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[^0]:    10 Interview with Ibrahim Sani Kankara, conducted by the author and Paul Lovejoy in Katsina on 27 November 2017.  
Baquaqua was very likely labelled a negro boçal ("black ignoramus") or 'Mina slave' in Brazil. The former was used to designate an African-born enslaved person unable to understand the social mores and local language, that is Portuguese, which Baquaqua is certain to have learned within a few months. The latter term was widely used in Brazil, particularly in the mining regions of Minas Gerais and the coastal provinces, and represented 'a broad "metaethnic" category, imposed by Europeans on a relatively heterogeneous group of slaves from the so-called Mina coast' (Sweet, 2009), which is east from the fortress of São Jorge da Mina (renamed Elmina Castle by the Dutch) as far as the Niger delta. Baquaqua was one of many Mina slaves who left traces of their time in Pernambuco in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Domingos Álvares was another (Sweet, 2013); and there is evidence of others having joined the Portuguese troops fighting the Dutch in the early seventeenth century.  
In his first few months in Pernambuco, Baquaqua, identified as a boçal, was assigned to the worst form of boçal work - carrying stones to build houses. Before long, however, he was sold to a Portuguese baker in a village on the banks of the Capibaribe River, not far from Recife, which was known as Pernambuco city according to some foreign maps: ${ }^{11}$  
I soon improved in my knowledge of the Portuguese language whilst here, and was able very shortly to count a hundred. I was then sent out to sell bread for my master, first going round through the town, and then out into the country, and in the evening, after coming home again, sold in the market till nine at night. Being pretty honest and persevering, I generally sold out, but sometimes was not quite so successful, and then the lash was my portion.