Shepherds of Les Landes: A Community on Stilts in France

The shepherds of Les Landes, France, navigated their challenging landscape on stilts, using the height to manage flocks and perform everyday tasks with remarkable skill. Here is a 1910 article about these amazing people:

Landes Shepherds

There is a vast district in France where the entire community goes about and transacts its business on stilts. This district is called “Les Landes.”

The inhabitants, who are among the poorest peasants in France, gain their subsistence by fishing, by such little agriculture as is possible and by keeping cows and sheep. The shepherds make use of their stilts for two purposes — first, because walking is quite impossible on account of the sage and undergrowth of brush, and, second, because the height of their stilts gives them a greater range of vision.

The stilts generally are about six or seven feet high. Near the top there is a support for the foot, which has a strong stirrup and strap, and still nearer the top a band of leather fastens the stilt firmly to the leg just below the knee. Some stilts, especially those made for fancy walking and for tricks, are even higher than seven feet, and the man who uses these, and he must be an expert, can travel as fast as ten miles an hour. The lower end of this kind of stilt is capped with a sheep bone to prevent its splitting.

Some of these Landes shepherds are wonderfully clever in the management of their stilts. They run races, step or jump over brooks, clear fences and walls and are able to keep their balance and equilibrium while stooping to the ground to pick up pebbles or to gather wild flowers. They fall prone upon their faces and assumer their perpendicular without an effort and in a single moment after they have thus prostrated themselves.

Source: The Western news. (Stevensville, Mont.), 19 Jan. 1910.