The statement of accounts was for salaries in the amount of seventeen pesos six reales a day for company of sixteen mulatto and free black militiamen, who were dispatched by Pedro Piernas, Commandant of Louisiana, to capture a group of fugitive slaves (cimarrones). The company was led by Lieutenant Pierre Thomas, a free Negro. Leonardo Mazange ordered the City Treasurer to pay the Captain of the Negro militia thirty-five pesos five reales, as authorized by the Cabildo. [For an account of black participation in the governor's campaign against the cimarrones, see: McConnell, Negro Troops of Antebellum Louisiana, 22-23.]
