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Meanwhile, let us open the gazette from Spanish Town, Jamaica:
Trafalgar, November 12, 1808. RUNAWAYS.
JUDDY, a middle aged creole wench, a great higgler, marked $S$ on one shoulder, yellow complexion, and pitted with the small pox, an artful wench, and, if apprehended, may attempt to pass as free, under the cloak of - "Mistress left free to pck and nyam". PHILIP, or CAPTAIN YM, her son, a creole, or a kind of idiot, but more knave than fool. NED, her brother, of a yellow complexion, a creole, marked $S$ on one shoulder, an artful rascal, and a great rogue and runaway: The above three negroes are partly harboured about Miss Fleming's Red Hills, (now Miss Good's) amongst their friends in town, or the King's Land, St. John's. HARRIET, calls herself KITTY, marked S, black complexion, short and stout, pretends to be purblind, but has the full faculty of her sight ; she is either harboured in Port-Royal, at Bonville, in St. Ann's, or about Mr. Evanson's, or Mr. Robert James mountain, at which latter place her husband, named Duke Thomas, has a brother named Phaeton. Whoever apprehends any of the above slaves, shall have a Pistole for each of them, on delivery to the subscriber, or lodging them in any workhouse. All persons harbouring \&c. are cautioned from harbouring \&c. and Four Doubloons will be paid on conviction \&c. on applying to the proprietor.
RD. POORE (Saint Jago de la Vega Gazette, 21 January 1809).
Juddy was not free to gather and sell the tops and the 'straw'- the name given to the leaves - of the sugar cane left on the ground when the plant had been cut and taken to the mill (Blachette, 1826, p. 28-9; Dureau, 1852; Roughley, 1823), the activity meant by the word 'pick' in Jamaican Creole (Cassidy, Le Page, 1967,
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p. 348; Cassidy, 1961). ${ }^{2}$ Selling this forage would have allowed her to subsist on her own, as indicated by the word 'nyam' (Cassidy, Le Page, 1967, p. 325), meaning to eat - the term is also used in various regions of West Africa - but according to the narrator, Richard Poor, that was not her mistress's intention. Philip, Juddy's son, 'a kind of idiot, but more knave than fool', might, like his mother, attempt to mislead his interlocutors: one can imagine his unfettered language in incoherent Creole, at least from the point of view of anyone who questioned or arrested him. For if Philip was playing the idiot, the clown or the fool, most of all he was a joker, a 'knave', unprincipled and dishonest just like his uncle Ned, another good-for-nothing, 'an artful rascal' and 'a great rogue', or Harriet, who called herself Kitty, and who could see much better than she let on: 'she has the full faculty of her sight'.
A rare and singular combination of fugitive lives, bound together in a theatrical game. Juddy, Philip, Ned and Harriet are clearly much more than just simple slaves 'on the run'. Each of them is playing a role they have freely chosen, and each is keeping up an appearance. None of them seems really to be on the run, but rather to be living in the interstices of some great human comedy, that of Jamaican slavery and its contradictions. It is also a rare example of a notice in which the arrogance and exasperation of the narrator blend so well with the description, coming so close to the slaves through the medium of the text. Lastly, this notice is one of the rare examples where the voice of the runaway is reported in direct speech, and one of the rare specific references to Jamaican Creole.
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From the standpoint of both form and content, it is nonetheless ordinary in that it embodies, maybe better than any other, the charactersistic ambiguity of fugitive slave notices. Does Richard Poore's description in the end enable the reader to form a mental picture of Ned, Harriet, Philip and Juddy? Probably not: we only know that three of them are marked with the letter $S$ - we do not know the size - that Juddy has smallpox scars and that she has a 'yellow' complexion like Philip. That is very little information when one considers that the slave population at the time was over three hundred thousand, that several thousand men and women attended the Sunday market in Kingston, where Juddy probably managed to sell her forage (McDonald, 1993, p. 29), and that smallpox was a common disease among slaves, not to mention their variety of appearance and skin colours.
[^0]
[^0]: 2 On Jamaican Creole: D’Costa, Lalla, 1989; glossary, pp. 142-51; D’Costa, Lalla, 1990.
In this chapter I would like to show that runaway slave notices were not only intended to be mimetic, tracing and describing as accurately as possible the features of the missing bodies, but also purely and simply narrative: telling a story, in a nutshell, in which, paradoxically, the primary voice of the narrator mingled under the surface of the words with the voices of the slaves, the 'he' or 'she' in the notices. The notices distil and reveal, in the manner of the autobiographies of fugitive slaves analysed by Frances Smith Foster in the late 1970s, much more than simple, unambiguous and supposedly objective facts:
My original goal had been to examine this body of autobiographical writings by former slaves not from the perspective of historical accuracy or data, but as writings that somehow had the power to reveal, to transform, and to transcend. It was not that mimesis was unimportant. Certainly the narratives offered unique and valuable information about slavery as it was experienced by slaves themselves (Smith Foster, 1994). [My emphasis]
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The narrator is not only the person who buys space on a printed page in exchange for a desired service, the arrest and return of his runaway by 'whoever apprehends any of the above slaves', as Richard Poore wrote. Likewise, the recipient, the 'ideal' reader, is not only the person likely to arrest the slave in the notice and bring him or her back to their master. Through the notice, the narrator is engaging in a twofold process. He is speaking about himself through the slave, in a type of self-representation described by Walter Johnson in his study of the New Orleans slave markets: 'slaveholders often represented themselves to one another by reference to their slaves' (Johnson, 1999, p. 13) but he is also making the slave speak indirectly, perhaps without realizing. The meeting of these two voices, and the circle or echo-chamber they create (Genette, Figures III, 1972, p. 10), ${ }^{3}$ turn the notice into a form of biographical narrative, a polyphony involving the fugitive protagonist, the narrator, and the slave-owning society in general. That narrative is addressed as much to the slaves as it is to those who share the narrators' social power, and to the narrators themselves, confronted by the refusal, through flight, of a man or woman to submit to their supposedly legitimate power.
What exactly do we mean by narrative? In choosing that word, do we not take the risk of over-interpreting the notices, making them into something other than what they were from around the start of the eighteenth century, a few square centimetres of text subject to the rules of monetary trade?
[^0]
[^0]: 3 The 'cercle de leur renvoi réciproqué: Genette is speaking of the complex relationship between the work and its author.
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There are several possible definitions in response to both those questions, starting with the one offered by Gérard Genette in Figures III at the beginning of the 1970s, and taken up again in his Nouveau discours du récit at the beginning of the 1980s. A narrative is, primarily, a telling of events; secondly, the sequence of those events considered independently of the medium that brings them to our knowledge (médium [...] qui [...] en donne connaissance), and lastly, the act of narration in itself (l'acte de narrer pris en lui même). For the avoidance of terminological confusion, Genette reserves the term 'narrative' (récit) as such for the recounting of events, calls their sequence the 'story' (bistoire) and the act of narrating them 'narration' (narration) (Genette, 1972, pp. 71-2; 1983, pp. 10-15). This definition, though intended to apply to literary texts, can also be applied to the fugitive slave notice cited in the introduction to this chapter. The text submitted by Richard Poore to the editor of the Spanish Town Gazette is the narrative, or more accurately the micro-narrative of a story of flight, albeit a very incomplete one. It rests moreover on an act of narration, in other words a set of descriptive and narrative choices, which in the present case are quite visible. This story has a beginning - even though this is not expressly set out in the notice - and a hoped-for ending, the capture of the four fugitives. The ending is, by nature, hypothetical. Juddy and Harriet, for instance, are reported in the same newspaper two years later as still being on the run. The story rests on the actions of the protagonists and the secondary characters - the friends of Juddy, Ned and Philip, 'their friends in town, or the King's Land, St. John's', as well as Harriet's husband and his brother - and on places known to both narrator and reader. It is addressed to one specific reader: the person who might capture them, or tell the narrator the names of any person who has helped the slaves to hide
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, or tell the narrator the names of any person who has helped the slaves to hide, and also to those accomplices directly: 'Whoever apprehends any of the above slaves, shall have a Pistole for each of them. [...] All persons harbouring \&c. are cautioned [...] and Four Doubloons will be paid on conviction.' While not all the notices published in slave-owning societies across the Atlantic were as long or as rich as that of Richard Poore, this basic ternary definition - narrative, story, narration - applies equally well to fugitive slave notices in general. It is a reminder that these are not just descriptions, but involve a subjective act of writing: simple, admittedly, but writing nonetheless.
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However, we cannot be satisfied with that definition, which in the final analysis is somewhat formal and static, and does not go to the heart of what the narrative says, represents or symbolizes. A second possible approach, then, is to read the notices as narratives in the sense that they are not documents, but texts, and look at all runaway notices from an intertextual perspective, as making
up one vast Text. By this we mean that the notices presuppose making a set of language choices that make them a form of 'fiction of factual representation' (White, 1978, pp. 121-34). The expression is Hayden White's, and was originally applied to the relationship of narrative similarity between a novel and a historical analysis. The point made here is a different one, but White's expression seems especially appropriate to the hypothesis I wish to develop. The fugitive slave notice is at the same time, taking the polysemy of the word 'fiction', both factual illusion and creation. ${ }^{4}$ This does not mean that the notices are not aggregations of true facts, indeed thousands of them, but as Charles Davis and Henry Louis Gates remind us, 'No written text is a transparent rendering of historical reality, be that text composed by master or slave' (Davis and Gates, 1985, p. xi). The context of that quotation is the definition of an autobiographical account by a slave in the United States; it seems equally relevant when speaking of notices, texts under the control of slave-owners.
Narrative, story, narration, text and 'fiction of factual representation', creation: essentially, we propose to read fugitive slave notices as a report (written) to the world. Of course it is not certain that the creators of the notices had this idea in mind when writing, and reading, fugitive slave notices. However, maybe that is exactly what accounts for their popularity.
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John Davis, an English traveller, poet, translator and novelist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, found this out to his cost. Passing through South Carolina in 1798 and 1799, he was surprised to find that his poetic imitations were of little interest to the lowland planters:
I indulged in the composition of lyric poetry, and when I had produced an Ode, transmitted it to Freneau, at Charleston, who published it in his Gazette. But planters have little disposition for poetry, and the eye of the Carolina reader was diverted from my effusions, by the more interesting advertisements for fugitive slaves (Davis, 1803). [My emphasis]
[^0]
[^0]: 4 We should also recall here the work of Natalie Zemon Davis on letters of remission, analysed from the standpoint of fiction: 'I want to let the "fictional" aspects of these documents [letters of remission] be the center of analysis. By "fictional" I do not mean their feigned elements, but rather, using the other and broader sense of the root word fingere, their forming, shaping, and molding elements: the crafting of a narrative.' Zemon Davis, 1987: 3.
His judgment is of course doubly ironic. John Davis, like many travellers, deplored the lack of culture of the planters whose only interests seemed to be the day-to-day management of their slave workforce, present or absent. However, he was oblivious to the irony here: the advertisements for fugitives, those little stories and accounts of the everyday, maybe actually were 'more interesting' than his imitations of Horace's odes. Not only because the main preoccupation of the planters was their slaves, but because those notices were much more than mere notices: they were accounts of events and depictions of characters all of whom were or could have been familiar, little snatches of daily life.
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For the narrators, whoever they were, the fugitive slave notice was first and foremost an opportunity to restate the racial inferiority of the slaves and thereby minimize the significance and implications of their acts of resistance. Far from being purely mimetic, the notice played a role, directly and indirectly, in both the construction and the day-to-day perpetuation of the idea of racial inferiority on which black slavery rested. ${ }^{5}$ Advertisements for fugitive slaves depended on reading habits and a world of familiar relations. The representation of flight was as commonplace as the sale of wood, the arrival of a ship, the obituary of a dignitary or an advertisement for a play. It was rare for a newspaper not to publish notices of runaway slaves. The notices were tangible inscriptions; they were also fundamentally racial inscriptions. To take one example, let us study the description of this new African slave, published in the Charleston Gazette of 18 March 1805:
A New Negro.
Picked up on Saturday night last, on Sullivan's Island, a NEW NEGRO MAN, about five feet ten or eleven inches high, and about forty years of age; he came there in a canoe, without oar or paddle; had on a white negro cloth long jacket, straw hat and old velvet breeches; rings in both ears, and remarkably large white eyes. Enquire of
Spencer Morrison,
On the Island.
March 18. [My emphasis]
[^0]
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Spencer Morrison,
On the Island.
March 18. [My emphasis]
[^0]
[^0]: 5 See Thomas C. Holt, 'Marking Race: Race-making, and the Writing of History', American Historical Review 5 (1995), 7: 'It is at [the level of everydayness], I will argue, that race is reproduced via the marking of the racial Other and that racist ideas and practices are naturalized, made self-evident. [...] It is at this level that race is reproduced long after its original historical stimulus - the slave trade and slavery - have faded.' The historian Walter Johnson recently suggested, in Soul by Soul. Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, 136, that this everyday scale should be applied to the particular racial rituals of the New Orleans slave markets of the antebellum period - 'at no site was race more readily given daily shape than in the slave market' - to the looks exchanged between slaves, buyers and sellers, to the demeaning rituals to which the slaves on sale were subjected, and to their strategies of resistance.
This notice of a capture can be read in various different ways: for its demographic context - the slave was one of thousands of Africans brought into South Carolina between 1803 and 1808 - for its geographical detail, or the description of clothing it gives. A further possibility is to read it as a debriefing on an encounter or confrontation, a look at that Other, the slave. In describing to the reader this slave freshly imported from the coast of Africa, Spencer Morrison mixes 'objective' details - height, presumed age, the description of clothing and earrings - with value judgments. This slave found just off Charleston is said to have had 'remarkably large white eyes'. It is hard to see this detail as having any descriptive value in enabling the reader to recognize his slave. 'Remarkably large white eyes' in a very black body: that, most probably, is the implied message in the notice. In one sense the arrested slave is as much or even more of a curiosity than a fugitive.
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As such, the body of the fugitive is often misshapen or ugly. Louis Lessant, for example, a Louisiana slave aged about thirty years, is described as an 'extremely ugly' (extrêmement laid) character, and 'a bit stooped' (un peu vouté) (Le Moniteur de la Louisiane, 3 June 1807). Michel, an 'English' slave also living in Louisiana, is said to have 'really ugly legs' (les jambes fort vilaines) with 'big knees, misshapen feet, very thick ankles and pinched toes' (genoux gros $\mathcal{E}$ pieds difformes, la cheville très-grosse, $\mathcal{E}$ le bout fort-serré) (Le Moniteur de la Louisiane, 9 March 1808). In the case of Bob, a Jamaican slave who fled from Clarendon Parish in 1809, his 'ugliness' was due to having been kicked by a horse: 'a remarkably ugly fellow, has a scar from the kick of a horse, on one side of his face' (The Saint Jago de la Vega Gazette, 25 March 1809). Others had marks on their skin, probably from smallpox. Quaco, for instance, a Carolina slave the subject of a notice in February 1802, was said to be 'remarkably ugly, pitted deep with the small pox, very thick lips, a large and very flat nose' (City Gazette, 23 February 1802). By insisting on Quaco's ugliness when the mere mention of smallpox scars would have sufficed to describe his face, his master Charles Colcock was doing more than merely announcing the flight of his slave. He gave an image of him that was almost monstrous and altogether revolting. He was thus emphasizing the distance that separated them, relegating the destabilizing effect of his escape to the background.
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Where the fugitive was not ugly, he was often described, like Quaco, using the vocabulary of size and disproportion. The notice was a caricature and proceeded from hyperbole, as is indicated, unambiguously, by the recurring use of the intensifying adverbs or superlatives 'very', 'extremely', 'uncommonly', 'exceedingly' and 'remarkably' when describing the lips, mouth, eyes, nose, breasts or feet of the fugitives. Take for example Chloe, a slave from Carolina, the subject of a notice in the Charleston Gazette in June 1803. Almost nothing is known about
her except that she had 'remarkable large breast and very thick lips' (City Gazette, 14 June 1803). The description is of no help in painting a picture, even a vague one, of the slave in question. The reader would have difficulty recognizing her in the street and would probably not be much helped by her height: '[she] is about five feet three or four inches high'. But the description is not altogether useless and would in all likelihood be familiar to the reader. In fact, as Winthrop Jordan clearly shows in White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812, the size of the nose, lips and breasts were among the demeaning tropes in the rhetoric about blacks from the seventeenth century onward (Jordan, 1968, p. 10). Women's breasts, in particular, crystallized those prejudices. They were at the same time a symbol of maternity and also of unbridled sexual passion. The frequently hyperbolic nature of the notices transformed the fugitive into a freakish spectacle and functioned as a reminder of the racial superiority of the narrator and the readers. As Shane White explains in his study of fugitive slave notices from New York, 'Even ostensibly objective descriptions of "thick lips" or "flat noses" then, are freighted with cultural meaning, referring back to a whole body of "scientific speculation" about the physical origins and intellectual capacity of blacks' (White, 1991, p. 120).
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Though the narrator's voice in the notices can seem all-powerful and overwhelming, it is equally often the case that the voice of the slaves can be heard, although it is generally reported in indirect speech and thus truncated. The runaway slave 'says', 'does not say', 'gives an account of himself', 'declares', 'tells', 'told' or 'will tell a story', or stories. In the notices he speaks mostly of imprisonment or arrest, often there are transcripts or adaptations of depositions, voluntary or obtained by force. This, for instance, is the statement of a young African slave, recently imported into South Carolina:
Committed to the Work-House,
AS RUNAWAYS :
[...]
An African Boy, of the Congo nation, taken up by the city guard [...]. The Boy accounts of himself (as from an interpreter) is that he was stolen from the wharf with another of the same age, that they arrived here in a ship commanded by a capt. Clark, a French gentleman; when taken from the wharf he was clothed in a red flannel shirt, blue trowsers and a blue cap.
[...]
Daniel Ward, M. W. H.
August 2 (Charleston Courier, 2 August 1808).
Unfortunately it is not enough to change back the personal pronouns [he and I] to hear the words actually spoken by the slave. In this case his words are doubly indirect, first translated by an interpreter and then summarized and reported by the prison guard, Daniel Ward. It is unlikely that the slave would have used the words 'flannel' or 'gentleman', but it is perfectly possible on the other hand that he would have remembered the name of the captain of the slave ship on which he crossed the Atlantic, a Frenchman named Clark, though we can assume the name was either misheard or spelled wrongly. The slave is speaking, relating the sequence of events, taking the role of narrator. And like all narrators, he makes temporal choices: first he relates being stolen, then, in a flashback, refers to his Atlantic crossing and arrival in Charleston, before coming back to the moment he was stolen to describe his clothes.
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In some notices, the fugitive's voice is closer to the surface of the words, and the censoring hand of the narrator is weaker and less visible. In the following notice, for example, published in the Charleston Courier, the narrator conveys the immediacy of the slave's words by shifting from the past to the narrative present tense and preceding the reported statement with a dash to indicate dialogue:
An African.
CAME on this day to my plantation on South Santee, a Mandingo NEGRO MAN [...] : He speaks the guinea language to one of my Negroes - says that he does not know his master's name, nor the way back to his plantation, which he left a week ago, and is directed by a driver named Prince, who abused him and imposed on him. He mentions that his African name is Muldy, his present name Galter; that his master lives mostly in town, and has a waiting man called Dick (Charleston Courier, 15 March 1805). [My emphasis]
Still more audible are the words of Plenty, a slave from Carolina, and Catharine and Charles, two Jamaican slaves whose words come across to readers with only the minimum of distortion:
Fifty Dollars Reward.
PLENTY, a Negro Runaway
From the Subscriber, and going about with a ticket under the pretence of looking for a master, having declared his intention not to return until he be shot, and there being in all probability not other method to cure him of the hostile disposition visibly increasing in him, having lately threatened the lives of several persons, and information being received of Plenty having twice made his escape through the indulgence of persons who out of regard for the master would not fire at him. [...]
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J. Laval.<br>July 19. [My emphasis]<br>St. Mary, April 14, 1812<br>RANAWAY, on the 27th May, 1811, a negro slave, belonging to the Subscriber, named CATHARINE with her Mulatto Child: they have been long advertised, and, on Monday the 13th instant, were taken, and lodged (as a place of the greatest security) in the Guard House of Ford Haldane, from whence she made her escape the same evening. [...] She is tall and stout, aged 32 years, of a yellowish complexion, very artful, impudent, and assuming, "she is determined she will be free, and belong to no buckra [Jamaican Creole for any white person] whatever" (Saint Jago de la Vega Gazette, 25 April 1812). [My emphasis]
Spanish Town, July 24, 1812.
RANAWAY the following slaves, on Monday last : [...] PATTY, [...] a stout able wench, looks sulky, with a pug-nose. [...] Patty [...] is harboured at Mrs. Adolphus' red hill by a negro man named Charles who, it is understood, is determined to lose his head before Patty shall be taken from him, for which purpose he has built a house in the middle of the woods of the said mountain, where other runaways are harboured (Saint Jago de la Vega Gazette, 18 July 1812). [My emphasis]
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The more threatening and determined the slave's voice, 'having declared his intention', 'she is determined she will be free', 'is determined to lose his head', the more likely it is to be reproduced unchanged. The notice is thus a public warning that the simple, everyday act of running away has been transformed into an act of revolt. The moment the slave leaves negotiation behind and affirms his or her freedom and freedom of speech, the narrator is bound to warn his neighbours and the slave-owning community in general. The text of the notice must offer a way of containing this disorder and transgressive language, 'impudent' and 'assuming' in the case of Catharine. It is especially true in her case: the reader is under the illusion of hearing Catharine's voice, between the indirect style (change of pronouns), indirect free style (disappearance of subordination and the declarative verb) and the direct style (narrative present, quotation marks). The narrative illusion is strengthened by the use of Jamaican Creole: it is unlikely, in practice, that the word 'buckra' was chosen by the narrator.
However threatening they may be, the real problem with the words of slaves, from the narrator's point of view, is that they cannot be trusted. A fugitive slave, a veritable trickster, relates, distorts, invents, manipulates, plays tricks and enjoys telling tales and misleading people. Freedom, whether temporary or permament,
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is not so much to be found in physical appearances or clothing, as in the everyday words that the fugitives succeed in manipulating to their advantage. The trickster is one of the key figures of Afro-American and African, as well as AmericanIndian, vernacular culture. An animal character in fables - particularly the monkey, rabbit or snake - is a weak but ambivalent figure, both amusing and disturbing in its taste for trickery, but uses words to free itself from the more powerful. 'As its most elemental, then, the trickster tale consists of a confrontation in which the weak use their wits to evade the strong', explains the historian Lawrence Levine in Black Culture and Black Consciousness. Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (Levine, 1977, pp. 106, 102-32, 370-85). ${ }^{6}$ The comparison between the fugitive and the trickster is not used here to draw an analogy between fugitive notices and fables. Clearly, they are two very different forms. But on the other hand one can see from the notices the extent to which the power of the fugitive lies in his or her spoken words, just as the power of the master resides primarily in mastery of the written word. The notice is there to close down those spoken words, re-establish the truth and cut short the verbal illusion.
Peter, a slave in Carolina whose escape was advertised on 4 April 1807 in the Charleston Courier, was one of these 'tricksters' or manipulators, handy with words and situations. His story is woven out of lies and deception. His master, who nonetheless trusted him, had tasked him with finding a runaway slave belonging to him, named Diana. But Peter did not come back, and instead allegedly joined Diana, having several tricks up his sleeve to avoid arrest. In addition to the pass that enabled him to move around freely, his main asset was said to be his too-clever speech:
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On the 1st inst. in the evening, my Negro Fellow PETER was sent in search of [DIANA] [...] He is about twenty-seven years of age, and well known in town [Charleston] as a carter. He may endeavor to pass for a free man, and may show his pass, which the subscriber requests may be detained. He [...] is a sly, subtle, cunning fellow, of smooth speech, and has duped some people by his fair words and got off from them some time ago (Charleston Courier, 4 April 1807). [My emphasis]
The accumulation of adjectives connoting cunning and trickery shows yet again that the purpose of the notice was not merely descriptive. The narrator has been duped: so, as he cannot whip his absent slave, he spills forth his bitterness in words.
Peter is far from being an exception. Joe, for example, another slave in Carolina, had already passed himself off as a different slave, allaying the suspicions of the
[^0]
[^0]: 6 On the trickster as a trope in African-American literature, see Gates, Jr., 1988.
people he met on the lowland roads and ferries he had to take to cross the rivers on his way from Waccamaw in the north to Cooper in the south:
One Hundred Dollars Reward.
ABSCONDED [...]
On the 5th inst. JOE, a very stout, strong, well set Fellow, about thirty-five years old [...] he is dark complexioned, likely, artful, and as sensible as most of his colour [...] This fellow went off from my plantation about twelve years ago and passed himself at the ferries and along the road for one belonging to Mr. Weston, going from his plantation on Waccamaw to Charleston, with a message to him.
$[\ldots]$
Allard Belin.
May 16 (City Gazette, 16 May 1803).
Was he not capable, just like Peter, of fabricating stories and passing off the probable as the truth? 'He is capable of making out the most plausible stories.'
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May 16 (City Gazette, 16 May 1803).
Was he not capable, just like Peter, of fabricating stories and passing off the probable as the truth? 'He is capable of making out the most plausible stories.'
Around one in ten fugitives in the body of notices from Jamaica and Carolina studied for this chapter is said to be 'cunning' and one in twenty is 'plausible', not to mention all those described as intelligent, artful, sensible or a flatterer. Charles, for instance, a Jamaican slave the subject of a notice in the Royal Gazette in late December 1800, is described by his master as 'very artful' and 'plausible' enough to fool the crew of a ship: 'he may impose, and endeavour to pass as a free man, or may procure a forged ticket, and get on board some vessel at Kingston' (The Royal Gazette, 27 December 1800). Davy, a slave of African origin living in South Carolina, did not try to leave South Carolina by sea, but seems to have been every bit as wily as Charles, 'a smooth spoken artful fellow' (City Gazette, 6 May 1805). The slaves in Louisiana seem to have been no less adept at invention and roleplay than their counterparts in Jamaica and Carolina. The story of Charles the mulatto, published on 12 March 1808 in Le Moniteur de la Louisiane, offers a good illustration. Charles plays on the ambivalence of reality and announces to anyone who asks him that he has been sent on 'important business' concerning the death (which was real) of his master. Not content with playing the role in which he had cast himself, Charles made his announcement in a tavern, as public a place as he could find in the absence of a theatre:
60 Psts. Reward.
A Mulatto named Charles, belonging to the late John W. Gurley, made his escape on the evening of the 3rd of this month. He is about 25 years old, around 5 feet 10 inches, well proportioned, and speaks French \& English; he is alert \& intelligent, \& he will make up all sorts of stories to make good his escape. I do not remember
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what clothes he was wearing. The said mulatto took with him one of his master's carriage horses, a bay, about fifteen hands, with a few harness marks. He was seen on the 4th of this month at the Marseille tavern; there he gave the news of his master's death, \& said that he had been sent up the coast by friends of his master, on important business (Le Moniteur de la Louisiane, 12 March 1808). ${ }^{7}$
There were many fugitive slaves who, like Charles, did not merely invent stories but acted them out and staged them. The notices, as long as they are read carefully and with caution, take on a real air of the theatre of everyday life. Cuffee, a Jamaican slave, is said to have staged his own death very realistically, and Charles, a slave from Carolina, allegedly tried not to be taken for what he was, namely a slave advertised as a runaway:
Kingston, May 23, 1812.
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# THREE DOUBLOONS REWARD.
RAN AWAY, about two years ago, a Negro Man, named CUFFEE, who contrived to make it believe that he was drowned by the oversetting of a Canoe, near the Bath prison, but has been since fishing about Hunt's Bay and Newland's, and is supposed to have gone to windward, about Christmas last, for the same purpose (The Royal Gazette, 9 May 1812).
Fifteen Dollars reward.
RAN AWAY some time since a Negro Man named CHARLES. He is a fellow upwards of 40 years old, about 5 feet 10 inches high, not of a clear black, but rather of a brownish cast; $[\ldots]$ lately belonging to Mr. Negrin, and was formerly, for a long while, the property and confidential servant of Mr. Dupont, but originally belonged to Mr. Lenox. He [...] knows how to read and write tolerably well, and may possibly endeavour to pass himself by another name, especially as he is extremely artful in telling a fair story of himself, and has been known to make inquiry about a fellow Charles, that was advertised as a run-away in order that he might not be suspected of being the same person.
[...]
John H. Sargent (Charleston Courier, 11 May 1808). [My emphasis]
[^0]
[^0]: 7 '60 Psts. de Récompense. Un Mulâtre nommé Charles, appartenant à feu John W. Gurley, est parti marron le soir du 3 de ce mois. Il a environ 25 ans, à peu près 5 pieds 10 pouces, est bien proportionné, parle français $\mathcal{E}$ anglais ; il est alerte $\mathcal{E}$ intelligent, $\mathcal{E}$ il inventera toute sorte d'histoires pour favoriser la fuite. On ne se souvient pas bien du vêtement qui le couvrait. Ledit mulâtre a emmené avec lui un des chevaux de la voiture de son maître, bai, taille d'environ quinze mains, portant quelques marques de barnais. On l'a vu le 4 du courant à la taverne de Marseille ; il y a donné la nouvelle de la mort de son maître, $\mathcal{E}$ a dit qu'il était envoyé dans les côtes d'en baut par les amis du défunt, pour des affaires importantes.'
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This last notice is captivating, and raises questions. It seems that Charles had already been the subject of an advertisement, and that he knew about it either directly or indirectly, as he could read and write. The obvious irony of this new notice is that Charles would probably read it, finding confirmation of his acting talent and of the importance of changing roles. The notice is two-edged: it enables the narrator to have a dialogue with anyone who might arrest his slave, but it could also serve the purposes of the fugitive himself.
One clear finding emerges from this chapter, from all these intermingled voices and life stories like that of Charles. Fugitive notices are much more than mere descriptions, unambiguous documentary sources the historian can confidently use without fear of distorting the lost reality. The notices analysed in this chapter can be seen as a series of performances, stages set for dressing-up, carnivalesque expressions and carnival identities, and above all as the polyphonic telling of multi-faceted stories, peopled with characters that are plausible but not always real. As life stories or narrative fragments (petites allures de récit), fugitive slave notices will probably retain their popularity for a long time to come. Let us hope that they will be read in future in all their richness and complexity.
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# References
Charleston Courier
City Gazette
Le Moniteur de la Louisiane
Saint Jago de la Vega Gazette
The Royal Gazette
Blachette, L-J. 1826. Manuel du fabricant de sucre et du raffineur ou Essai sur les différens moyens d'extraire et de la raffiner. Paris, Roret.
Cassidy, F. 1961. Jamaica Talk. Three Hundred Years of the English Language in Jamaica. London, Macmillan \& Co.
Cassidy, F.G., and Le Page, R. B. 1967. Dictionary of Jamaican English. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
D'Costa, J. and Lalla B., eds. 1989. Jamaican Texts of the 18th and 19th Centuries. Tuscaloosa and London, The University of Alabama Press.
D'Costa, J. and Lalla, B. 1990. Language in Exile. Three Hundred Years of Jamaica Creole. Tuscaloosa and London, The University of Alabama Press.
Davis, J. 1803. Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America; during 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, and 1802. London, R. Edwards.
Davis, C.T. and Gates, H.L. eds. 1985. The Slave's Narrative. Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press.
Dureau, B., ed. 1852. Notice sur la culture de la canne à sucre et sur la fabrication du sucre en Louisiane. Paris, M. Mathias.
Farge, A. 2003. Le bracelet de parchemin. Paris, Bayard.
Gates, H.L. Jr. 1988. The Signifying Monkey. A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Genette, G. 1972. Figures III. Paris, Seuils.
Genette, G. 1983. Nouveau discours du récit. Paris, Seuils.
Holt, T.C. 1995. Marking Race: Race-making, and the Writing of History. American Historical Review, 5.
Johnson, W.S. 1999. Soul by Soul. Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Harvard, Harvard University Press.
Jordan, W.D., et al. 1968. White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 15501812. 2nd ed., University of North Carolina Press.
Levine, Lawrence W. 1977. Black Culture and Black Consciousness. Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York and Oxford University Press.
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Levine, Lawrence W. 1977. Black Culture and Black Consciousness. Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York and Oxford University Press.
McDonald, R. 1993. The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves. Goods and Chattels on the Sugar Plantations of Jamaica and Louisiana. Baton Rouge and London, Louisiana State University Press.
Roughley, T. 1823. The Jamaica planter's guide, or, A system for planting and managing a sugar estate, or other plantations in that island and throughout the British West Indies. London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.
Smith Foster, F. 1994. Witnessing Slavery. The Development of Ante-bellum Slave Narratives. Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press (1st edition 1979).
White, H. 1978. The Fictions of Factual Representation. Tropics of Discourse. Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press (chapter 5).
White, S. 1991. Somewhat More Independent. The End of Slavery in New York City, 17701810. Athens and London, University of Georgia Press.
Zemon Davis, N. 1987. Fiction in the Archives. Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in SixteenthCentury France. Stanford, Stanford University Press.
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# CHAPTER 6
## 'I AM NOT A SLAVE'
Liberated Africans and their Usage of the Judicial
System in Nineteenth Century Rio de Janeiro
Daniela Carvalho Cavalheiro
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## Introduction
'Fourteen years old, round face, big eyes, flat nose, big lips, small ears, without body marks'. ${ }^{1}$ This is how Miquelina Conga was described in 1835, shortly after receiving the legal status of 'liberated African', a category involving quasifreedom that followed British efforts to suppress the slave trade. This status would represent a major change in her life, perhaps comparable only to the change she suffered at the time of her capture in Africa, subsequent to which she was sold and transported as an enslaved person to the Americas. Belonging to the 'liberated African' category meant that she was subject to specific laws and conditions of labour and exploitation. In addition, being a liberated African in a country where slavery still existed was a challenge, since attempts to enslave those thus designated were not unusual (Mamigonian, 2002; Florence, 2002; Chalhoub, 2012).
In Brazil, many regulations were created to deal with liberated Africans. The first one was the Charter of 1818, by which all apprehended Africans in illegal slave ships were to be considered free and returned to Africa. When this was not possible, they were to fulfil 14 years of service under the responsibility of the
[^0]
[^0]: 1 Arquivo Nacional GIFI 6D 12.
imperial government, and were expected to learn the Portuguese language and the customs and religion of Brazil. However, the return to Africa did not happen often, and most liberated Africans remained in Brazil (Mamigonian, 2002).
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The Charter of 1818 was the only document, until 1853, that mentioned a period of service. All laws and regulations after this Charter stated that liberated Africans were to serve and work under guardianship, but for how long was not stated. Only in 1853 was it again stated that the term was 14 years. However, the Charter of 1818 was very clear on one point: liberated Africans should be treated in such a way that their physical integrity and their right to freedom were respected ${ }^{2}$. This understanding of the law is key to understanding the judicial procedure that Miquelina and her representative followed in applying to the Ministry of Justice to secure her freedom.
It is not known when Miquelina arrived in Brazil, though she was registered as 'a Liberated African of those who were by the Charter valid as a Law of 26 January 1818 and the Law of 7 April 1831', ${ }^{3}$ and was described as belonging to the Congo nation, which establishes that she came from western Central Africa. The lack of further details, however, does not prevent one from appreciating how she managed her quest for emancipation and how she used the experience she acquired during her years of service to understand the judicial system and use it in her favour.
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Miquelina registered her petition for emancipation in 1844. Petitions made by liberated Africans and their employers are prime sources for reconstructing their life stories. Such requests ranged in scope from petitions made by liberated Africans for final emancipation, after completing their period of service, to requests to change their place of employment (whether to follow a spouse, avoid undue physical punishment or for other reasons). As for employers, one finds requests for changing the concession or the place of employment, requests for dismissal of service, complaints of bad behaviour, and so forth (Mamigonian, 2002; Cavalheiro, 2015). Any dispute between liberated Africans and employers that went beyond household boundaries could be settled by the Ministry of Justice, often represented by the Judge of Orphans. Therefore, when Miquelina decided to seek emancipation, she went to the Ministry of Justice and, with the help of a representative, filed a petition.
[^0]
[^0]: 2 Collection of the Laws of the Brazilian Empire, 1808-1889, including: Charter of 26 January 1818, establishing penalties for those engaged in illegal slave trade; Decree No. 1303 of 28 December 1853, declaration that liberated Africans whose services were for private employers were to be emancipated after 14 years of service, when they so requested, and regulations for the destiny of said Africans.
3 The original reads 'liberta dos que o são pelo inciso $1^{2}$ do Alvará com força de Lei, de 26 de Janeiro de 1818, e artigo $1^{2}$ da Carta de Lei de 7 de abril de $1831^{\prime}$.
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# To serve and to be rented
In 1835, when our account begins, the Atlantic slave trade was already forbidden in Brazil. Moreover, liberated Africans could be hired by private persons, who were to provide the knowledge and skills needed, in exchange for services and a salary. ${ }^{4}$ This salary was supposed to be paid to the government and not to the liberated African, and was to go towards creating a fund that would be used to protect liberated Africans after their final emancipation. However, this salary was rarely paid at all, and no such fund ever existed (Mamigonian, 2002).
In 1835, Colonel Manoel Joze de Oliveira hired Miquelina. She served him until he passed away on 3 July 1838. During the time she worked for the Colonel, Miquelina performed domestic chores as a house servant. After his death, Emerenciana Roza de Oliveira, his widow, became the person responsible for Miquelina. Finally, she entered the employ of Maria Izabel de Oliveira on 24 January 1844. Miquelina spent her entire time of service in the employ of private individuals, who, according to the regulations of 1834 and 1835, were supposed to take care of her, feed and clothe her, and be responsible for her learning Portuguese and necessary skills.
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Many liberated Africans who fulfilled their period of service under the guardianship of a private employer endured a time when, in addition to the hardships of the service, they were alone and isolated in their workplace. That seems to have been the case of Miquelina, since there were apparently no other liberated Africans conceded to Colonel Manoel Joze de Oliveira. Nor were there any enslaved persons under his responsibility. When analysing the experience of liberated Africans in Brazil, this must be taken into consideration. The forms of labour, social relations, marriage, and even escape that applied to liberated Africans who worked for private individuals and lived in big cities such as Rio de Janeiro differed considerably from those that applied to liberated Africans who served in rural areas, or on frontiers, building roads and toll stations. The latter had more possibilities for establishing networks and strategizing in groups, since they worked in groups and, in many cases, alongside others who were enslaved, free or freed (Mamigonian, 2002; Moreira, 2005; Cavalheiro, 2015).
Nonetheless, that did not mean that Miquelina did not have any connections with other African people, or with people of African descent,
[^0]
[^0]: 4 Decree of 13 October 1834 determining that the services of Africans are to be taken under certain conditions; Decree of 19 November 1835 altering the Decree of 1834 related to the services of liberated Africans.
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whether enslaved, liberated or free. Historiography has already established that liberated Africans created bonds with those around them, including neighbours and others, who formed networks of support in times of need, such as the moment of requesting emancipation, even when living in urban contexts in a small work place (Moreira, 2005; Cavalheiro, 2015). Miquelina's petition does not indicate who may have been part of her support network, but it is important to highlight the participation of Jose Gomes da Silva, the person who wrote and signed her petition. As the judicial record does not yield any information about him, it is not possible to know whether he was a friend, neighbour or merely an acquaintance, but his presence in this process indicates that liberated Africans were not alone in their pursuit of freedom. During the nineteenth century, urban centres such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo witnessed the progressive growth of abolitionist organizations that included lawyers and rabulas, who promoted the cause of freedom of enslaved people in the courts. The participation of such figures in the emancipation of Africans via legal channels is clear. ${ }^{5}$
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# Deposit, emancipation and the right to freedom
While the Charter of 1818 stated that liberated Africans were to serve 14 years before acquiring final emancipation, Miquelina had only been under guardianship for nine years when she filed her emancipation request in 1844. However, that same Charter stated that liberated Africans could not be treated as slaves. In addition, article 10 of the Charter of 1832 stated that a liberated African whose physical being or right to freedom was threatened by another person could request placement 'in deposit', which meant that he or she could be taken from his or her employer and placed under the guardianship of a different person until a legal review took place to prove or dismiss the claim that the liberated African was in danger. ${ }^{6}$ These are the two regulations that Jose Gomes da Silva used in Miquelina's petition that she be removed from her employer and then emancipated.
The complaint was based on 15 receipts to Emerenciana Roza de Oliveira for the sums she received for renting out Miquelina's service as a wet nurse
[^0]
[^0]: 5 Rabula was the name given to a person who practised law without having a formal education or degree. On the abolitionist movement in Brazil, see Azevedo, 2010.
6 Decree of 12 April 1832, Regulations on the execution of the Law of 7 November 1831 regarding the slave trade, article 10 .
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6 Decree of 12 April 1832, Regulations on the execution of the Law of 7 November 1831 regarding the slave trade, article 10 .
from 19 April 1842 to 7 May 1844. As Mamigonian has observed, there were no regulations regarding an employer's practice of renting out the services of a liberated African. Yet such renting out of liberated Africans by their employers was widespread and very lucrative for the latter. The salary that was supposed to be paid to the government for a liberated African for one year could thus be collected in less than a month. In Miquelina's case, the amount to be paid to the government was 12,000 réis, while renting her out gave her employer from 16,000 réis to 20,000 réis per month. ${ }^{7}$ Although it was not illegal to rent out the services of liberated Africans, the issue raised by Miquelina and her representative was that she was described as a slave in the receipts, using the words 'my slave, my black woman' and 'a black woman of mine' (minha escrava, minha preta, uma preta minha). ${ }^{8}$ In short, she was being treated as a slave, and this was the basis of their argument. The problem Miquelina and Jose Gomes da Silva cited was not that her services were exploited through rent, but that the arrangement was based on a false claim of enslavement.
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Miquelina's petition, which was filed in May 1844, nine years after she started working under the guardianship of her employer, requested her deposit. Since she was being referred to as a slave, the petition argued, the terms of guardianship under which her services were conceded to the employer should be terminated on account of non-observance of the regulations. In addition, the petition requested emancipation prior to fulfilment of the 14 years of service. This was based on the provision of the Charter of 1818 according to which liberated Africans who had already acquired the skills and independence necessary for living on their own before the end of the 14 years should be emancipated if they demonstrated what was called 'good behaviour'. ${ }^{9}$ Miquelina and Jose Gomes da Silva used the argument that she was a good servant and demonstrated good behaviour.
Although the exploitation of the labour of liberated Africans was similar to that of the labour of enslaved people, the law stipulated a difference between the two categories of people. And, as E. P. Thompson has suggested, laws and regulations can only work and be respected if they present the possibility of being used by anyone in a society (1975). Thus, what this case highlights is
[^0]
[^0]: 7 See also Mamigonian, 2002, p. 99, and Arquivo Nacional GIFI 6D 12, Petition of emancipation of Miquelina Conga.
8 This is a loose translation. It is important to remember that during the years of slavery in Brazil, reference to a person as a black man or woman meant that he or she was property. See Mattos, 2013.
9 Charter of 1818.
not only the exploitation of labour, but also the possibilities of fighting against that exploitation. The very same laws that stipulated periods of service and forms of labour - and therefore exploitation - also held forth the possibility of emancipation.
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Both deposit and emancipation were, however, denied. In response to the petition, the Judge of Orphans rejected all that was requested, alleging that, in spite of everything, a liberated African needed to fulfil the period of 14 years of service. Nonetheless, Jose Gomes da Silva and Miquelina did not give up. They decided to use the legal system in every way possible, initiating a legal process in which we get glimpses of Miquelina's perceptions of freedom and of what it meant to be a liberated African, in relation to how she was to be treated and how this treatment, when not suitable, allowed her to demand emancipation.
The letter of the law was in her favour since liberated Africans were not supposed to be treated as slaves. But, as Sidney Chalhoub points out, Brazilian society was shaped in such a way that black people's experience of freedom during the nineteenth century was conditioned by the strength of slavery (Chalhoub, 2012, p. 233). Miquelina was being treated as a slave even though, since she was a liberated African, the legal system and society were supposed to corroborate her status as that of a person who was not to remain in a position of exploitation and servitude.
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Miquelina and Jose Gomes da Silva thus filed a new petition. More emphatic than before, they argued that she needed to be 'freed from the maltreatment and extermination that she fears'. ${ }^{10}$ She also demanded that she be emancipated because she was being treated as a slave, even though she still had several years to serve. The new argument rested on the fact that the last receipt for the payment of her services was signed by José Francisco Ribeiro at the request of his mother Rita Maria Joaquina, to whom Miquelina's services had never been entrusted. Therefore, since a new master who should not be taking advantage of her services appeared in the receipts, it was clear that the condition of slavery was being imposed, which reinforced the argument for her emancipation. This fact proved that Miquelina was being treated as a slave, since her employers were selling her services to anyone who was willing to pay for them.
For almost two years, from April 1842 to January 1844, Miquelina was hired out for her services as a wet nurse. What the legal process does not show us is that being a wet nurse meant that Miquelina must have had a child, since
[^0]
[^0]: 10 The original reads: 'para que fique segura de sevicias ou exterminio que receia.' Arquivo Nacional GIFI 6D 12.
she needed to be able to breastfeed. Usually liberated African women who had children would try to free their children when filing petitions of emancipation. ${ }^{11}$ The fact that Miquelina did not mention a child during the legal process may indicate either that Miquelina was separated from her baby or that the child had died. Child mortality rates in Brazil were high during the nineteenth century, and the exploitation and hard work endured by mothers (Chalhoub, 1996), circumstances which seem to have been endured by most liberated African women, only increased these rates.
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Miquelina was first rented out for 16,000 réis per month, a sum that did not differ much from what most liberated Africans received. Maciel Silva presents the case of Candida, a liberated African woman living in Recife in northeast Brazil in the 1840s, who was hired out for 480 réis per day, which added up to around 14,400 réis per month (Silva, 2007). The same amount was paid by another woman, Dionizia. She was not rented out but worked by herself as a washerwoman in the streets of Rio de Janeiro and had to pay 480 réis daily to her employer. She endured those conditions for 16 years from 1839 to 1855. This work arrangement, by virtue of which Dionizia was responsible for finding work and being paid for it, was a strong argument in her petition of emancipation, since she proved she was able to take care of herself (Cavalheiro, 2015, pp. 138-141).
From April 1842 until April 1844, Miquelina was rented out to José Martins da Rocha as a wet nurse. Until July 1843, the receipts were signed by Emerenciana Roza de Oliveira. Receipts from August to October 1843 are not attached to the file. Then, in November 1843, José Francisco Ribeiro started signing the receipts, stating that he was doing so for his sister Emerenciana Roza de Oliveira, who was legally responsible for Miquelina. However, in January 1844, José Martins da Rocha paid the fee to a different person. That receipt was signed by José Francisco Ribeiro representing his mother, Rita Maria Joaquina.
Shifting a liberated African from one employer to another was not impossible. However, it was necessary to file a request with the Ministry of Justice, which had to approve the conveyance and make it public. That had not been the case with Miquelina. The change in the name of the person who received the payment for her services, according to Miquelina's understanding and that of her representative, showed that she was being treated as a slave.
[^0]
[^0]: 11 For a discussion of liberated African women requesting emancipation, see Cavalheiro, 2015, chapter 4.
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[^0]
[^0]: 11 For a discussion of liberated African women requesting emancipation, see Cavalheiro, 2015, chapter 4.
The last receipt is dated 7 May 1844. For the sum of 20,000 réis, Miquelina was given to José Francisco Ribeiro by the Chief of Police without any notice from the Ministry of Justice or the Judge of Orphans. And she remained with him, living in Rio de Janeiro, at 32 Piolho Street, from where she filed her petition on 24 May 1844, only a few days after being transferred to Ribeiro's household. This petition was also denied on 19 August 1844. After that, the petition does not state where and with whom Miquelina lived and worked. However, newspaper accounts fill some of the gaps.
On 30 June 1848, an escape announcement was placed in the Jornal do Commércio, stating that Miquelina had fled her workplace. The announcement also stated that she might have escaped to Santa Ana de Niterói, a neighbouring city, across the bay from Rio de Janeiro. ${ }^{12}$ Four years after beginning her quest for freedom within the judicial system and failing in the process, Miquelina decided to escape to pursue her freedom. It should be noted that, in 1848, Miquelina was completing 13 years under guardianship. The end of her time was near and yet she decided to escape. The reasons are not mentioned in the small space of the newspaper announcement. However, historiography points out that the transfer from one employer to another could have been a strategy to try to hold the services of Africans under employers' control. As shown above, Miquelina already feared that possibility since she was treated as a slave. Maybe she also realized that the end of the period of 14 years might not mean emancipation for her.
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# 'I am not a slave'
Miquelina and Jose Gomes da Silva, her legal representative, tried every possible argument to gain her emancipation. They used proof of payments in which she was described as a slave to prove that her status as a liberated African was not being respected. They proved that she had been given, as only an enslaved person could be, to a third party who was not responsible for her. Miquelina's conditions during the nine years she was under guardianship in Brazil were far from what was stipulated by the laws and regulations under which liberated Africans were supposed to be allowed to live.
Being treated as a slave was something that a liberated African tried to avoid. Even though the work and living arrangements were very similar for these two
[^0]
[^0]: 12 'Announcements' (Annuncios), Jornal do Commércio (Rio de Janeiro), 30 June 1848.
categories of person, a liberated African had the possibility of emancipation after completing the period of 14 years of service. That became clear in 1853, with a decree stating that any liberated African under the guardianship of a private employer and having fulfilled 14 years of service could file a request for emancipation. Once the time of service was proved, a letter of emancipation was to be given. ${ }^{13}$ After this decree, it is possible to find numerous requests for emancipation made by liberated Africans in the 1850s and the 1860s. ${ }^{14}$ Miquelina's case shows a level of interpretation of the judicial system that one sees in the case of other liberated Africans only after this decree.
In 1844, using the Charter of 1818, Miquelina and her representative built a case based on the ideas of freedom and slavery. Miquelina's trajectory allows us to perceive the different meanings that labour could have for employers and liberated Africans, also allowing us to observe that the struggles for freedom ran deeper than we know. Her trajectory demonstrates that there is still much work to be done in order to understand the experiences of liberated Africans in Brazil.
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# References
Azevedo, E. 2010. O direito dos escravos. Campinas, Brazil, Editora da Unicamp.
Cavalheiro Carvalho, D. 2015. Africanos livres no Brasil: tráfico ilegal, vidas tuteladas e experiências coletivas no século XIX. M.A. thesis, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Cavalheiro Carvalho, D. 2016. Carolina e Delfina: aprendizado e emancipação de africanas livres em Magé e no Rio de Janeiro. Revista Recôncavo, Vol. 6, No. 10.
Chalhoub, S. 1996. Cidade febril. Cortiços e epidemias na Corte Imperial. São Paulo, Brazil, Companhia das Letras.
Chalhoub, S. 2012. A força da escravidão. Ilegalidade e costume no Brasil Oitocentista. São Paulo, Brazil, Companhia das Letras.
Florence, A. B. 2002. Entre o cativeiro e a emancipação: a liberdade dos africanos livres no Brasil (1818-1864). M.A. thesis, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil.
Mamigonian, B. G. 2002. To be a Liberated African in Brazil: Labour and Citizenship in the Nineteenth Century. Ph.D. thesis, University of Waterloo, Canada.
[^0]
[^0]: 13 Decree No. 1303 of 28 December 1853, declaration that liberated Africans whose services were for private employers were to be emancipated after 14 years of service, when they so requested, and regulations for the destiny of said Africans.
14 For petitions of emancipation in the 1850s, see Mamigonian, 2002, Cavalheiro, 2015, chapter 4, Cavalheiro, 2016.
Mattos, H. 2013. Das cores do silêncio, 3rd edn. Campinas, Brazil, Editora da Unicamp. Moreira, A. S. 2005. Liberdade tutelada: os africanos livres e as relações de trabalho na Fábrica de Pólvora da Estrela, Serra da Estrela/RJ (c. 1831 - c. 1870). M.A. thesis. Campinas, Brazil, Editora da Unicamp.
Silva, M. H. 2007. Uma africana 'livre' e a 'corrupção dos costumes': Pernambuco (18301844). Estudos Afro-Asiáticos, Vol. 29, pp. 123-160.
Thompson, E. P. 1975. Whigs and Hunters. The Origin of the Black Act. New York, Pantheon Books.
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# BIOGRAPHY, HISTORY AND DIASPORA
The Bight of Benin and Bahia Kristin Mann and Lisa Earl Castillo
Exciting new research is demonstrating the possibility of recovering biographical information about individual African slaves and reconstructing the contours of their lives. Long limited to the rare African men and even rarer African women who left narratives or autobiographical testimony of one kind or another, historians are now expanding research on individual Africans, both enslaved and freed, by combing ecclesiastical, notary and other secular sources in archives around the Atlantic world and piecing together the fragments of information they uncover to narrate and interpret their lives. Oral traditions handed down within families, religious communities, town quarters, and other populations are also yielding vital insights. The work is beginning to reclaim the untold stories of men, women and children torn from their natal homes and brutalized by enslavement and trade, rescuing them from near universal anonymity. The recovery of these human stories is bringing to light anew the terrible realities of slavery and the slave trade in Africa and the Americas and making them more immediate and concrete. The biographical research, moreover, is casting a bold new light on Africans' resilience and resourcefulness in surviving slavery, re-forging identity and community, and, sometimes, escaping slavery through redemption, manumission, rebellion, running away, or other means. In the case of the fortunate minority of Africans who freed themselves, biographical analysis is demonstrating the oppression and vulnerability they
continued to face. All of this new historical knowledge is transforming our understanding of the origins and development of the global African diaspora (Law and Lovejoy, 2001; Reis, 2008; Sweet, 2011; Scott and Hébrard, 2012). ${ }^{1}$
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Few sites of the transatlantic slave trade have proved richer for the recovery of biographical data about Africans sold to the Americas than the hinterland and littoral of the Bight of Benin and Brazil, especially Bahia. One reason is the richness of sources for these regions. Another is the long and superb tradition of scholarship that has used these sources to document, analyse, and interpret Afro-Bahian history and culture. Two short biographies presented in this chapter will illustrate the kinds of information it has been possible to recover about Yoruba-speaking Africans sold into the Bahian slave trade during the first half of the nineteenth century, when that branch of the commerce reached its height. In Bahia, these slaves were generally identified as Nagô. The first biography takes as its subject a woman who is still remembered today as an important religious leader; the second, a man who was at once a victim of the transatlantic slave trade and a participant in it. Both of these historical actors ultimately made important contributions to the development of the diaspora connecting West Africa, Brazil, and other parts of the world.
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Francisca da Silva, better remembered by her ritual title, Iyá Nassô, is one of the most celebrated nineteenth-century figures of the Afro-Brazilian religion known as candomblé. ${ }^{2}$ A priestess of the Yoruba orisha (deity) Shango, she was born in Yorubaland, probably around 1770. It is not clear when she arrived in Bahia as a slave, but it was probably sometime before 1810. The title she used, Iyá Nassô, suggests that, while still in Africa, she supervised the religious activities related to Shango worship in the palace of the alafin (king) of Oyo. At this point, Oyo had been a major regional military and economic power for well over a century. From the late 1780s, however, Oyo was rocked by a series of internal power struggles, including armed uprisings. It is likely that Iyá Nassô's enslavement occurred during one of these conflicts. She seems to have arrived in Bahia with a son and to have left at least one other child, a boy, behind in Africa. In Salvador, the capital of the province, she was baptized as Francisca while her son received the name Domingos. After obtaining their freedom, both used the surname da Silva, probably their owner's last name.
[^0]
[^0]: 1 Pierre Verger paved the way in his book Os libertos: Sete caminhos na liberdade de escravos da Babia no século XIX (1992).
2 For a fuller discussion of Francisca da Silva's life, see Castillo and Parés, 2010.
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2 For a fuller discussion of Francisca da Silva's life, see Castillo and Parés, 2010.
Francisca da Silva first emerges in written documentation in 1822, when she was already a freedwoman with slaves of her own. By 1824, she had formed a relationship with the freedman José Pedro Autran, whom she married according to Catholic rites in 1832. A native of Ilesha, José Pedro Autran had purchased his freedom in 1822. ${ }^{3}$ As a member of a prominent black Catholic brotherhood, he had connections to a number of affluent African freed people in Salvador. Like other Africans, especially men, he utilized the Catholic institution of godparenting to establish ties with newly arrived enslaved Africans, particularly those from his own ethnolinguistic group (de Queirós Mattoso, 1986, pp. 11416; de Oliveira, 1995-1996, pp. 184-87; Castillo, 2011). For example, in 1824 Autran became godfather to a captive baptized as Thomé, who was actually the son Iyá Nassô had left behind in Africa. A decade later, when Thomé's master died, his mother and her husband provided the funds to purchase his freedom.
By this time, the family had attained a degree of economic prosperity and material comfort as owners of two parcels of property and around a dozen enslaved adults, mostly Yoruba-speaking women. Some, such as Marcelina Obatosi, baptized in 1824, were initiated into orisha worship and became active participants in the family's religious activities. These practices, like José Pedro's godparenting network, enabled the couple to reconstruct an Afrocentric web of social relations in Bahia. Most devotees of Iyá Nassô's shrines were probably enslaved or freed Yoruba speakers, but there is evidence that other Africans, particularly Gbe speakers and Nupe, also participated.
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In January 1835, the household's comfortable life was shattered by the political fallout of a slave revolt known as the Malê Rebellion, which was led by Islamicized Yoruba speakers. In its wake, anti-African, anti-Islamic hysteria swept the city. More than 300 Africans, both enslaved and freed, were imprisoned, including Iyá Nassô's two sons, Domingos and Thomé (Reis, 2003). ${ }^{4}$ Iyá Nassô lobbied courageously for her sons' sentences to be commuted to deportation to West Africa. In an 1836 petition to Brazil's Ministry of Justice, she argued that their convictions had resulted from 'false accusations by enemies'. Offering to pay their passage to Africa, she vowed that she would follow them herself, never to return to Brazil, 'not because she had been forced to [leave] by the authorities', but because she 'refused to tolerate being compromised' by those who wished her ill. ${ }^{5}$ Late in 1837, Francisca da Silva and her husband left
[^0]
[^0]: 3 For more on José Pedro Autran, see Parés and Castillo, 2015.
4 For an earlier edition in English, see Reis, 1993.
5 Francisca's petition is transcribed in Reis, 2003, p. 466.
for Africa, accompanied by over a dozen former slaves, many recently freed, including Marcelina Obatosi and her two young children.
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5 Francisca's petition is transcribed in Reis, 2003, p. 466.
for Africa, accompanied by over a dozen former slaves, many recently freed, including Marcelina Obatosi and her two young children.
The memory of the group's odyssey is preserved in the oral traditions of one of Brazil's oldest candomblé temples, Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká, whose shrines were created by Iyá Nassô, probably during her first years as a freedwoman, if not before. According to one version of the story, the group's journey back to Africa ended in the Yoruba city-State of Ketu. However, newly uncovered evidence from the Republic of Benin shows that they went to Ouidah, where they received land from the Dahomean king, Gezo. There, Iyá Nassô's husband became involved in exporting kola nuts, and perhaps other products, to Brazil. He and his wife also established a new religious community, undoubtedly with the participation of her sons and the family's former slaves, some of whom, including Marcelina's children, had been freed only on the condition that they remain with their former owners until the latter's death. Having paid for her freedom, Marcelina was bound by no such restriction. In 1839, she returned to Bahia, where she assumed leadership of Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká. Twenty years later, one of her daughters joined her, suggesting that by then Iyá Nassô and her husband were dead. Today, Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká is one of Brazil's most respected candomblé temples. In 1986, it was designated a national historic site.
The subject of our second biography is Francisco Gomes de Andrade, also known by the African name Shetelu, who was one of the founders of the AfroBrazilian community in Lagos (Mann, 2016). Like Iyá Nassô, he was enslaved during the instability and warfare that accompanied the fall of the Oyo empire. Unlike her, he was not born at the centre of the empire, but in the allied kingdom of Owu on Oyo's southern frontier. While Iyá Nassô was enslaved as an adult, Shetelu was captured as a youth between about 1815 and 1825.
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A Brazilian, likely the slave trader Luis Antônio de Andrade, eventually bought Shetelu and had him christened Francisco. Luis Antônio worked in the Brazilian slave trade at Molembo, north of the Congo River, in the 1820s, and at Lagos, then the leading slaving port along the Bight of Benin, in the 1830s and 1840s. Francisco's general absence from Bahian records during the 1820s and 1830s suggests that Luis may have purchased him in West Africa, not Brazil, and that Shetelu's first experience of chattel slavery occurred in Atlantic Africa rather than in the New World.
Clear evidence places Francisco in Lagos during the 1830s, working with his owner in the Atlantic slave trade. While there, Francisco encountered two members of his family from Owu, which had been defeated and destroyed in 1822. One was a younger woman named Ayebomi, who he later said was related
to him through his father, and the other was her mother, Ayiku. Ayebomi too had been enslaved as a very young child along with her older sister Ajatu, possibly at the same time as Shetelu. Ayebomi, however, had not been sold into the Atlantic trade, but rather to a Yoruba-speaking woman in the nearby town of Ijebu-Ode. After several years, she was redeemed and reunited with her mother, by then living in the town of Abeokuta, founded by refugees in 1830. During their unexpected reunion, Shetelu told Ayebomi and her mother that he had seen Ajatu in Brazil, where she had been christened Luisa.
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By mid-1844, Francisco had manumitted himself, and travelled back and forth between Lagos and Salvador, in the company of known slave traders on at least one occasion. Identified as a trader in his passport application to leave Brazil in May of that year, he apparently subsequently made his home in Lagos, where, by 1846, he had fathered three children by two different mothers and begun to establish a family. By the early 1850s, Francisco was a leader of the growing community of Brazilian freed people in the town. Ironically, the experience he had gained, connections he had forged, and economic and social resources he had accumulated while living in Lagos as an enslaved Brazilian and working in the slave trade enabled him to play that role. His transatlantic travel, moreover, had allowed him to carry messages between his family members and others on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
That Francisco had three of his children baptized in a collective celebration of that sacrament when the first Roman Catholic priest visited Lagos in the 1860s testifies to his identification as a Brazilian (Da Cunha, 1985, pp. 152-204; Strickrodt, 2004; Parés, 2015). The strong ties he and Luisa Ajatu, who herself returned to Lagos from Bahia in 1854, re-established and maintained with their Owu kin, Ayebomi and Ayiku, as well as other Owu country folk from whom they had been separated by enslavement roughly 30 years before, demonstrate their enduring bonds with their long-dispersed family and destroyed homeland.
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At first glance these short biographies of Iyá Nassô and Shetelu appear quite different. The evidence preserved in the surviving sources, written primarily by ecclesiastical and secular authorities, or handed down orally by orisha worshippers, inevitably shapes what we know about them. Despite their differences, the biographies illuminate a number of common themes in early nineteenth-century Afro-Bahian history, from the perspective of gender, age, and chronology. Each illuminates, for example, the experience of Yoruba speakers enslaved in the early phase of the calamitous collapse of the Oyo empire, one at the centre of the maelstrom, the other on the southern frontier where the conflict quickly spread. A mature woman at the time she was captured with her son Domingos,
it is not surprising that Iyá Nassô was sold into the Atlantic trade. Her price on the coast would have been significantly higher than in the interior; moreover, her ritual knowledge and authority may have made her a dangerous investment locally. Shetelu's youth and gender, on the other hand, made him well-suited for specialized training and careful grooming as a worker in the transatlantic trade. Both aspects surely helped catch his Brazilian buyer's eye. ${ }^{6}$ Ayebomi, a small child at the time of her capture, was not attractive for export and thus entered the African slave market, although her older sister Ajatu was not so fortunate. How the girls' mother escaped being captured is not known.
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The biographies of Francisca da Silva and Francisco Gomes de Andrade also demonstrate the diversity of slave experience in Bahia. Sugar production still dominated the province's economy in the first half of the nineteenth century, and many of the enslaved people imported from Africa at that time were set to work in the cane fields and processing mills of the Recôncavo. Even so, large numbers were also employed beyond sugar, including those like José Pedro Autran, employed in Salvador's urban economy, or Francisco Gomes de Andrade, employed in the transatlantic trade. The sites and character of the men's labour profoundly affected their subsequent opportunities. Urban slaves, like those involved in the transatlantic trade, generally had better chances of earning an income and accumulating capital that could be used to buy their freedom, or that of relatives or friends, than did enslaved people who performed agricultural labour on sugar plantations (Klein and Luna, 2010, pp. 78-85, pp. 89-90, pp. 107-112; Graham, 2010, pp. 35-6, 50-3, 67, 79-80, 101-4). These two types of enslaved person also enjoyed superior physical mobility and thus had greater opportunity to remain in touch with loved ones who did not share the same owner, even sometimes across the Atlantic. Although nothing is known about Francisca da Silva's work while enslaved, it is likely that she benefited materially from her religious activities. The lives of Brazilian enslaved people and freed people were characterized by a relentless struggle - to survive poverty and oppression, re-forge community, negotiate spaces of autonomy, and accumulate capital that could be turned to manumission and invested in slaves and other property. The stories of Francisca da Silva, her husband José Pedro Autran and Francisco Gomes de Andrade illustrate the strategies used by enslaved Africans who worked in urban environments or the transatlantic trade to achieve these goals.
[^0]
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[^0]
[^0]: 6 On the work of enslaved and freed Africans in the slave trade and other commerce between the Bight of Benin and Brazil, see Hicks, 2015, chapters 3, 4.
The biographies show the importance of family, godparenting, slave ownership, ritual practice and initiation, and ethnolinguistic identity in rebuilding lives and worlds violently ruptured by slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. Both Iyá Nassô and Shetelu entered Brazilian slavery with kin and attached great importance to maintaining these and other family relations throughout their lives. Tellingly, Iyá Nassô and José Pedro, who placed Shango worship at the centre of their activities, were careful to give their marriage the sanction of the Catholic Church and thus the protection of the Brazilian State. Francisco Gomes attended to his relationship with Ayebomi and her mother from the time of the trio's reunion in the 1830s until the women's deaths many years later. His example may have helped inspire Luisa Ajatu to return to West Africa and her family a decade after he did.
Francisca da Silva and José Pedro Autran in Brazil and Francisco Gomes de Andrade back on the African coast, all used the Catholic institution of baptism to construct dense networks of relations with slaves and their owners, free infants and their parents. The godparenting networks thus formed bound the parties involved in a web of mutual, if sometimes hierarchical, obligation. In this way, all three extended the number and reach of their patrons, clients and dependents. In nineteenth-century baptisms, the role of the godfather was crucial while that of the godmother was optional. Nevertheless, Francisca da Silva's Catholic union with José Pedro Autran gave her unofficial access to her husband's godchildren.
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The acquisition of slaves - much more common among African freed people than among enslaved people themselves - played a major role in the accumulation of property and construction of a network of dependents. The enslaved people belonging to Francisca da Silva and José Pedro Autran not only performed labour and generated income for their owners, but they also served as a cadre of dependents whose existence enhanced their owners' prestige. They were valued, moreover, as devotees of the orishas, and they performed necessary tasks in the ritual domain, first in Salvador and later in Ouidah. As mentioned above, one of these enslaved people, Marcelina Obatosi, returned to Bahia as a freed woman to lead the terreiro after Iyá Nassô and her family had established themselves in Ouidah. No evidence survives that Francisco Gomes de Andrade owned slaves either in Brazil or West Africa. However, like Francisca and José Pedro, many Bahian freed people took slaves and former slaves back to Africa with them. Many also bought slaves after their return to West Africa and, over time, incorporated some of them into their households and lineages. Francisco may have done likewise in the process of consolidating his position in Lagos during the 1840s.
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The majority of enslaved Africans entering Bahia in the first half of the nineteenth century came from the Yoruba-speaking world. ${ }^{7}$ It is, therefore, not surprising that Francisca da Silva's and José Pedro Autran's slaves, former slaves, and godchildren were predominantly Nagô. So were the co-workers at the heart of Francisco Gomes de Andrade's social network. The ethnolinguistic concentration of Nagôs in Salvador increased the demand for orisha worship of the sort practiced by Iyá Nassô, as it did for the African commodities, beyond enslaved people, that Africans who worked and travelled in the transatlantic trade purveyed. While Nagô slaves and freed people in Bahia inhabited a world in which the State, church, and most free citizens were committed to maintaining a social order based on slavery, and thus to tightly controlling the enslaved population, these Africans did not have to look far for companions who spoke their language, shared their culture, practised their religions (including Islam), and understood their signs and symbols, even when veiled (De Oliveira, 1995-1996). Freed Africans, many Nagô, became deeply threatening to the authorities in the aftermath of the 1835 Malê slave rebellion, leading to the severe punishment of those thought implicated in the uprising and to the introduction of new laws and regulations that repressed Africans more generally.
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It was, of course, Francisca da Silva's concern for her sons, Domingos and Thomé, that motivated her, in 1835, to intervene with civil authorities on their behalf and then, supported by José Pedro Autran, to lead members of their household and religious community to emigrate to Ouidah. The political exodus, post-Malê, of Francisca da Silva, José Pedro Autran, and over a thousand other Africans like them, marked a turning point in the history of the African diaspora connecting the littoral of the Bight of Benin with Brazil because it inaugurated a sustained, if uneven, flow of freed people from Brazil to West Africa that would last for the rest of the century. The number of returnees ebbed in the 1840s, when most, like Francisco Gomes de Andrade, were men already working in the transatlantic slave trade. Some of these men built on the political, economic, and social alliances they had forged through their commercial or other activities to open new coastal towns to settlement. The foundation Francisco Gomes de Andrade helped lay at Lagos proved significant less than a decade later when Britain took a fateful step toward its colonization, the slave trade from the port ended, and there was a new commerce in palm oil that would soon make the town the most prosperous and dynamic settlement on the West
[^0]
[^0]: 7 On the number and origin of slaves imported into Bahia in the nineteenth century, see Eltis, 2004; Reis and Mamigonian, 2004; Ribeiro, 2008.
African coast. From the 1850s, Lagos became a site of renewed immigration on the part of Brazilian freedwomen and children, as well as men (Da Cunha, 1985, pp. 479-91; Strickrodt, 2004; Parés, 2015; Castillo, 2016; Mann, 2007, ch. 3, 4).
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The return of freed Africans such as Iyá Nassô and Shetelu to coastal areas of the Bight of Benin transformed the character of the diaspora connecting Africa, Brazil and, ultimately, other parts of the globe. Henceforth, Africa ceased being simply a place of traumatic origin associated with enslavement and trade; it became also a site of memory, cultural and political identity and retrospective longing. The creation of communities of kin, co-religionists, trade partners, and intellectual interlocutors in towns along the littoral of the Bight of Benin and in the interior turned these places into sites of ongoing travel, exchange, engagement and dialogue (see, for example, Matory, 1999). Moreover, the relationship was reciprocal. Just as Africa's children had once been sent to Brazil as slaves, so Afro-Brazil was now sending hers back to Africa, and the circulation continued over decades via the back-and-forth movement of people, commodities, ideas, knowledge and information. A living, Afrocentric, transatlantic community developed. As its members dispersed across generations via their own further migrations, carrying their forebears' history and practices with them, the diaspora itself widened and transformed, and it has now become global. With individual members and affiliated temples scattered across Brazil and also - via migration from Bahia to Ouidah and, in a later generation, to Lagos - along the Bight of Benin, and then with secondary migrations from these places extending the process to England and Australia, the temple founded by Iyá Nassô provides an excellent example of this phenomenon.
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# References
Castillo, L. E. 2011. The Exodus of 1835: Àguda Life Stories and Social Networks. T. Babawale, A. Alao, and T. Onwumah (eds), Pan-Africanism and the Integration of Continental Africa and Diaspora Africa. Lagos, Nigeria, Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization, pp. 27-51.
Castillo, L. E. 2016. Mapping the nineteenth-century Brazilian returnee movement: Demographics, life stories, and the question of slavery. Atlantic Studies, Global Currents, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 25-52.
Castillo, L. E. and Parés, L. N. 2010. Marcelina da Silva: A Nineteenth-Century Candomblé Priestess in Bahia. Slavery and Abolition, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 1-27.
Da Cunha, M. C. 1985. Negros, estrangeiros: Os escravos libertos e sua volta à África. São Paulo, Brazil, Brasiliense.
De Oliveira, M.I.C.1995-1996. Viver e morrer no meio dos seus: Nações e comunidades africanas na Bahia do século XIX. Revista USP, No. 28, pp. 174-93.
De Queirós Mattoso, K. M. 1986. To Be a Slave in Brazil, 1550-1888. New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press.
Eltis, D. 2004. The Diaspora of Yoruba Speakers, 1650-1865: Dimensions and Implications. T. Falola and M. D. Childs (eds), The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World. Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University Press, pp. 17-39.
Graham, R. 2010. Feeding the City: From Street Market to Liberal Reform in Salvador, Brazil, 1780-1860. Austin, Tex., University of Texas Press.
Hicks, M. 2015. The Sea and the Shackle: African and Creole Mariners and the Making of a Luso-African Atlantic Commercial Culture, 1721-1835. Ph.D. thesis, University of Virginia, USA.
Klein, H. S. and Luna, F. V. 2010. Slavery in Brazil. New York, Cambridge University Press.
Law, R. and Lovejoy, P. E. (eds). 2001. The Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: His Passage from Slavery to Freedom in Africa and America. Princeton, NJ, Markus Wiener Publishers.
Mann, K. 2007. Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900. Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University Press.
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Mann, K. 2007. Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900. Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University Press.
Mann, K. 2016. The Illegal Slave Trade and One Yoruba Man's Transatlantic Passages from Slavery to Freedom. P. Misevich and K. Mann (eds), The Rise and Demise of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Atlantic World. Rochester, NY, University of Rochester Press, pp. 220-46.
Matory, J. L. 1999. The English Professors of Brazil: On the Diasporic Roots of the Yorùbá Nation. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 72-103.
Parés, L. N. 2015. Afro-Catholic Baptism and the Articulation of a Merchant Community, Agoué 1840-1860. History in Africa, Vol. 42, pp. 165-201.
Parés, L. N. and Castillo, L. E. 2015. José Pedro Autran e o retorno de Xango. Religião e Sociedade, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 13-43.
Reis, J.J. 1993. Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Babia. A. Brakel (trans.). Baltimore, Md., The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Reis, J. J. 2003. Rebelião escrava no Brasil: A bistória do levante dos malês em 1835. São Paulo, Brazil, Companhia das Letras.
Reis, J. J. 2008. Domingos Sodré, um sacerdote africano: Escravidão, liberdade e candomblé na Babia do século XIX. São Paulo, Brazil, Companhia das Letras.
Reis, J. J. and Mamigonian, B. G. 2004. Nagô and Mina: The Yoruba Diaspora in Brazil. T. Falola and M. D. Childs (eds), The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World. Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University Press, pp. 77-110.
Ribeiro, A. V. 2008. The Transatlantic Slave Trade to Bahia, 1582-1851. D. Eltis and D. Richardson (eds), Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, pp. 130-54.
Scott, R. J. and Hébrard, J. 2012. Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
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Scott, R. J. and Hébrard, J. 2012. Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
Strickrodt, S. 2004. 'Afro-Brazilians' of the Western Slave Coast in the Nineteenth Century. J. C. Curto and P. E. Lovejoy (eds), Enslaving Connections: Changing Cultures of Africa and Brazil during the Era of Slavery. Amherst, NY, Humanity Books, pp. 213-44.
Sweet, J. H. 2011. Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World. Chapel Hill, NC, The University of North Carolina Press.
Verger, P. 1992. Os libertos: Sete caminhos na liberdade de escravos da Babia no século XIX. São Paulo, Brazil, Corrupio.
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# CHAPTER 8
## DONA ANA JOAQUINA DOS SANTOS SILVA
A Woman Merchant of Nineteenth Century Luanda<br>Vanessa S. Oliveira
Historians long ago established the importance of western Central Africa, particularly colonial Angola, in the transatlantic slave trade. However, it is only more recently that they have begun to appreciate the importance of women in this enterprise (Curtin, 1969). Prior to 1970, scholars based their work on primary sources penned by foreigners, especially European men, which created an ethnocentric and male view of African societies (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 1997, p. 3). Scholarly interest in African women then was limited to the study of queens, prostitutes and peasants (Hay, 1988). Meanwhile, the frameworks that influenced the study of African history tended to neglect women and gender as categories of analysis, prioritizing Africa's great States and leaders, as well as class and underdevelopment, as the central problematics (Zeleza, 1997, pp. 81-115).
In recent decades, the number of studies focusing on the participation of women in local and long-distance trade along the western coast of Africa has increased remarkably, challenging the image of African women as mere victims of indigenous and European patriarchal systems, by highlighting their agency in the socioeconomic fabric of African societies. ${ }^{1}$ This contribution analyses the
[^0]
[^0]: 1 See, for example, Brooks, 1976, pp. 19-44, 1997, pp. 295-319, 2003; Havik, 2002, pp. 79-120, 2004; White, 1987, 2011. For western Central Africa, see Candido, 2012a, pp. 33-54, 2012b, 2014; Curto, 2002a, 2002b, pp. 185-208, 2003; De Castro Lopo, 1948, pp. 129-138; Lopes Cardoso, 1972, pp. 5-14; Pantoja, 1997, 2001a, pp. 45-67, 2001b, pp. 35-49, 2008; Wheeler, 1996; see also the case of Dona Joana Gomes Moutinho in Candido, 2013a.
trajectory of one of the wealthiest Luanda merchants, Dona Ana Joaquina dos Santos Silva. She was not the only female merchant of her time, but she did become the most well-known due to the extent of her investments.
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The variety of roles played by women in African history has largely escaped detection by contemporaneous observers. In the case of colonial Angola, the Portuguese naval officer José Joaquim Lopes de Lima stated in the mid-1840s that men took as many wives as they could support because, 'in this barbaric region only the women and the enslaved cultivate the land and perform all of the rural and domestic tasks: such occupations are deemed unworthy of any free men'. He further commented that 'it is they [the women] who have to support their husbands (or rather their masters) and children' (Lopes de Lima, 1846, p. 198). The British scientist and explorer Joachim John Monteiro, who worked in the colony during the 1850s and 1860s, made a similar assessment in reference to the area of Ambriz and its northern environs, stressing that '[w]omen's work is entirely restricted to cultivating the ground and preparing the food' (Monteiro, 1876, p. 157). Nevertheless, official records provide evidence that women also engaged in local and long distance trade in nineteenth-century Angola, not to mention before.
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Current estimates indicate that about 12.5 million Africans were forcibly shipped across the Atlantic Ocean during the era of the transatlantic slave trade. ${ }^{2}$ At least 45 per cent are believed to have departed from ports in western Central Africa (Lovejoy, unpublished). Estimates indicate that approximately 2,073,650 captives left Angola between 1801 and 1867, with about 733,000 thought to have embarked at Luanda up to 1850, turning this city into the single, most important Atlantic slaving port until the end of the slave trade in the 1860s (Domingues da Silva, 2013). In 1802, the Luanda population was estimated at some 6,925 inhabitants, including 2,832 enslaved individuals representing 41 per cent of the total population. Among the civilians, some 710 were designated brancos (whites), 1,060 pardos (of mixed African and European background) and 3,932 pretos (blacks). The remaining 1,223 were military, ecclesiastics and civil servants who were most likely brancos or pardos (Curto and Gervais, 2001, pp. 1-59).
As in the case of other Atlantic ports, the slave trade in Luanda attracted a significant number of foreigners, mainly Portuguese and Brazilian-born men, who sojourned or eventually settled in the colonial capital. Foreign traders adventuring onto the coast of western Central Africa generally relied on local
[^0]
[^0]: 2 For the most recent estimates on the number of Africans exported across the Atlantic Ocean, see Eltis and Richardson, 2008, pp. 3-68; 2010; and Eltis et al., 2008.
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[^0]
[^0]: 2 For the most recent estimates on the number of Africans exported across the Atlantic Ocean, see Eltis and Richardson, 2008, pp. 3-68; 2010; and Eltis et al., 2008.
intermediaries who had knowledge of Indigenous languages and cultures to establish commercial networks, which facilitated the exchange of their products for African commodities, including captives. Many of the local intermediaries were women, with whom incoming merchants established commercial and intimate relationships (Brooks, 2003, pp. xxi, 217; Candido, 2013b, pp. 136137). Through these relationships, expatriate males accessed the personal and commercial logistics necessary to newcomers, such as an established household that provided accommodation, food and care during illness, as well as access to trade networks that increased their participation in the transatlantic slave trade. Meanwhile, these women enhanced their prestige by marrying incoming Portuguese and Brazilian traders, who facilitated their access to foreign goods for personal consumption and commercialization. The most successful of these female traders became known in Angola as donas, a term that originated from the title granted to noble and royal females in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), which was subsequently adopted in overseas possessions to designate women of high socioeconomic status who adopted the European culture ( Da Silva Pereira Oliveira, 1806, pp. 172-173).
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Dona Ana Joaquina dos Santos Silva was born in Luanda in 1789, the daughter of Portuguese Junior Officer Joaquim de Santa Ana Nobre dos Santos and a local Luso-African, Dona Teresa de Jesus (Barbosa de Mascarenhas, 2008, pp. 156-157; Lopes Cardoso, 1972, p. 5; Wheeler, 1996, p. 284). ${ }^{3}$ She was first married to Portuguese Infantry Major João Rodrigues Martins with whom she had her only daughter, Dona Tereza Luíza de Jesus, born on 4 December 1815. ${ }^{4}$ In the early nineteenth century, Martins owned 200 head of cattle, a highly valued commodity in western Central Africa, illustrating that he had become a wealthy man after marrying the most important female merchant in the colony (Pacheco, 1990, p. 181). After the death of her first husband, Dona Ana Joaquina married the Brazilian merchant, Joaquim Ferreira dos Santos Silva, with whom she had no children (Lopes Cardoso, 1972, p. 9). Her second husband engaged in various business activities, often in partnership with his wife. For instance, in the 1840s, the couple sent several sailing vessels to Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro and the Congo River. ${ }^{5}$ Joaquim Ferreira also
[^0]
[^0]: 3 According to Pacheco (1990, p. 208), Joaquim de Santa Ana Nobre dos Santos was a pardo (of mixed European and African background).
4 According to Lopes Cardoso (1972, p. 9), she had two daughters with her first husband. However, the author does not present any source that confirms the existence of a second daughter.
5 Arquivo Nacional de Angola (ANA), Cx. 47, "Termos de Fiança" 1840, pp. 217-220.
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5 Arquivo Nacional de Angola (ANA), Cx. 47, "Termos de Fiança" 1840, pp. 217-220.
became well-off after marriage and, in 1839, he stood as a candidate for the position of Deputado das Cortes (Portuguese Court Deputy) alongside other rich male residents (Pacheco, 1990, pp. 37-39). ${ }^{6}$ Joaquim Ferreira's date of demise is unknown. His death left Dona Ana Joaquina a widow for the second time. Dona Ana Joaquina signed official documents and wrote letters herself, which indicates that she had had access to some kind of formal education. ${ }^{7}$ She lived in a Portuguese-style palace located in Bungo, in the lower part of the town, acquired in 1824, for the appreciable sum of $1,600,000$ réis. ${ }^{8}$ Today, the palace houses the Tribunal Provincial de Luanda (Luanda's Provincial Court of Justice).
Dona Ana Joaquina is usually referred to as one of the wealthiest Luanda slavers, alongside male traders such as Augusto Garrido and José Maria Matozo de Andrade Câmara (Clarence-Smith, 1985, p. 49). Alone or with her husbands, she engaged in various business activities throughout the colony and even abroad. She was the owner of at least ten vessels, sailing between several Atlantic destinations, including Benguela, Lisbon, São Tomé, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco, Bahia and the Congo River, either on her own account or shipping goods and captives on behalf of other traders. ${ }^{9}$ For instance, in 1827, Dona Ana Joaquina sent 449 captives to Pernambuco, in northeast Brazil aboard her ship Boa União (Eltis et al., 2008, Voyage Id. 47030). In 1835, her ship Pérola crossed the Atlantic with 490 captives and disembarked in Rio de Janeiro, in southeast Brazil (Eltis et al., 2008, Voyage Id. 46265).
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In 1836, Portugal prohibited the export of captives from its possessions in Africa. Nevertheless, merchants established in Luanda continued to ship enslaved Africans to Brazil and Cuba from ports south and north of the colonial capital until the 1860s (Ferreira, 1996, pp. 18, 21, 30; 2008, p. 232; Karasch, 1967, p. 47; Alexandre and Dias, 1998, pp. 375-6; De Almeida Santos, 1970, p.371). Dona Ana Joaquina was part of a group of traders who illegally exported
[^0]
[^0]: 6 On the Matozo family, see Lopes Cardoso, 1971, pp. 316-319.
7 Brazil was the place where many wealthy families established in Angola sent their offspring to be educated (Candido, 2013b p. 127). The first classes for girls were only established in Luanda in 1845. See Vansina (2001, p. 276). Pacheco (1990, p. 72) references a letter written by Dona Ana Joaquina to the former Governor of Angola, Barão de Santa Comba-Dão when he left to Portugal in 1834.
8 Biblioteca Municipal de Luanda (BML), Códice 37, "Receita da Ciza dos Prédios dessa Cidade," 1809-1833, p. 78.
9 Arquivo Nacional de Angola (ANA), "Termos de Fiança," Cx. 147, pp. 217, 219-220; Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (AHU), Secretaria de Estado da Marinha e Ultramar (SEMU), Direcção Geral do Ultramar (DGU), Angola, 2a. Sessão, Cx. 6; AHU, BOA, no. 101, 14 August, 1847, p. 4; BOA, no. 102, 21 August, 1847, p. 4; BOA, no. 124, 22 January, 1848, p. 4; BML, Códice 37, "Receita da Ciza dos Prédios dessa Cidade," 1809-33, pp. 76v, 115, 124v.
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thousands of enslaved individuals to Brazil (De Castro Henriques, 1997, p. 1267). A foreign observer claimed that Dona Ana Joaquina ordered the construction of a tunnel that connected the palace where she lived, in the neighbourhood of Bungo, to the beach, through which she exported captives illicitly from Luanda. ${ }^{10}$ Although such an enterprise sounds unrealistic, Dona Ana Joaquina did engage in illegal slaving, most likely from her feitorias (warehouses) in the ports of Ambriz, Benguela, and Moçâmedes (Alexandre and Dias, 1998, p. 386; Pacheco, 1990, p. 72). For instance, on 11 July 1846, she shipped 490 captives to Bahia, northeast Brazil, aboard her vessel Maria Segunda (Eltis et al., 2008, Voyage Id. 900217). On 2 November of the same year, the Maria Segunda crossed the Atlantic again, with another 490 captives destined for disembarkation in Bahia (Eltis et al., 2008, Voyage Id. 900218). In 1850, Brazilian authorities captured her vessel Oriente near the captaincy of Rio de Janeiro: a total of 200 captives, embarked in the ports of Novo Redondo and Quicombo, south of Luanda, were found on board. ${ }^{11}$
The slave trade, however, was not her only business. Dona Ana Joaquina owned various agricultural properties called arimos in the immediate interior of Luanda, where large quantities of beans, maize and manioc flour were produced for household consumption, and to supply caravans, urban markets and sailing vessels. ${ }^{12}$ Between 1823 and 1832 alone, Dona Ana Joaquina acquired no fewer than seven arimos located in the districts of Dande, Icolo e Bengo, Quilunda and Zenza, which serves as evidence of her anticipation of the economic transition that occurred in the colony in the mid-nineteenth century, when commercial agriculture and trade in tropical products replaced the traffic in captives. ${ }^{13}$ In the 1850s, she figured as the largest maize supplier to the Terreiro Público, the public market established in Luanda. ${ }^{14}$
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With the abolition of the slave trade in 1836, the extraction of raw materials such as ivory, beeswax and gum copal, as well as the production of palm and groundnut oil, orchid weed, coffee and cotton increased greatly in colonial Angola, to supply the European and North American markets. The new "legitimate" commercial activities received incentives from the colonial government and
[^0]
[^0]: 10 Gil 1854, p. 14. Some authors have reproduced the story as true although there is no proof that such a tunnel ever existed. See Moreira Bastos Feliciano, 2003, p. 30.
11 British and Foreign State Papers, Library of the University of Michigan, Vol. 40, pp. 539-40.
12 ANA, Luanda, Avulsos, Cx. 145, "Passaporte para o Interior", 21 September 1849.
13 Biblioteca Municipal de Luanda (BML), Códice 37, "Receita da Ciza dos Prédios dessa Cidade", 180933, pp. 76, 88, 99, 99v, 121v, 128v.
14 BML, Códice 055, Vol. II, "Registo de Entradas e Saídas do Milho", 1850-1857.
private investors. Dona Ana Joaquina, for example, invested in the production of sugar cane and aguardente (sugar cane brandy), establishing mills in the immediate hinterland of Luanda. ${ }^{15}$ During his stay in Angola in the early 1850s, the Portuguese traveller Francisco Travassos Valdez visited the arimo Capele in the district of Icolo e Bengo, which belonged to Dona Ana Joaquina (Valdez, 1861, p. 277). On that occasion, the overseer informed him that the agricultural property counted on the labour of some 1,400 enslaved Africans (Valdez, 1861, p. 277). Valdez also observed the existence of a sugar mill established there in 1846 by a Frenchman named Pedro Regueure, whom Dona Ana Joaquina had hired to set up the mill to make sugar and distil aguardente. Despite having spent more than 10,000,000 réis on this enterprise, Dona Ana Joaquina was not able to reap the expected results. In early 1850, she hired Manoel Farias, a settler from Brazil, who finished the work Regueure had started. ${ }^{16}$
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The visit of Governor Adrião Acácio da Silveira Pinto to Dona Ana Joaquina's agricultural property in mid-1850, illustrates the support of the Luanda colonial administration to private investors willing to experiment with commercial agriculture. By then, according to Governor Pinto, 'sugar manufacture was well advanced and Mr Freitas hope[d] to be able to manufacture sugar and alcohol later [that] year'. ${ }^{17}$ On 24 May 1852, Carlos José Caldeira, who was in Luanda as part of a commercial expedition, disclosed that Dona Ana Joaquina had been able, the year before, to obtain samples of sugar cane and aguardente from her Bengo sugar mill (Caldeira, 1853, p. 211). Most likely, the aguardente produced in Dona Ana Joaquina's mills was used to acquire legitimate commodities such as orchid weed, as well as captives illegally exported to Brazil (Alexandre and Dias, 1998, p. 391).
On 6 April 1859, Dona Ana Joaquina headed to Lisbon aboard the Portuguese vessel D. Pedro, for treatment of an illness, with eight enslaved individuals in her service. ${ }^{18}$ However, she did not make it, dying during the Atlantic route (Freudenthal, 2005, p. 305). Following her death, a long legal dispute took place in Luanda. Dona Ana Joaquina had disinherited her only
[^0]
[^0]: 15 BOA, no. 582, 22 November, 1856, pp. 2-3; BOA, no. 254, 10 August, 1850, p. 3; Caldeira, 1853, p. 211.
16 Almanak statistico da província d'Angola e suas dependências para o anno de 1852 (Luanda: Imprensa do Governo, 1851), p. 11; De Almeida Santos, 1990, p. 146.
17 Boletim Oficial do Governo da Povinncia de Angola (BOA), no. 254, 10 August 1850, pp. 2-4. Brazilians played an important role in the transfer of technology related to the production of sugar in Angola (Freudenthal, 2005, pp. 180, 261).
18 BOA, no. 706, 9 April 1859, p. 11; Lopes Cardoso, 1972, p. 7.
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18 BOA, no. 706, 9 April 1859, p. 11; Lopes Cardoso, 1972, p. 7.
daughter, Dona Tereza Luíza, and left her wealth to her two grandchildren. ${ }^{19}$ Dona Tereza was then married to Elísio Garrido, a marriage she had entered into without the consent of her mother, that being the main reason why she was excluded from Dona Ana Joaquina's last will (Lopes Cardoso, 1972, pp. 9-10). The Garridos were among the wealthiest of Luanda's merchants and were thus in direct competition with Dona Ana Joaquina. ${ }^{20}$
Dona Ana Joaquina's numerous properties were probably acquired through inheritance from her parents and husbands, as well as through her own entrepreneurial activities. In spite of political and economic instability resulting from the end of the slave trade in 1836, Dona Ana Joaquina was able to maintain her position as one of the most successful merchants of her time. The diversity of her investments, as well as her cooperation with the colonial administration, contributed to her long-standing career. For instance, in 1832, she contributed 1,000 réis to the Municipal Council of Luanda for the city's cleaning. ${ }^{21}$ In 1850, Dona Ana Joaquina was the only female among male merchants to make a donation to benefit the poor foreign settlers established in Moçâmedes, in the south of the colony. On this occasion alone, she contributed the significant sum of 20,000 réis. ${ }^{22}$
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Women like Dona Ana Joaquina were successful in applying the capital they inherited and the profit of their own entrepreneurial activities in the local and Atlantic markets. Luso-African women in the colony of Angola acquired sailing vessels and exported captives alone or as commercial associates of foreign merchants and husbands. Furthermore, they also owned enslaved individuals who assisted them in their commercial activities and contributed to increasing their prestige in the colonial society. The experiences of female merchants operating in local and long-distance trade contradicts the image of submission and reclusion too often attributed to African women in the past. Female entrepreneurs like Dona Ana Joaquina used every opportunity open to them in a port city connected to the Atlantic economy.
[^0]
[^0]: 19 BOA, no. 805, 9 March, 1861, p. 5. For further information on her inheritance, see Lopes Cardoso, 1972, pp. 11-13.
20 On the Garrido family in Luanda, see Clarence-Smith, 1985, p. 49.
21 BML, Códice 42-43, "Termos de Correção," 29 December, 1832, p. 19.
22 BOA, no. 230, 23 February, 1850, p. 3-4.
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# References
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Brooks, G. E. 1976. The Signares of Saint-Louis and Gorée: Women Entrepreneurs in Eighteenth-Century Senegal. N.J. Hafkin and E. G. Bay (eds), Women in Africa. Studies in Social and Economic Change. Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, pp. 19-44.
Brooks, G. E. 1997. A Nhara of the Guinea-Bissau Region: Mãe Aurélia Correia. C. C. Robertson and M.A. Klein (eds), Women and Slavery in Africa. Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann.
Brooks, G. E. 2003. Eurafricans in Western Africa. Commerce, Social Status, Gender, and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century. Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press.
Caldeira, C. J. 1853. Apontamentos d'uma viagem de Lisboa á Cbina e da Cbina a Lisboa. Vol. 2. Lisbon, Typographia de G. M. Martins. 2 vols.
Candido, M. P. 2012a. Dona Aguida Gonçalves, marchande à Benguela à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Brésil(s). Sciences humaines et sociales, No. 1.
Candido, M. P. 2012b. Concubinage and Slavery in Benguela, c. 1750-1850. N. Hunt and O. Ojo (eds), Slavery in Africa and the Caribbean. A History of Enslavement and Identity since the Eighteenth Century. London and New York, I. B. Tauris, pp. 65-84.
Candido, M. P. 2013a. Os agentes não europeus na comunidade mercantil de Benguela, c. 1760-1820. Saeculum, No. 29, pp. 97-124.
Candido, M. P. 2013b. An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World. Benguela and its Hinterland. New York, Cambridge University Press.
Candido, M. P. 2014. Strategies for Social Mobility: Liaisons between Foreign Men and Slave Women in Benguela, c. 1770-1850. G. Campbell and E. Elbourne (eds), Sex, Power and Slavery. Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press, pp. 272-288.
Clarence-Smith, W. G. 1985. The Third Portuguese Empire, 1825-1975. A Study in Economic Imperialism. Manchester, UK, Manchester University Press.
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Clarence-Smith, W. G. 1985. The Third Portuguese Empire, 1825-1975. A Study in Economic Imperialism. Manchester, UK, Manchester University Press.
Coquery-Vidrovitch C., 1997. African Women. A Modern History. Boulder, Colo., Westview Press.
Curtin, P. D. 1969. The Atlantic Slave Trade. A Census. Madison, Wisc., The University of Wisconsin Press.
Curto, J. C. 2002a. 'As If from a Free Womb': Baptismal Manumissions in the Conceição Parish, Luanda, 1778-1807. Portuguese Studies Review, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 26-57.
Curto, J. C. 2002b. A restituição de 10.000 súbditos Ndongo 'roubados' na Angola de meados do século XVII: uma análise preliminar. I. de Castro Henriques (ed.), Escravatura e Transformações Culturais: África-Brasil-Caraíbas. Lisbon, Vulgata.
Curto, J. C. 2003. The Story of Nbena, 1817-1820: Unlawful Enslavement and the Concept of 'Original Freedom' in Angola. P. E. Lovejoy and D. V. Trotman (eds), TransAtlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora. London, Continuum, pp. 43-64.
Curto, J. C. and Gervais, R. R. 2001. The Population History of Luanda during the late Atlantic Slave Trade, 1781-1844. African Economic History, No. 29, pp. 1-59.
Da Silva Pereira Oliveira, L. 1806. Privilégios da Nobreza e Fidalguia de Portugal. Lisbon, João Rodrigues Neves.
De Almeida Santos, J. 1970. Vinte anos decisivos na vida de uma cidade (1845-1864). Luanda, Câmara Municipal.
De Almeida Santos, J. 1990. Perspectivas da agricultura de Angola em Meados do Século XIX: Pedro Alexandrino da Cunha e o pioneiro do Cazengo.
De Castro Henriques, I. 1997. Percursos da modernidade em Angola. Dinâmicas comerciais e transformações sociais no século XIX. Lisbon, Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical.
De Castro Lopo, J. 1948. Uma rica dona de Luanda. Porto, Portugal, Portucale.
Domingues da Silva, D. B. 2013. The Atlantic Slave Trade from Angola: A Port-by-Port Estimate of Slaves Embarked, 1701-1867. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 105-122.
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Eltis, D. 2010. Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press.
Eltis, D. et al. 2008. Voyages. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Online Database. www.slavevoyages.org/ (Accessed 25 May 2022.)
Eltis, D. and Richardson, D. (eds). 2008. Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press.
Ferreira, R. 1996. Dos Sertões ao Atlântico: Tráfico Ilegal de Escravos e Comércio Lícito em Angola, 1830-1860. Master's Thesis, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Ferreira, R. 2008. The Suppression of the Slave Trade and Slave Departures from Angola, 1830s-1860s. D. Eltis and D. Richardson (eds), Extending the Frontiers. Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press.
Freudenthal, A. 2005. Arimos e fazendas: a transição agrária em Angola, 1850-1880. Luanda, Edições Chá de Caxinde.
Gil, A. 1854. Considerações sobre alguns pontos mais importantes da moral religiosa e systema de jurisprundência dos pretos do continente da África Occidental portuguesa além do Equador, tendentes a dar alguma idea do character peculiar das suas instituições primitivas. Lisbon, Typografia da Academia.
Havik, P. J. 2002. A dinâmica das relações de gênero e parentesco num contexto comercial: um balanço comparativo da produção histórica sobre a região da GuinéBissau, séculos XVII e XIX. Afro-Ásia, Vol. 27.
Havik, P. J. 2004. Silences and Soundbytes. The gendered dynamics of trade and brokerage in the pre-colonial Guinea Bissau Region. Münster, Germany, Lit Verlag.
Hay, M. J. 1988. Queens, Prostitutes and Peasants: Historical Perspectives on African Women, 1971-1986. Canadian Journal of African Studies, Vol. 22, Issue 3, pp. 431-47.
Karasch, M. C. 1967. The Brazilian Slavers and the Illegal Slave Trade, 1836-1851. Master's thesis, University of Wisconsin, USA.
Lopes Cardoso, C. A. 1971. Estudo Genealógico da família Matozo de Andrade e Câmara. Ocidente, Vol. 403, pp. 311-22.
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Lopes Cardoso, C. A. 1971. Estudo Genealógico da família Matozo de Andrade e Câmara. Ocidente, Vol. 403, pp. 311-22.
Lopes Cardoso, C. A. 1972. Ana Joaquina dos Santos Silva, industrial angolana da segunda metade do século XIX. Boletim Cultural da Câmara Municipal de Luanda, Vol. 32.
Lopes de Lima, J. J. 1846. Ensaios Sobre a Statistica das Possessôes Portuguezas na Africa occidental e oriental; na Asia occidental; na Cbina, e na Oceania. Lisbon, Imprensa nacional.
Lovejoy, P. E. (unpublished). West Central Africa and the Trans-Atlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans.
Monteiro, J. J. 1876. Angola and the River Congo. London, Macmillan.
Moreira Bastos Feliciano, M. I. 2003. Luanda, quotidiano e Escravos no Século XIX. M.A. Thesis, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.
Osborn, E. L. 2011. Our New Husbands Are Here. Households, Gender, and Politics in a West African State from the Slave Trade to Colonial Rule. Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press.
Pacheco, C. 1990. José da Silva Maia Ferreira. O homem e a sua época. Luanda, União dos Escritores Angolanos.
Pantoja, S. 1997. Luanda: relações sociais e de gênero. II Reunião Internacional de História da África. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Pantoja, S. 2001a. A dimensão atlântica das Quitandeiras. J. Ferreira Furtado (ed.), Diálogos Oceânicos. Minas Gerais e as novas abordagens para uma bistória do Império ultramarino português. Belo Horizonte, Brazil, UFMG.
Pantoja, S. 2001b. Donas de 'Arimos': um negócio feminino no abastecimento de gêneros alimentícios em Luanda (séculos XVIII e XIX). Entre África s e Brasîs. Brasília, Paralelo 15.
Pantoja, S. 2008. Women's Work in the Fairs and Markets of Luanda. C. Sarmento (ed.), Women in the Portuguese Colonial Empire: The Theatre of Shadows. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 81-93.
Travassos Valdez, F. 1861. Six Years of a Traveller's Life in Western Africa. 2 vols. London, Hurst and Blackett.
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Travassos Valdez, F. 1861. Six Years of a Traveller's Life in Western Africa. 2 vols. London, Hurst and Blackett.
Vansina, J. 2001. Portuguese vs Kimbundu: Language Use in the Colony of Angola (1575-c.1845). Bulletin des séances de l'Académie des Sciences d'Outre-Mer, Vol. 47, pp. 267-281.
Wheeler, D. L. 1996. Angolan Woman of Means: D. Ana Joaquina dos Santos e Silva, Mid-Nineteenth Century Luso-African Merchant - Capitalist of Luanda. Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies Review, Vol. 3, pp. 284-297.
White, E. F. 1987. Sierra Leone's Settler Women Traders. Women on the Afro-European Frontier. Ann Arbor, Mich., University of Michigan Press.
Zeleza, P. 1997. Gender Biases in African Historiography. A. Imam, A. Mama and F. Sow (eds), Engendering African Social Sciences. Dakar, Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA).
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# CHAPTER 9
## TESTIMONIES OF SLAVERY \& FREEDOM
The North American Slave Narratives<br>Mary Niall Mitchell
'Marse Bill wus mi'ty tough on his slaves. I wus jes' a boy, but I will niver fergit how he whup'ed his slaves.' So reads the transcribed testimony of Ebenezer Brown, a formerly enslaved person, given in Amite County, Mississippi, United States of America, in the late 1930s (Rawick, 1972, pp. 239-254; Berlin et al., 1998, p. 92). Brown was speaking to an interviewer from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Writers' Project (FWP), a group charged in the New Deal era with gathering the narratives of the last remaining survivors of chattel slavery in the antebellum South (Rawick, 1972, pp. 239-254; Berlin et al., 1998, p. 92). The thousands of interviews conducted by the FWP, in common with the rest of the canon of North American 'slave narratives', the first-hand accounts of the formerly enslaved, are simultaneously a collective indictment of American racial slavery and a testament to the tenacity of the enslaved. By their specificity, and with collective wisdom, they refute the myth of the benevolent slaveholder and, at the same time, give a voice, a name, a personal history and sometimes even a photographed face to the individuals that survived.
While the slave societies of the Caribbean and Brazil might have held the majority of the enslaved the previous century, the best known published narratives come from the American South and relate the stories of those who escaped slavery before the Civil War; and while there were some 4 million people enslaved in the southern states at the start of the war, the number of book-
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length antebellum narratives is relatively small - roughly 200 in all and only one by a woman (Jacobs, 1861). Together with the shorter accounts published before 1865, including interviews and oral histories printed in periodicals, however, scholars now estimate there to be as many as 6,000 surviving narratives of survivors of North American slavery; and combined with the 2,300 or so FWP interviews with formerly enslaved persons in the late 1930s, there is therefore a rich body of evidence on slavery in the United States from the perspective of the enslaved themselves. ${ }^{1}$
Dismissed by most historians until the 1950s as abolitionist propaganda, the nineteenth-century narratives have become indispensable sources for historians of slavery. The early black voices attesting to the cruelties of racial slavery and oppression have also shaped much of the corpus of modern African American literature. Whether the narrators wrote their own accounts, as in the case of Douglass (1845) and Jacobs (1861), or told their story to an interviewer or amanuensis, they were united in their ability to go beyond abolitionist critique and counter proslavery arguments with painful memories of their own personal experience. The most searing passages inevitably involve the loss or abuse of family members, such as Thomas H. Jones' recollection of the powerlessness of his mother watching his sister stripped naked and whipped:
[I] stood by my mother, who was wringing her hands in an agony of grief, at the cruelties which her tender child was enduring. I do not know what my sister had done for which she was then whipped: but I remember that her body was marked and scarred for weeks after that terrible scourging, and that our parents always after seemed to hold their breath when they spoke of it (Jones, 1854, p. 9).
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The best known anti-slavery novel of the nineteenth century, Uncle Tom's Cabin; or Life Among the Lowly (Stowe, 1852), would not have been such a tour de force had its author not relied on the documented real-life stories of the fugitives that had escaped slavery and lived to recount what they had endured; indeed, the vast majority of antebellum slave narratives published in the nineteenth century were by fugitives - enslaved men and women who had risked their lives to break free from bondage in the decades before the Civil War. Most had crossed into the free states from the Upper South, as it was a far shorter distance to travel from Maryland or Virginia than it was from the Deep South plantations and cities of Alabama,
[^0]
[^0]: 1 See Ernest, J., 2007, p. 218 and Still, W., 1872. William Still, a free black man, gathered many such stories through his work with the Underground Railroad, a nineteenth-century network of activists assisting fugitives from slavery in their escape. The largest collection of separately published North American slave narratives, produced by William Andrews, is available at http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/index.html
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Georgia or Mississippi. Some had escaped to safety aided by abolitionists: Henry 'Box' Brown, for instance, was assisted by local allies in arranging to have himself shipped in a crate from Richmond, Virginia, to abolitionists in Philadelphia, for example - a journey that took 27 hours (Brown, 1851). Many of the best known nineteenth-century narrators, however, reached freedom on their own or through less organized channels. Frederick Douglass, for instance, fled Maryland via Pennsylvania with the help of a free black woman and journeyed with forged 'free papers' until he reached New York (Douglass, 1845); Harriet Jacobs hid for seven years in her freed grandmother's attic in North Carolina before fleeing to Philadelphia from whence, helped by abolitionists, she managed to reach New York (Jacobs, 1861); and perhaps the most notable fugitives from the Deep South, Ellen and William Craft, escaped from Georgia by train and then steamboat, with Ellen disguised as a sickly white male slaveholder and William as his manservant - the ruse worked, in spite of more than one close call, and they arrived in Philadelphia where they were encouraged by abolitionists to tell their story publicly (Craft, 1860). ${ }^{2}$
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After first doing so at abolitionist gatherings, it was through selling their narratives in print that the formerly enslaved were able to raise the money to support themselves and the cause of abolition. The dissemination and preservation of those accounts was made possible by the publishing power of the abolition movement whose radicalization and rapid expansion from when it began in the United States in the 1830s was, in turn, made possible to a large extent by the printing press. William Lloyd Garrison's weekly paper, The Liberator, first published in 1831, launched an 'antislavery print culture' that went beyond opposition to slavery based on Christian principles to brand it as a 'peculiar institution' and call for the immediate and unconditional emancipation of the enslaved on moral and democratic grounds (Fisch, 2007, p. 18). By the 1840s, the masthead of The Liberator, by then the official organ of the American Anti-Slavery Society, was carrying Garrison's slogan 'no union with slaveholders' and Garrison had declared slavery 'a covenant with death'. Before long there were dozens of abolitionist associations with their own periodicals running interviews with and publishing the narratives of formerly enslaved people (Finkelman, 2000, pp. 231-245).
One driving theme in most antebellum narratives is the narrator's Christian faith, which had helped them to endure the trials of slavery. Their Christianity
[^0]
[^0]: 2 All the narratives referred to in the above paragraph are available online at http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/index.html
would enable them not only to make common cause with their readers - largely white, Northern, abolitionists with whom they shared a world view that bypassed differences of race and origin - but also to deliver a brilliantly pointed critique of the proslavery arguments of the Southern slaveholders. As one narrator, Henry Bibb, said of the man that had purchased him and his family: 'He looked like a saint [...] talked like the best of slaveholding Christians, and acted at home like the devil' (Bibb, 1849, p. 110).
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The two published narratives most often referenced and used in the classroom are Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Douglass, 1845) and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs, 1861), which together bring into stark contrast the experiences of men and women under slavery. Douglass' account revolves around three themes: his sudden awareness in childhood, after witnessing his Aunt Hester's brutal whipping, that he had passed through 'the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery' (Douglass, 1845, p. 5); his struggles to become literate; and his battle to assert his manhood in the face of a brutal overseer. Jacobs, on the other hand, sheds light on the particular trials endured by enslaved girls and women, pointing to their vulnerability to the daily sexual abuse: 'If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave', her struggles to escape the predations of her master and the ire of her mistress (Jacobs, 1861, p. 46). Another difference between the two narratives is that one narrator (Douglass) relied on individual resistance and the other (Jacobs) on collective opposition to the brutalities of slavery: while Douglass appears to have been a self-propelled protagonist in his struggle to be free, Jacobs, throughout her story, counted on the support of a community of enslaved and free - hence black and white - people to sustain her through her seven years in hiding and, ultimately, her escape to the North.
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Perhaps one of the most unique nineteenth-century narratives is that of Solomon Northrup, a free black man who was lured from upstate New York to Washington, DC, then kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. Northup's narrative, Twelve Years a Slave, offers an outsider's account of the first-hand experience of enslavement as an insider and served as a powerful condemnation of the system of chattel slavery when it first appeared in 1853 (Northup, 1853). Although literate, the conditions under which Northup was taken into slavery prevented him from communicating his whereabouts to his family for twelve years, during which time he was mostly held on remote cotton and sugar plantations in central Louisiana, one of the deadliest regions of the South for
enslaved people. Northup survived his years of slavery and eventually succeeded in contacting friends in the North who brought him out of bondage.
Northup's narrative is, in fact, one of the most detailed in terms of factual descriptions of the conditions of the enslaved and the labour regimes imposed upon them in the Deep South:
I can speak of Slavery only so far as it came under my own observation - only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person. My object is, to give a candid and truthful statement of facts: to repeat the story of my life, without exaggeration, leaving it for others to determine, whether even the pages of fiction present a picture of more cruel wrong or a severer bondage (Northup, 1853).
Northup became a recognized figure at antislavery gatherings after his return to the North but his narrative was dismissed as too improbable to be true by historians until the mid-twentieth century when the scholars Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon published an authenticated version that restored it to its place among the most valuable and insightful accounts of slavery in the antebellum South (Northup et al., 1968). In 2013, it was made into an Oscar-winning film hailed as one of the most accurate ever portrayals of slavery in American cinema (McQueen, 2013).
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Scholars have continued to search for and authenticate texts to be added to the canon of autobiographical slave narratives: the historian Jean Fagan Yellin, for instance, published an authenticated 'enlarged edition' of Harriet Jacobs' narrative in 1987, until which time most historians had considered it a fictional account (Jacobs and Yellin, 2009); the literary scholar William Andrews has been the most prolific in terms of finding and compiling book and articlelength testimonies by the formerly enslaved and has now made the fruits of his ongoing labours available online (Andrews, 1998); and more recently, the historian David Blight discovered and authenticated two unpublished Civil War period narratives previously unavailable to scholars (Blight, 2007). ${ }^{3}$
The narratives of formerly enslaved persons collected by the FWP, like their nineteenth-century counterparts, reflect the times in which they were produced: the late 1930s, when the South was still segregated and African Americans were regularly threatened with violence. The interviewers sent by the FWP to small towns and cities in search of the survivors of slavery were mostly white and those that they interviewed were elderly and reluctant to speak in detail about
[^0]
[^0]: 3 For online access to hundreds of published narratives, see the 'North American slave narratives' collection at http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/
the abuses that they had suffered; and some, as the transcripts make clear, also believed the interviewers to have some control over the government assistance that they received. The fact that many had only been children at the time of the Civil War has been considered by some scholars a weakness in terms of the value of the FWP narratives as a source for studies of slavery. What is more, there were no standardized questions, so while some chose to write up their work as a set of brief narratives, others transcribed the conversations in a dialect that smacked of racism.
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The value of the narratives as the testimony of those that had endured slavery, however, is undeniable. James Cape of Texas, for instance, who was over 100 years old at the time of his interview, attested to being the son of Africans, which makes his testimony, gathered from a person so close to African culture, invaluable to historians studying the development of African American cultural and linguistic forms. Although the FWP interviews, unlike the nineteenthcentury narratives, relied on the memories of elderly people, learning about the abuses generated by the system of chattel slavery directly from the mouths of the survivors enables us to connect with that not-so-distant past, the power of which can be felt in the testimony of Mingo White, a formerly enslaved person born in South Carolina, who recalled the day that he had been sold to a trader heading for Alabama: 'I was jes' a li'l thang; tooked away from my mammy an' pappy, jes' needed "em mos" (Rawick, 1972, pp. 413-22; Berlin et al., 1998, p. 161). While some interviews served to preserve folk tales and descriptions of secret parties held by enslaved people in the woods, others recalled the violence visited upon family members, the violation of enslaved women and the indignity of having too little clothing and too little food. The combined memories of formerly enslaved persons recorded by the FWP, which have now been digitized and made available online by the Library of Congress, are arguably the closest link that we have to the experiences of those that endured the slavery and survived to tell their stories (Library of Congress, 1941, vol. 16, p. 193). ${ }^{4}$
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Modern scholars continue to mine the narratives of the formerly enslaved for information on a multitude of topics ranging from the various labour and resistance strategies of the enslaved to the workings of the domestic slave trade and how it affected enslaved families; the ways in which gender and age shaped the enslaved person's experience; the creation of local and long-distance information networks among the enslaved; the persistence of cultural forms and
[^0]
[^0]: 4 Available on the American Memory website at: https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
how they have evolved among Africans and their descendants; and even the transformation of cotton cultivation technologies and how the expansion of the cotton industry affected daily life in the South. Without the determination of the formerly enslaved to tell their stories, the narratives would not have existed and we would know far less about the history of American racial slavery, in particular its role in the economic, political and cultural development of the United States.
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# References
Andrews, W. L. 1988. To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 17601865. Urbana and Chicago, Ill., University of Illinois Press.
Andrews, W. L. (ed.). 1998. North American Slave Narratives. Available at: http:// docsouth.unc.edu/neh/biblintro.html (Accessed 24 May 2022.)
Berlin, I., Favreau, M. and Miller, S. F. (eds.). 1998. Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation. New York, The New Press.
Bibb, H. 1849. Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself. New York, published by the author.
Blight, D. W. 2007. A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation. New York, Harcourt.
Brown, H. B. 1851. Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself. Manchester, UK, Lee and Glynn.
Craft, W. 1860. Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery. London, William Tweedie.
Douglass, F. 1845. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. Boston, Mass., Anti-Slavery Office.
Ernest, J. 2007. Beyond Douglass and Jacobs. A. A. Fisch (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the African American Slave Narrative. Cambridge, UK, and New York, Cambridge University Press, pp. 218-31.
Finkelman, P. 2000. Garrison's Constitution: The Covenant with Death and How It Was Made, Part 2. Prologue, Vol. 32, No. 4. Available at: https://www.archives. gov/publications/prologue/2000/winter/garrisons-constitution-2.html (Accessed 24 May 2022.)
Gould, P. 2007. The rise, development, and circulation of the slave narrative. A. A. Fisch (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the African American Slave Narrative, Cambridge, UK, and New York, Cambridge University Press, pp. 11-27.
Jacobs, H. A. 1861. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. Boston, Mass., published and edited for the author by L. M. Child.
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Jacobs, H. A. 1861. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. Boston, Mass., published and edited for the author by L. M. Child.
Jacobs, H. A. and Yellin J. F. (ed.). 2009. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself, 3rd edn. Cambridge, Mass., The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Jones, T. H. 1854. Experience and Personal Narrative of Uncle Tom Jones, Who Was for Forty Years a Slave. New York, George C. Holbrook.
Library of Congress. Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938. American Memory Collection. https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/ snhome.htm (Accessed 24 May 2022.)
McQueen, S. (dir.). 2013. 12 Years a Slave. Fox Searchlight Pictures. (Film).
Northup, S. 1853. Twelve Years a Slave. Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of NewYork, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River, in Louisiana. Auburn/Buffalo, NY/London, Derby and Miller/Derby Orton and Mulligan/Sampson Low, Son \& Company.
Northup, S. 1968. Twelve Years a Slave. S. L. Eakin and J. Logsdon (eds.). Baton Rouge, La., LSU Press.
Rawick, G. P. (ed.). 1972. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. Westport, Conn., Greenwood Publishing Company.
Still, W. 1872. The Underground Rail Road. A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, \&c., Narrating the Hardships, Hair-Breadth Escapes, and Death Struggles of the Slaves in Their Efforts for Freedom, as Related by Themselves and Others, or Witnessed by the Author; Together with Sketches of Some of the Largest Stockholders, and Most Liberal Aiders and Advisers, of the Road. Philadelphia, Penn., Porter \& Coates.
Stowe, H. B. 1852. Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly. Boston, Mass./ Cleveland, OH, John P. Jewett \& Company/Jewett, Proctor \& Worthington.
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Stowe, H. B. 1852. Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly. Boston, Mass./ Cleveland, OH, John P. Jewett \& Company/Jewett, Proctor \& Worthington.
Work Projects Administration. 1941. Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938. Type-written records prepared by the Federal Writer's Project, 1936-1938, assembled by the Library of Congress Project, Work Projects Administration, for the District of Columbia. Sponsored by the Library of Congress. Illustrated with photographs. Washington, D.C., Library of Congress.
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# OSIFEKUNDE OF IJEBU (YORUBALAND)
Olatunji Ojo*
This is a preliminary study on the story of an enslaved Ijebu-Yoruba man popularly called Osifekunde but also known to his biographers, scholars, and enslavers variously as Osifekunwede, Osifekun, Osifeko, Osifekode, Osifakorede, Joaquim and Joseph depending on whether these writers, slavers or employers were in what later became Nigeria, Brazil or France. These many names reflect the diversity of Yoruba naming practices and the complex nature of the Yoruba experience and involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. The names capture his identities as an enslaved Ijebu-Yoruba (Osifekunde and its variants), Christian and Catholic in Brazil (Joaquim and perhaps Joaquim Mina and Joaquim Nago, depending on whether he was in Rio de Janeiro or Recife), and a freed African in France (Joseph). More than most Yoruba of his era, Osifekunde's story not only encapsulates but provides rich data on the history, geography, culture and economic activities in the eastern Bight of Benin between the 1780s and 1820 when he was sold to the Americas. His story comes to our attention because of the account of French ethnographer Marie-Armand Pascal d'Avezac de CasteraMacaya, published in Paris in 1845, with additional materials from Peter Lloyd's
[^0]
[^0]: * The author wishes to thank Ambassadors Alberto Da Silva and Olabiyi Yai, Professor Femi Ade-Ojo, and Andrew Quesnel for their ideas and references, Fati Deng and Blessing Babalola for research in the French Archives, Victoire Silva and Aplovi D'Almeida for materials on 'Aguda' families in Benin, Margaret Crosby-Arnold for sharing her conference paper and expertise on D'Avzac and blacks in France, and my Ilaje 'canoe mates', Akin Semilore, Godgift Jolowo, and Kola Akinfosile.
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study of Ijebu society in the 1950s and 1960s, Olabiyi Yai and Femi Ade Ojo in the 1960s to the 2000s, and Aderivaldo Ramos de Santana, who have analyzed materials from French and Brazilian archives. Finally, I have spent over two decades studying the subject and have visited many of the places he mentioned to better understand him. ${ }^{1}$
Until the eighteenth century, Oyo kingdom was the most powerful Yoruba state. Oyo's strength rested on her size and revenue base, a substantial part of which derived from the slave trade. By the middle of the century, however, Oyo began to decline due to a combination of internal troubles and pressure from its neighbors. For instance, in the seventeenth century Oyo had sold enslaved people through the ports of Ouidah and Porto Novo, both on the Slave Coast. But, in the 1720s, the sudden rise of Dahomey, Oyo's western neighbor and a former vassal, gradually cut off access to these ports. By the 1770s Yoruba traders had relocated eastward to Badagry and, in the 1790s, to Lagos.
The rise of Lagos coupled with new political realities in Central Sudan and northern Yorubaland also redirected trade away from the Oyo heartland into non-Oyo towns. One of the new routes from Central Sudan passed through Ilorin and Owu/Ife to Ijebu lagoon port towns such as Ikorodu and Ikosi from where traders sailed on the lagoon to Lagos or the Niger Delta. ${ }^{2}$ With Lagos becoming the most important slave port in West Africa it drew Yorubaland intimately into the slave trade. ${ }^{3}$ It spread the frontiers of slavery deeper into Yorubaland and the violence associated with slaving operations. The major market on this route was Apomu, an Ife town where enslaved people were sold to Ijebu traders for cowries, foodstuffs, textiles, and after 1820, firearms. ${ }^{4}$ Almost immediately competition for the control of the Apomu began among surrounding states: Ife, Owu, Ijebu, Egba, and Oyo, leading to two wars, the
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[^0]
[^0]: 1 Marie Armand Pascal d'Avezac-Macaya, 1845, "Notice sur le pays et le peuple des Yébous, en Afrique," Mémoires de la Société Ethnologique 2, no. 2; Peter C. Lloyd, 1960, "Osifakorede of Ijebu," ODU: Journal of Yoruba and Related Studies 8: pp. 59-64; Lloyd, 1967, "Osifekunde of Ijebu," in Philip D. Curtin, ed., Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 217-88; Tunde Oduwobi, 2003, "Some considerations concerning d'Avezac's Notice sur le pays et le Peuple des Yebous en Afrique," Lagos Notes and Records 9, pp. 106-14; and Aderivaldo Ramos de Santana, 2018, "A extraordinária odisseia do comerciante Ijebu que foi escravo no Brasil e homem livre na França (1820-1842)," Afro-Asia 57, pp. 9-53.
2 H. F. C. Smith, Murray Last and Gambo Gubio, "Ali Eisami Gazirmabe of Bornu" and J. F. Ade-Ajayi, "Samuel Ajayi Crowther of Oyo" in Curtin, Africa Remembered, pp. 199-216 and 289-316.
3 See Robin Law, 1983, "Trade and politics behind the Slave Coast: the lagoon traffic and the rise of Lagos, 1500-1800," Journal of African History 24, pp. 343-48.
4 Samuel Johnson, 1976 [1921], The History of the Yorubas from the Earliest to the Beginning of the British Protectorate, Lagos, CSS Books, pp. 188-189, 206-207.
second of which led to the destruction of Owu and Egba in the 1820s and the collapse of Oyo and Ife over the next decade. Only Ijebu kingdom survived the ravages of the slave trade.
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second of which led to the destruction of Owu and Egba in the 1820s and the collapse of Oyo and Ife over the next decade. Only Ijebu kingdom survived the ravages of the slave trade.
Ijebu was one of the three coastal Yoruba states - others being Awori and Ilaje to the west and east of Ijebu. The name Ijebu, according to traditions, came from Ajebu, one of the early immigrants into a region of dense forest partly inhabited by the aboriginal Idoko. The immigrants defeated their hosts whose remnants now occupy the region astride Ijebu, Ikale, Ilaje and Ondo kingdoms and Makun, Osifekunde's place of birth, one of their ancient towns. ${ }^{5}$ Ijebu traders were the primary beneficiaries of the violence in the Yoruba interior and the attendant boom in the slave trade. By the 1810s, because of their strategic location at the terminus of three major trade routes, the Apomu-lagoon road and waterways of Rivers Ogun and Osun, Ijebu traders controlled most of the Yoruba foreign trade. But Ijebu traders did not simply sit on the lagoon waiting for enslaved people from the interior. They also pushed inland to major slave markets, hence the existence of Ijebu wards at Ibadan, Ondo, Ife and Apomu. Thus, more than any other Yoruba district, Ijebu became a trading state whereas agriculture predominated in other areas. Its people are known for their business acumen which dated back a couple of centuries; a child was expected to know the value of money and have the attributes of a trader by age twelve. By the eighteenth century, the Ijebu people had become major actors in the Atlantic trade. They bought war captives in the interior for sale to European traders on the coast in exchange for European merchandise. Osifekunde's story captured changes in Yoruba history from about 1750 to 1820, the evolution of the Yoruba diaspora in the Atlantic world, and an enslaved African's fight for freedom. ${ }^{5}$
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Born around 1798 in the coastal Ijebu town of Makun (now Makun-Omi), Osifekunde belonged to an aristocratic family. His grandfather, Osiwo, named after a popular Orisa, Osi, was born in Oke Ako, located between Ijebu Ode and the port town of Epe. However, his popularity derived from his role as the royal treasurer or Ladeke, a probable corruption of Aladeken, now the title of the king of Oke-Ako. If so, Oke Ako, especially from its location, could have started as a market or toll point in the eighteenth century. ${ }^{6}$ Osiwo's role in the treasury, market, and the fact that he or members of his family later lived in Epe could also account for his wealth and many wives. A market supervisor
[^0]
[^0]: 5 See Olatunji Ojo, 2015, "Amazing struggle: Dasalu, global Yoruba networks, and the fight against slavery," Atlantic Studies 12 no. 1, pp. 5-25.
6 D'Avesac could have mistranslated the title of Oloja (village head/market master) as treasurer.
regulated access to the market, collected fees and fines, and resolved disputes between competing traders. Also, he, like the Yoruba gatekeeper, became rich from receiving market commissions, bribes and trading in his own right.
One of Osiwo's fifteen wives, Ogoua Ade [Ogunade], was a descendant of King Osigade, recognized in Ijebu traditions as the head of the aboriginal (pre-Awujale) Idoko group and ancestor of the succeeding Oliworo (of Iworo) dynasty. Having established many villages and communities in western Ijebuland, Osigade proceeded west to Ijebu-Ode and settled at Ilede (OdoEgbo), although Iworo remained his administrative capital. Another group of immigrants led by Ogboroganda (or Obanta) (D'Avezac's Obrogoluda), came and defeated Osigade and created the Awujale dynasty. Osifekunde alludes to this tradition when he described Osigade as the predecessor of Beleboua [Gbelegbuwa], the forty-fourth Awujale, who reigned from $c .1760$ to $c .1790$.
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One of Ogunade's sons, Adesunlu, was Osifekunde's father. Like many of his contemporaries, Adesunlu was a soldier. But he was also a man of short temper, a character that might have been boosted by his status as an akeyo or omo ola (prince or noble) who could not be punished harshly for his crimes. Around 1797, in a fit of rage, Adesunlu murdered a fellow soldier at Epe after which he fled with his family to Makun until the case could be resolved. In local Yoruba traditions, a family could be held responsible for any offense committed by any of its members. With Adesunlu in hiding, his father paid compensation to the victim's family. Some years later he committed a similar crime, after which he fled to Benin until the case was again resolved by his elite father. ${ }^{7}$ The choice of Makun and Benin is significant. Makun was the border town between Ijebu and Ilaje, while Benin was located further away, suggesting Adesunlu fled to places where he was technically beyond the reach of Ijebu authorities.
In addition to soldiering Adesunlu was also a trader, a profession he did not just inherit from his father. His itinerant commercial journeys took him far and wide: from Ijebu to Lagos in the west, the Niger Delta in the east, and Central Yorubaland in the north. He was a successful man, as evident in his many wives and large family. Adesunlu had seven wives, the first of whom was princess Egghi Ade (Ejiade), who had six children, including Osifekunde. Osifekunde was born while his family lived in exile at Makun. He was the
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[^0]: 7 On collective punishment in Yorubaland, see Ojo, 2010a "[I]n search of their relations, to set at liberty as many as they had the means: ransoming captives in nineteenth century Yorubaland," Nordic Journal of African Studies 19, 1, pp. 58-76 and 2007, "Êmú (Âmúyá): The Yoruba institution of panyarring or seizure for debt," African Economic History 35, pp. 31-62.
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seventh of his father's nine children. Adesunlu's children were all involved in the family business. For instance, around 1810, around age twelve, Osifekunde joined his father on a three-month commercial journey to the Niger Delta. Their journey followed the lagoon from Ijebu to Ilaje and Ijo, fishing and saltproducing towns, eastward to the Itsekiri town of Warri, and on the river Benin northward to Ughorton.
Following in the footsteps of his father, in June 1820, Osifekunde filled his canoe with an assortment of European merchandise purchased in Lagos and left Makun on a trade mission for Mahin, the easternmost Yoruba town and capital of Ilaje kingdom as well as a meeting point for Yoruba, Edo, Itsekiri and Ijo traders. ${ }^{8}$ The plan was to sell the goods and purchase local products such as palm oil, foodstuffs, salt and fish for resale in Ijebu and surrounding markets. This was not an unfamiliar journey for him. He had visited Mahin and beyond many times previously as a boy, trading with his father as far as Benin, Itsekiri and Ijo towns and later in his own capacity. ${ }^{9}$
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The journey from Makun to Mahin followed the narrow Lagos channel or lagoon, passed several fishing villages near the Ilaje/Ijebu border to the region of modern Atijere, the first major Ilaje village and eastward to Aboto, Mahin and Ugbo, all inhabited by the Ilaje. Beyond Mahin the route led to Jakpa and Ughorton, the Benin entrepot. This was a frontier region traversing numerous Yoruba-speaking groups such as the Ijebu, Ikale and Ilaje and the Ijo, Itsekiri and Edo of the Niger Delta. Traders crossed political and cultural boundaries in rapid succession. In the seventeenth century the region was under Benin suzerainty having been captured in the previous century. By the eighteenth century however, Benin power was no longer effective, though Ilaje and Ikale towns still paid tribute to Benin chiefs. Furthermore, from about the mid-eighteenth century a wave of Itsekiri and Ijo populations began to push westward toward Yorubaland in search of farmland and fishing grounds as well as places suitable for trade, canoe making and salt production. Thus, at the time of Osifekunde's journey the coastal region of southeastern Yorubaland was in a state of socio-economic and political flux with no single state wielding effective control. The plurality of states,
[^0]
[^0]: 8 Osifekunde's claim that Mahin was an Ijebu border town is wrong but it alludes to turbulence in coastal Yorubaland in the early nineteenth century and Ijebu trying to annex her neighbors. D'Avezac, Notice, p. 30. Santana accepted the claim. See Santana, "Extraordinaria," p. 13.
9 Santana theorizes that Osifekunde "could have sold or exchanged captives for European goods he intended to sell in Mahin." See "Extraordinaria," p. 13. This is doubtful since slave trading was a risky and expensive business with huge outlay in security, weapons, and cash. Existing evidence depicts Osifekunde as a small retailer trading in a small canoe on the Lagos lagoon.
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the sparse population, and the popularity of the slave trade in the region made the journey from Makun to the Niger Delta risky. Pirates, mostly Ijo but also including groups drawn from Ijebu and Ilaje villages, were exploiting the relative loneliness of the lagoon and creeks, and the lack of effective governance to prey on traders. By the sixteenth century the Western Niger Delta was known as a pirate den. In 1699, David de van Nyendaal, a Dutch trader who visited the Benin Rivers, referenced the activities of Ijo pirates whom he called the corsaire d'Usa. In the 1780s, the French trader and colonist, Jean-François Landolphe made similar comments about violence on the Benin waters amidst fighting between Ijo, Benin and Yoruba traders. ${ }^{10}$ In perhaps the best historical study of the Ijo, Ebiegberi Alagoa linked the violence to Ijo outward migration. The influx of Arogbo and Apoi (or western) Ijo into hitherto Benin and Yoruba spheres of influence created chaos as they competed with their hosts for supremacy, and scarce salt making, fishing and canoe building sites. By the eighteenth century some Ijo migrants had advanced west as far as Lagos. Competition for territory and resources led to conflicts. ${ }^{11}$ The rise of the Atlantic slave trade in the Niger Delta after 1750 further complicated matters, as key trade ports Warri and Bonny created a huge market for war captives. In effect, piracy became a profitable vocation as bandits seized goods, canoes and sold their captives into slavery. Landolphe recorded an incident in the 1780s when Ijo pirates seized about 200 Yoruba traders. ${ }^{12}$
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Human trafficking and the slave trade did not cease with British abolition. In the age of abolition, the lagoon waterway, rivers and numerous creeks in southeastern Yorubaland were particularly suitable for slave traders who needed to conceal their activities from British antislavery patrol boats. For example, several islands on the lagoon were separated from the mainland by long, winding, and shallow waterways and the Atlantic coastline was too shallow for naval vessels to sail close to land or find any landing place between Lagos and River Benin. On the contrary, traders on the lagoon could haul their small canoes over land, sometimes carried by their operators and hidden in the forest should anti-slavery patrols be sighted. The islands and islets also afforded many places for concealment in addition to waterways (parallel to the lagoon) that could be
[^0]
[^0]: 10 Jacques Quesné, 1823, Mémoires du Capitaine Landolphe: Contenant l'Histoire de ses Voyages Pendant trente-six ans, aux côtes d'Afrique et aux deux Amériques, Paris, Bertand, II, pp. 85-88.
11 On Ijo migration, see E. J. Alagoa, 1972, A History of the Niger Delta: An Historical Interpretation of Ijo Oral Tradition, Ibadan University Press, pp. 26-42.
12 Quesné, Mémoires du Capitaine Landolphe, 1-113 and Pernille Roge, "Britain, Danish and French Colonial Projects on the Coast of West Africa, 1780s and 1790s," in Robert Aldrich and Kirsten McKenzie, eds., 2014, The Routledge History of Western Empires, London, Routledge, pp. 72-86.
used without going near Lekki. Therefore, enslaved people were carried with impunity between Lagos and the Niger delta. ${ }^{13}$
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used without going near Lekki. Therefore, enslaved people were carried with impunity between Lagos and the Niger delta. ${ }^{13}$
Given the high level of insecurity on the route, it is unclear why Osifekunde travelled alone and under darkness, resulting in his seizure by Ijo pirates around 5 a.m. Did he not expect the pirates to be active during that time of day? Perhaps he trusted his familiarity with the terrain and was not expecting the pirates to be active in broad daylight. Whatever his thoughts, it is important to note that slave traders in the Bight of Benin often transported their victims before dawn (analogous to marching offenders blindfolded) to disorient and prevent them from understanding their environment and possible escape routes. Whatever the case, after his seizure Osifekunde was taken to Warri. After four days in captivity he was sold to a slaver who brought him to Brazil, the biggest market for enslaved people from the Bight of Benin after 1800. ${ }^{14}$
Nothing is known about Osifekunde's experience during the middle passage and he offered little about his bondage in Brazil. However, if is true that he left Makun in June 1820 and embarked a Portuguese slaver days later, he could have entered Brazil and specifically Bahia, the usual destination for many enslaved Yoruba. The Slave Voyages: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database shows that antislavery patrol operations shortened ship loading, reducing the average voyage completion time to around three months. Voyages were shorter for high-speed vessels and ships trading in regions with extensive slaving fields. An effective local trade organization was an added factor, such that prior to the arrival of a ship, traders would have assembled captives at safe locations. As soon as the vessels docked, captives boarded and the ships departed immediately. ${ }^{15}$
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Evidence adduced above on trade itineraries between Brazil and the Bight of Benin indicated that Osifekunde was originally shipped to northeast Brazil. He might have been transported on either of two vessels: the first is the Boa Hora (voyage number 46781), belonging to Joaquim Jose de Oliveira. The ship left Bahia for an undisclosed port in the Bight of Benin on March 8, 1820 where it embarked 390 enslaved people and landed 353 in Bahia. The other vessel is the Americana (voyage number 900053),
[^0]
[^0]: 13 William Griffith to Ussher, December 24, 1880, CSO 1/1/8, National Archives, Ibadan. For details, see Ojo, 2010b, "The recruitment and marketing of slaves in Ijebu, c.1505-1892" in Themes in the History of the Ijebu and Remo of Western Nigeria, ed., Oladipo Olubomehin, Ibadan, Bamon Publishing Company, pp. 1-22 and Ojo, 2020c, "Slavery and the slave trade in Ikale, Yorubaland': A rejoinder," Lagos Historical Review 10, pp. 120-44.
14 Davezac, Notice, 22 and Lloyd, "Osifekunde," p. 237.
15 Richard Lander, 1830, reprint London, Frank Cass, 1966, Records of Captain Clapperton's Last Expedition to Africa, II, pp. 238-40 and Pierre Verger, 1976, Trade Relations Between the Bight of Benin and Babia Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century, Ibadan University Press, pp. 374-76.
belonging to Vicente Moreira Ribeiro and Pedro Gomes Brandão. The ship, like the Hora, sailed from Bahia to the Bight of Benin on June 22, 1820, where it boarded 239 Africans and landed 217 in Bahia. The speed between Osifekunde's capture and embarkation showed either ship would have been in the Niger Delta for a couple of days, if not weeks, pending the sale. In Bahia, Osifekunde was among the first batch in the huge wave of Yoruba-speaking people landed there in the early nineteenth century. The movement of these people had begun in the aftermath of the uprising at Ilorin and the outbreak of the wars in Yorubaland in 1817.
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