r nation.
The conspiracy was discovered by the hints of a woman in the revolt before
it had time to ripen, and the head of the revolt, a powerful black named
Samba with eight of his confederates was broken on the wheel, and the woman
hanged.[28]

Gov. Perier's administration did not lack interest. The next year, in 1731,
we find him still struggling with his old enemies, the Natchez. His
dispatches mention that a crew under one De Coulanges, with Indians and
free blacks had been massacred by the Indians. One dispatch has the
greatest interest for us, because of the expression "free blacks"[29] used.
Here is one of the great mysteries of the person of color in Louisiana.
Whence the free black? We are told explicitly that up to this time all
Negroes imported into Louisiana were slaves from Africa, for the West
Indian migration did not occur until a half century later. This dispatch
from Gov. Perier recalls articles in the Black Code of 1724, where explicit
directions are given for the disposition of the children of free blacks.
In the regulations of police under the governorship of the Marquis of
Vandreuil, 1750, there is an article regulating the attitude of free
Negroes and Negresses toward slaves. Here is the very beginning of that
aristocracy of freedom so fiercely and jealously guarded until this day, a
free person of color being set as far above his slave fellows as the white
man sets himself above the person of color. Three explanations for this
aristocracy seem highly probable: Some slaves might have been freed by
their masters because of valor on the battlefield, others by buying their
freedom in terms of money, and not a few slave women by their owners
because of their personal attractions. It makes little difference in this
story which of the three or whether all of the three were contributors to
the rise of this new class. It existed as early as 1724, twelve years after
the first recorded slave importation. It was in 1766 that some Acadians,
complaining of their treatment to the Governor Ulloa, represented that
Negroes were freemen while they were slaves.

Bienville returned to the colony as its governor in 1733, after an absence
of eight years, and it is recorded that in 1735, when he reviewed his
troops near Mobile while making preparations for an Indian war, he found
that his army from New Orleans consisted of five hundred and forty-four
white men, excluding the officers, and forty-five Negroes commanded by