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Petit Accused of Poisoning Crusquet

Date
1729-10-21
Origin
New Orleans
Language
French
Archive
Louisiana Historical Center
Keywords
death
resistance
conspiracy
poison
LHC Scans
lacolonialdocs.org
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Publication Date
August 9, 2025
Suggested Citation
'Petit Accused of Poisoning Crusquet, 'Keywords for Black Louisiana, published on August 9, 2025, https://docs.k4bl.org/keywords/d0354.html.

Summary

Enslaver Bonnaud reports to the Registry of the Superior Council that a man he enslaved named Crusquet died from poisoning. Bonnaud accused Petit, another man he enslaved, of poisoning Crusquet and asks the Superior Council to prosecute Petit.

Transcription
Translation
Notes

Transcription (French, diplomatic)

[feuille 1 recto] [digital 2] Bonnaud Declare que la Nuit du 19 Du Courant, Il mourut Un de ses Negres Nommé Crusquet a son habitation[;] de quoy ayant eté adverty Il sy transporta avec le Sr. Mirandé Chirurgien
quy fit L[‘]ouverture du Corps dud.[it] Negre et trouva plusieurs Marques quy luy firent Connoitre que led.[it] Negre avoit êté Empoisonné[;]1 et Comme led.[it] Bonnaud soubçonne [soupçonne] Le Nommé petit aussy un de ses
Negres pour Estre L’auteur de Cet Empoisonnem[en]t. suivant la [même] declaration Meme que Luy en a fait plusieurs fois led[i]t. Crusquet avant
Mourir, Il a fait arretter Cejourdhuy et mettre en prison led[it]. petit pour estre poursuivy Criminellement En Justice pour Ce fait A la requeste de Monsieur Le procureur general du Roy, a la
N[ouvel]le. orleans Ce 21e. 8bre. 1729

Translation (English, modern)

[page # 1] [digital 2] Bonnaud declared that on the night of the 19th of the current month, one of his negres named Crusquet died at his plantation2; Having been alerted of this, he went there with Sieur Mirandé, surgeon,
who opened the body of the aforesaid negre and found several signs which made it clear to him that the said negre had been poisoned; and
as the said Bonnaud suspects the named Petit, also one of his negres, of being the author of this poisoning; according to the very statement made to him several times by the aforementioned Crusquet before
dying,
He had the aforementioned Petit arrested and detained3 to be criminally prosecuted before the law for this act at the request of Monsieur the Prosecutor General
of the king, at New Orleans, this October 21, 1729.

Notes

  1. Throughout the Atlantic world, enslaved and free Africans used poison and the threat of it to protect themselves and their kin. Thirty years after Bonnaud accused Petit of using poison to kill Crusquet, enslavers in the French colony of Saint Domingue captured and executed François Makandal, a maroon leader, who they accused of poisoning over six thousand people. Laurent DuBois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2004), 51-59. ↩

  2. Roughly three years after Petit’s death, a census taker visited the plantation of Arnaud Bonnaud. At that time in 1732, Bonnaud lived on a plantation just upriver from New Orleans where at least eighteen Africans or people of African descent were enslaved on the land. Charles R. Maduell, The Census Tables for the French Colony of Louisiana from 1699 through 1732 (Baltimore: Geneaological Publishing Co., 1972), 116. ↩

  3. The prison was located next to the church in today’s Jackson Square, at the intersection of today’s Chartres St. and Orleans St. For more on the construction, location, and procedure inside of the prison complex, see especially “‘Said, Without Being Asked’: An Introduction” in Sophie White, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (Williamsburg, VA and Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2019), 1-26. ↩