Did pirate Jean Lafitte spend time near Lake Charles? (2024)

Pirate, privateer and slave smuggler Jean Lafitte is a notorious outlaw in Louisiana. Today, he’s the inspiration for characters in multiple novels, the namesake of both Lafitte and a national historic park with six locations inLafayette, Marrero, Chalmette, New Orleans, Eunice and Thibodaux. His name evenmakes a cameo in pop culture institutions like the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride at Disneyland.

Lafitte and his older brother Pierre are documented to have spent time between 1805 and at least 1815 in New Orleans and Barataria before eventually making their way to Galveston, Texas.

But did he and his pirate crew really spend time near Lake Charles? That’s the question posed by Michael Smith, a Baton Rouge resident who works at the Louisiana Art and Science Museum.

When Smith was growing up near Lake Charles, people celebrated Lake Charles Contraband Days— now known as the Louisiana Pirate Festival. Legend has it that Lake Charles, Contraband Bayou specifically, was one of Lafitte’s favorite hideouts. That's why it's named Contraband Bayou. Some have even speculated that he hid his treasure there.

“I never knew if it was necessarily true or not,” Smith said.

Short answer: Most likely, yes, but it’s hard to prove.

Adley Cormier, a Louisiana historian and author of the book “Lost Lake Charles,” believes Lafitte was active at Lake Charles. According to his research, Lafitte spent time there during his early days while he was active in Barataria, while he was working with Andrew Jackson during the Battle of New Orleans, and afterward, when the area was a no man’s land sometimes called the Sabine Free State.

“For southwest Louisiana, he isn’t really the 'yo ho ho bottle of rum' type pirate but rather, an active part of the community,” Cormier said. “In fact, he was more of a supplier and an enabler than anything else.”

According to Cormier, Lafitte brought materials to the then sparsely populated part of the state and traded with the locals.

“There are some stories and family histories and journal entries that show he did meet with some of the early pioneers of this area,” Cormier said.

There’s a lot of lore about the brothers' time at Lake Charles. According to William C. Davis’ “The Pirates Lafitte,” in 1909, Joseph Choate swindled $10,000 (approximately $345,247.25 adjusted for inflation) from “gullible investors” by claiming to know the location of a cave where Lafitte hid treasure. Choate was later sentenced to prison for fraud.

At other points, people have claimed to know the secret hiding place of Lafitte’s treasure, sometimes near Lake Charles, but treasure has never been found. Other tales abound, but the concrete and verifiable narratives about Lafitte's time at Lake Charles remain difficult to pin down.

Just because there’s a rich oral tradition, doesn’t necessarily make it true, especially with this pirate. Historians are not sure where or when Lafitte was born or died. Records aren’t consistent even about the spelling of his name: is it Lafitte or Laffite?

“With the Lafittes, you sometimes get stuff like family lore passed down from someone's grandmother's uncle who heard it from his neighbor whose family has been in Lake Charles since before the Civil War,” said David Head, historian at University of Central Florida.

There is some documentation however, according to Cormier, mostly held by private families and not accessible to the public. Arsene LeBleu, one of Lafitte’s operatives, testified in his will and other documents that he worked with Lafitte and they spent time in Lake Charles. But there isn’t anything in Lafitte’s hand that says he was there or legal court documents that can tie him to the area, but that might be because what he was doing was illegal.

Jack Henkels, a park ranger at the Barataria Preserve Unit of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, has been working at the park since 2000 and researching the life of Lafitte for almost as long.

“Pirates don't leave a lot of paper trail as to where they visit, so it's hard to figure out where they have been,” said Henkels. “Even here in the park, we have a map of the smuggling routes of Jean Lafitte but they’re listed as possible smuggling routes. We just can’t verify exactly where he was at different times.”

Still, Lake Charles makes sense as a hideout. It’s about halfway between New Orleans and Galveston, and the Lafittes went back and forth between the two cities regularly. It’s plausible, even likely, that he spent time near Lake Charles.

In popular culture, pirates are often romanticized. They are rogue figures that drink booze on beaches, talk to parrots and occasionally make people walk the plank, but that’s far from reality. Many were slave traders who did horrific things.

Lafitte is no exception — he smuggled enslaved people after the slave trade was made illegal in 1808. Though he legitimized his work claiming to be a privateer, a licensed agent that is contracted to attack a country’s enemies during times of war, he largely acted as a pirate and smuggler. Regardless of what folks believe about Lafitte and Lake Charles, there is no evidence of gold or silver there. Contrary to popular belief, pirates don’t bury treasure, according to historians.

“Pirates are short-term thinkers,” said Head. Being a pirate wasn’t a lifetime profession. It was dangerous, and most could only stay alive doing it for a couple of years, if they were lucky. “They would go out, rob, they’d get the money, then they spend it as fast as they can— and then if they're still alive, they go out and do it again.”