Esteban Rodríguez Miró

Whether he was part of it, whether he was just there during the mutiny, just wrong place, wrong time, we don't really know.

But the French governor of Louisiana at the time, Louis Biloy, he was one of these guys who didn't like the cut of Jean Baptiste's jib, and so he wanted to make an example out of him.

And so, Biloy ordered the poor unfortunate soul to be put to death on the breaking wheel, his limbs broken one by one in front of a crowd.

After the heinous deed was done, Jean Baptiste Boudrot's broken body was cut down, and his remains were unceremoniously thrown into the Mississippi River as a final insult to the man.

The mutineers had gone out of their way to make sure that it was known that Jean Baptiste Boudrot had absolutely nothing to do with the mutiny.

He was innocent.

The governor had apparently received the letter and read it, but proceeded to ignore what the mutineers had said, and he had the man executed anyway.

So I'm glad he now has at least a memorial plaque, because if he really was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, that is a horrific way to go.

The Spanish were spooked by the large influx of Americans flooding into the lands that now encompass Kentucky and Tennessee, and their answer was to block access to the Mississippi River to dissuade Americans from building up towns along its eastern banks.

When the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Esteban Miro, realized that settlement was going to happen with or without his blockade, he began secretly encouraging leaders in the Southwest Territory, now known as Tennessee, and the Judicial District of Kentucky to become independent nations allied with the Spanish king.

In that, he would offer them free trade.

A revolutionary war hero and crafty Lexington merchant, General James Wilkinson, found a way around the blockade.