This trade in furs made the settlement important despite its small population. Most of the permanent residents were French Canadians and Americans, though some distinguished Spaniards remained, none more distinguished than Don Carlos de Villemont, commander of Arkansas Post until the turnover to the United States in 1803. Now he owned more than twelve thousand acres along the Mississippi, and he and his wife and several children were American citizens. Universally liked and respected, he displayed impeccable manners and high principles, and was a sociable and cheerful host to visitors, as Laffite and Latour found on their arrival.7 They also became acquainted with Frederick Notrebe, the township justice for Arkansas County.8 Indeed, since Notrebe traded frequently in New Orleans, he and Laffite may have been acquainted already.9
Latour and Laffite tried to keep their mission a secret, even adopting false names—Laffite calling himself "Captain Hillare" and Latour becoming John Williams—but the people at Arkansas Post soon realized who Jean was, possibly because Notrebe recognized him. Latour and Laffite noted the frustration people expressed with Washington. The Creoles among them had been lax in registering their old French and Spanish land grants with the new American regime, and now found themselves at risk of losing their land and feeling aggrieved at the United States. "They know the Americans and cordially hate them," said Latour. They would welcome a return of Spanish authority. 10
By early July Latour and Laffite had moved upriver to Pine Bluff, where they visited with the widower François Catejan de Vaugine, a native of Bayou Teche who had been appointed judge of the court of common pleas by the governor of the territory in 1804, William Clark. Laffite and Vaugine became friendly enough that the judge engaged Jean to witness a property transaction on July 4.11 Sometime after July 4 Laffite and Latour were ready to go on. By this time they had another companion on the journey, the surveyor Louis Bringier. Pierre Laffite may have known him slightly, for Bringier lived on Canal Street in New Orleans until 1810 and was frequently sighted at the city's gaming parlors. He had also taken part in some business transactions in Ascension at the time Pierre was moving El Boladors slaves through that parish. Bringier left Louisiana to explore the Arkansas and Missouri territory, chiefly scouting for spots to mine gold on public lands.
Not too many months ago Bringier had petitioned Congress to enact legislation allowing citizens to exploit minerals on public lands west of the Mississippi, and though Congress did not respond to his entreaty, the Public Lands Committee did report on February 13, 1816, a recommendation for a bill allowing the president to grant leases or permits on an ad hoc basis. This was enough to encourage Bringier to pursue his prospecting. Interestingly, if Bringier made his petition in person, then he was in Washington at the same time as Laffite and Latour, and the three meeting now in Arkansas Post may not have been mere serendipity. By joining together, Bringier gained company and possible assistance on his prospecting, and Latour and Laffite had the advantage of Bringier's prior travels up the Arkansas.12
The three set out in keelboats and barges with crews to pole their way up the Arkansas, bringing provisions to last them several months, as well as arms for protection and some of Bringier's mining equipment and tools. They stopped first at the plantation of Daniel Wright, located a few miles below a land feature known as the Little Rock. Laffite and Wright became acquainted enough that a year later Wright entrusted Jean with his power of attorney to sell a slave for him in New Orleans. 13 From Wright's they moved upstream, a dozen miles past the Little Rock until they came to Crystal Hill on the north bank.14 Bringier lived there, and here they made camp. Over the next few weeks they assembled a lumber mill, then cut and milled timber to erect shanties in which they set up Bringier's mining machinery. They prospected in the vicinity for a time, but it proved an unhealthy stop, for a few of the boatmen took sick and died.15
Bringier remained there looking for silver or gold while Laffite and Latour continued their journey.16 From Crystal Hill they poled upriver, stopping at Cadron. The new American settlement was nothing more than a blockhouse and half a dozen scattered farming families, and so remote that its leading citizen, Major James Pyeatt, maintained that he only learned of the War of 1812 after it was over.17 That degree of isolation was gone, as Latour noted that United States mail now came to Cadron, brought by mail riders who then traveled southwest past the Hot Springs on the Ouachita, and down to Natchitoches. If Washington would deliver the mail to this far-flung outpost, then the government clearly expected it to endure and to grow.
Equally significant, at Cadron Latour and Laffite met a trapper who told them he had several times made the seven-hundred-mile overland trip across the plains to Taos and the pass through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains into the Rio Grande Valley. It took just fifteen days, and from Taos it was a mere seventy miles to Santa Fe. If a man on horseback could make this journey in such a time, then an army could do it in a month. If the Americans took Santa Fe, then they could cut off California, and at the same time have the Rio Grande as a highway into Texas.18
While at Cadron, Latour's expedition traded with Indians who told them of rich fields of ore near the Caddo River, perhaps seventy-five miles away. This was enough to persuade some in the group to set out overland on ponies purchased from the Indians. After riding several days southwest through heavily wooded and hilly country they made camp at the Caddo, and were ready to prospect again when they were attacked by a roving party of Lipan Indians. At first the prospectors repulsed them, but in a few days the Lipan returned in strength and the whites abandoned their camp and made their way back to the Arkansas, and then down to Major Pyeatt's home at Cadron, as quickly as they could. 19
Laffite and Latour did not participate in the prospecting for long, if at all, though the promised gold would have appealed to both. They had a clear mission from Onís, and limited time to accomplish it. They also had the recently published maps made by Major Zebulon Pike of the United States Army as a result of his exploration of the territory a few years earlier.20 Leaving the prospectors behind to their digging, Laffite and Latour continued the arduous voyage up the Arkansas until they reached its confluence with the Poteau River, and a village of about thirty families where Fort Smith would be established the following year. The expedition leaders saw the area's fertile soil and agreed that the nascent settlement was likely to swell rapidly with Americans. Moving up the Arkansas another hundred miles or more they came to a grand village of the Osage Indians, where they found a substantial saltworks with mills, evaporating vats, and all the machinery necessary to extract salt from local deposits.21 The Poteau settlement and its saltworks would be further aids to any American army on the march.
Latour was finding that the Pike maps were not very accurate, however.22 As he and Laffite traveled, he drew his own, his chief concern being potential avenues of American invasion.23 A day or two beyond the Osage village the Arkansas ceased to be navigable, but by then Latour and Laffite were no more than eight days overland from Santa Fe. This was one line of advance. Another was via an upper fork of the Red River in Caddo country not far from where their prospecting comrades encountered the Lipan. The Red then flowed southerly into western Louisiana, to Natchitoches, from which the overland trail into Texas was well established. Laffite and Latour did not have to travel that route to learn of its practicality. Finally, invaders could move up the Mississippi to the Red, and then up to Caddo Lake, from which Cypress Bayou led a few miles to an established trace that would take them directly south over the headwaters of the Sabine to Nacogdoches, and then southwest across the Trinity and Brazos rivers straight to Béxar. 24
Laffite and Latour probably did not stray far from their boats or the river, relying on information gathered from locals and travelers to fill in their picture of the region as well as their maps. If they did venture down to the Red River they did not go far, for by November 5 they were back at Arkansas Post with Bringier, who had found ore samples that Notrebe thought were gold, but proved not to be.25 Lat
our and Laffite were also there to witness settlers casting their votes in local races at the same time as presidential balloting, though territorial voters did not participate in James Monroe's landslide election to the Oval Office. Of more interest to them than the outcome was the turnout. From the electoral count Latour drew an idea of the population and concluded that, though a mere ten years earlier it had been a wilderness, the banks of the Arkansas River were proportionately more settled than Spanish New Mexico.26 Calculating how the population would grow at its present rate of expansion, or what dangers this posed for Spain's hold on Texas, was not hard. Neither did they overlook the settlers' petition that year to have Arkansas separated from the Missouri Territory to become a territory in its own right, the first step to statehood. Moreover, Congress had promised to give veterans of the recent war a million acres of land as a bounty, and once there, the veterans would themselves constitute a potential army of conquest.27
Following the election, Laffite and Latour did not tarry long before taking their boats down the Arkansas to the Mississippi, and thence to New Orleans. They reached home in the last days of the month. By their estimate, in a journey lasting eight months they had covered a round trip of some 540 leagues between New Orleans and the navigable headwaters of the Arkansas, more than 1,500 miles.28 What they had seen ought to alarm Spain. The Americans moving into the Arkansas country were greater in number than they had expected, and endured hardship cheerfully. "They have strength of character, courage, and skill in the use of guns rarely seen among civilized people," declared Latour. From what Latour and Laffite had heard, even more were settling on the Red River. The land there was excellent and suitable to growing sugar, cotton, indigo, tobacco, corn, and other produce. Already beaver had begun to disappear because of the onslaught of trappers, and Latour and Laffite had seen many hunters leave for the Rio Grande Valley even in late autumn, at the risk of being caught in the mountains in winter. Excess "adventurers" from the eastern United States were pouring into this public land, their eyes fixed on Mexico. "They will gladly join any expedition that is proposed in that direction," Latour concluded.
Worse, the Americans were prepared to incite the Indian peoples to aid them in fighting the Spanish. Latour and Laffite saw traders ready to import guns to the Indians up the Red and Arkansas, and from St. Louis through to the Osage. They also saw a brisk contraband trade in leather, harness, spurs, stirrups, buckles, and more, carried on between the Spaniards in New Mexico and the American traders on the Arkansas and Red, who sold to the Indians. The profits were simply too tempting. The Indians traded furs at the exchange rate of 25 cents per pound. Laffite and Latour witnessed a carbine that would sell for $15 to $20 in Kentucky being exchanged with Indians for 250 pounds in furs, which could then be sold in New Orleans for 35 to 40 cents a pound. A $15 investment in Kentucky could be turned into a profit of $75 or more in New Orleans. 29
Latour returned to find copies of his book on the Battle of New Orleans done at last, though not before their delay in coming off the presses resulted in a legal imbroglio for Livingston over his failure to deliver them in time to be sold by subscription.30 No sooner did Latour see his words in print than he began work on a report of the expedition, but to complete a full outline of the hazards Spain faced in its territories he needed more than his own observations. He asked the Laffites for their opinions on the filibusters and revolutionary movements. For all the sympathy the revolutionary movements had in the East, it was in the West, and particularly Louisiana, that the rebels received their greatest encouragement and succor. The Laffites knew this as intimately as anyone, and they knew leaders such as Herrera, Toledo, and Humbert even better than Latour. It was all too evident that the Americans sympathized with them, and that some invested heavily in their enterprises. To prevent harboring an enemy within,31 Spain must fight further immigration by Americans into its lands and win back the allegiance of the original inhabitants of the settlements on the Ouachita, White, Red, and Arkansas rivers, and up the Mississippi at New Madrid and St. Louis. The dissatisfaction Latour and Laffite had seen among some of the Americans could be put to good use, and the even greater discontent of many of the settlers from the days of French and Spanish reign was a considerable asset. The spread of Americans westward was "inevitable," Latour warned. "The Spanish government cannot prevent it, but at least it can put off the time." Spain must firmly establish the Louisiana boundary as far east as possible, and then militarize that border to stop American infiltration and control the Indians. If Spain could hold on long enough, other factors might save her possessions later, for Latour at least believed that there were signs of an incipient sectional rivalry that could one day lead to the breakup of the Union. When that happened, none of the separate sections would be strong enough to threaten Spain's grip on her colonies. 32
While Latour considered population changes, the Laffite family continued to expand. Besides Pierre's daughters Catherine Coralie and Rosa and his sons Pierre, possibly Eugene, Jean Baptiste, and Martin, Pierre's household also contained Catherine and her infant Jean Pierre.33 By August Marie was six months pregnant with another child. This would mean at least ten in the home not counting any slaves or the absent adult Jean. They needed a larger house, and thanks to the money coming in from Spain, Pierre could move them. Of course he bought no property in his name. Plumage protected him as much as it did Marie, for a property purchased in her name could not be confiscated on his account though he had paid for it.
On August 17, while Jean was still away, Pierre sent Marie to Claude Treme to buy a house and lot at the northeast corner of Bourbon and St. Philip streets. It represented a considerable step up in the Laffites' living standard, for the house cost $5,500, more than six times the $900 their previous home had sold for the year before. Marie took out a mortgage for $1,120, and Pierre must have given her the rest of the cash down payment of $2,500, the property itself being security for payment. It was a standard sized lot for the quarter, 60 feet along Bourbon and 120 along St. Philip.34 The house was twenty-six years old, having been built by Juan Moore under a contract with Don Carlos Parent, coincidentally the father of the Charles Parent to whom Pierre made the sham sale of the Presidente. Moore had built a wood and brick house fifty-two feet wide on Bourbon and forty-two feet deep, with a ten-foot-wide wraparound gallery fronting both streets. Inside were six rooms or "apartments," with three fireplaces for heat.35 Behind the house sat two outbuildings, one a kitchen and the other either a well or an outhouse.36 Despite the price, the property was not situated in the most desirable section of the old quarter or Vieux Carré. Next door on St. Philip sat the charity hospital, while on the opposite corner were two groups of dilapidated wooden buildings, and next to them two more buildings in nearly as bad condition. 37 The Laffite family would remain in this house for several years.38
The money from Spain also allowed Pierre to extricate himself from his creditors, and for a change it was now Pierre Laffite who recovered money from others. The executors of his onetime business associate Robin had spent months trying to collect on $2,297 notes Pierre had given for loans, but in April he was able to show proof of having paid them and a jury awarded him its verdict, with court costs to be paid by Robin's heirs.39 Laffite went after $3,075.50 due him from the brothers' former accomplice in the Lafourche smuggling, Godefroi Dumon, and tried to foreclose on Dumon's land near Donaldsonville as compensation.40
For the first time in more than a year Pierre Laffite dealt in slaves again, though clearly not as a supplier as before. In April and May he took in $1,400 from the sale of two, but then on August 15, only two days before buying the Bourbon and St. Philip house, Pierre bought a black from San Domingue for $700, most likely as a house servant. If so, the young man must not have given satisfaction, for four months later Pierre sold him.41 Meanwhile Pierre gave almost perfect satisfaction to his new employers, not least because of his ability to lie convincingly. Picornell found Laffite to be "of attractive appearance and distingu
ished manners," and learned in talking with townspeople that "no one who has known him before and after his activities in Barataria fails to regret that a man otherwise so good and so honest in meeting his obligations should have lent himself to a business so detestable as that." Given Pierre's history with creditors, this statement alone revealed Picornell's gullibility. He also somehow confused Pierre with Jean, or else Pierre convinced him that he and not Jean directed affairs on Grand Isle, for the Spaniard told his superiors that it was well known "among the rabble that surrounded him in the island" that Pierre "made himself notable by the good treatment that he gave to those who had the misfortune of falling into the hands of the privateersmen." Moreover, Pierre threatened severe punishment to any who failed to treat captives well, and Picornell had only to recall the testimony of several Spanish captains and crewmen in the federal court cases of the past three years to know that they affirmed that at Grand Isle they received "all assistance they could desire." Laffite sometimes bought their private goods with his own funds, provided them with new clothing to replace that taken by privateers, and even gave them smaller vessels in which to return home.
The testimony made it clear that the Laffite who did this was Jean, but Pierre had no reason to set Picornell straight. Pierre told his greatest lie when he convinced Picornell that the brothers' mother had been a Spaniard, and that having been raised among her kind the Laffites felt "very friendly towards Spaniards," even preferring their company to that of all others. "It is also remarked," Picornell added, "that he detests and hates with a deadly hatred the English and Americans." At this very moment Pierre would have been assuring his American friends among the "associates" of his hatred of Spain and Spaniards. At least they could all agree on hating the English. Picornell may have viewed Laffite through a roseate glass, but he was not entirely deluded. Picornell warned Onís that though Pierre might call on his men to serve when an opportunity for action arose, neither he nor they were likely to take a risk until they had money in their pockets. Spain must either pay Laffite in advance for preemptive action, or be satisfied with him revealing what had happened after it was too late to take action.42
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