The Swamp

The swamp had a leader with a name. Juan San Malo, once enslaved by the planter Pierre d'Arensbourg, led maroons who built settlements in the wetlands southeast of New Orleans in the 1780s. They grew food, hunted and fished, and traded with Indigenous people and with enslaved people on nearby plantations. Spanish raids began in 1782. In 1784 troops attacked Terre Gaillarde and took him and most of its residents, and after a six-day trial in New Orleans he was executed on June 19. A Creole song still carries his memory, and a small fishing town bears his name.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• E. D. White Historic Site — 20 mi
  A National Historic Landmark house of about 1790 on Bayou Lafourche, built by enslaved people and home to two Whites, a governor and a Chief Justice, with an exhibit on the bayou's history.
• Whitney Plantation — 21 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• LSU Rural Life Museum — 23 mi
  Four slave cabins moved from Welham Plantation and a working-plantation row of more than twenty saved buildings, on land the Burden family held as Windrush plantation since the 1830s.
• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — 23 mi
  A Jean Lafitte National Historical Park center on Bayou Lafourche with Acadian and bayou-life exhibits, a 200-seat theater and ranger-guided boat tours to the E. D. White house.

More markers nearby

• The Culture — steps away
• Central Agricultural School — steps away
• African American Life — steps away
• Bicentennial Jazz Plaza — steps away