Bayou Teche was the Mississippi River's main course when it developed a delta about 2,800 to 4,500 years ago.

Through a natural process known as deltaic switching, the river's deposits of silt and sediment cause the Mississippi to change its course every thousand years or so.

The Teche begins in Port Barre where it draws water from Bayou Courtableau and then flows southward to meet the Lower Atchafalaya River at Patterson.

During the 18th-century Acadian migration to the area - then known as the Attakapas region - the Teche was the primary means of transportation.

After the levees were built along the Atachafalaya River in the 1930s, the Teche and the rice farms located along the bayou suffered a drastic reduction in fresh water.

Where the huge carcass lay and decomposed, the depression it left behind filled with water to become the bayou.