In November 1836, Marguerite, her children, her sister, and other descendants of Marie Jean Scypion, her mother, finally won their case as free people of color.
The unanimous jury decision in their favor was based on their maternal descent from a Natchez woman, as Indian slavery had been ended by the Spanish in 1769.
[1] The Mississippi Valley area had a complex history under succeeding French and Spanish colonial rules, which affected slavery case law developed by the later United States after the Louisiana Purchase.
The Spanish territorial governor in 1769 prohibited Indian slavery in the area to make the policy and law consistent with other Spanish-controlled colonies.
Faced with protests by powerful slaveholders, however, the government allowed the retention of enslaved Native Americans while the Crown reviewed the issue.
After his wife's death, the widower Tayon accepted the invitation of Jean Pierre Chouteau, a wealthy merchant and fur trader, to join his household.
By the time of the 1803 annexation of the area into the US by the Louisiana Purchase, numerous residents of territorial Missouri still held as slaves people who were descendants of Indians.
The Tayon family continued to struggle; in the spring of 1804, the sisters Mrs. Chevalier and Mrs. Chauvin filed legal documents that declared that Celeste and Catiche were free women of color to forestall their father's planned sale of the people they enslaved.
Incorporated into slavery case law in the United States since 1662 in the Virginia Colony, the principle of partus held that that of the mother determined the children's legal status.
[4] The opposing lawyers argued Marie Jean's daughters should be classified as simply of African descent (and thus legally enslaved), as they had a black grandfather and were considered mulatto under Missouri law.
It provided that when the court agreed there was a basis for the freedom suit, it would assign counsel, who would institute an action for "trespass, assault and battery, and false imprisonment" against the master.
In 1825, Marguerite Scypion renewed her case and sued as a free woman of color, with Pierre Barribeau acting as "next friend" for legal standing in the freedom suit.
[4] Because of the political and economic prominence of the extended Chouteau family in St. Louis, Marguerite's attorneys requested a change of venue, which the court granted.