Before those grand Cabildo men
Excerpt from “The Dirge of St. Malo” (Louisiana folk song as recorded by George Washington Cable, in “Creole Slave Songs,” The Century Magazine, April 1886)
They charged that he had made a plot
To cut the throats of all the whites.
They asked him who his comrades were;
Poor St. Malo said not a word!
The judge his sentence read to him,
And then they raised the gallows-tree.
They drew the horse – the cart moved off –
And left St. Malo hanging there.
“The Dirge of St. Malo” recounted the heroic exploits and execution of St. Malo (aka San Maló, Juan Maló and Jean Saint-Malo).
From 1780 to 1784, St. Malo became the Spanish colony’s most notorious maroon, or cimarrón, after establishing a territory for fugitive slaves at Ville Gaillarde (in present-day St. Bernard Parish). His territory stretched from the Rigolets in present-day New Orleans East to Lake Borgne, along the canals and bayous connecting Lake Pontchartrain, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi River. This area encompasses the present site of Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge. One of St. Malo’s main encampments was located a short distance away at Chef Menteur Pass, a narrow waterway that connects Lake Borgne to Lake Pontchartrain. In defense of this territory, St. Malo reportedly issued the warning: “Woe betide the white man who crosses these bounds.” When several white Americans attempted to capture him and fellow maroons to return them to slavery in 1783, St. Malo killed one man and rescued his compatriots. St. Malo later confessed his role in killing four white Englishmen and commandeering their provisions. After several raids on his encampment by colonial authorities, St. Malo was eventually captured, tortured, and sentenced to a public hanging in Plaza de Armas (Jackson Square) on June 19, 1784.
Maroon settlements like the one established by St. Malo developed throughout the New World where African runaways tried to recreate the language, religion, and cultural traditions that were severed by slavery. Many of these maroon communities developed in colonial Louisiana. Beginning in the 1720s, Africans fleeing slavery developed an extensive network of settlements on the outskirts of New Orleans. In Louisiana, marronage was initially a temporary break for enslaved Africans and Indians who often ran away together to escape neglect and abuse by slave owners. By the 1740s, the system had developed into a well-established, sophisticated form of resistance to slavery and the plantation economy. Enslaved men, women, and children in pursuit of freedom risked recapture, brutal punishment, and death at the hands of slave owners and government agents. Whether escaping for a short duration or for an extended period, maroons created alternative communities that existed between slavery and freedom.
Navigating the wetlands posed real dangers. The presence of alligators and poisonous snakes, fluctuating water levels, and a treacherous natural landscape deterred potential inhabitants. This proved to be an advantage for maroons who created a mutually-sustaining community beyond the supervision of plantation owners and the colonial government. St. Malo and other maroons learned to navigate the narrow, intricate network of waterways, using them as escape routes and secret passages to other maroon villages. They adapted to the natural environment by planting, harvesting, fishing, and hunting in the abundant habitat. Maroons’ family members and friends in New Orleans or on nearby plantations helped them to pirate and trade food, ammunition, and supplies. They also provided valuable intelligence that aided the maroons in defending their settlements.
Many whites turned a blind eye to the maroon colonies to advance their own economic interests. They traded with maroons, purchased their wares, and hired them to work in nearby sawmills. Maroons shared their earnings equally among their fellow fugitives in direct challenge to the slave economy that exploited their labor for the financial benefit of a white minority. Because of their small numbers, whites could not contain the system of marronage. For the most part, they accepted it as an inconvenient reality. This reality made it easier for maroons like St. Malo to move between plantation, marshland, and city without arousing suspicion. These fluid communities developed in tandem with New Orleans Afro-Creole culture.
Nearby Sites of Interest
NASA Michoud Assembly Facility—13800 Old Gentilly Rd. New Orleans, LA 70129
A NASA-owned manufacturing facility managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center. During the Space Shuttle Program between 1979-2010, the facility produced components of the space shuttle external tank, which were shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Former site of a plantation dating to the 18th-century that was owned by a succession of New Orleans slave owners and businessmen and their heirs through WWII.
To Learn More
- Gilbert C. Din, “The San Malo Affair” in Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803, 89-115 (1999).
- Sylviane A. Diouf, “The Maroons of Bas du Fleuve, Louisiana” in Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons, 157-185 (NYU Press, 2014).
- Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, “Bas du Fleuve: The Creole Slaves Adapt to the Cypress Swamp” in Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 201-236 (LSU Press, 1992).
- Lawrence N. Powell, “Slavery and the Struggle for Mastery” in The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans, 222-248 (Harvard UP, 2012).