The swamps of Acadiana are as dense with tales of tradition as the Spanish moss that blankets the cypress trees. Among those stories stand the traiteurs — the faith healers.

These Cajun folk heroes traversed the region to visit anyone ailing from anything. They carried no tools of modern medicine, or even of ancient medicine. They laid hands on people and prayed in French.

When they were done, they left — with no expectation of payment for their work. And not another word was spoken about it. As the legends go, the healing would not happen if these tenets were violated.  

Traiteurs like these are not relegated to the shadows of Cajun history. Faith healers today continue to pray for sick people to get well. But the practice has changed. Modern traiteurs have thrown off the veil of silence and have embraced technology like telephones and the internet to share their prayers and the healing touch of God.

A Family Tradition

Traiteur Becca Begnaud discovered faith healing as a child. She was about 10 years old and was playing outside — doing what a 10-year-old does. She began to feel bad. She was suffering from sunstroke, but she was more concerned about her mother’s reaction.

“My momma would fuss at me,” Begnaud recalls. “That’s what mommas do.”

Her mother didn’t fuss at her. She called Becca’s grandfather instead.

“I thought something was wrong with her,” Begnaud says of her mother. “Momma said, ‘He’s gonna come treat you.’ I didn’t know what to think. Is he going to treat me good? Is he going to treat me bad? Is he going to give me a treat.? I really had those thoughts.”

Becca’s grandfather put his hands in a basin of water and ran his fingers through her hair while he prayed over her in French. She didn’t understand then what was happening. All she knew was that before long she was ready to go back outside and play. Nothing more was said about what had happened. 

“I didn’t know anything about that,” she says. “It wasn’t something we talked about. Sacred doesn’t mean it’s a secret. You just don’t talk about it.”

When Helen Boudreaux was about 10, she knew her Tante Eunice Boutin was called a traiteur, but she had no idea what that meant. She thought less and less about it through the years as she grew up, got married and went on with her life. But it all came back to her in 1992, when she went to Lafayette to visit her ailing Tante Eunice.

“She gave me her prayers,” Boudreaux says. “One day she said, ‘Helen, do you want my prayers?’ I didn’t know what she was talking about. I said, ‘Sure, I will take them.’ That first day, she taught me a couple of prayers in French. On my second visit, she gave me three more. On my last visit, she gave me the other three. Eight or nine prayers all together. I still have them to this day.”

Boudreaux is honored to have been chosen to carry on this family tradition.“Tante Eunice had a lot of family, and she chose me,” she says.

Keeping the Faith

While honored to receive the prayers, Bourdreaux was unsure about what she had been given.

“I was scared of the prayers,” she admits. “I was not sure about the prayers or what they meant. I was not sure I was good enough or worthy enough that God would recognize me as somebody who could serve people that way. I had no confidence in myself. Yet she believed in me. It took me a couple of years to really work on it.”

Despite her fear, Boudreaux did go to work praying with people for their healing. She prayed for burns, rashes and sore throats. She started out praying for and laying hands on her family. As her confidence grew, word began to spread.

She recalls one healing, in particular, when she realized she didn’t even have to touch her patient. “One day a man called me,” she explains. “He was at Church Point. His horse had cut herself, and blood was gushing out. I said a prayer over the phone. As I prayed, he said it slowed down. When I finished the prayer, he said it stopped. I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I realized it was God’s will. God lays his hand on the sick.”

Boudreaux has collected more than 60 prayers from people through the years. She has prayers for all sorts of ailments. She often prays for people over the phone, because she knows the power is not in the traiteur or in the prayers — it comes from God.

“You don’t have to be a traiteur,” she says. “When you pray, God’s going to lay hands on that person.

“After you pray for somebody, don’t call the next day and ask, ‘Did it work?’ You don’t question God. It’s in His hands.”

All About Community

Begnaud says that faith healing is not an affront to modern medicine, but rather a nod to everyone’s need for community.“We can’t let it be simple,” she says. “Medicine came along, and you have people in medicine who think this is superstitious. After all, they went to medical school. What happened culturally, we wanted to do better than grandma and grandpa. We turned our backs on letting someone be sick and nursing them back to health. Nursing meant caring. There is no more caring in health care.”

She recalls the effects of a caring community in her childhood. “The Cajuns — my grandfather, the people around here — lived like family,” she says. “Nobody starved to death because the community was for all, black and white, sharecroppers and rich, big families and single families. Even orphans had a place to go because the doors were always open. The community itself was generous, so I think this culture was the perfect place for the gift (of healing) to continue.” 

Begnaud has studied Reiki, a Japanese form of alternative medicine, and other healing practices. She also has a degree in anthropology. Through it all, she has learned faith healing is not unique to Cajun culture and its traiteurs.“The Cajuns don’t have a monopoly on healing,” Begnaud says. “It’s everywhere. They have healing in every culture. God is not a Catholic. My grandma would flip in her grave if she heard me say that. That’s all she knew, so she wasn’t wrong to believe that. You’ve got to understand that the idea of God is in every culture.” 

Community is no longer defined by geographic borders or family trees, Begnaud says. She has embraced technology to expand her community at her website, ahealingartscollective.com. 

“It’s all about community,” she said. “My community is on the internet and on Zoom. It’s not limited by who’s across the street from me.”

Today’s traiteurs no longer operate in a vacuum of secrecy. But Boudreaux still holds tight to one of Cajun faith healing’s traditions — the traiteur cannot accept payment.She recalls the story of a traiteur she knew who started charging people for his work. Not only did his prayers stop working, but he went into the hospital himself and never came out, she says.

“That kills the prayer right there,” she says. “You can thank them for the prayer, but thank God for the healing. We are just a servant. You can feed them a bowl of gumbo, but no money is to exchange hands.”