PLUNDER, the stuff pirates stole, was not all silver and gold. Pirates took or smuggled anything they could find and anything that would sell. A pirate bazaar was a local celebration. A schooner or brig would sail into the town landing and set up shop on the dock. The prices were good because no taxes were being paid. These bazaars offered the locals a chance to buy foreign luxuries that English colonies weren't allowed to import. Jean Lafitte's pirate bazaars on the outskirts of New Orleans were social gatherings where you might see maids shopping for a pretty lace shawl and the governor's wife looking for rolls of Chinese silk.Blackbirds were illegally imported slaves. Outlaw pirates were more willing than most to accept Africans as shipmates, but this does not pardon them from the shame of slavery. To pirates, African slaves were one more form of booty. From Seadog John Hawkins's first slave-selling voyages in the late 1500s to the blockade-running blackbirders of the Civil War, piracy has always been associated with the stink and sadness of slavery.
JEAN LAFITTE was a charming, intelligent pirate (he would insist he was a privateer) who commanded a large navy and ruled the vast, swampy territory he called Barrattaria at the mouth of the Mississippi River. He hated Spaniards and plundered their ships, but he would not raid ships of the young United States. While he was providing luxuries to the rich of New Orleans, tax free, from his pirate vessels, he was a dashing figure in New Orleans society, often dining with the governor, who was "officially" chasing him.
