[1] Bras-Coupé was a talented entertainer and dancer who was allowed by his master (owner) to travel.
But after numerous escape attempts, in 1834 a planters' patrol captured him and amputated his right arm as punishment.
Squire ran away again and organized a gang of escaped slaves, as well as sympathetic whites.
In the three years until his death Bras-Coupé's fame grew to the point where superhuman attributes were given to him, such as being immune to bullets.
A character named Bras Coupé with a similar life story appears in the 1880 novel The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life by George Washington Cable.