1. Chretien Point cache

Chretien Point about three miles southwest of Sunset in St. Landry Parish was once the home of Hippolyte Chretien II, and his beautiful high-spirited wife, Felicity. Felicity Chretien was cut from a different cloth from other southern plantation belles, and Hippolyte indulged her wish to take an active hand in plantation business ·but he refused to tell her exactly where he had buried the Chretien family fortune. Only Hippolyte II?, slave Old Pajo had an inkling of where the cache that may have contained as much as $625,000 worth of Chretien family gold and silver was hidden. When Hippolyte II quickly succumbed to yellow fever, all Old Pajo could remember is that the treasure was hidden somewhere to the rear of the property near Teche Bayou. Left with a sickly son and a mounting debt, Felicity took over operation of the plantation and made it a success. She supplemented her day-to-day income by inviting fellow planters over for regularly scheduled poker games in which she invariably came out a winner. Her prowess at the gaming tables was legendary and, no doubt, bolstered by the ample quantities of strong liquor to which she treated her fellow gamblers. Felicity Chretien soon amassed a second Chretien family fortune. That she was once again wealthy became so much a topic of local conversation that, at one point, she was compelled to shoot dead the leader of a gang of robbers who forced their way into the mansion after dark. The other bandits fled, and it is thought that at this time Felicity made a second Chretien cache.

Felicity died in the 1850s, and Chretien Point very quickly fell on hard times. In short order it passed to her son, her grandson, and her grandson? creditors. In 1863, invading Union troops found nothing of value there to confiscate. Today, just about everyone is convinced that Chretien Point holds the secret to at least one fabulous cache of treasure and possibly more.

2. The Parlange treasure

The Parlange treasure, hidden on the Parlange Planta tion five miles south of New Roads on the False River in Point Coupee Parish, has a slightly different twist. At the outbreak of the war, Madame Virginia Parlange, like so many others, buried the family fortune (three chests containing gold, silver, and jewels valued at between $100,000 and $500,000) somewhere in the garden on her plantation. During the Red River Campaign, Madame Parlange saved her home and tarnished her reputation by treating Union General Banks and his staff to a lavish dinner accompanied by her best wines. She later entertained Confederate General Dick Taylor in a similar fashion. Spared the wanton destruction that erased all landmarks on many other plantations, it should have been easy for the Parlanges to reclaim the family fortune after the war; and, in fact, son Charles Parlange did relocate and recover two of the hidden chests ·but the third chest eluded all his efforts at reclamation. Eventually Charles Parlange gave up and left to study law. Subsequent treasure seekers enjoyed no better luck, and the third chest has never been found.

3. Count Faezno? buttons 3During the Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 1873, Italian Count Paulo Faezno got into the spirit of the celebration by arraigning himself in his official ambassador-to-the-court finery. The centerpiece of this ensemble was a splendid coat to which were affixed no less than 25 elaborate gold and silver buttons hand-crafted by Benuvito Cellini in the 1500s. Each button was mounted with a prize ruby surrounded by a ring of valuable diamonds and each individual button was said to be worth an estimated $10,000. Count Faezno further got himself into the spirit of the party by getting blind-drunk. Together with five equally inebriated companions, Faezno staggered down to the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. The entire party piled into a rickety skiff and somehow managed to row about 100 yards out from the shore line before the ill-chosen vessel capsized. There was only one survivor, and it was not the count. Neither his body or his buttons were ever recovered.

4. Bowie? cache

4In 1808 Congress passed into Federal law a ban on the importation of slaves into the United States. The law did nothing to outlaw the practice of slavery and had the predictable side effect of sending the price of those slaves already in-country skyrocketing. In Louisiana, where Federal authority was practically non-existent, many persons sought to cash in on the financial opportunities the inflated prices offered by continuing to import additional slaves in defiance of the law.

Jean Lafitte, with characteristic opportunism, moved swiftly to set himself up as the sole supplier to the slave smugglers. This was easily accomplished by sending his pirates out to intercept and capture the slave ships. The human cargo was then transferred to Lafitte? pirate base where smugglers from the mainland could purchase at a discount what the pirates had acquired for free.

One of those smugglers to whom Lafitte supplied a large number of slaves was the future commander of the Alamo, James Bowie. Bowie? affinity for riches has been well documented, but what is usually overlooked is the fact that for Jim Bowie danger, not profit, was the chief attraction of slave smuggling. The Bowie Brothers, James and Rezin, made a great deal of money in legitimate business; but Jim found riches without danger boring. When James Long attempted to establish his ill-fated Republic of Texas, Bowie folded up his smuggling operations in the Vermillion Bay area and rushed to join the other adventurers attempting to steal back the country that President James Monroe had given away. Jean Lafitte? pirate fleet on Compeachy Island was supposed to act as a navy for the new republic, but Lafitte betrayed the Texans to the Spanish authorities. James Long was captured and taken to Mexico City just in time to be proclaimed hero by the victorious Mexican revolutionaries who liberated the city from Spanish control. Jean Lafitte was driven off Compeachy by American gunboats and sailed away to an unknown fate. Then the tables turned again. Augustin de Itubide betrayed the revolution and declared himself emperor of Mexico. James Long, still in Mexico City, allied himself with the democratic faction, and Itubide had him assassinated.

Bowie, along with the other adventurers, retreated briefly to Louisiana ·but he had no intention of staying there. He was soon back in Texas in search of the legendary San Saba mines. There is no record that he ever returned to either the Vermillion Bay or the Calcasieu Bayou where he allegedly cached the proceeds of his slave smuggling operation. He was off in search of greater risks, greater riches, and greater dangers. Yesterday? profits, like yesterday? perils, no longer interested him.

5. Spanish pack train gold

5Around the beginning of the Nineteenth Century when so-called privateers sporting the flag of the Republic of Cartagena were swarming like sharks in a feeding frenzy off the Mexican coast, Spanish officials experimented briefly with the notion of packing their gold overland to river ports along the Mississippi. The experiment was less than a rousing success for multifarious reasons: the trails were poor, the terrain impossible, and hostile Indians dogged the pack trains every step of the way. Any gold that did make it through still had to be loaded on to a ship and sailed past the swarms of pirates and privateers plying the waters between New Orleans and Cuba.

One such pack train containing eight mule loads of heavy gold lost the trail and eventually blundered into a thick swamp along the Dugdemona River just north of present day Winnfield in Winn Parish. The marshy ground would not support the mules and their heavy burdens of precious metal, so the Spaniards took the practical step of caching their cargo in the swamp before proceeding. Later they were unable to relocate their treasure, and numerous subsequent searchers who sought this fortune have fared no better.

Please Note: It is the responsibility of the treasure hunter to gain permission before detecting.

SOURCES:

Botkin, B.A., Ed. A Treasury of Mississippi Folklore. Bonanza Books, 1978.

Myers, John. Deaths of the Bravos. Little Brown Co., 1962.

Penfield, Thomas. A Guide to Treasure in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. True Treasure Publications, 1973.

Roberts, W. Adolphe. Lake Pontchatrain. Bobbs Merril, 1946.

Terry, Thomas P. U.S. Treasure Atlas. Specialty Pub., 1985.