To this day one may occasionally see in New Orleans and in other lower river towns an old "mammy" wearing the bandanna headdress called a tignon, which, toward the end of the eighteenth century, was made compulsory for colored women in Louisiana. The need for some such distinguishing racial badge was, it is said, twofold. Yellow sirens from the French West Indies, flocking to New Orleans, were becoming exceedingly conspicuous in dress and adornment; furthermore one hears stories of wealthy white men, fathers of octoroon or quadroon girls, who sent these illegitimate daughters abroad to be educated. The latter, one learns from many sources, were very often beautiful in the extreme, as were also the Domingan girls, and history is full of the tales of the curious, wild, fashionably caparisoned, declassé circle of society, which came to exist in New Orleans through the presence there of so many alluring women of light color and equally light character. Some of these women, it is said, could hardly be distinguished from brunette whites, and it was largely for this reason that the tignon was placed by law upon the heads of all women having negro blood.
No morsels from the history of old New Orleans are more suggestive to the imagination than the hints we get from many sources of wildly dissipated life centering around the notorious quadroon balls—or as they were called in their day, cordon bleu balls. An old guide book informs me that the women who were the great attraction at these functions were "probably the handsomest race of women in the world, and were, besides, splendid dancers and finished dressers." Authorities seem to agree that these balls were exceedingly popular among the young Creole gentlemen, as well as with men visiting the city, and that duels, resulting from quarrels over the women, were of common occurrence. If a Creole had the choice of weapons slender swords called colichemardes were used, whereas pistols were almost invariably selected by Americans. Duels with swords were often fought indoors, but when firearms were to be employed the combatants repaired to one of the customary dueling grounds. Under the fine old live oaks of the City Park—then out in the country—it is said that as many as ten duels have been fought in a single day. Duels having their beginnings at the quadroon balls were, however, often fought in St. Anthony's Garden, for the ballroom was in a building (now occupied by a sisterhood of colored nuns) which stands on Orleans Street, near where it abuts against the Garden. This garden, bearing the name of the saint whose temptations have been of such conspicuous interest to painters of the nude, is not named for him so much in his own right, as because he was the patron of that same Padre Antonio de Sedella, already mentioned, who came to New Orleans to institute the Inquisition, but who, after having been sent away by Governor Miro, returned as a secular priest and became much beloved for his good works. Padre Antonio lived in a hut near the garden, and it is he who figures in Thomas Bailey Aldrich's story "Père Antoine's Date Palm."
St. Anthony's Garden, where duels originating at the quadroon balls were fought
To the Creole, more than to any other source, may be traced the origin of dueling in the United States, and no city in the country has such a dueling history as New Orleans. The American took the practice from the Latin and by the adoption of pistols made the duel a much more serious thing than it had previously been, when swords were employed and first blood usually constituted "satisfaction." Up to the time of the Civil War the man who refused a challenge became a sort of outcast, and I have been told that even to this day a duel is occasionally fought. Governor Claiborne, first American governor of Louisiana, was a duelist, and his monument—a family monument in the annex of the old Basin Street division of St. Louis cemetery—bears upon one side an inscription in memory of his brother-in-law, Micajah Lewis, "who fell in a duel, January 14, 1804."
Gayarré, in his history of Louisiana, tells a story of six young French noblemen who, one night, paired off and fought for no reason whatever save out of bravado. Two of them were killed.
Two famous characters of New Orleans, about the middle of the last century, were Major Joe Howell, a brother-in-law of Jefferson Davis, and Major Henry, a dare-devil soldier of fortune who had filibustered in Nicaragua and fought in the Mexican War. One day while drinking together they quarreled, and as a result a duel was arranged to take place the same afternoon. Henry kept on drinking, but Howell went to sleep and slept until it was time to go to the dueling ground, when he took one cocktail, and departed.
Feeling that a duel over a disagreement the occasion for which neither contestant could remember, was the height of folly, friends intervened, and finally succeeded in getting Major Henry to say that the fight could be called off if Howell would apologize.
"For what?" he was asked.