Ozeme Carriere the St. Landry Parish Jayhawker

by
I recently discovered the story of St. Landry Parish Jayhawker Ozeme Carriere (1831326f348f-7d4f-490c-bc04-b9301c5ae941-1865). He was the brother in law of my third great grandfather, Andre Zenon Vidrine (1824-1898), whose first wife was Pauline Carriere (1817 – b/t 1861-1867). They had six children before Pauline died and Andre Zenon Vidrine remarried. Below are several articles that give insight into who Ozeme Carriere was and the terror he inflicted throughout South LA during the Civil War.
 
 
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Arrel Carrier Tells It Like It Was
by Pat Carroll Marcantel
 
“The Carriers go back to the 16th century in France,” said Arrel Carrier. “They came to Nova Scotia and were run out of there. Then they drifted down to Louisiana and settled in to be farmers. A few of them had other trades, but most of them farmed. They spelled their name a different way back then. It was ‘Carriere’. When I started school in 1932, we still spelled it with an ‘e’ on the end. In fact, up until the time my grandpa died in 1936, we still spelled it that way.”
 
“My grandpa’s name was Dorselin Carriere. He lived in the Oberlin, Louisiana area when he was an eight year old child. His daddy was Eursanian Carriere and Eursanian was born in 1815. He had eleven children and all of them were still living in 1936. Eursanian crossed the Calcasieu River when he first came to this part of the country, and ever since then, the place where he crossed has been called the ‘Carriere Ford.’ It was somewhere in the LaCaze settlement, I believe. That’s north of Guy. Great-Grandpa Eursanian came here during the Civil War days.”
 
“My grandpa, Dorselin, told me this story when I was just a kid. Eursanian had a brother named Ozamey who was a jay-hawker. In fact, he was the leader of a large band of jay-hawkers who robbed and killed for food and supplies, gold and other precious metals. They didn’t want to fight for either the North or the South in the Civil War. ‘It is not our fight,’ Ozamey said. He was an Adadian, and in fact, could speak only French. He called the Civil War ‘la gare de Americain’ (the American war). At one time the North offered him a commission if he would join with them. Evidently he considered it, because he asked who would be giving him orders. When he heard the name he stated: ‘That man is too military. I won’t serve under him!'”
 
“When my grandpa was eight years old something happened to the family that he could never forget. It haunted him all of his life. Because Ozamey refused to fight for the Union, they had put a price on his head, dead or alive. Due to his expert horsemanship and cunning, he had managed to escape capture for years. One day while visiting his brother Eursanian, they were sitting on the front porch, enjoying a sit-and-smoke after a good meal. Suddenly, before they realized what was happening, the U. S. Calvary was almost in the front yard. Ozamey jumped up, grabbed his hat, ran through the house and out to the stables. He leaped onto his big white horse and went sailing across the split rail fence, and down into a nearby gully. The soldiers’ bullets rained across the gully, clipping the limbs of the trees over Ozamey’s head. He was able to escape, as he had so many times before.”
 
“After the troops lost Ozamey, they returned to the house, burned it and all of the outbuildings. They killed every animal except two oxen. They left one ox cart standing. The soldiers allowed Eursanian’s wife and children to leave with the cart pulled by the oxen. She and the children never knew what happened to Eursanian. The family feels he was killed for allowing his brother to be on his property. My great-grandmother, pregnant with their eleventh child, and her ten children made their way from the Calcasieu River in the Oberlin area back to Opelousas where she had relatives. The good Lord only knows how long it took them to get there. My grandpa picked berries and foraged for food in the woods as they traveled. That was all they had to eat. They finally reached Opelousas and lived there until the children were grown.”
 
“Meanwhile, Ozamey rode back to his headquarters in the Bayou Mallet woods near Opelousas. There he had more than a thousand men under his command. His lines, or territory, started in the Mamou area and included two to three parishes below St. Landry. His second in command was a free man of color. Until the end of the Civil War, Ozamey and his men continued to terrorize the countryside. After the war, most of his men headed back to their families. Only his second in command stayed with Ozamey. It was not long afterward that Union troops hunted them down, killing both of them on the same day. They also blew the head off of his faithful white horse. No one knows where the two men are buried–or if they were buried.”
 
“Supposedly Ozamey hid most of his stolen money before the soldiers killed him. The story is that he dug a great hole near the old Carriere Ford on the Calcasieu River. Many school children today tell their parents, ‘I’m going swimming at the money-hole’ without even knowing why the area is called by that name. People through the years have searched for Ozamey’s buried treasure. As far as I know, no one has ever found it.”
 
“There’s a story that some years ago two men from the Oberlin area decided to try to find the money hole. They brought along a black fortune teller, Eddie Hall, to help them. Eddie told them where to dig but hours of work turned up nothing. Hot, sweaty, tired–they decided to take a dip in the river to cool off. Their last remarks to Eddie were ugly and he sat by the hole worrying about what might happen to him if the men didn’t find the treasure, and soon. He peered into the hole and noticed that the shovels had fallen in the shape of a cross. This gave him an idea.”
 
“When the men came back from their swim, they asked Eddie to tell their fortunes. Eddie took their coffee cups, swished the dregs around, and blew on them three times. Then, closing his eyes, he asked, ‘Where’s the money? Where’s the money?’ After this, Eddie spun each cup on the ground, looked into it seriously, and told the men, ‘Yep, we’re right on it. In the morning, the first one of you who digs will hit that money. And when you do, Carriere’s going to come out of there on his white horse with no head. He’ll let out a war whoop like you’ve never heard, and one of you is going to drop dead.”
 
“Which one of us will die?”
 
“I don’t know.”
 
The two men looked at each other and one of them said, ‘We might as well go home.’ And they did.”
 
http://bayoubloggercom-stargazer.blogspot.com/2010/09/arrel-carrier-tells-it-like-it-was.html
 
Some thought Jayhawker Carriere was really a hero
His outlaw band reigned in area around Bois Mallet in 1860s
By Jim Bradshaw
 
Ozeme Carriere, who lived in Bois Mallet, was born May 6, 1831, four months after his father’s death. His parents, Ursin Carriere and Emilite LaCasse, had seven other children.
As a teenager, Ozeme became involved with a group of local toughs who made their living by helping themselves to their neighbors’ livestock, gold, and whatever else they could lay hands upon. They ranged across Acadiana in pursuit of booty, but they were most often found on the prairies of Acadia and western St. Landry parishes. Carriere learned his trade well, and was firmly established as the leader of this outlaw band by the late 1850s.
With his leadership came reports of crimes more vicious than simple robbery. Some people were killed when they resisted the outlaws. That was something that could not be overlooked, and lawmen across the area began tracking the Carriere gang. When the lawmen didn’t get there fast enough, local vigilante groups did. The bandit leader’s older brother, Hilaire, and several other members of the gang were strung up by vigilantes. But Ozeme Carriere remained untouched, and his gang kept acquiring new members — including some women.
When the Civil War reached Acadiana, Ozeme added another dimension to his reputation. He became a “Jayhawker,” a term coined during the Civil War for guerrilla fighters in the South who fought against the Confederacy. The war was not popular in every camp in Acadiana, and a number of men decided that they would rather join Carriere’s gang than be conscripted into the Confederate army.
In 1864, the Confederate government attempted to conscript Creoles of color from the Opelousas area for duty as forced laborers in north Louisiana. The Creoles did not like the idea, and were welcomed alongside white draft dodgers in Carriere’s Bois Mallet band.
Before the Civil War, Carriere had entered into an extra-marital liaison with a sister of Martin Guillory, a prominent free man of color, who in 1864 became Carriere’s chief lieutenant. Carriere also accepted Union deserters as quickly as men skipping Confederate duty.
As his gang grew in size, he had to raid more regularly to keep everyone fed and happy. Luckily for him, the war also brought new opportunities for his raiders — the Confederate encampments where he could find food, tents, horses, and weapons.
The Confederates put out orders to shoot him on sight. But Carrier became a hard man to see, because he was also a hero to the families of those he was hiding from the Confederate draft. At one point, Union General Nathaniel Banks, who commanded the Federal troops that marched through southern Louisiana, sent his Chief of Staff to offer Carriere a commission in the Union army. Carriere would have none of it. He didn’t want any Generals looking over his operations, no matter which side they were on.
As historian Carl Brasseaux and his fellow writers point out in “Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country,” “Under the leadership of Carriere and Guillory, the southwest Louisiana Jayhawkers were a formidable fighting force capable of resisting repeated Confederate efforts to annihilate them. Operating out of camps in the Bois Mallet area … the Jayhawkers controlled most of the southwestern Louisiana prairie country for much of 1863, 1864, and 1865.
“While publicly espousing the Confederate cause, St. Landry’s wealthiest Creoles of Color appear to have privately supported the insurgents. It is hardly coincidental that such leading free men of color as Auguste Donato, fils, capitalized on the Jayhawker presence to move as many of their increasingly valuable cotton bales as possible to relatives’ farms in the Bois Mallet area, where they would be safe from Confederate and Union foragers. Indeed, contemporary civil suits indicate the free men of color were even transporting to Jayhawker territory fencing materials that they acquired from Union forces….
“It is equally significant that,” Brasseaux et al continue, “though the Jayhawkers lived off the land by pillaging local farms, particularly those between Opelousas and Church Point, they appear to have scrupulously avoided the caches of agricultural stores hidden by free persons of color at Bois Mallet. Indeed, at a time when Jayhawkers were conducting daring daylight raids against Cajun yeomen, Auguste Donato’s cotton bales sat abandoned but untouched on Evariste Guillory’s Bois Mallet farm ” But Confederate soldiers who had gone to fight were angry now over how Carriere was hiding those who would not go. The military joined with the law in hunting him down. The vigilantes found Ozeme’s brother, Ursin, and his sister, Celestine Carriere Saunier, early in 1865. They had each been part of the gang, and were given vigilante justice.
In May 1865, Confederate Lt. Louis Amede Bringier met Carriere and one of his men, Martin Guillory, in the woods near present-day Mallet. When the confrontation was over, Carriere was dead and Guillory was badly wounded. Carriere was 34 years old.
Guillory would recover from his wounds and accept a Union commission as a captain, organizing his Jayhawkers into a unit called the Mallet Free Scouts. But he too would soon be shot down by vigilantes. He was 25 years old when he died.
http://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/carriere/290/
 
 
 
Ozeme Carriere and the St. Landry Jayhawkers
Without a doubt, the best known of the Louisiana Jayhawkers, was Ozeme Carriere, who in 1860 was a 29-year-old male, residing in the household of two Mulatto sisters, Mary and May Guillory. It does not appear that Carriere began mustering his Jayhawker followers until the summer of 1863, so who the earliest bands of St. Landry Parish were in 1862 is uncertain. One writer noted that women around the Bayou Chicot area, northwest of Ville Platte, appealed to Governor Moore as early as late 1862, as follows:
…We could not fare worse were we surrounded by a band of Lincoln’s mercenary hirelings. These men pillage homes, stealing anything they can find. And if you asked these lawless wretches, their reply is that they are carrying out the orders of their Captain Todd.
Another writer observed that in 1859-1860, western St. Landry Parish was already the scene of brigandage and various vigilante groups engaged in guerrilla-like warfare. In the summer of 1863, it was left to Carriere to recruit the disgruntled deserters and draft dodgers, many of whom were Acadians or ‘prairie Creoles,’ into a group that some called “Carriere’s Battalion” of about 1,000 men. Their ranks also included some Mulattoes, free Negroes, and escaped slaves.
 
Apparently Carriere kept his forces broken up into much smaller groups, since complaints about them always reported the plundering of horses and arms by smaller groups of men. Bands of less than fifty men could probably hide out in the forests and bottomlands without attracting so much attention or retribution, although Carriere certainly had the ability to communicate quickly with his other Jayhawker bands by horseback.
During the fall of 1863, Carriere united his Jayhawkers into a close-knit and cohesive group. His first haunt was the Mallet Woods, but certainly by 1864 Carriere’s raids extended into parts of Rapides, Lafayette, and Vermilion parishes. At first Carriere became popular with the residents because of his defiance of the Confederate Army and the Conscription Act. But during General Taylor’s general retreat along the Red River in 1864, his band drew more deserters, and his Jayhawker brigandage increased to much thievery and murder against civilians.
In February, 1864, several residents of St. Landry Parish executed depositions that small bands of Carriere’s Jayhawkers raided throughout the parish, stealing horses, weapons, saddles, blankets, cattle and food. Terry Jeansonne complained that after impressing 500 beeves for the depot commissary at Cheneyville, he was robbed by a number of Carriere’s plunderers. T. P. Guidry deposed that seven Jayhawkers robbed him and his mother of a wagon load of corn, 2 horses, and other property, and Guidry recognized five of them to be Don Louis Godeau, Agile Myers, Edouard Simon, Maxmilien Guillory, and — Ardoin.
Francois Savoy deposed that while he was gathering beeves in Prairie Hayes, he was accosted by an armed band of Carriere’s men, as follows:
…(Savoy) replied that he was not a soldier and belonged to no company. They then told him they would let him go if he promised not to inform on them. They further told him that they were acting under orders from one certain Ozeme Carriere; that in letting him go, they would have to keep it a secret from Carriere to keep him from punishing them.
During the same month the St. Landry enrolling officer reported to General Taylor, as follows:
…The Jayhawkers swept over the country known as Plaquemine Ridge, robbing the inhabitants in many instances of…all their fine horses and good arms they could find…These lawless bands are daily increasing in numbers; not only are they collecting the discontented white and the free Negroes, but the slaves…are going over to them every day.
…I speak from my own knowledge when I say that Carriere is daily becoming more and more popular with the people, and every day serves to increase his gang. These men are making the ignorant and deluded suppose that they are their champions…that their object is to bring the war to a close.
…The few men who report declare that they will never leave home until some steps are taken to afford some security for the defenseless ones they leave behind them.
Captain M. L. Lyons of “Headquarters, Paroled Prisoners,” reported to General Taylor that it would take 200 well-armed men to subdue Carriere and his band. Lyons added that:
…those prisoners of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, of which there are large numbers in this (St. Landry) parish, have in many instances gone inside the Jayhawker lines and cannot be gotten out of them.
One writer believed that the Jayhawker chief, known as a Dr. Dudley, received a commission from Union General William Franklin, probably in the Louisiana Scouts, and that Carriere had been offered one, but refused it. It was after General Taylor defeated the Union advance at the Battle of Mansfield and Generals Franklin and Banks began a slow retreat down the Red River, that a major effort was made to destroy Carriere’s brigands.
General Taylor assigned the duties of clearing out the St. Landry and Rapides Parish Jayhawkers to Colonel Louis Bush’ 4th Louisiana Cavalry, who in turn directed Lt. Colonel Louis A. Bringier to complete the task.
Colonel Bringier conducted a totally repressive campaign against Carriere’s Jayhawkers for next year, until May, 1865, during which time the latter doubled their efforts to burn houses, pillage, and murder civilians with a vengeance. When conscription laws ended, Carriere’s men deserted and went home until only fifty remained in May, 1865, when Colonel Bringier’s cavalry attacked them. During the onslaught, Carriere was killed and Martin Guillory, Carriere’s chief officer, was mortally wounded, thus concluding St. Landry Parish’s ugly struggle with the Jayhawkers.
The ‘Louisiana Scouts’ and the Other Parish Jayhawkers
When the armies of Union Generals William Franklin and Nathaniel Banks reached Alexandria late in March, 1864, hundreds of Unionists or ‘loyalists,’ whom the Confederates also called Jayhawkers, began emerging from the forests and swamps, seeking to take the oath of allegiance to the United States. One Union soldier described them as looking “more like ragamuffins than men…” General Banks organized them into a regiment, and he gave to Dennis Haynes command of Company B, 1st Louisiana (Union) Battalion of Cavalry Scouts. Haynes managed to enroll 118 men into his cavalry company.
 
The life of the ‘Louisiana (Union) Scouts’ was relatively short after the Battle of Mansfield. Although several of the companies retreated south with Banks’ Union Army, four companies remained in Rapides Parish, and one company entered the swamps near Catahoula Lake. The Scouts principally sought revenge from persons loyal to the Confederate States. A person living in Alexandria noted that the Louisiana Scouts committed against:
…individuals their vengeance and vindictiveness. This irregular force entered the residences of planters, carrying off whatever they needed…In remote parts of the parish, they burned buildings.
One of those who was commissioned a Louisiana Scout was a Dr. Dudley, also known as “Colonel” Duley, against whom “all manner of outrages” were charged. Those included “houses…burned, livestock killed or stolen…,” and even assassinations. There is a discrepancy about his ultimate fate though. One source noted that Dr. Dudley retreated to New Orleans with Banks’ army, only returning to Rapides Parish after the war.31 Another source observed however that Dr. Dudley, “a chief of the Jayhawkers,” had been captured in January, 1865, and executed. The same source reported the capture of some Jayhawkers, location not shown, as follows:
…a band of them were routed in the swamps, and two were sentenced to be shot. One of them had a wife and children who came to see him, and oh! It was piteous to hear the weeping.
In February, 1864, Major R. E. Wyche and Captain G. W. Smith’s company of cavalry, Louisiana State Troops, were ordered to flush out the Jayhawkers in East Rapides and adjoining parishes, particularly in the swamps between Lake Larto and Catahoula Lake. Their instructions were to: “…hunt the Jayhawkers down with the utmost severity, and shoot any with arms in their hands, making resistance.”
Another soldier active in the swamps of East Rapides and Concordia parishes was David C. Paul, captain of Paul’s Rangers. One description of him was that: “…Jayhawkers were killed wherever found and without consideration…” Paul’s reputation for severe retribution against the Jayhawkers enabled him later to be elected sheriff of Rapides Parish.
Apparently a large area northeast of Alexandria, probably including swamp areas in LaSalle and Catahoula parishes between Little and Black rivers, were “infested with recusant conscripts and jayhawkers,” and two letters to General C. J. dePolignac ordered: “…If Jayhawkers are taken in arms, they will be summarily executed…” Some of their locations were localized names difficult to identify, such as Big Creek, Holloway’s Prairie, and David’s Ferry.
There were other parishes that were periodically molested by Jayhawkers. As early as September, 1863, General P. O. Hebert at Monroe was ordered to dispatch five companies of Colonel W. H. Parsons’ brigade into Winn and Jackson parishes to “…break up the bands of jayhawkers infesting that section of the county…”
In March, 1864, General J. L. Brent reported that: “…bands of deserters and jayhawkers are infesting the country north of Red River and between Black and Mississippi rivers. I have ordered Lt. Griffin with a detachment of cavalry into that section of country.”
Another letter of April, 1864, reported an infestation of Jayhawkers in Marion County, Mississippi on Pearl River, as well as in Washington Parish, Louisiana. The writer added:
…In fact it is dangerous to travel in that part of Louisiana…they (the Jayhawkers) are banded together in large numbers, bid defiance to all authorities, and claim to have a government of their own in opposition to the Confederate government.
Even the Union forces that occupied the LaFourche District around Assumption and Terrebonne parishes had their own troubles with the Jayhawkers, who did not care from whom they stole food, horses, or weapons. General Cameron, a Union general, reported in February, 1865, that:
…There is but one way to get rid of the guerrillas, who infest and almost hold undisputed possession of the country from the (Bayou) LaFourche to Grand Lake. If we pursue them with cavalry, they take to their canoes and small boats. If we undertake to cut them off with a gunboat, they run into a chain of smaller bayous where a gunboat cannot follow them. The only plan left by which we can insure success is to gather together what small boats we can at Bayou Bouef, and build enough more to carry…125 picked men and fight them in their own way.
There is, however, one incorrect statement, that logic maintains is in error, because no Jayhawker band would venture too far from its safe hiding place in the forests or swamps, nor permit itself to have to fight on the open prairie. One article reported that: “…Jayhawkers sometimes stole children and sold them in Texas. Sarah Dorsey told of 500 such children…”
 
An earlier page noted that slaves stolen on Louisiana were being sold in Houston in 1863 by Texas soldiers returning from the fighting around Opelousas. Hence the slave children were being sold or traded by the Jayhawkers to the passing soldiers en route to Texas. The one exception might have been Jayhawkers hiding out in the Sabine River bottoms.
Summary
Obviously the American Civil War as fought in Louisiana was accompanied by as much heartache, military action, civil disobedience, and bloodshed as in any other Confederate state, except Virginia. The writer has an unpublished participant account of some twenty battles and skirmishes, fought by a Confederate cavalryman between Opelousas and Brashear (Morgan) City between June-November, 1863, that exemplifies some of the worst fighting and dying similar to that at Gettysburg. As was stated near the beginning, many Acadian farmers who owned no slaves quickly reasoned that it was not their war that was being fought, despite the knowledge of thousands of other Acadian Frenchmen who served the Confederacy with distinction. The ranks of the Louisiana Jayhawkers reached their peak around March, 1864, and included recruits of every persuasion – deserters from Texas and Louisiana, draft dodgers, free Negroes and escaped slaves, some of whom continued to fight even after General Lee surrendered. It appears that every Confederate state had some Jayhawker bands within its borders, yet it has generally been those guerrillas of Quantrell’s stature that have drawn the most historical attention. Hopefully that field will attract other historians in the future.
Many times the writer’s grandmother, Ellen Sweeney, recalled that night riders or vigilantes continued to ride up and down the Grand Chenier ridge, occasionally shooting or hanging people, for many years after the war had ended.
 
http://www.wtblock.com/wtblockjr/jayhawke.htm
From Official records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1861-1865
 
THE STATE OF LOUISIANA, Parish of Saint Landry:
Personally appeared before the undersigned authority Francois Savoy, of said parish and State, who, being duly sworn according to law, says and deposes that he was out in Prairie Hayes, in said parish, on Government business, for the purpose of obtaining beeves for the Government, he, ti) e deponent, being a detailed soldier for that purpose. That while in said prairie a band of armed men rode up hastily to deponent and halted him and asked him if he belonged to any company, and that if he did not belong to the jayhawkers they must take him to their camp, assigning as a reason for doing so that they did not want the authorities to know what they were about. That he replied that he was not a soldier, and belonged to no company. They then told him that they would let him go if he promised not to inform on them. That he made the promise. They then told him should they ever find him on the prairies and hear that he had informed on them they would kill him. He was moreover asked by them whether he had any arms; he proved to them that he had none. They then proceeded to take away his spurs. They afterward asked him if he knew where they could get good horses, as they intended to take all they could find. They further told him that they were acting under orders of one certain Ozeme Carrire; that in letting him go they would have to keep it a secret from Carriere to keep [him] from punishing them, as they had strict orders from the said Carriere to arrest every man they found on the prairies. They further told him they would take away his horse, but they considered him worthless. He further deposes that these men were well armed and mounted; that among them there were some free negroes.
F. SAVOY.Sworn to and subscribed before me this 13th February. 1864.
E. D. ESTILETTE, Justice of the Peace.
P. S. Also appeared G. W. Hudspeth and Omer Poiret, of said parish, who upon their oath say that they are well acquainted with Mr. Francois Savoy, who subscribed the foregoing affidavit, and they know him to be a reliable gentleman.
GEG. W. HUDSPETH.OMER POIRET.
Sworn to and subscribed before me this 13th February, 1864.
E. D. ESTILETTE, Justice of the Peace.
HEADQUARTERS ENROLLING OFFICER,Parish of Saint Landry, Opelousas, February 13, 1864.
Maj. Gen. R. TAYLOR, Comdg. District West of Louisiana:
GENERAL: Yesterday, it seems, the jayhawkers, having collected their forces, swept over the country known as Plaquemine Ridge, robbing the inhabitants in many instances of everything of value they possessed, but taking particularly all the fine horses and arms they could find. Although there are many of these robbers in the parish, this is the first time they have ever gone about publicly in daylight robbing the citizens. These lawless bands are daily increasing in numbers; not only are they collecting the discontented whites and free negroes, but the slaves, already demoralized by the Yankees, are going to them every day, and my word for it, unless some protection is afforded by the military authorities, all the good, loyal, and honest men in the western part of the parish will have to flee from their homes and abandon the country. It is no longer thecase of a few isolated desperadoes; the entire community in the western part of the parish is implicated in these organizations. I speak not from hearsay, but from my own knowledge, when I say that Carriere is daily becoming more and more popular with them asses, and that every day serves to increase his gang. These men are making the ignorant and deluded suppose that they are their champions, that their object in pursuing the course they follow is to bring the war to a close, and tell them if they could only make everybody join them the war could soon be brought to a close. These jayhawkers, as they are termed, have stolen horses and pressed and stolen guns until they are well mounted and armed, and are now far too numerous for the limited force we have here to venture among them.
 
Until some vigorous measures are taken the conscription in this parish may be said to be suspended, as every man who does not desire to report has only to go within the lines of the jayhawkers to be perfectly safe from the officers of the law. The few men who report declare they will never leave home until some steps are taken to afford some security for the lives of the defenseless ones they leave behind them. In conclusion, I would say that in my opinion some firm and vigorous steps should be taken at once to rid the country of these murderers, thieves, and traitors. I am, general, yours, truly,
H. C. MONELL, Capt. and Enrolling Officer, Parish of Saint Landry.
HEADQUARTERS PAROLED PRISONERS, Opelousas, La.,
February 13, 1864.
Maj. Gen. RICHARD TAYLOR, Alexandria, La.:
GENERAL: I have the honor to state to you that a critical state of things now exists in this parish. Carriere, with his band of jay-hawkers, within the last few days, has been very actively engaged in robbing the citizens of all the fine horses, guns, and everything in the shape of ammunition, thus showing a disposition to carry on their thieving business publicly, which the very small force here allows them to do with impunity. I would very respectfully request that you send a cavalry force sufficient to drive them entirely out of the country, not less than 200 men, well armed, and with at least 40 rounds of ammunition. Unless these men are captured or driven away, the good citizens of this parish will be compelled to remove; besides this, those prisoners of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, of which there are large numbers in the parish, have, in many instances, gone inside the jayhawkers lines and cannot be got out to them. Should this thing be allowed to go on any length of time, you can depend upon it a most fearful state of things will exist.
 
Hoping to hear that you will send a force to our assistance, I have the honor to be, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
M. L. LYONS, Captain, Commanding Paroled Prisoners.
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