Connecting the dots...
In 2013, the Williams
Cypress Sawmill museum in Patterson, Louisiana, added an exhibit. The exhibit was the “Tarzan Lord of the
Louisiana Jungle”. The very first silent
Tarzan movie was filmed in Morgan City, Louisiana, in 1918, at Lake Inn Park,
right on Lake Palourde. Check out the trailer here.
As you will hear in the
trailer, the jungle animals for shooting the movie were shipped in by train
from California. Among the animals
brought in were 18 monkeys. After the
movie was completed the monkeys could not be recaptured so they were left
behind in Morgan City, Louisiana.
While doing research for
the Bayou Pigeon Book and while conducting interviews, several people told
stories of Bayou Pigeon fishermen finding playful monkeys in their boats in the
Bayou Pigeon and Indigo Bayou areas in the early 1900’s. Later on as the story was being told over and
over, it was thought the monkeys might have escaped from the Donaldsonville
State Fair and eventually made their way to the Bayou Pigeon area.
After visiting the Tarzan
exhibit in Patterson, Louisiana and after viewing the above movie trailer on
YouTube we (the author and coauthors of the Bayou Pigeon book) think the
monkeys in the Bayou Pigeon area very possibly came from Morgan City and
perhaps not from the Donaldsonville State Fair. Migrating from Morgan City to
Bayou Pigeon, which is less than 50 miles, would have been quite easy following
the river bank. There is no way to prove
this one way or the other, but it is fun trying to connect the dots.
