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In the
middle of the seventeenth century, with King
Charles beheaded and Lord Protector Oliver
Cromwell's vengeful Protestantism unleashed the
Irish people were uprooted, slain and kidnapped.
In 1653, local magistrates were authorized to
round up "rogues and vagabonds", and to
deal with merchants and ship captains for their
transportation to the British American colonies,
and it is clear that they embraced their new
powers enthusiastically. With the turmoil in the
land and a convenient new method of making
problems disappear, with perhaps a profit to be
made as well, the magistrates looked none too
closely at the degree and kind of vagabondage of
those brought before them for transportation
across the Western Sea. To June of 1653, sixty
women from Connaught were consigned to Colonel
Stubbers for the colonies; there were others,
many others.
These women were not
slaves, nor were they free to remain in Ireland.
They were spoken of as "servants", but
their labor was bought and sold, they were
whipped and chained as required to ensure their
faithful attendance and diligence, and, while
they were nominally free of their bonds after
seven years, in many of the colonies their
freedom was circumscribed by the harsh living to
be found. They could not marry without
permission, and since a child
out of wedlock(words
changed from original) was an expense to the
master, the result of a dalliance was usually an
extension of the term of their servitude.
Some years later, how many
we cannot say, a shipload of these women, or
their daughters, or their granddaughters, set
sail from the one of the West Indies colonies for
the British possessions in West Florida, what is
now the part Louisiana east of the Mississippi
River but north of New Orleans and its environs.
Did they sail as slaves? As free women but
without means of support? Did they bring
husbands, protectors, sons, fathers or masters?
We can only surmise that they came involuntarily
and alone because of their subsequent history.
Their ship entered Lake
Maurepas through Pass Manchac, having navigated
successfully the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico,
the Mississippi Sound, the Rigolets passes and
Lake Ponchartrain. But Lake Maurepas, where
cypress swamp fades indistinctly into the misty
horizon and no promontories or harbor lights
could guide the seaman, was a trap, a snare, a
cul-de-sac. Add here their voyage ended. We can
picture the disorientation, a stormy night, ships
crew beset with fear of sea and human cargo, the
master pitched or slipped overboard, the rotted
keel torn asunder on cypress knees just beneath
the water, and captors and Irish women and bags
and bales and crates washed without distinction
into the swamp.
Many years later, tales of
a wild race of Irish women living in the cypress
swamps along the western shore of Lake Manchac
began to surface. Loggers felling and floating
the huge logs down Blind River, trappers and wild
people, agreed: a fierce race of women of Irish
descent. The legend has it that these Amazons
feared recapture and slavery in a British
American colony and so remained in the
impenetrable depths until they were sure British
rule was gone from the continent.
Are there still women --
strong from their ordeals, proud in their
heritage -- who live in the River Parishes around
the swamp and who trace their history to this
double transportation? Where are the men who must
necessarily have joined in the propagation of
this clan, these Louisiana Amazons? The tale
persists.
The first part of this
story is true Cromwell and the women of Ireland,
and the British West Indies. The second part,
Louisiana and the swamps, cannot come to us on
paper or in discovered artifacts, but has passed
into oral tradition or legend, but what a story;
Amazons in Louisiana!
If you can confirm or deny
or add to this tale, Dave Stefferud would be
happy to hear from you at davestef@communique.net.
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