Mutinous Women

how French convicts became founding mothers of the Gulf Coast

Plot

"On December 12, 1719, a ship named La Mutine, or the Mutinous Woman, sailed from the French port of Le Havre, bound for the vast North American territory then referred to as 'the Mississippi.' La Mutine was loaded with goods that the fledgling French colony urgently required for its survival, basic foodstuffs such as flour and lard. But its principal commodity was a new kind of French export: women. The women who arrived in the New World from that frigate would go on to found Gulf dynasties, but their beginnings were less auspicious. Falsely accused of sex crimes--some for reporting rape, others because their families were obscenely poor and it was financially expedient to imprison them--these women were prisoners, shackled in the ship's hold. Of the 98 women who were shipped to the colony, only 44 survived. Despite the bleakness of these women's origins, they achieved unlikely triumph across the Atlantic. They managed to carve out a place for themselves in the colonies that would have been impossible in France, making advantageous marriages and accumulating property. Many were instrumental in the building of New Orleans, founded only a year before their arrival, and in settling Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. Today, hundreds of thousands of Americans can trace their lineage La Mutine. Drawing on an impressive range of sources to restore the voices of these women to the historical record ... [this work] introduces us to the Gulf's Founding Mothers--the 'mutinous women' of La Mutine"--