to know the general architecture
Speaker 1: of this story. The trappers started making money, and people
Speaker 1: from the outside moved in and wanted a big piece
Speaker 1: of the pie. Here's Carville with all you need to know.
Speaker 2: So powerful people said, well, this is not right that
Speaker 2: little people should be making all this money, when really
Speaker 2: it's rich people that really need money. And that's always
Speaker 2: happened in the world, that rich people are going to
Speaker 2: take the labor and work of poor people and moneturize
Speaker 2: it and make more money on it.
Speaker 3: That's not new man.
Speaker 2: That didn't start in nineteen twenty, and it ain't ending
Speaker 2: in twenty fourteen, and it's not going to end in
Speaker 2: twenty one fourteen.
Speaker 3: It is to sort of inherent.
Speaker 2: Right of power to acquire power and money, to acquire
Speaker 2: more power and money.
Speaker 3: And it played out right down in front of my
Speaker 3: very eyes.
Speaker 1: You nor I expected to hear James Carvill on Bear grease.
Speaker 1: But what we really need to remember is that Manuel
Speaker 1: Malaro is our protetagonist. He represented the right to the
Speaker 1: trappers in a head to head legal battle with Leander
Speaker 1: Perez over the land. Here is how the war started,
Speaker 1: but well how.
Speaker 5: The war started. It was a one day war. Perez
Speaker 5: got a crooked judge to give him overturned the appeal
Speaker 5: that Manuel had won, and he tried to Now, of
Speaker 5: course you have to enforce that. It's just a piece
Speaker 5: of paper. So when he went back to the Islanians
Speaker 5: and said, hey, get off my land, they just said,
Speaker 5: you know, screw you. And that's when Perez turned around
Speaker 5: and hired a bunch of mercenaries from Texas to come in,
Speaker 5: get a boat, get a Gatlan gun on it, and
Speaker 5: go down to buy you Whether Islanis said. His attention
Speaker 5: was to murder them, but the Islanians got wind of it,
Speaker 5: and so they were ready for them and kind of
Speaker 5: ambush them. And that's the one day war, which was
Speaker 5: referred to. As you know they talk about street justice
Speaker 5: or courtroom justice. This was delta justice. This was by
Speaker 5: you justice, old school, old fashioned, you know, Hatfield's McCoy's
Speaker 5: kind of you know, between the Islanios and Perez. Many
Speaker 5: of the Islanios, I would say, they are proud of
Speaker 5: the fact that they stood up for themselves against what
Speaker 5: they felt was the tyranny of the local government, who
Speaker 5: was just Perez and his ilk were mainly interested in
Speaker 5: the money to be made from the muskrat trapping, which
Speaker 5: would turned into fur coats up north and sold. And
Speaker 5: there was a lot of money. I mean, it was
Speaker 5: maybe a couple of dollars per pelt, which now is nothing,
Speaker 5: but back then was a lot of money. I think
Speaker 5: in the film we convert the money that they would
Speaker 5: have made on Africa per trapper to you know, and
Speaker 5: it was close to like one hundred thousand dollars. There's
Speaker 5: a lot of money for trapping. The film is ten
Speaker 5: years old now.
Speaker 1: I asked Wimpy Sarenay how valuable furs were to these people.
Speaker 6: I'm upon it this week. I remember they were what
Speaker 6: they what they call dollar around, no other words, dollar
Speaker 6: for each far And my dad needs to catch you
Speaker 6: by the hundred rounds a day, a.
Speaker 5: Lot of money.
Speaker 6: So for how many months of the year could he
Speaker 6: do that? From December till March. Well, I'm gonna put
Speaker 6: it this way. When you first went, you know, you
Speaker 6: caught a lot of rap, but towards the end of
Speaker 6: the season, you you finishing up. See the way they trapped.
Speaker 6: Let's see it. You had a squapys of land, so
Speaker 6: you would trap what they call him. You'd put your
Speaker 6: traps all around the land, all around the outside of
Speaker 6: your land, your boundary lines, okay, And as the season
Speaker 6: goes by, you keep closing that that circling in and
Speaker 6: you keep closing it in, so you're catching the rat.
Speaker 6: And at the end of the season, you got them
Speaker 6: in one little spot, so you would get right I
Speaker 6: was left, you know.
Speaker 5: So the Islanios were very they're very prideful people. I mean.
Speaker 5: And these some of these people in Saint Bernard Parish
Speaker 5: and the lower end of it where Dela Crowe Island
Speaker 5: is and where the original descendants lived, there's only five
Speaker 5: families left there. And it's so between Hurricane Betsy and
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty five, and of course Katrina years later, forty
Speaker 5: years later, just kind of wipe out Delacroue Island. But
Speaker 5: that was once a very fertile place for fishing, hunting, trapping,
Speaker 5: and that's what people did. They lived off the land.
Speaker 5: My grandfather on my mother's side, that's what he did.
Speaker 5: He lived off the land and that's how he fed
Speaker 5: his family. But I would say that the majority of
Speaker 5: Islanios had heard the story of the trappers ord because
Speaker 5: it was passed down generation to generation oral histories basically,
Speaker 5: and they looked at it as an unfortunate thing that happened.
Speaker 5: But they had to defend themselves against the Perez people
Speaker 5: and his group, especially when he hired mercenaries from Texas
Speaker 5: to come over and murder them. They just felt, Okay, well,
Speaker 5: that's the last straw. But they were lucky that they
Speaker 5: had Manuel Malero, who was an educated in Islanios who
Speaker 5: knew that they were being taken advantage of.
Speaker 1: We're learning little bits of this story as we build
Speaker 1: the context of the value of trapping bad Boy. Perez
Speaker 1: would end up hiring mercenaries to kill the Islanios trappers,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to that. But to understand any story,
Speaker 1: you've got to understand the historical context of the Roaring twenties.
Speaker 5: So if you can picture America in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 5: this was a high time for the coastal cities. Hollywood
Speaker 5: was just getting started and was thriving with silent films,
Speaker 5: and New York was like the talk of the nation.
Speaker 5: Everything new and innovative was going on. It started in
Speaker 5: New York and slowly made its way around the country,
Speaker 5: and fur coats became a status symbol for a lot
Speaker 5: of rich, wealthy women who lived in New York and
Speaker 5: all over the East Coast. So there was this great
Speaker 5: demand for furs, and of all the furs that were prized,
Speaker 5: muskrat fur was considered the most expensive and the most desired.
Speaker 5: And so you can imagine all the great department stores
Speaker 5: that sprung up out of New York that were trying
Speaker 5: to sell these coats. They had to get them from somewhere.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 5: They eventually word got down to South Louisiana, where the
Speaker 5: muskrats were thriving throughout the marshes and Bayous. So the
Speaker 5: Islanios trappers and the hunters and the fishermen and shrimpers
Speaker 5: who made a living off the land, they were contacted
Speaker 5: by these outside sources to say, hey, they need these muskrats.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty five, prime muskrat furs were going for
Speaker 1: a dollar thirty each. The math adds up if you're
Speaker 1: catching over one hundred per day for the seventy five
Speaker 1: day season, which yields a single trapper making three to
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars per season. It's estimated that Plaqua Mine
Speaker 1: Parish alone sold over a million dollars worth of muskrat
Speaker 1: hides in its peak in the late twenties, and author
Speaker 1: Glenn Jeanson says that Louisiana produced more furs than any
Speaker 1: other states and more muskrats than all the other states
Speaker 1: combined during this period. The territory of Alaska, thirteen times
Speaker 1: larger than Louisiana, sold only one third as much value
Speaker 1: in pelts in nineteen twenty five. Here's Paul, what does
Speaker 1: it Does it feel like? Muskrat fur?
Speaker 4: Oh? Well, you know what a mink feels like. You
Speaker 4: have rubbed mama, your grandma's mink coat. Well, mink. The
Speaker 4: head is smaller and shorter on a mink. On a rat,
Speaker 4: A good rat. It was a good prime, right. I'd
Speaker 4: say that the furs inch and a half long sometime,
Speaker 4: and the top of the rat was black. They had
Speaker 4: some of the best rats they caught. Was out of Canovn.
Speaker 4: That's a little settlement right down the river here, that's
Speaker 4: where all lands behind.
Speaker 6: It's not like a horse rat. It's bigger than the
Speaker 6: house rat. It's about this big, you know, and it
Speaker 6: looks like a rat.
Speaker 5: It's a rat.
Speaker 6: It's a musk rat. And they have two lands of
Speaker 6: musk in them. And you know when they would catch
Speaker 6: them and scin them, you know, and of course the
Speaker 6: Caucasus they were trying to buy you the buzzies and
Speaker 6: that would eat it them. They would take the musks
Speaker 6: and like my mother, she would she would get the
Speaker 6: musk and they'll put them in alcohol in preserva them
Speaker 6: and sell them to people who make foray fuel.
Speaker 1: With the muskrat.
Speaker 6: I think that's what it is. This toy from gold
Speaker 6: mustard probably came from that, you know. I remember the jaws,
Speaker 6: you know, full of musk rat must musk in the
Speaker 6: jaws because they would put them a s m alcohol
Speaker 6: and something in presumab and the wins and that would
Speaker 6: that would their money.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: The hair felt very smooth. The top of it was
Speaker 6: not black, but very very dark. The bottom was like
Speaker 6: the color your shirt gray on the bottom, you know.
Speaker 6: And when they when the skin them, the skin from
Speaker 6: the back legs, you cut right along with tail and
Speaker 6: you turn them inside out and just peel the skin off.
Speaker 6: And then you would put it on a rat stretcher
Speaker 6: and you put the rat on air and you let
Speaker 6: it go. It stretched the you're far out and then
Speaker 6: they would create the excess meat off of the bottlement
Speaker 6: that far was inside out. Then they would hang them
Speaker 6: on what they call uh right hangers, you know, uh
Speaker 6: big big hangers with with booge with nails in it,
Speaker 6: and they'd just hang them up. You know, we have
Speaker 6: pictures of that in the museum down as in. But
Speaker 6: then they would they have pictures of God hanging up
Speaker 6: muskrat to dry. You put it in the some and
Speaker 6: dry and once they dry, and that's when the uh
Speaker 6: the deal is what we call you know, would bottom
Speaker 6: the fur even even you to sell pieces if if
Speaker 6: one of the rants was ate up or something, they
Speaker 6: don't just sell the piece or whatever they had was
Speaker 6: left because there was I guess it was with a
Speaker 6: lot of money they could sell it all well. The
Speaker 6: way I understand it was, it was the fashion in
Speaker 6: the twenties was for a coach. Even the men used
Speaker 6: to wear long fur coach. My mother had a said
Speaker 6: she had my dad had muskrat coat fulls lant coat
Speaker 6: made out and beautiful. It was so soft one the
Speaker 6: time they they tanned it and worked it out and
Speaker 6: men then then the colt out of it, you know.
Speaker 4: They I used to work in the firehouse, and uh
Speaker 4: they bought him for from Simon Yoka, the Jewish Man,
Speaker 4: and uh he owned Delta Row Farr.
Speaker 1: So so in your lifetime that fur business was alive
Speaker 1: and well.
Speaker 3: In New Orleans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so you worked How long did you work
Speaker 1: in the firehouse.
Speaker 4: Well, I'd go there at the end of the trapping
Speaker 4: Caesar and they'd be shipping to New York, and uh,
Speaker 4: they'd have all those fires in there. Lord, they had
Speaker 4: furst stack from flowing around the walls from the flood
Speaker 4: of the seal.
Speaker 1: All muskrat h No.
Speaker 4: Everything you had marsh grat, you had mink, she had honors.
Speaker 4: You had cools.
Speaker 1: Added the firs down here compare with northern firs.
Speaker 4: They got to have you thicker far up there because
Speaker 4: of the cool water. But you had cold. We had
Speaker 4: cool windows down here. When I was a kid man.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't say every morning, but i'd say
Speaker 4: quite often. You had icycles hanging off the tin roof.
Speaker 4: Like I was telling you, I worked in the firehouse
Speaker 4: and they'd taken all as far as would go in
Speaker 4: and at the end of the season they had shipped
Speaker 4: to New York, and uh, so I'd go in there,
Speaker 4: and uh, plenty of them had mildew on them. And
Speaker 4: then so they take the otters. Otters got a lot
Speaker 4: of fat on them, and you'd scrape them. They had
Speaker 4: big boards and they'd scraped that inside hide and get
Speaker 4: especially the tail, and you put that it put that
Speaker 4: fat in a in a rag. And for ours that
Speaker 4: stand there at their tables and wipe them rats, wipe the.
Speaker 1: Mill with the with the otter fat with the fact.
Speaker 4: And made it beautiful. They came out beautiful. And uh,
Speaker 4: then they'd take them and they'd put them in a press.
Speaker 4: They had a press about as water as this table.
Speaker 4: And then they did press it down full of muskrats,
Speaker 4: full of muskrats. They weighed about four or five hundred
Speaker 4: pounds or you couldn't.
Speaker 1: They were shipping them green. Yeah, you ship them green, right,
Speaker 1: shipped them green. Wherever they processed them, they turn them.
Speaker 4: They t well, they didn't even process them here. Most
Speaker 4: of them went to Europe. You see, they they'd go
Speaker 4: to they'd go to New York and then they had
Speaker 4: a forest sail up there and they'd sell them to
Speaker 4: the people in Europe. My great grandfather was was a
Speaker 4: farm and that's what he did. They didn't know nothing
Speaker 4: but for him. And when my grandfather got down there,
Speaker 4: they you know, they trapping was starting to pick up,
Speaker 4: and uh so he uh and know those days, there
Speaker 4: wasn't no you owned this piece of land. And now
Speaker 4: the guy I owned up it was all open priority.
Speaker 4: It was just like wild wesh And uh. When you
Speaker 4: know when a story at the beginning of the season,
Speaker 4: you went out there and you picked out a spot
Speaker 4: and you put your trap on out and people honored
Speaker 4: each other's areas.
Speaker 1: You know, any good American story starts with a land squabble,
Speaker 1: which is such a primitive qualm. And deep in our
Speaker 1: DNA is a hidden carnal playbook, and on page one
Speaker 1: of that book it says, look out for your own
Speaker 1: interests and no one else. Territory to the Homo sapien
Speaker 1: is equivalent to food, water, and air, and in this case,
Speaker 1: these god forsaken swamps, encompassing tens of thousands of acres
Speaker 1: in the region had historically been no man's land owned
Speaker 1: by the state, the parishes, and absentee landowners. The islandios
Speaker 1: were easily able to get cheap trapping leases for generations
Speaker 1: until all of a sudden the land had value because
Speaker 1: of muskrats. Most of the people that had historically trapped
Speaker 1: these swamps were from Delacroix Island. Here's whimpy.
Speaker 6: I grew up at Delacra Island and that was a
Speaker 6: big story, you know, since I was a kid, about
Speaker 6: the Tramp's War and what happened. The people from delacrow
Speaker 6: made a living off the marshland, you know. So there
Speaker 6: were a lot of muskrat in them days, you know.
Speaker 6: So it was they made their living in the winter
Speaker 6: with the muskrat. And so these people were just you know,
Speaker 6: they were descendants of the Canary Islands and they settled
Speaker 6: down at delacro Island. After the Revolution war, of course,
Speaker 6: I was born down in Delacrosse. Uh, the Canary Islanders
Speaker 6: moved towards the Delacraland and the Bayoux Arizona. You know,
Speaker 6: at Denacrue Island. It was not French. My dad was French.
Speaker 6: He spoke French, but the whole. Uh, Delacroix Island spoke Spanish.
Speaker 6: You know, I can speak to Spanish that Spanish today
Speaker 6: but uh, and it's only about maybe six or seven
Speaker 6: of us that that speak it right now from non
Speaker 6: Donacrol and then you know in the middle living trap
Speaker 6: and Muskrat.
Speaker 1: The Islanio's people were Spanish speakers from the Canary Islands,
Speaker 1: southwest of the coast of Spain. Here's Paul paint the
Speaker 1: picture for me of who these Islanio people were. This
Speaker 1: was like a Spanish group of people.
Speaker 4: Yet yep, you heard the Canary Islands, all right. They
Speaker 4: inhabited the Canary owns, I don't know how far all.
Speaker 4: And when Spain owned the Louisiana purchase before before France
Speaker 4: sold it. They were brought here back in the seventeen
Speaker 4: nineties to to guard that river, to keep the English
Speaker 4: and whoever else wanted to come with that river. And
Speaker 4: and uh and Colin, I's take it away from you know,
Speaker 4: Spain had it and that's what their their purpose was.
Speaker 4: And they were they were. They were not only brought there,
Speaker 4: they were brought to Galveston and a couple other spots
Speaker 4: where they were.
Speaker 1: So now is was this your family is this? Is
Speaker 1: this part of the family.
Speaker 4: A lot of my found my my my grandmother's side,
Speaker 4: on my daddy's side was Arcelonia.
Speaker 1: The Islanios settled on Delacroix Island. But is it really
Speaker 1: an island? Described to me why it's what what bodies
Speaker 1: of water surrounded that make it an island?
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, a lot of people. If you ride down there,
Speaker 6: you wouldn't think it's an hour. And if you good
Speaker 6: on it when you get the dinner crow on, and
Speaker 6: if you have lake livery here and buy you literary,
Speaker 6: and then you have buy you tarry buff and then
Speaker 6: you have buy you gentility here, and then a little
Speaker 6: all these links, so it made it an island. So
Speaker 6: they called it an island.
Speaker 1: Mmm.
Speaker 6: You know. So if you drive down there and you
Speaker 6: still on this sign on the road today, you.
Speaker 1: Don't have to cross a bridge to get there? Is
Speaker 1: that what?
Speaker 6: You can raise it as one little bridge, you know?
Speaker 6: But it's just a buyo.
Speaker 1: Now that that's settled, let's talk to David. He's the
Speaker 1: filmmaker and some of his family were Islaanios. But the
Speaker 1: story of the Trappers War somehow remained hidden.
Speaker 5: I didn't even know about it. This is a classic
Speaker 5: case of being a tourist in your own hometown. I
Speaker 5: had no idea this even existed. Late aunt, great aunt
Speaker 5: Doc Benj Dorothy Benj. She's a direct descendant of Manuel Malaro,
Speaker 5: who was a big player during the Trappers War, and
Speaker 5: she was very fond of him. And she called me
Speaker 5: one day. She knew I was a filmmaker and I
Speaker 5: was part of the large family on my mother's side.
Speaker 5: My mother was a new Nez. She was Neslanios, which
Speaker 5: means they came from the Canary Islands. I didn't know
Speaker 5: a thing about it. So she called me dot did
Speaker 5: and she said, I want you to do a documentary
Speaker 5: on my grandfather, Manuel Malaro. She felt he didn't get
Speaker 5: the credit that he deserved. And I always am attracted
Speaker 5: to people who don't get there just due. So I
Speaker 5: put together the budget schedule, I hired, you know, people,
Speaker 5: started putting the whole show together. I called my DP,
Speaker 5: Gabe Mayhon, who did a brilliant job on the film.
Speaker 5: He came down with his crew and we assembled extras
Speaker 5: from the local area and we shot on the land
Speaker 5: where the Islaanios had lived. Parts of it. We shot
Speaker 5: at the museum. Some of the interviews we did there,
Speaker 5: and then we did a lot of the reenactments in
Speaker 5: the marsh and in the swamps where they would have
Speaker 5: been in the nineteen twenties. This took place in nineteen
Speaker 5: twenty six, But my aunt was the one that got
Speaker 5: me involved, and once I started researching it, I just felt,
Speaker 5: this is such a great story that no one knows about.
Speaker 1: Part of me would like to make a bear grease
Speaker 1: just about David making this film. He's an eccentric, brainy
Speaker 1: guy and knows more about cinema than Dale Brisbee knows
Speaker 1: about going ninety on a buck and bull. But I
Speaker 1: asked David how true his movie stayed to the real story.
Speaker 5: My favorite if I made Digress for just a moment.
Speaker 5: My favorite anecdote on that is in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 5: when Lawrence of Arabia hit the a gentleman and British
Speaker 5: journalist took one of T. E. Lawrence's colleagues to see
Speaker 5: the movie and when it was over, he said, well, sir,
Speaker 5: what did you think of the film? Oh? Most entertaining?
Speaker 5: Most entertaining? He said, well, how accurate would you say
Speaker 5: it was? And he'd say, well, I'll tell you they
Speaker 5: got the sand and the camel's right, and that kind
Speaker 5: of leads to this kind of leads into though the
Speaker 5: whole trapper's war idea, because you know, Wimpy Serenade was
Speaker 5: one of our interview subjects. He told me, he said,
Speaker 5: the one thing that gets lost in war is the
Speaker 5: truth any war, and he said, you're always going to
Speaker 5: have people pointing at each other. You know, they still
Speaker 5: don't know who fired the first shot in this war,
Speaker 5: and so there's always this ambiguity of who was right,
Speaker 5: who was wrong? Can you right or wrong? By being wrong?
Speaker 1: The truth gets lost in war? Ain't that the truth?
Speaker 1: I want to learn about Paul's family. They're trapping in
Speaker 1: their camp.
Speaker 4: And you see, we trapped too, and we had a
Speaker 4: camp and uh, I spent my winter, well, I spent
Speaker 4: all my holidays with them, and uh get off for
Speaker 4: Christmas holidays and all and uh they would be at
Speaker 4: the camp trap and I'd go back there with them
Speaker 4: and sit around that table at night and they tell stories.
Speaker 4: Sometimes I don't like to talk about it, but yeah,
Speaker 4: they'd dose stories. And you know, your surrounding them was
Speaker 4: a kid listening and uh, That's why I picked up
Speaker 4: as much as I know about it.
Speaker 1: Was there somebody in your family that was that was
Speaker 1: there trapping that was.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, my grandfather was there when it all went down.
Speaker 4: My grandfather was Paula Gord my dadd who was junior.
Speaker 4: I'm the third and uh my, my my son is
Speaker 4: the fourth, and his son is the fifth and uh
Speaker 4: and the boy said he's going to name his boy too. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but uh, I tell you what really were really started
Speaker 4: it off. He was working at the at the slaughter
Speaker 4: house they called the Avatar. They had a big stainless
Speaker 4: steel troughs that ran through there, and they take their
Speaker 4: intestines and they turned those intestines inside out and they
Speaker 4: washed them to make sausages. But they put the sausage
Speaker 4: in in them days. They didn't have all that synthetic
Speaker 4: stuff they got today. And uh, all the guys that
Speaker 4: were working that to be leaning up against their trough
Speaker 4: all day, they were all getting intestinal flew and dying.
Speaker 4: So my grandfather got it and uh, my great grandfather
Speaker 4: told me, he said, paul you're gonna die. He said,
Speaker 4: you're gonna die. He said, why don't you just quit?
Speaker 4: He said, And come and form with me. He said.
Speaker 4: We ain't gonna make much money. He said, but you
Speaker 4: might get well and left. He was he was well
Speaker 4: and very sick. So he did. And uh so he
Speaker 4: went down there and started forming with the old man,
Speaker 4: and the trapping started getting better and better, and people
Speaker 4: were starting They were starting to ship for us overseas.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 4: They always did ship them overseas, but they, like I said,
Speaker 4: we got better. There was money in it. Like I said,
Speaker 4: he started trapping, and plenty of him down there told
Speaker 4: him they laughed at my grandpa, and they told him,
Speaker 4: you think you're gonna make a trapper. Grandpa told me, sad,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna do it. I do my best. And they
Speaker 4: wouldn't show him nothing. And uh, he said, I used
Speaker 4: to go out there and sit that in the evening time,
Speaker 4: watched them animals move, because they'd come out in the evening,
Speaker 4: some of them, you know, and watch them move, how
Speaker 4: they moved, where they ate at, where they where they
Speaker 4: messed at. And he, uh, I'll tell you what. When
Speaker 4: he died, ain't none of them could keep up with him.
Speaker 3: He was.
Speaker 4: He was. He trapped way until he after he was
Speaker 4: seventy five years old, and he didn't walk the prairie,
Speaker 4: ran it and uh fast fast, and he'd run from
Speaker 4: one trap to the next. And he taught me how
Speaker 4: to trap. When I trapped too, when I came back
Speaker 4: from Vietnam, I trapped.
Speaker 1: Muskrats meant a lot to these people. Wimpy is eighty
Speaker 1: four years old. He was born in nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: fifteen years after the war, but he grew up going
Speaker 1: to the family's trapping camp, which they still own today.
Speaker 1: Paul's family still owns all that land today too. We're
Speaker 1: building the context to understand why people were willing to
Speaker 1: murder over muskrats. Wimpy also grew up in the Alanios
Speaker 1: trapping camps. Do you remember going on the trap line
Speaker 1: with your dad?
Speaker 6: No, I was too small, you know, I was a kid,
Speaker 6: But I remember what they'd done because my brother's in
Speaker 6: all used to trap, and us kids would take the
Speaker 6: few trapped and put them behind the camp or something,
Speaker 6: catch a couple of the muskrats. I was very young.
Speaker 1: I was nothing with a kid, you know. Were those
Speaker 1: fond memories or was it just work.
Speaker 4: To me?
Speaker 6: It was? It was great, It was really Nye was great.
Speaker 1: Was your mother there, your whole your whole family would
Speaker 1: go to the traffic camp.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Was it a like a something celebrated or was it
Speaker 1: something that people just had to do? So it was
Speaker 1: just like work, right?
Speaker 6: They was like what for that?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 6: The older one was like my brother trap and my
Speaker 6: two oldest brothers they trapped with my dad.
Speaker 1: But did they I guess what I'm trying to understand
Speaker 1: is did they like today, if I had a camp
Speaker 1: and I went out there trapping, it would be it
Speaker 1: would be like this extra thing. It's recreational.
Speaker 6: There wasn't.
Speaker 1: This was not right.
Speaker 6: No one that was your home in the winter.
Speaker 1: I mean, they would have been doing something else if
Speaker 1: they could have made money.
Speaker 6: Doing something else, probably so, But that's that one. The
Speaker 6: way they middle living and the winter was trapping. Spring
Speaker 6: was fishing crabs, and then you had the troll season
Speaker 6: and they made uh, they're living catching shrimp fish, you know,
Speaker 6: with big shams and all that. Then when it was
Speaker 6: it was legal then you know, and they would There
Speaker 6: was some family that would fish for they catch fishing
Speaker 6: which and some of them trill. My dad was a trawler.
Speaker 6: He was shrimping. Matter of fact, he was one of
Speaker 6: the best ones, not because he was my dad, but
Speaker 6: he didn't catch shrimp when y'all grew up on a
Speaker 6: cleaning shrimp and you know, on the shrimp boat with
Speaker 6: my dad and a song. Well, no, I used to
Speaker 6: enjoy it because there was so much wildlife, you know,
Speaker 6: ducks and man you go right off the camp and
Speaker 6: kill the dog and you eat it, you know, things
Speaker 6: like that. You just lived off that land. And what
Speaker 6: I used to enjoy when I was a little kid
Speaker 6: was the blackbird, the red winged blackbird. And of course
Speaker 6: we all spoke Spanish, it wasn't English, you know, when
Speaker 6: I was a little kid, and they had this this
Speaker 6: fellow called Adam Millery, and he used to come when
Speaker 6: out when I was old enough, when I was out there,
Speaker 6: and he used to come out with the boat and
Speaker 6: buy the muskrat, you know because they would hang it
Speaker 6: up on the hangers and dry it and all that
Speaker 6: kind of stuff. Well he uh worked for Delapa Corporation,
Speaker 6: and they would buy all the the far far from me,
Speaker 6: and he would come and ingrid the far and all that.
Speaker 6: I remember, all that kind of stuff, and and he
Speaker 6: would buy the far and I used to like them, uh,
Speaker 6: little red winged black words and uh and they was
Speaker 6: always singing, you know. And I told mister Anam and
Speaker 6: he gotta he called me that ever since anyway, he said,
Speaker 6: And I told him, say, you know, mister Anam put
Speaker 6: them little birds of singing And he said, what is that?
Speaker 1: Whimpey. I said, they're saying.
Speaker 6: Panfrio, panfrio, we called French toast. We call that panfreo
Speaker 6: in Spanish. And I said, they want panfreeo. They're saying panfree. Yeah,
Speaker 6: isn't they would go like Toledo, Toledo like this? I said,
Speaker 6: they want panfril. You know, it was that I wanted,
Speaker 6: I guess. I said, they're saying they want panfree. You
Speaker 6: know what he left me. He got a kick out
Speaker 6: of that, and the rest of my life whenever I
Speaker 6: was saying, he me fun for us. It was just
Speaker 6: a joy to be out there.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I think we're starting to get a glimpse into the
Speaker 1: culture of the trapping camps. It seems like an idyllic place,
Speaker 1: but the work was long, hard, and the conditions primitive.
Speaker 1: But all this would come under literal gunfire in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty six. In this episode, we've built the context that
Speaker 1: shows the value of these Muskrats to these Islanios people.
Speaker 1: In the next episode will get into the actual details
Speaker 1: of the war, including machine guns and murder, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna explore more into Leander Perez's life. We'll close with
Speaker 1: a final thought about this story from James Carvill, taken
Speaker 1: right out of the movie Dealt the Justice, which will
Speaker 1: lead us into our next episode.
Speaker 2: This is the oldest, most predictive movie in the world
Speaker 2: that has the shame beginning, the shame middle, and the
Speaker 2: same end every time.
Speaker 3: It don't change.
Speaker 2: And you could look at the history of the modern
Speaker 2: world through these land people of Saint Benard Parish and
Speaker 2: it would be It would be right now.
Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease.
Speaker 1: Please share a podcast with a friend this week look
Speaker 1: out for Lake Pickles, Backwards, University Brints, this country life podcast,
Speaker 1: and truly thank you for listening to these stories. Keep
Speaker 1: the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.
Speaker 1: You know, they're trying to sell a bunch of our
Speaker 1: public lands. We all need to take action because that's
Speaker 1: where the bears live.