Longfellow's vision of Acadia was primarily influenced by his experiences growing up in Maine. He did, however, use two historical sources that helped him fill in the details of the real Acadia, and what life in Acadian communities was like prior to the removal. Today, Acadie/Acadia is wherever Acadians live. Some Acadians live in regions near to the first communities, such as Nova Scotia, Maine, and Quebec, others, who came to call themselves Cajuns, live in Louisiana and throughout the South, while still others live throughout North America and the world. Though much of the poem "Evangeline" was fantastical, it helped many people of Acadian descent (or, the Acadian Diaspora) reconnect with their history and with other Acadians, and spearheaded a movement to assert their survivance (cultural survival despite forced removals and assimilation by foreign governments).

Material culture refers to objects created by people for a particular use. What do these objects make you wonder about?

This painting, by an unknown artist, is an interpretation of what Acadian woman's clothing may have looked like. It depicts a woman wearing typical workers' clothing including sabots (wooden shoes) and she is spinning yarn with a drop spindle as she walks perhaps to a neighbor's home.

Making adequate clothing for the family required constant effort and while a spinning wheel was more efficient, a drop spindle was portable. Women spun yarn on a drop spindle for knitting or weaving while walking to a neighbor's home and while visiting so as to not waste the time during transit.

The Acadians brought to their new settlements in the 1600s the same style of wetland agriculture they had developed in west-central France. This type of agriculture translated well into the marshland regions of New Brunswick and Northern Maine.

These wooden shoes, or sabots, show the type of Acadian footwear worn when working outside and particularly when people were harvesting salt hay from the high marsh grassland region of the intertidal zones along the Maine coast.

Salt hay, when mixed with upland hay, provided cattle with salt and other necessary nutrients to produce healthier livestock.

Many of the people who became Acadians fled France due to anti-Catholic animosity. England was a primarily Protestant power, and parts of France were becoming Protestant as well. The majority of the French people held onto their Catholic heritage and religious identity.

This Acadian baptism certificate was printed in Paris and depicts Catholic imagery in honor of the baptism (a ceremonial admission of a person, often as a child, into the church) of Marie-Anne Berebe in 1913. Today, Acadian descendants continue to hold onto their Catholic heritage.

This mid-20th century Evangeline doll shows the enduring interest in Longfellow's poem more than a century after its publication. Note the similarities in the doll's traditional Acadian dress to the 19th century illustrations of the heroine and other Acadian women, as described in the poem.

What do you think having a doll like this might mean to an Acadian child?

Acadian Village in Van Buren, Maine is the site of multiple homes belonging to Acadian Diaspora families over the past several centuries. This house was originally built by Alexander Roi in the 1790s. 

The Roi house was constructed using the "piece on piece" method. The roof is a Normandy roof, that is, the roof curves up at the eves to form a gutter to collect rain water for washing, bathing and household usage.

The door was facing away from the road to face toward the brook to facilitate the use of the brook. The house has one room and dirt floor with a fieldstone fireplace, which was the source of heat for cooking and comfort. Moss collected from the nearby woods is the source of insulation.

Over the centuries it was used as a home and later reused as a tool shed. It was dismantled and rebuilt in its original form from original materials at Acadian Village, Van Buren, in 1977.

Standards for Material Culture of the Acadian Diaspora