Primary documents say what they say. What later litigants, descendants, and advocates argue they meant is a separate question. A four-step method for distinguishing primary text from advocacy interpretation.
freedom suits
Marguerite Scypion: The Louisiana Decree That Outlasted Three Sovereigns
Marguerite Scypion’s freedom argument rested on a 1769 decree by the Spanish Governor of the Province of Louisiana against Indian slavery. Her family fought thirty-one years to make the courts read it as the freedom of every descendant of an Indian woman.