Jim Bradshaw
Joseph Piernas, the son of Pedro Joseph Piernas, acting governor-general of Louisiana in 1768, served without any particular distinction as a Spanish military officer in Louisiana. He, and those who could promote him, recognized pretty quickly that he wasn’t cut out to be a soldier. But he apparently liked the place, retired in Louisiana as still a young man, and decided to stay.
He was particularly intrigued by southwest Louisiana. Spanish naval officer Jose de Evia had briefly visited the area in 1785 as part of a larger exploration of the Gulf coast, and Piernas may have seen his reports — or he may simply have been looking for someplace to settle away from New Orleans and an officialdom that didn’t think very much of him.
At any rate, as recorded by historian Jack D. L. Homes, one of the leading authorities on Spanish exploration and settlement on the Gulf coast, Piernas proposed in 1795 that the Spanish government should underwrite a settlement on the Calcasieu River, and that he should be in charge of it.
His idea drew little official attention, but he persevered, and in 1799 claimed he had the authority to begin a settlement, although apparently without the formal backing of the Spanish government, or any of its money. He circulated a letter inviting settlers into the area, signing it as “founder and Governor Military and political of the establishments on the rivers (Calcasieu) and (Mermentau) and the towns of Casacalvo and Carondelet in the province of Louisiana.”
The towns were named after prominent Spanish officials in Louisiana.
Sebastián Nicolás de Bari Calvo de la Puerta, Marqués de Casa Calvo, was briefly the military commander of Louisiana. He was in Louisiana at the time of the Louisiana Purchase and was a leader of an expedition into western Louisiana in 1806 to try to shore up Spanish claims in a border dispute with the United States.
When Gov. William C. C. Claiborne threw him out of the territory in 1806, Casa Calvo went to Pensacola and asked for men and equipment to launch a military expedition against Louisiana. He didn’t get it.
Francisco Luis Hector, barón de Carondelet, was governor of Louisiana from 1791 to 1797. He was also involved in a border dispute, this one over the line between West Florida and the United States.
Carondelet left Louisiana in 1797 to become governor of New Granada, which included almost all of what is now Colombia and Panama and part of Ecuador and Venezuela.
The two men were important colonial officials, but the towns named for them apparently existed only in Piernas’s mind. There is no evidence of any Spanish town in the Calcasieu area in 1799. Nonetheless, Piernas proclaimed that the territory “has good exports and imports by sea . . . and by land,” was “watered by a variety of Rivers, Fountains, and Springs,” and that it had a benign atmosphere, pure air, and a climate that was “temperate and healthy.”
Settlers would find aromatic and medicinal plants in abundance, extensive pastures, “clear and excellent water,” and “innumerable” trees “for the Building of Ships, Houses, Household Furniture, or Charcoal.” The land, Piernas said, was particularly good for growing wheat, corn, rice, hemp, flax, cotton, indigo, tobacco, sugar cane, barley, and “all European and American fruit,” as well as for raising silkworms and bees.
He estimated that more than 8.000 families could be comfortably settled on the banks of the Calcasieu.
He had no takers despite his marketing claims, but was right about the attributes of the countryside. Eventually, a lot more than 8,000 families found their way into southwest Louisiana, but Piernas had nothing to do with that, and none of them settled down in places called Casacalvo or Carondelet.
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.