Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
liked nor feared began dying soon after Lafitte crossed the water: dead in a crick on the edge
of the settlement; killed by a boom swinging across the quarterdeck.
Lafitte soon had the pirate islands under control. Business would now be conducted in the
efficient way of the marketplace. The pirates took to sea, scouting for targets, bringing cap-
tured ships through the channel into Barataria. Crew and passengers were held captive in
comfort until a ransom was paid. Stolen goods were inventoried and stored in island ware-
houses. If the pirates were lucky enough to come across a slave ship—the big prize, easi-
est pickings with the best return—the cargo, which was human misery, was moved to slave
quarters built on Grand Terre. After arranging matters with Pierre at the blacksmith shop,
plantation owners sailed out for the weekend. They would stay for two nights, drinking and
eating, a party, a feast, before walking the aisles, saying,
That one looks sickly, but I will take
that one, and that one, and that buck over there
. A few days later, the pirates would load the
slaves onto pirogues and flatboats and carry them to plantations up the river.
IfthepiratescameintopossessionofanespeciallylargecargoofAfricanslaves,anauction
washeld,thelocationkeptsecretuntilthelastmoment.Theseevents—thebiggesttookplace
at the temple, the huge pile of clamshells—were advertised in handbills scattered around the
quarter: “Come One! Come All! To Jean Lafitte's Bazaar & Slave Auction. Tomorrow at the
Temple, for Your Delight, Clothing, Gems and Knick-Knacks from the Seven Seas.” On one
such occasion, 400 Africans were sold. Within a year of Lafitte's arrival in Barataria, even
the wildest pirates were calling him Old Man, Boss, Governor. To friends, he was Fita, the
king of the badlands. Grand Terre became a kind of city-state, a capital of a pirate nation. It
was egalitarian, each criminal taking an equal share of the loot and sharing in the responsib-
ility of guarding the channels and the bay.
Lafitte set up a court of admiralty, where he judged the legality of each mission and the
fateofeachprize.Asinthecasewithmostundergroundeconomies, thisoneexistedwiththe
silent consent of the nearby population—it existed, in fact, because of that consent.
The majority of New Orleanians believed the ban on African slaves was foolish, and thus
saw Lafitte less as a pirate than as a businessman supplying a desired product. What's more,
Lafitte was a Frenchman in a French city that had recently come under American rule. He
became a popular hero. Like Jesse James in the vanquished South, he personified the fantasy
of defiance. Many of his practices—the comfort in which he held hostages, the return of run-
away slaves—were followed with this reputation in mind. Like all dictators, he wanted the
love of the people.
Lafitte remade Grand Terre, turned it from a mean camp into a criminal metropolis, the
nightmarecityofbuccaneers.(WhenyouwereakidridingPiratesoftheCaribbeanatDisney
World,shudderingasananimatronicBlackbeardpulledawomanscreamingintoahouse,did
you know that all the animatronic women were being raped?) By 1809, perhaps a thousand
pirates were living on the island, a sandy barrier, its back to the bayou, its face to the sea. Six
