Article Image Alt Text

Jim Bradshaw

Romance and piracy on the Mermentau

I was looking for something else when I ran across a romantic “tale of the Mermentau” in an old edition of the New Orleans Crescent. It is the story of young, aristocratic Leon de Solis, one of a group of young men who after an attack on a passenger ship, sailed from New Orleans in the early 1800s “with the avowed determination of extirpating the horde of villains who had made the Calcasieu and Mermentau the scene of their exploits.”
The villains, a band of pirates, are never found, but Leon does find and is smitten with the lovely peasant girl, Nina l’Estrange. The story is one of the romantic pieces of serialized fiction that newspapers once used to fill their columns, and is reminiscent of the tale of Evangeline. They marry, he goes to sea again and is reportedly killed, she refuses to believe it and waits for his return, sitting each day at the base of an oak gazing out to sea, until “one bright spring morning” she is found, “one hand grasping a bunch of wild flowers which grew near, and her head turned toward the Gulf.”
There is just enough fact to give the tale a ring of authenticity, or at least believability, and make it hard to figure what parts are romance and what parts are real, or nearly real. Especially the part about the pirates.
The story is set at just about the time that the notorious Lafitte gang was scattered from its stronghold at Barataria, and some of them may have come to l’Isle des Pecaniers where the story is set. This was not the Pecan Island we know today. It was somewhere in the marsh near the Mermentau, but, according to the story, its exact location was no longer known.
“Through this marsh … the numerous pirates who infested the Mermentau and Calcasieu constructed a canal by opening a communication with the various little bayous which intersect the low marsh land,” according to the tale. “They so skillfully concealed the outlet which opened on the Gulf, by thick clumps of muskeet bushes, as to render it impossible for even those most familiar with every brake and briar on that unfrequented coast to detect their lurking places.”
The anonymous writer admits that “the legendary lore which ascribes to the pirates a rendezvous at every marked spot on the Gulf shore has probably been exaggerated far beyond the bounds of truth,” but claims that “the ghastly relics of their crimes are sufficiently numerous to prove that tradition has added little to the actual horrors which have been enacted on the peaceful and lovely coast of the Mermentau.”
It is fact that the Mermentau area was once known as a refuge for smugglers. John Landreth, a government surveyor, visited the area in 1818 and wrote in his journal that “these places, particularly the Mermentau and Calcasieu are the harbours and Dens of the most abandoned wretches of the human race ... smugglers and Pirates who go about the coast of the Gulph (sic) in vessels of a small draught of water and rob and plunder without distinction every vessel of every nation they meet and are able to conquer and put to death every soul they find on board without respect of persons age or sex and then their unlawful plunder they carry all through the country and sell at a very low rate and find plenty of purchasers.”
There is also a persistent tale that Captain James Campbell, purportedly one of Lafitte’s most trusted lieutenants, is supposed to have stashed a horde of gold coins somewhere near the Mermentau. That legend has been kept alive by discovery from time to time of old gold coins in the area.
But I can find nothing other than this account about the hero and heroine, Leon and Nina. Did such a pair of lovers really exist? Is the story based at least partly on a real and tragic romance?
It could have been, but to paraphrase the story told in the old newspaper, it is a mystery that will likely remain forever unraveled.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

Vermilion Today

Abbeville Meridional

318 N. Main St.
Abbeville, LA 70510
Phone: 337-893-4223
Fax: 337-898-9022

The Kaplan Herald

219 North Cushing Avenue
Kaplan, LA 70548

The Gueydan Journal

311 Main Street
Gueydan, LA 70542