PIRATES
In Herbert Eugene Bolton's book "Athanse De Mezieres and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1768-1780 - Spain in the West": A report was sent to the Governor by De Mezieres:
"Likewise I am informed by courier that the persons named Jeronimo Matulich and Juan Hamilton continue to make journeys to the mouth of the Trinity, buying horses and mules off the Indians who live there and who have joined recently thirty families of Coxos and Carancaoueys, Apostates and fugitives from our missions, attracted by the opportunity to barter; and now they get a small amount of money, I do not know whether stolen or found in some shipwreck. These traders go in by land as far as the Bidais Nation, and try to arouse the interior tribes."
De Mezieres further reports: "That a man named Matulich had gone to the mouth of the Neches River with a boat manned by ten men and there he was selling liquor to the Indians and maligning the governor."
On August 8, 1774 the Governor ordered the arrest of Jeronimo Matulich but no further mention is made if he was actually caught and jailed. Matulich was an inhabitant of Mobile, Alabama and took the Oath of Allegiance and Fidelity to his Brittanic Majesty King George III in 1764. Matulich appeared in many court cases in New Orleans in the 1760's and 1770's dealing with piracy, indebtedness and other sundry matters.
Adam S. Eterovich