¹ Throughout this work I use the inclusive somatic terms “free black,” “free person of color,” and “libre” to encompass anyone of African descent, that is, any free nonwhite person whether he or she be pure African, part white, or part Native American. The exclusive terms pardo (light-skinned) and moreno (dark-skinned)—preferred by contemporary free blacks over mulato and negro—are utilized to distinguish elements within the nonwhite population. Occasional references delineate further between grifo (offspring of a pardo(a) and a morena(o), and in some cases of a pardo(a) and an india(o)), cuarterón (offspring of a white and a pardo(a)), and mestizo (usually the offspring of a white and an indio(a) but in New Orleans sometimes meaning the offspring of a pardo(a) or moreno(a) and an india(o)).

² Hanger, Kimberly S., Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar One insight many of the documents reveal is that racial identity in New Orleans' hierarchical, patriarchal society was very malleable and subjective. A person’s racial designation depended on who recorded it, what purpose it served, when it was recorded, and what physical characteristics were considered niost relevant. For example, censuses taken during the era of French rule grouped New Orleanians into whites, blacks, and Indians, with no differentiation as to free or slave. When the Spanish took over, residents were now white, free pardo or moreno, and slave pardo or moreno. Where did all the Louisiana Indians go? They still lived in or around New Orleans (refer to Usner, Daniel H. Jr., “American Indians in Colonial New Orleans,” in Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast, eds. Wood, Peter H., Waselkov, Gregory A., and Hatley, M. Thomas [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), pp. 104–27]Google Scholar but because Spanish officials outlawed Indian slavery, Native Americans most likely “became” (were reclassified as) persons of African descent. That way, they could still be slaves and would have to sue for their freedom based on Native ancestry in later decades. In addition, the terms used to designate phenotype were many and varied, as they were throughout the Spanish empire. People were not simply black or white based on biological factors, but rather fit into the racial hierarchy according to a complex formula that combined physical features, clothing style, language, religion, family reputation, occupation, and other factors and that differed depending on locality and time period. This is what Patricia Seed best defines as “social race” in her article “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” Hispanic American Historical Review (HAHR) 62:4 (November 1982), 569–606.

³ Hanke, Lewis, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1949)Google Scholar; McAlister, Lyle N., “Social Structure and Social Change in New Spain,” HAHR 43:2 (April 1963), 349–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492–1700 (Minneapolis: LIniversity of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 24–40, and 398–401.

⁴ Records and Deliberations of the Cabildo [hereafter RDC], vol. 2,19 January 1781, Louisiana Collection, New Orleans Public Library.

⁵ Miró’s, Bando de buen gobierno, art. 6, RDC, vol 3, no. 1, 2 June 1786.Google Scholar

⁶ Klein, Herbert S., African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 217–42 Google Scholar; Lachance, Paul F., “The Politics of Fear: French Louisianians and the Slave Trade, 1786–1809,” Plantation Society in the Americas 1:2 (June 1979), 162–97 Google Scholar; Liljegren, Ernest R., “Jacobinism in Spanish Louisiana, 1792–1797,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 22:1 (January 1939), 47–97.Google Scholar

⁷ Cutter, Charles R., The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700–1810 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), pp. 39–43.Google Scholar

⁸ Quotes derived from “Criminales seguidos de oficio contra el Pardo Libre Pedro Bahy,” Louisiana State Museum Historical Center, Spanish Judicial Records [hereafter SJR], 7 October 1791; “Testimonio de la Sumaria contra el Mulato libre Pedro Bailly, Thenienie de las Milicias de Pardos de esta Ciudad, por haver prorrumpido especies contra el Govierno Español, y haverse manifestado adicto a las máximas de los Franceses rebeldes,” Archivo General de Indias, Estado 14, no. 60, 11 February 1794; and “Criminales Seguidos por don Pedro Fabrot contra María Cofinie, parda libre, sobre palabras injuriosas,” SJR, 8 June 1795.

⁹ For a discussion of the images whites held of black women, see Bush, Barbara, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650–1838 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 11–22.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Robin, Claude C., Voyages dans l’Intérieur de la Louisiane, de la Floride Occidentale, et dans les Isles de la Martinique et de Saint-Domingue, 3 vols. (Paris: F. Buisson, 1807), 2:112 Google Scholar; Alliot, Paul, “Historical and Political Reflections,” in Louisiana Under the Rule of Spain, France, and the United States, 1785–1807, 2 vols., ed. Robertson, James Alexander (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1911), 1:146–47Google Scholar.

¹¹ “Magdalena Canella, Mulata libre contra don Luis Beaurepos para la posseción de su esclava Adelaida,” SJR, 20 January 1777.

¹² For a discussion of honor and its changing meanings in the Spanish American context see Gutiérrez, Ramón A., When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Martínez-Alier, Verena, Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba: A Study of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society, 2nd. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Seed, , To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574–1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988).Google Scholar Hanger, , “Coping in a Complex World: Free Black Women in Colonial New Orleans,” in The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, eds. Clinton, Catherine and Gillespie, Michele (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 218–31,CrossRefGoogle Scholar provides additional information on free black women and issues of honor in Spanish New Orleans.

¹³ For more on libre challenges to race discrimination in New Orleans and elsewhere see Hanger, , “Conflicting Loyalties: The French Revolution and Free People of Color in Spanish New Orleans,” and the other articles in A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean, eds. Gaspar, David Barry and Geggus, David Patrick (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 178–203.Google Scholar

¹⁴ These and other forms of daily subversion constituted what Scott, James C. has insightfully identified as “weapons of the weak” (Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985)).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Many Irish Catholics, like Macnemara, held high positions in the Spanish bureaucracy, including a governor-general of Cuba and then Louisiana, Alejandro O’Reilly. Macnemara most likely came to Louisiana with O’Reilly in 1769 and was a close associate of O’Reilly’s and subsequent Louisiana governors.

¹⁶ “María, Negra Libre, Contra don Patricio Macnemara,” SJR, 19 December 1776. María and her one-year-old son were manumitted in 1760 by the boy’s natural father, Comte Pechon, a French infantry officer. Pechon also made an intervivos donation to his son of large sums of money, slaves, and land, which his widow contested when Pechon died later in the decade. Because the child was a minor, Pechon accorded his lover Maria usufruct rights to the property, thereby giving her access to substantial economic resources. Count Pechon’s widow, doña María Claudia Bernoudy, eventually did relinquish the donated property to María Pechon in 1770. It included eighty head of cattle (produced from an original donation of ten cows) valued at 640 pesos; one male and two female slaves valued at 600 pesos; and 480 pesos in wages for María’s eight years of service to the Count subsequent to the date he had freed her (“Réquisition de Marie Claude Bernard, vve. Comte Pechón,” Judicial, French Records, Louisiana State Museum Historical Center, 6 July 1769 Google Scholar; Acts of Andrés Almonester y Roxas, 19 July 1770, Orleans Parish Notarial Archives [hereafter OPNA]).

¹⁷ The testimony varied as to whether Macnemara used a hunting knife or the breech of a gun as his weapon of choice.

¹⁸ The Péchons continued to play an active role in New Orleans society, polity, and economy. Eleven years later María married another free moreno, Gabriel Laloir, a member of the influential Carrière family (Nonwhite Marriages, book 1, no. 37, 11 August 1787, Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans). Francisco Pechón rose through the ranks of the free pardo militia to become a second lieutenant in 1801. He lived in the first ward of New Orleans, the downriver, riverside quadrant (Militia Rosters, Archivo General de Indias, Papeles Procedentes de Cuba [hereafter AGI PC], legajos 159–B, fols. 719–20, [1792] and 160–A, 1 May 1801).

¹⁹ Petitions, Decrees, and Letters of the Cabildo, book 4079, doc. 287, 6 October 1797, Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library. The merchants referred to the “crecido número de Mulatas y Negras tanto libres” (“increasing number of mulatas and negras, so many of them free”).

²⁰ “Resumen del Tercer Barrio de la Nueva Orleans echo el día 18 de Febrero del ano 1796,” AGI PC 212-A, fols. 33–40. A list of losses incurred in the first great fire to sweep colonial New Orleans (March 1788) is another useful source for estimating at least the real and personal property holdings of the city’s free blacks and for comparing them with those of white women and men. In September 1788 a list of 496 claims for damage to buildings and interior furnishings (plus ten claims on state and church property) totaling more than 2.5 million pesos was submitted to the Spanish crown. Fifty-one of the claimants were free black women, and their average estimated loss to real and personal property was 1,814 pesos. Free black men made up only twenty-one of the claimants, with an average loss of 1,700 pesos. Another sixty-seven of the claimants were white women (average loss of 2,880 pesos), almost half of them widows, and the remaining 357 claims were made by white men. The white male average claim of 6,090 pesos was more than double that of white females and about three and a half times greater than that of free black women or men (“Relación de la perdida que cada Individuo ha padecido en el Incendio de esta Ciudad …,” AGI, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 2576, fol. 532, 30 September 1788). Clearly, white men possessed the vast majority of material wealth in late-eighteenth-century New Orleans. Nevertheless, more libre women than libre men held property (which one would expect given that their sex ratios were two to one), but most important, on average they possessed more valuable or larger amounts of property.

²¹ “Diligencias practicadas por Andrés Barba, contra Mariana Brion, Mulata Libre sobre que dicha Mulata no le suba el precio de los Alquileres de la casa que havita,” SJR, 15 February 1786.

²² See articles 52 and 53 of the French Code Noir as applied to Louisiana in 1724 and Bowser, Frederick, “Colonial Spanish America,” in Neither Slave Nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), pp. 40–42.Google Scholar

²³ “Criminales Seguidos por don Pedro Fabrot contra María Cofinie, parda libre, sobre palabras injuriosas,” SJR, 8 June 1795.

²⁴ Court documents never state his name, but the boy was either Juan Isidoro, who was nine years old at the time and died in 1812 at the age of twenty-six, or Pedro, five and a half years old (Nonwhite Baptisms, book 3a, 20 July 1786 and book 4a, 19 March 1790; Nonwhite Burials, [book 5], 1 October 1812, Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans).

²⁵ “Hija(o) de puta” was a phrase commonly cited in slander suits.

²⁶ Cofignie bore eight children during the Spanish period, the first in 1785 and the last in 1801; of these, three died in their youth. She had another daughter in 1806. The father(s) of all but one of Cofignie’s children were not identified; Josef Urra, cuarterón libre born November 1797, was described in his baptismal record as the illegitimate son of Manuel Urrà and the parda libre María Cofignie (Nonwhite Baptisms, books 3a, 4a, 5a, 6a, 7a, 8a, and 9a, 1785–1806, Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans).

²⁷ Cofignie, however, did not give up fighting for what she believed to be just causes. The same month that Favrot brought charges against her, she petitioned a tribunal for the freedom of her brother, Antonio Cofignie, as slave of her former mistress and the widow of her and Antonio’s white father, don Claudio Cofignie. It appears that don Claudio had verbally promised to give each of his three illegitimate children—María, Feliciana, and Antonio—by his grifa slave Luisón 400 pesos to purchase his/her freedom. The girls had done so prior to Cofignie’s death in 1786, but Antonio had not, and now the widow refused to free him for that amount, demanding instead what Maria claimed to be an exhorbitant sum. While María was in the process of seeking retribution, Antonio took matters into his own hands and ran away. His mistress then accused María of assisting Antonio and hiding him; ironically María, who obviously placed much faith in the legal system, was thrown in jail once again, where she again called on the mercy of the court as a “pobre mujer” to release her so she could support her family. Finally, a white planter in Opelousas, whose ties to the Cofignies are not clear, paid 1,100 pesos for the fugitive, with the promise that María would reimburse him that sum if her brother ever reappeared. And the case concluded (“Promovido por María Cofiny Parda Libre sobre que se estime su hermano Antonio Esclavo de doña Francisca Monget para su Libertad,” SJR, 23 June 1795).

²⁸ The Fornerets made up a large and prosperous mixed-race family. Luisa Forneret, the cuarterona daughter of Felicite or Feliciana Forneret, a mulata libre, was born in 1791 when her mother was twenty-one years old. Felicite and Rosa (or María Rosa) Forneret were sisters, two of the nine children born to don Luis Forneret, a white man and government interpreter of Native American languages, and María Forneret, a negra who purchased freedom for herself and their eight children from don Luis in 1786 (one additional child was born free after this date) (Non-white Baptisms, books 3a–13a, 1786–1814, Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans; Acts of Francisco Rodríguez, vol. 9, fo). 1225, 27 July 1786, OPNA; Acts of Francisco Broutin, vol. 7, fol. 203, 19 April 1791, OPNA).

²⁹ “Criminales contra Ursula Macarty Mulata libre por haber dado una cuchillada a la Quarterona Luisa,” SJR, 24 March 1801.

³⁰ “Criminales por querella dada por la Negra libre Angela Piquery, contra la Mulata libre Isabel Conand por haberla herido alevosamente,” SJR, 27 May 1800.

³¹ Martin, Cheryl English, “Popular Speech and Social Order in Northern Mexico, 1650–1830,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32:2 (1990), 305–24,CrossRefGoogle Scholar provides an illuminating example.

³² Some of these cases include: “Criminales seguidos por el nombrado Santiago Vibelmont contra la Negra nombrada Chalinet esclava de Sesilia Mulata libre, sobre haverle dicha negra ultrajado de Palabras dado le de Palos y herídole en la Cara con una hasta de toro,” SJR, 28 September 1786; “Información producida por María Hernández contra Josef Basques su Marido,” SJR 4 July 1793 and “Criminales de oficio contra José Vasques por haber herido a su mujer María Hernández Claro,” SJR, 30 September 1797; “Criminales seguidos de oficio contra don Francisco Delay sobre haver querido matar con un Estoque de Carlos Forneret, Pardo libre,” SJR, 2 January 1795; “Criminales seguidos por Romualdo Marín contra Lorenzo García sobre Palabras Injuriosas,” SJR, 20 June 1795; “Criminales seguidos por oficio del Señor Governador contra el Negro Ponpeyo sobre Injurias y otros excesos,” SJR, 5 August 1795; “Pedro Nitar contra Mr. Desilet hijo por haver agolpeado a Lubin Mulato libre,” SJR, 23 September 1795; “Don Bartolomé Lebreton contra don Bartolomé Lafond sobre palabras,” SJR, 27 June 1796; “Francisco Barba Negro libre querellando se contra Antonio Martínez havitante sobre haverle dado este de golpes,” SJR, 27 September 1797; “Lorenzo Lafontena contra el Negro libre Jorge Felipo, sobre golpes,” SJR, 15 February 1799; “Querella Criminal de doña María Juana Lerable mujer del Capitán de Milicias don Luis Macarty, contra Madama Senas y Madama la Lanne,” SJR, 31 May 1799.

³³ For further elaboration of these topics see Hanger, , “Coping in a Complex World,” pp. 218–31.Google Scholar