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88 chapter four Free People of Color A Dependent Segment of Colonial Natchitoches In november 1782, Étienne de Vaugine, commandant of Natchitoches , banished Pierrot de Blanc from the post in response to the petitionofsixwhiteinhabitantswhoaccusedhimofstealingfivesheep. De Blanc, a carpenter by trade, was the pardo (light-complexioned black) son of the late Cesaire de Blanc and had lived in Natchitoches all of his life. Pierrot’s father, who had formerly been the post’s commandant , had married into the powerful St. Denis family soon after his arrival in Natchitoches in the 1740s. At some point following his father’s death in 1763, Pierrot, a libre (Spanish term for free person of color) inherited 120 piastres’ worth of tools, money, cows, horses, and a cabin located a couple miles from town. Cesaire’s will also stipulated that his legitimate white son, Louis de Blanc, be responsible for Pierrot . In accordance, on March 26, 1783, Louis protested on behalf of his half-brother to Louisiana Governor Esteban Miró, asking that a trial be held “in conformity with the laws . . . and allow the pardo, who has been chased from the post, to return and allow him to name someone to work in his favor.” Although there is no record of Miró’s response, since Pierrot does not appear in subsequent records or censuses, Louis de Blanc—who would become the Natchitoches commandant soon thereafter—was evidently unsuccessful in his efforts to help his halfbrother . Despite Pierrot’s relation to an elite family, the libre had been helpless when a few townspeople and the commandant decided to exile him without a trial.1 TheoriginsofLouisiana’slargeandpropertiedantebellumfreeblack population can be traced to the colonial era. Few libres resided in the province during the French period, but demographic, economic, cultural , legal, and political circumstances during the Spanish era spurred the growth of the free black community. During the late eighteenth century, French settlers turned increasingly to large-scale tobacco, indigo, and cotton production and imported ever larger numbers of slaves as laborers. In Louisiana, as in other parts of the Spanish empire , laws allowed enslaved blacks and Indians to secure their freedom. Under Spanish laws, freed people or blacks born free could not be 89 free people of color reenslaved, and manumission was more easily obtained than under the Gallic system. As a result, Louisiana’s libre population grew significantly . By the beginning of the nineteenth century, free people of color in Louisiana—particularly in New Orleans—and other slave societies throughout the Americas increased in numbers and coalesced to form an intermediate social stratum, separate from whites and slaves.2 Even in Natchitoches, located far to the interior on the LouisianaTexas frontier, the libre population expanded as a result of the lenient Hispanic laws, though the increase was neither as dramatic nor as sustained as that of coastal settlements like New Orleans. The development of a dynamic and self-sufficient group of free people of color occurred later in Natchitoches than in other parts of the Spanish empire because local paternalism and ties to the more powerful free French citizenry impeded the coalescence of libres as a group. The fact that there were hardly any free people of color in Natchitoches until the Spanish era meant that they relied on former owners or white relatives to secure manumissions. Free blacks lived in scattered households and remained socially and economically tied closer to the French segment of Natchitoches society than with other libres or slaves. In the late colonial period, most libres not only owed their liberty to white males but continued to depend on the French for economic and cultural models within the agriculturally based plantation economy even after manumission. Once emancipated, free persons of color theoretically enjoyed relative equality under the law with other free people, but in practice libres—as in the case of Pierrot de Blanc—suffered from social prejudices. Although Natchitoches creoles of color lacked suf- ficient numbers for successful group cohesion throughout most of the Spanish era, the expanding numbers of manumissions late in the period created a population base that permitted libres to form a flourishing community following the Louisiana Purchase.3 During the half century in which France controlled Natchitoches, only twenty-three free people of color—ex-slaves of African or Native Americanancestry—appearinthetown’srecords.Thesmallnumberof gens de couleur (the French term for free people of color) in Natchitoches was consistent with the demographics within the rest of French Louisiana , even along the Gulf Coast. An analysis...

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