A Tale of a Scurvy Band of Brigands

or ... It Doesn’t Pay to Borrow the Treasure!

 

 

There are scalawags in our midst ... !

 

In the time of the famous pirate, Jean Lafitte, Texas was a wild, unruly land and the people who settled it were just as adventurous. Pirate Days of The Colony commemorates the legend of a small band of Lafitte’s crew who stumbled upon the eastern shore of Lake Lewisville.

 

Their hapless journey began the night that Lafitte ordered his settlement in Galveston to be burned as he exited, supposedly with his vast treasure. Like many of the residents of this scurvy colony, former ship’s cook, Peter Scogg, sometime deck hand, Finneas Stewart and their lady friend, Delia Card, owner of a makeshift gambling salon, gathered their share of rum along with their favorite cur, Scamp and struck out in their leaky dinghy up the Brazos river. They planned to hide north until the settlement was cleared, then return to bury a treasure chest that they had ‘borrowed.’ This bounty was entrusted to their care by Lafitte himself as he could not transport it all during his hasty exit.

 

Their three-hour tour became a three day ordeal. Suffering from too much rum and exposed to a sudden storm which triggered the 100 year flood they drifted about, not knowing that the dinghy had crossed the flooded fields to the Trinity River. They sailed north, desperate for food and shelter, but found it difficult to obtain as they were forced to evade hostile natives and suspicious settlers.  Furthermore the only map they possessed was damaged in a drunken brawl - and they were looking at it upside down.

 

They awoke on the shores of what is now Lake Lewisville, wondering if they had indeed returned to Galveston. Realizing that soon Lafitte would begin to look for his gold, they hastily buried it. Legend has it there is a map to the burial spot, but no one has found it.

 

Our pirates explored their new home and quickly chose to stay on the east side of the lake once they had encountered the fighting farmers on the lake’s west side. The scalawags’ far flung insults were no match for those German immigrants with pitchforks.

 

Now each October, a grey, foreboding mist floats, for only a moment, above The Colony’s shores.

 

Some say it resembles an unearthly ship, seeking a heavenly port.

Some say it is the spirit of Lafitte, looking for his stolen treasure.

Some say it is the ghost of the pirates who cannot remember where they buried it ...