Trappers of the Barataria

Nutria Traditions

Jon and Jocelyn Donlon

Shane K. Bernard

Historian & curator, McIlhenny Company, Inc. archives

As historian and curator of McIlhenny Company's historical documents, Shane K. Bernard (son of musician Rod Bernard) oversees the archiving of material owned by the company, much of which has been found in a number of warehouses and in attics of abandoned houses on Avery Island. Some family members and company employees have also donated or sold items. He is a "one-man operation," and takes particular pleasure in what he calls "myth-busting."

Before he began working for McIlhenny in the mid-1990s he, like many others, had heard the nutria legend associated with Avery Island. He has seen the legend mentioned in National Geographic, The Washington Post, and Audubon. Shane stumbled across a "nutria" folder in the McIlhenny papers, and became curious to confirm or refute the story.

The legend is as follows, in Shane's words:

'E. A. McIlhenny, the man who ran the Tabasco Sauce business, as a side venture began to raise nutria on Avery Island. And he imported a number of nutria from Argentina, where they're indigenous, and brought them to Louisiana and raised them in a pen somewhere on the Island. A hurricane came along in the late 1930s, early 1940s, knocked down the pen, the nutria got out, and populated the coastal salt marshes of Louisiana. It was all his fault.'

The legend has variants: sometimes he introduced nutria to Louisiana; other times he introduced them to North America. Sometimes the nutria escaped during a hurricane; other times M'sieu Ned let them out on purpose-for malicious purposes.

The story researched by Shane Bernard is much more complex than the popular version. He found that E. A. McIlhenny was at least the third-rather than the first-nutria farmer in Louisiana; he was at least the second nutria farmer to set loose his nutria in the wild, on purpose. He never imported nutria from Argentina. He bought nutria from one of the two pre-existing nutria farms in Louisiana, the one in St. Bernard Parish. What's more, the detail of the hurricane is irrelevant. In fact, McIlhenny purposely released twenty-one nutria into the marsh on June 1, 1940, two months prior to the 1940 hurricane that struck in early August of that year. He did not release all of his nutria until 1945.

According to Bernard's article "Reconsidering the Origin of Nutria," published in Louisiana History in 2002 (Vol 53. No. 3, pgs. 281-293), McIlhenny purchased his first nutria in March of 1938-fourteen adults and six kits-all but two of which were born in the United States. The papers do not name the farm owner in St. Bernard Parish, but they do verify that A. Bernstein of New Orleans, a fur dealer, served as middleman in the transaction. He wrote to McIlhenny, "I am able to purchase the nutria for you for the sum of $100.00 and now you will kindly let me know what day you can send your truck to pick the up, as I must let the party know, in order that he may have them ready for shipment" (287-88).

McIlhenny posted a check to Bernstein for $100.00 on March 12, 1938, and he dispatched a landscape architect, Jim Kennedy, who was employed at Jungle Gardens, to collect the nutria. Kennedy's documented report and expenses verify the transaction. He also brought advice from Bernstein about maintaining the nutria, advising McIlhenny to "feed them carrots, beets, cabbage, grass, alfalfa, or anything green'" (Bernard 288).

Soon after McIlhenny released his nutria into a one-acre pen on Avery Island, he learned that the difficulty of maintaining them was no exaggeration. Some escaped, and they could gnaw through just about any material with their legendary orange teeth. He enclosed his pen with wire screen as a deterrent. And he soon learned of their stunning ability to reproduce: in les than two years his original twenty had grown to "probably 500 to 1,000 animals" (Bernard 289).

Whatever difficulty McIlhenny faced with the troublesome fur-bearers was not entirely a surprise. In 1930, Armand P. Daspit, director of the Louisiana Department of Conservation's Fur and Wildlife Division, was warned in a letter from the Bureau of Biological Survey in Washington, DC (and Daspit sent a copy of the letter to McIlhenny) that "It may be highly objectionable to turn [nutria] loose. . . . Numerous examples exist in this and foreign countries of the introduction of species from one part of the world to another with very disastrous results" (Bernard 286).

McIlhenny waited eight years from the date of that letter to buy his first nutria. In the meantime, two other nutria farms began to operate in Louisiana. One was owned by Susan and Conrad Brote in St. Tammany Parish; the other was the unnamed farm in St. Bernard Parish, from which McIlhenny purchased his first nutria in 1938.

Once McIlhenny had in his possession five hundred animals, he began to sell live adults to other farmers as breeding stock. He continued to sell breed stock, until he "let all of [his] nutrias go in the marshes" in late 1945. His original aim had been "to establish a fur industry on nutria in the waste marshes of Louisiana" and he believed that he had "succeeded in doing this" (Bernard 291).

McIlhenny seems to have contributed to stories of his exaggerated role in the spread of nutria throughout the marshes. According to Bernard, "He often embellished stories, particularly about himself, in the jovial manner of a seasoned raconteur" (Bernard 284). In fact, he did claim to have been the one to introduce nutria to Louisiana, saying in a 1945 letter that later appeared in the Times-Picayune:

I originally brought fifteen pairs of the animals from the Argentine . . . [and] have liberated probably one hundred and fifty pairs of these animals in Iberia Parish since 1940, and they have spread to the northern limits of Louisiana and the extreme western limits, and have crossed over Vermilion Bay to Marsh Island (Bernard 284).

McIlhenny suffered a debilitating stroke in 1946, and passed away in August 1949. He died known to many as the one who introduced nutria to Louisiana, a legend that he, himself, cultivated. Bernard's research, however, indicates that the introduction of this now troublesome critter was much more complex.

Shane Bernard has published two books: Swamp Pop (1996) and The Cajuns (2003), both of which were published by the University of Mississippi Press. An authority on Cajun and Creole History, Bernard published an article on the subject of nutria that was picked up by the Associated Press, and appeared in over 100 newspapers. His understanding of local history is invaluable to discussions of the industry.