Jean Lafitte

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This article is about the privateer. For the town named after him, see Jean Lafitte, Louisiana.
Jean Baptiste Lafitte
1776 – circa 1826

Late 19th century artist's conception of Jean Laffite
Type: Pirate
Place of birth: Bordeaux France?
Place of death:  ?
Yucatan, the Gulf of Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina, Illinois, or Leon, Nicaragua
Rank: Captain
Base of Operations: Barataria Bay
Commands: The Republican
Battles/wars: War of 1812
*Battle of New Orleans
Anonymous portrait said to be of Jean Lafitte in the early 19th century, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas
Anonymous portrait said to be of Jean Lafitte in the early 19th century, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas

Jean Lafitte (1776 - 1826?) was a pirate in the Gulf of Mexico in the early 19th century.

Contents

[edit] Biography

As a privateer and pirate, Jean Lafitte lived much of his life outside the law, and a number of details about his life are obscure. Some believe he was born January 24, 1776 as Jean Baptiste Lafitte in Bayonne, France, although a number of other cities in France also claim to be his birthplace. He married (but did not have any children with) Madeleine Ragaud. Jean is also known to have had one illegitimate child with Catherine Villars; descendants of Pierre Lafitte (born 1816) live in Louisiana to this day. Both Ragaud and Villars were quadroons, one-fourth black and three-fourths French.

He is said to have been a friend of both Andrew Jackson and Napoleon Bonaparte. Lafitte allegedly tried to help Napoleon escape exile, but fearing capture he fled back to Louisiana when Napoleon didn't arrive at Lafitte's boat in Bordeaux at the exact hour planned. Stories also circulated that Lafitte buried Napoleon's treasure somewhere and that it has not been found even to this day.

Along with his 'crew of a thousand men' (the number he commanded was actually quite small, but, due to the loose confederation which he and his brother ran, the number of men engaged in their affairs was substantial), Lafitte sometimes receives credit for helping defend Louisiana from the British in the War of 1812, with his nautical raids along the Gulf of Mexico.

Jean and his older brother Pierre established their own "Kingdom of Barataria" in the swamps and bayous near New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. He claimed to command more than 3,000 men and provided them as troops for the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, greatly assisting Andrew Jackson in repulsing the British attack. The actual number he commanded was more likely a few dozen, although since they specialized in artillery their effect was substantial. Lafitte reportedly conducted his operations in the historic New Orleans French Quarter. General Jackson was informed of Lafitte's gallant exploits at the Battle of New Orleans by Colonel Ellis P. Bean, who then recruited Lafitte to support the Mexican Republican movement.

Of the two brothers, Jean was more familiar with the naval aspects of their enterprise, while Pierre was more often involved with the commercial aspects. Pierre lived in New Orleans or at least maintained his household there (with his mulatto lover who bore him a very large family). Jean spent the majority of his time in Barataria managing the daily hands-on business of outfitting privateers and arranging the smuggling of stolen goods. The most prized "good" was invariably slaves, especially after the outlawing of the slave trade in the United States.

After being run out of New Orleans around 1817, Lafitte relocated to the island of Galveston, Texas establishing another "kingdom" he named "Campeche". In Galveston, Lafitte either purchased or set his claim to a lavishly furnished mansion used by French pirate Louis-Michel Aury, which he named "Maison Rouge". The building's upper level was converted into a fortress where a cannon commanding Galveston harbor was placed. Around 1820, Lafitte reportedly married Madeline Regaud, possibly the widow or daughter of a French colonist who had died during an ill-fated expedition to Galveston. In 1821, the schooner USS Enterprise was sent to Galveston to remove Lafitte from the Gulf after one of the pirate's captains attacked an American merchant ship. Lafitte agreed to leave the island without a fight, and in 1821 or 1822 departed on his flagship, the Pride, burning his fortress and settlements and reportedly taking immense amounts of treasure with him. All that remains of Maison Rouge is the foundation, located at 1417 Avenue A near the Galveston wharf. When Laffite left Galveston Island in 1820 he made Jao de la Porta, a Jewish Texan merchant a full-time trader. [1]

While the Lafitte brothers were engaged in running the Galveston operation, one client they worked with considerably in the slave smuggling trade was James Bowie. The Lafittes were selling slaves at a dollar a pound, and Bowie would buy them at the Lafittes' rate, then get around the American laws against slave trading by reporting his purchased slaves as having been found in the possession of smugglers. The law at the time allowed Bowie to collect a fee on the "recovered" slaves, and he would then re-buy the slaves (essentially a "slave laundering" act) and then resell them to prospective buyers.

The Lafittes were also engaged in espionage, and were, in effect, double agents. The notion of their loyalty to the United States, while much evoked by their own publicity, was highly dubious. The Lafittes (Pierre, in particular) spied for Spain through agents in Cuba and in Louisiana. While often providing solid material, the Lafittes in fact played both sides, American and Spanish, and always with an eye to securing their own interests. No doubt the charm of Pierre and his reputation as a man in the know figured heavily in the weight he was given by his immediate handlers, although he was never trusted by the higher-up of the Spanish interests. Of particular interest it should be noted that while running the island of Galveston for personal benefit, Pierre Lafitte tried to induce Spain to assault the island. This would have enhanced his standing with Spain while causing minimal real losses to the Lafitte operations.

In the early 19th Century, a price of $500 was placed on Jean Lafitte's head by the Louisiana Governor, William C. C. Claiborne. In response, Jean Lafitte put a $5,000 bounty on the Governor. Neither collected the offered rewards.

In early 1821, the U.S. Navy ran Lafitte out of Galveston, according to French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld. While leaving, Lafitte burned his compound. Thus, despite the great heights to which Lafitte rose, began his decline. He left with three vessels, but two of them deserted him a few days later when he refused to attack a convoy of Spanish merchantmen. From that point on, Lafitte's power and influence reached a low ebb, and he became a petty pirate and thief. He established a base on Mujeres Island (Isla Mujeres ) off the coast of Yucatán, but it was just a small collection of squalid huts.

Herbert Asbury recounts his death in The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld. In 1826, Lafitte entered the little Indian village of Teljas, on the mainland, and died of fever after a few days' illness in a native hut. He was 47.

[edit] Lafitte's journal

The authenticity of the Lafitte Journal is hotly debated among Lafitte scholars, with some accepting the manuscript and others denouncing it as a forgery. The problem of authenticating the diary is confounded by the scarcity of genuine documents in Lafitte's handwriting for comparison. The most reliable genuine Lafitte documents are two short manuscripts from the library collection of Republic of Texas president Mirabeau B. Lamar, which are currently held by the Texas State Archives. Paper tests confirm that the Journal is written on paper from the 19th century, though no consensus exists about authenticity among the small number of handwriting experts who have studied the document. The original manuscript was purchased by Texas Governor Price Daniel in the 1970s and is on display at the Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center in Liberty, Texas. Translated versions of the journal have been in print since the 1950s.

[edit] Folklore

Lafitte claimed never to have plundered an American vessel, and though he engaged in the contraband slave trade, he is accounted a great romantic figure in Louisiana and Texas. The mystery surrounding Lafitte has only inflated the legends attached to his name. Lafitte was said to be a master mariner; according to one legend he was once caught in a tropical storm off the coast of North Galveston and steered his ship to safety by riding the storm surge over Galveston island and into the harbor.

Lafitte's lost treasure has acquired a lore of its own as it, like his death, was never accounted for. He reportedly maintained several stashes of plundered gold and jewelry in the vast system of marshes, swamps, and bayous located around Barrataria Bay. One such legend places the treasure somewhere on the property of Destrehan Plantation, and Lafitte's spirit walks the plantation on nights of full moons to guide someone to the treasure's location. Other rumors suggest that Lafitte's treasure sank with his ship, the Pride, either near Galveston or in the Gulf of Mexico where some believe it went down during an 1826 hurricane. In the area of Galveston, it is commonly said that Lafitte buried his treasure on Galveston Island.

His legend was perpetuated in Cecil B. DeMille's classic film The Buccaneer and its 1958 remake, and even by a poem of Byron:

He left a corsair’s name to other times,
Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes[1].

[edit] Other references to Lafitte

  • Lafitte is also the subject of the Contraband Days festival of Lake Charles, Louisiana, held during the first two weeks of May to celebrate rumors of buried treasure in Lake Charles and Contraband Bayou. The festival features a band of actors portraying Lafitte and his pirates, who sail into the city's namesake lake and capture the city's mayor, forcing him to walk the plank. No such event is known to have occurred, although there are unsubstantiated legends that Lafitte hid treasure in the area of the lake.
  • Carl Ouellet played a gimmick in the World Wrestling Federation where he was supposedly a descendant of Lafitte. His ring name was a combination of the Lafitte brothers' names, Jean-Pierre Lafitte.
  • "Who was Jean Lafitte?" was the correct response to the "final jeopardy" answer on the television game show Jeopardy! that aired on Thursday, August 23, 2007. The question was, "When the Governor of Louisiana put a $500 price on his head, he responded by putting a price on the Governor's head."
  • Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop is a bar on Bourbon Street in the New Orleans French Quarter. It is one of the oldest continually operating bars in North America and is notable for antique construction and its lack of electric light sources. Legend holds that it was a front for Lafitte's operations in the city, but no definitive record of this exists.

[edit] In popular culture

The figure of Jean Lafitte has made a number of appearances in popular culture.

[edit] Literature

  • Lafitte plays a prominent role in Isabel Allende's novel Zorro, where the real pirate and the fictional hero fall in love with the same woman, Juliana, in 19th century Louisiana.
  • Lafitte appears as a minor character in Barbara Hambly's Wet Grave, the sixth of her historical mystery series set in New Orleans.
  • A fictional descendant, Johnny Lafitte, is the main character of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel Pirate Blood.
  • Author Poppy Z. Brite used him in her short story "The Sixth Sentinel" in the collection Wormwood.
  • Jean Lafitte plays a role in the American Girl History Mystery The Smuggler's Treasure.
  • Lafitte appears as the principal villain in Charles Sealsfield's 1829 novel Tokeah; or, the White Rose.
  • Joseph Holt Ingraham writes a book about Lafitte called Lafitte: The Pirate of the Gulf.

[edit] Film and television

  • Jean Lafitte (John Dehner) befriends Hoss Cartwright (Dan Blocker) on Bonanza; Hoss helps him clear his name of a murder charge in "The Gentleman from New Orleans", an episode aired originally February 2nd 1964 on NBC (Season 5, Episode 18).
  • Lafitte is portrayed by Paul Henreid in the 1950 movie, "Last of the Buccaneers"
  • In the episode of Jem and the Holograms, Jean Lafitte is characterized as the unrequited love to a singer, who happens to look like Shana.

[edit] Comics

  • He appears in DC Comics' Swamp Thing title, said to have been slain by a fellow pirate named Dark Conrad Constantine.

[edit] Games

  • Jean Lafitte also appears in the game American Conquest Divided Nation, in the Battle of New Orleans.

[edit] Other appearances

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ cf. Lafitte Society's selected bibliography.

[edit] See Also

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

[edit] On the life of Lafitte

[edit] Other sites

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