r servant to
exercise them.

The settlers of Louisiana had an active trade with the West Indies, and
a percentage of the population was composed of West Indians, a people
then notorious for their lack of moral restraint. The traders travelling
between Louisiana and these islands were frequently unprincipled
ruffians, and their companions on shore were commonly sharpers,
desperadoes, pirates, and criminals steeped in vice. Tiring of the raw
life of the sea or sometimes fleeing from justice in northern cities,
such men looked to New Orleans for that peculiar type of free and easy
civilization which most pleased their nature. Hence, although some
better class families of culture and refinement resided in the city,
there was but little in common, socially at least, between it and such
centers as Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. As a sea-port looking to
those eighteenth century fens of wickedness, the West Indies; as a river
port toward which traders, trappers, and planters of the Mississippi
Valley looked as a resort for relieving themselves of accumulated thirst
and passion; as the home of mixed races, some of which were but a few
decades removed from savagery; this city could not avoid its reputation
for lax principles, and free-and-easy vice.

Berquin-Duvallon, writing in 1803, gave what he doubtless considered an
accurate picture of social conditions during that year, and, although
this is a little later than the period covered in our study, still it is
hardly likely that conditions were much better twenty years earlier; if
anything, they were probably much worse. Of one famous class of
Louisiana women he has this to say: "The Creoles of Louisiana are blond
rather than brunette. The women of this country who may be included
among the number of those whom nature has especially favored, have a
skin which without being of extreme whiteness, is still beautiful enough
to constitute one of their charms; and features which although not very
regular, form an agreeable whole; a very pretty throat; a stature that
indicates strength and health; and (a peculiar and distinguishing
feature) lively eyes full of expression, as well as a magnificent head
of hair."[227]

Such women, as well as the negro and mulatto girls, were an ever present
temptation to men whose passion had never known restraint. Thus
Berquin-Duvallon declares that concubinage was far more common than
marriage: "The rarity of marriage must necessarily be attrib