FESTIVAL SPOTLIGHTS FRENCH HERITAGE

A festival celebrating the French cultural heritage of Southeast Missouri came to a close Monday afternoon on the lawn of the Common Pleas Courthouse in Cape Girardeau amid the sounds of French Cajun music and the sights of local actors portraying early French settlers of the region.

The second annual festival, called La Fete Francaise, also included American Dixieland jazz played by Les Flagada Stompers, a seven-man jazz band from Lyon, France, and a performance of "Audubon in Ste. Genevieve" by the Historyonics Theatre Company of St. Louis.

The three-day festival, which kicked off Saturday at the Old Courthouse in St. Louis and continued on Sunday in Ste. Genevieve, was sponsored by Les Amis or The Friends. It was spawned from the Ste. Genevieve flood in 1993 and the efforts of the group to preserve the French heritage and French structures of the Mississippi River valley.

The celebration in Cape Girardeau began Monday morning with a lecture by O.D. Niswonger of Cape Girardeau on the origin of the Fleur de Lys, the symbol of the French monarchy.

Niswonger, president of the American Iris Society, said that according to legend the iris became the symbol of France when the first French king, Clovis, faced King Alrich and the Visigoths.

The French had a problem crossing a river. As they looked for a place to cross, Clovis saw a place where the irises were growing in the water and knew that at that point the water would be only a foot deep. The French king and his army crossed and defeated the Visigoths. From that point on, the iris became the symbol of French royalty.

After Niswonger, the Rev. Louis Derbes spoke on the "The French Origins of the Vincentian Fathers in the Mississippi Valley."

Derbes was born in New Orleans and is of French Creole ancestry. He taught at St. Vincent's Seminary in Cape Girardeau and has been associated with St. Mary's of the Barrens in Perryville since 1990.

In addition to Les Flagada Stompers, music for the festival was provided by The Brown Baggers from Carbondale. The four-man band played traditional Louisiana folk music sung entirely in French.

They were followed on stage by the Zenon River Brigade, a 20-member local re-enactor group. The group portrayed the trappers, traders and others who lived in the Cape Girardeau area from the mid-to-late 1700s.

Linda Nash, one of the group's members, portrayed Charlotte Pemanpiah Bouganville Lorimier, the Indian wife of Louis Lorimier, founder of Cape Girardeau.

Originally, all events were to take place at Cape Girardeau's Riverfront Park, but the high waters of the Mississippi River caused a change in plans. One event that had been planned for the day -- a re-enactment of the landing of French-Canadian explorers Marquette and Joliet by canoe had to be canceled because of the high waters.

Support for the event was provided by the Southeast Missouri Council of the Arts, Southeast Missouri State University, the Downtown Merchants Association and the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Assistance was also provided by the Missouri Arts Council, the Missouri Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities and Union Planters Bank.