Upper Guinea and the Significance of the Origins of Africans Enslaved in the New World

Author(s): Walter Rodney

Source: The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Oct., 1969), pp. 327-345
Published by: Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc.
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THE

JOURNAL
OF

NEGRO

HISTORY

VOLUME LIV, No. 4

OCTOBER, 1969

UPPER GUINEA AND THE SIGNIFICANCE

OF THE ORIGINS OF AFRICANS
ENSLAVED IN THE NEW WORLD
The authoris a Ph.D. fromthe University
of London and
lecturerin AfricanHistoryat University
currently
College,
Dar es Salaam,Tanzania,East Africa.
Attempts to pinpoint the distributionof Africans in the
Americas have been made far more frequentlyin the literature on the New World than in the studies of the African continentitself. The question usually posed is: "Where did the
black slave population of Brazil, Mexico, or Haiti originate?"
There are certain inherent limitations in conducting this
type of enquiryfroma New World base. For instance,the unreliabilityof the African ethnonymssupplied by slaveowners
has long been recognized,but the problem is neverthelessnot
susceptible to successful resolution withoutdata which emerges fromthe African area of provenance. Here it is intended
to shift the emphasis and to discuss the movementsof Africans from a particular region of the mother country to
various points across the Atlantic. It so happens that, during
the sixteenthcentury,and for the firstfour decades of the
seventeenthcentury,captives from the African area selected
(namely, Upper Guinea) were restrictedin their distribution
to certain parts of Spanish America, so that having determined the origins of a given set of black slaves in the New
World one can evaluate the usefulness of the exercise.
Toponyms applied by Europeans to the West African
coast often shifted and overlapped, but the term "Upper
Guinea" was fairly consistently applied to the stretch betweenthe Gambia and Cape Mount. As far as the Portuguese
327

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JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

were concerned, it fell under the aegis of the Cape Verde

island of Santiago. Within a few years of the organization of
the Santiago administration in 1466, the adjacent mainland
from Senegal to Sierra Leone was the sphere of slaving
operations designed to supply labour to the Cape Verde
islands, Portugal, Madeira, and the Canary Islands; and by
the beginning of the sixteenth century the Senegambia and
Upper Guinea could together provide upwards of 3,500 captives in a 'good' year.1 When the large-scale export of
Africans to the New World began via Iberia, it was Santiago
which was the main base in Africa, attracting Dutch and
Spanish agents, apart from Portuguese citizens. Garrevod's
option in 1518 to supply 4,000 Africans to the Caribbean was
sub-contracted in Seville to Genoese and Spaniards who had
establishments in Santiago. For another three decades the
Spanish colonies of the greater Antilles continued to be the
principal recipients of Upper Guinea Africans.
About the middle of the sixteenth century, several factors
combined to forge a strong connection between Upper Guinea
and the Spanish American mainland from Mexico to Columbia. The basis of the bond was the demand for slave labour on
the Spanish mainland and the European willingness to capitalize ventures such as gold-mining which held prospects of
great profits. Spanish conquests and epidemics had badly
depleted the population of Mesoamerica. The measles epidemic in Mexico in 1545, for instance, had a drastic effect on
areas on the coast and nearby European settlements; and it
was precisely in those districts that African slave labour was
to be most extensively utilized.2 The Spaniards turned to Santiago (Cape Verde) which was then the most firmlyestablished
slave entrepot in West Africa, and whose captives acquired a
reputation which caused them to be sold at higher prices and
yet to remain in demand. The Spanish orders placed at Cape
Verde were fulfilled by the intensive exploitation of Upper
Guinea.3
1 Pacheco Pereira, Cdte occidentale d'Afrique (Ed. R. Mauny), Bissau, 1956,
p. 90.
2 Carl Sauer, Colima of New Spain in the XVIth Century,UCLA 1948.
3 Walter Rodney, "Portuguese attempts at monopoly on the Upper Guinea
Coast, 1580-1650", Juornal of African History, VI, p. 3 (1965).

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AFRICANS

ENSLAVED

IN

THE

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Mexico, Central America, Columbia, and Venezuela purchased the great bulk of Upper Guinea captives. On the
24th Sept 1561, a license was granted to Herman Vasquez
of Mexico to take 1,000 slaves from Cape Verde. In fact,
in 1576 a petition from the colonists of New Andalucia
(Venezuela) actually detailed the ethnicgroups withinUpper
Guinea from among whom they wanted the slaves recruited.4
Anothercolonial petitionfromSanta Fe in 1595 implied that
there was some rivalry between differentlocalities in Columbia for Upper Guinea slaves, since the writer wanted these
Africans to be directedinland to the miningareas ratherthan
remain in Cartagena. The purchasers at the mines were
prepared to pay for each Upper Guinea captive the sum of
150 ducats, while in the city of Cartagena the price ranged
between 100 and 120 ducats.5Because they were paid in gold
and silver, Portuguese authorities and interested merchants
both in Lisbon and in Santiago expressed a preferencefor the
Spanish American market and concentrated their effortsin
fulfillingits needs.
Before the middle of the seventeenthcentury,plantation
slavery was not prevalent in the New World, and the West
African coast was not deeply involved in slave trading.
For instance, the long stretch of coast from Cape Mount
to the Volta River was virtually untouched by slavers.
Since both the points of supply and those using slave labour
were then limited, this early cycle of the Atlantic slave
trade was relatively uncomplicated in regard to the identificationof origins and destinations.Upper Guinea relations
with Spanish America were peculiarly exclusive. On the
hand, Upper Guinea Africans went scarcely anywhere except
to northernSouth America, Central America and Mexico. On
the other hand, the above-mentionedregions of the Americas
received slaves from virtually no place other than Upper
Guinea. When in 1563 the House of Trade in Seville started
issuing registers authorizing ships to transport an agreed
4 G. Aguirre Beltran, La Poblacidn Negra de Mexico, 1519-1810, Mexico
1946, p. 12; Federico Brito Figueroa, La Estructura Economica de Venezuela
Colonial, Caracas, 1963, p. 113.
5 Archivo General de las Indias (A.G.I.), Santa Fe, 17; Antonio Gonzalez,
20 Feb., 1595.

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number of slaves, each ship's manifest stipulated by name a

place in West Africa for loading and one in America for
unloading. From then until 1593 (when the registers ceased
to give exact information), the vast majority named Cape
Verde in West Africa, while the main ports of entry into
Spanish America were Cartagena, Porto Bello, and
Veracruz.6
By 1593, there were sizable black communities in the
Columbian Choco and Cauca Valley, in the Valle del Tuy
near Caracas and in the low valleys of the Bolivian Andes.
Africans became racially mixed with Europeans and Indians,
leaving such widespread ethnic offsprings as mestizo and
mulatto. The earliest census of Mexico in 1560 showed that,
apart from the Indians, there were 13,180 Spaniards, 15,609
Africans and 2,425 mestizos. Throughoutthe seventeenthcenutry, the blacks outnumberedwhites and were overwhelmingly predominantin such regions as Mexico City and Cartagena. The same was true of Panama, Columbia, Venezuela,
Bolivia and Peru. For instance, in 1600 it is estimated that
therewere 20,000 Africans enslaved in Lima city alone.7
Slave exports from Upper Guinea to Spanish America
reached 4,000 to 5,000 per annum in the latter half of the
sixteenthcenturyand the firstdecades of the seventeenthcentury; only an average of 75% to 80% of these reached their
destinations alive.8 The most substantial contributions to
slave exports fromUpper Guinea came fromtwo localitiesa northernsector bounded by the rivers Gambia and Nunez,
6A.G.I., Casa de Contratacion, No. 2875, 2876, 2877, Registers of slaves;
H. and P. Chaunu, Seville et l'Atlantique, Paris 1955, Vol. 3, 1561-95.
7 See Hispanic American Historical Review, XXIV (1944), which is largely
devoted to the slave trade into Spanish America. The present day absence of large
black communitiescomparable to those in the United States, the West Indies, and
Brazil should not blind one to the scope and importance of the slave trade from
Africa to the Spanish Main, notably in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
8 Mortality was calculated at upwards to 20%o. See Thomas de Mercado,
Tratos e Sontratos de Mercaderes, Salamanca, 1569, p. 66.

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and the southernextremitybetween the Sierra Leone estuary

and Cape Mount. The latter was the scene of warfare provoked by the expansion of an elite of Mande extractioncalled
the Mani. Their opponents were the Sapi who, as the vanquished, fell into the hands of Portuguese slavers. Furthermore, Mani leaders became engaged in internecinefighting
whichwas exploited by slave traders.9The Sapi were said to
comprise the Nalu, Kokoli, Landuma, Baga, Limba, Bullom,
Temne, Loko, Susu, and Djalonke. Most of them are memtioned individually in the records of Spanish America, as
well as being included under the term 'Sapi'. It is probable
that more than half of the Upper Guinea Africans entering
the New World in the 1550s and 1560s were Sapi.
The Atlantic slave trade usually generated its own warfare and raiding. The Mani-Sapi conflictsseemed initially to
have had their own dynamicwhen they broke out in 1545, but
after the first15 or 20 years of local hostilities,the slavers
did in fact have to rely upon persuading the Mani rulingclass
to undertake the recruitmentof captives as an end in itself.
Exports never again reached the same level as in the heat of
the battles. Very early in the seventeenthcentury,the slave
trade in Sierra Leone tailed offinto significance,and it was
not revived until the eighteenthcentury. As far as Upper
Guinea was concerned,it was the Gambia-Numez belt which
was the consistent source of slave labour. In this area,
there were broad similarities in the way of life of all the
peoples of the region; but there was also multiplicity of
pettypolitical units whichwere easily susceptible to divisions
when their rulers were offeredEuropean goods.
Portuguese slave traders regarded the river Cacheu as a
slaver's paradise, for within the narrow compass of that
river basin, theyencounteredfivepeoples-Djola, Papel, Banhun, Casanga, and Balanta-each of which was divided into
several political units. Neither the Djola nor the Balanta took
any active part in the slave trade, but they were nevertheless
to be found among slave cargoes because they were exposed
to attacks and man stealing by their neighbours. The Bijago,
9 Walter Rodney, "A Reconsideration of the Mane Invasions of Sierra Leone",
Journal of African History, VIII, 2 (1967).

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who resided in the islands offthe Cacheu and Geba estuaries,

were particularly noted for their piratical activities, and
steadily supplied the Portuguese with Djola, Papel, Balanta,
Beafada and Nalu captives. Bijago hostilities were at their
height at the turn of the seventeenthcentury,when the raids
of their formidable war canoes forced the three Beafada
rulers of Ria Grande de Buba to appeal to the king of
Portugal and the Pope for protection, offeringin turn to
embrace Christianity.10Long after this peak period, the
inhabitants of the tiny Bijago islands were still supplying
over 400 captives per year, all taken from the coastal strip
between the Cacheu and the Cacine. Of course, Europeans
were goading all of the parties involved. While some crudely
plied the Bijago with alcohol, others more subtly guided the
Beafada, Papel, Casanga, and Kokoli rulers along the road to
internecineconflict.11
The most significantpartnership was between the Europeans and the Mandinga, among the latter of whom were the
principal agents of the trans-Atlanticslave trade in Upper
Guinea. African resistance taught the Portuguese to desist
from raiding and to engage in legitimate trade; and no
African group in Upper Guinea were better qualified
than the Mandinga in matters of trade. Muslin Mandinga
traders were famous throughoutWest Africa; and it was
from individuals such as the Muslim Mandinga, Abubakar,
that the Portuguese received commercial intelligence and
African products for export from as early as the midfifteenthcentury.12The Mandinga were politically a most
advanced group, and enjoyed social and cultural hegemony in Upper Guinea as a consequence of the fourteenth
century expansion of the Mali empire to the Atlantic along
the course of the river Gambia. The decline of Mali in the
fifteenthcentury did not effectthe frameworkof Mandinga
rule in Upper Guinea. The Farim Gabu was the supposed
10 Biblioteca de Ajuda, Lisbon, Ms. 51-VIII-25 and Jesuit Archives (A.R.S.I.),
Rome, Lusitania 74, fo. 79-87.
11 Mateo de Anguiano, Misiones Capuchinas en Africa (Ed. Buenaventura de
Carrocera) Vol. 2, Madrid 1950, pp. 131-145.
12 Diogo Gomes, De la Premiere Decouverte de la Guinee (Ed. Monod, Mauny
Duval), Bissau, 1959, p. 34.

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AFRICANS ENSLAVED IN THE NEW WORLD

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representative of the emperor of Mali, and while he had

obviously lost that function,he was still the most powerful
ruler in Upper Guinea, controllinga large area between the
Corabal and the Gambia. Another Mandinga potentate south
of the Gambia was the Farim Brasso, on the Casamance
river, who held dominion not only over Mandinga subjects,
but also over Balanta, Djola, Papel, Banhum, and Casanga.
Similarly, to the north of the river, Mandinga kings ruled
over Wolof, Serer, and Fula subjects. Muslim marabu resided
under the protection of Mandinga kings with complete freedom of movement in their double role as religious proselytizers and traders. Besides, many of the resident 'Portuguese' traders were in fact mulattos of Portuguese and
Mandinga extraction.These aspects of the social situation in
Upper Guinea pointedto the fact that the majority of captives
were exportedthroughthe agency of the Mandinga.
Djola on the Casamance experienced Mandinga attacks
both by land and by sea. Mandinga war canoes rounded Cape
St. Mary and swooped upon workingparties of Djola gathering sea food on the coast. These two peoples had common
borders in the Bintang area and hostile overland incursions were readily effected.It seems that while the main
purpose of the raids was to obtain captives for sale to
Europeans, Mandinga rulers regarded this as a means of
disciplining recalcitrant subjects who refused to pay tribute
or to recognize Mandinga supremacy.This was the manner in
which the issues were posed in the late eighteenthcentury
when the Mandinga ruler of Fogny was exploiting the Banhum and Djola of the Bintang and Casamance. He demanded
tribute from them, and attacked when they refused to comply, selling large numbers as slaves.13In the sixteenthcentury, when the Banhun were attacked by the Casanga or were
judged by the king of Casanga, these actions were carried out
under the assumption that the Casanga were the political
overlords of the Banhun. These two peoples are closely
related,but the Casanga were more heavily influencedby the
Mandinga, and held a place in the hierarchyof power under
the Farim Brasso. This they exploited to fill the holds of
13 J. B. Labat, Nouvelle Relation de l'Afrique, Vol. V, pp. 19, 20.

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Portuguese slave ships.14

The greatest of the slave-tradingrulers of Upper Guinea
was the Mandinga Farim Gabu, whose main area of operation was the middle Gambia and upper Geba-Corubal, and
whose chief victims were the Bassarel, Coniagui, and Bad
jaranke. However, while the Djola (under the name Feloupe)
and the Banhun were frequentlymentionedas formingpart
-of the Spanish American population, these other victims did
not appear on any New World list. Indeed, the Bassarel,
Coniagui, and Badjaranke were seldom recognized in the
literature on Upper Guinea in the sixteenthand seventeenth
centuries.They have been referredto as 'Paleo-Nigritics' by
Baumann, and it is probably true to surmise that their
ancestors were present in the region since the Paleolithic, and
that they can reasonably be termed auctocthones.15The
expansion of the Mande (Mandinga, Susu, and Djalonke) and
of West Atlantic peoples such as the Beafada and the Fula
had led partly to the incorporationof many of these auctocthones and partly to their being hounded into extremelydifficult environments,such as the boval or scrub countryin and
around Futa Djalon. The word 'Tenda' is generally used to
describe the population of the middle Gambia which was the
product of miscegenation taking place from the fourteenth
centuryonwards between the Mandinga and Fula on the one
hand and, on the other hand, the Bassarel, Coniagui, and
Badjaranke.16 Together,the fugitiveelementsand the partially assimilated Tenda must have borne the brunt of the
Atlanticslave trade in Upper Guinea.
Lemos Coelho, writing in 1669 after more than twenty
years experience as a trader in Upper Guinea, specifically
pointed out that the Bassarel were the principal captives sold
by the Mandinga. He also noted that the population of the
Gambia and Corubal was Mandinga only in the sense that the
original inhabitantswere culturallydominated and had actusobre Serra Leoa", Biblioteca de Ajuda, 51Manuel
Geografica da Provincia da Serra Leoa",
"Descripqao
VIII-25;
Alvares,
Library of the Geographical Society, Lisbon.
15 H. Baumann and D. Westermann, Les Peuples et les Civilisations de
l'Afrique, 1962, pp. 367.
1a Antonio Carreira, 0 Fundamento dos Etnonimos na Guin6 Portuguesa,
Bissau, 1962.
14 Andr6 Dornelas, "Relacao

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ally taken the name 'Mandinga', while converselythe Mandinga had become 'naturalized' (sic).17 Later on, an officialof
the French Senegal Company reported that slaves from the
Gambia had become merchantable because of "war, crime,
sorcery or the fact of belonging to a subject race" 18 It can
be demonstratedthat the last category was inclusive of the
firstthree. Charges of sorcery and other criminal offences
were pressed against the imperfectlyassimilated subjects,
while wars were conducted against neighbouring peoples
(like the Bassarel) on the ground that they were disloyal
subjects. In this instance, therefore,a close association with
the African situation adds an unsuspected and a significant
element to the inventoryof Upper Guinea groups reaching
the New World.
As a corollary,it is equally importantto notice that many
individuals in Spanish America were incorrectlydesignated
as Mandinga. In the seventeenthcentury,a few discerning
observers did notice that the supposed Mandinga population
on the Gambia was not homogenous. For instance, Richard
Jobson found that on the upper Gambia the language spoken
by "the better sort" was Mandinga, but that the common
people had their own language. This must also have been true
much closer to the estuary, as in the kingdom of Salum,
where the ruling strata was penetrated by Manding, but the
citizens were Wolof, Fula, and Serer. Once a subject or a
victim of Mandinga hegemonyhad been shipped by Europeans under the mistaken impression that the captive was
Mandinga, then the mistake might well have been carried
throughas a positive deception on the part of the enslaved
individuals, for one consequence of Mandinga supremacywas
that other groups were constantly seeking to attach themselves to and 'pass' as Mandinga.
There were other positive reasons why few Mandinga
were shipped to the Americas. They were the ruling elite-the
clans and castes possessing a monopoly of skills such as
ironworkingand weaving. Even clans who were of lesser
17D. Peres, Duas Descrig3es Seiscentistas da Guine de Lemos Azevedo
Coelho, Bissau, 1953, pp. 25, 117, 134.
18 P. Cultru, Premier Voyage de Sieur de la Courbe fait a la Coste
d'Afrique
en 1685, Paris, 1906, p. 194.

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importancewere neverthelessfree citizens with full rights,as

distinct from subjugated peoples whose duties and obligations were more pronounced than their civil rights. A state
like Gabu was strong enough to protect its inhabitants from
outside aggression, and when it became consistently interested in slave raiding, it ceased any large-scale internal
recruitment-once more minimizingthe possibilities of Mandinga captives being used to fill the holds of slave ships. Yet,
the Mandinga left a clear mark on the Spanish American
mainland, and several words were loaned to the creole Spanish, such as the word 'marabu', which was preserved as the
general termfor a priest of the African religion.19
Being familiar with a large number of languages, Mandinga slaves were the ones who were most oftencalled upon to
act as interpretersin Spanish America.20This was a strategic position from which to influencethe development of a
creole lingua franca, just as in Upper Guinea itself "Portuguese Creole" clearly showed the pre-eminenceof the Mandinga. The Muslim Mandinga was revered among all the
peoples of Upper Guinea as a dispenser of spiritual protection in the form of amulets and Koranic inscriptions. Any
marabu who was unfortunateenough to have found himself
in captivityin Spanish America would certainlyhave wielded
authorityamong Upper Guineans. Because of his education,a
Muslim in Upper Guinea was called 'Bookman' by English
traders in the eighteenthcentury.21It is intriguingto note
that that was th ename of the African 'priest' who masterminded the outbreak of the great revolution in Saint
Domingue in 1789, having arrived there via Jamaica. Such
was the kind of role which their African developmentwould
have enabled the Mandinga to play in Spanish America since
the sixteenthcentury.
In this instance, some purpose is served by pinpointing
the African origins of the slave population in a given region
of the Americas, for it demonstrates that the Mandinga
19 G. Aguirre Beltran, op. cit., p. 104.
20 p. Alonso de Sandoval, De Instauranda
Aethiopium Salute: El Mundo
de la Esclavitud Negra en America, (Bogota, 1956 (Reprint of first edition
of 1627), p. 91.
21 John Matthews, A Voyage to the River Sierra
Leone, 1788, p. 69.

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impact in Spanish America was not a reflectionon their numbers, but rather on cultural factors reaching back into their
African past. Similar enquiries have suggested that Fon cultural dominance in Haiti did not correspond to numerical
preponderance,but that primacyin Jamaica was aided by the
high proportion of Africans carried to the island.22Knowledge of the proportion of Africans of differentregions does
not therefore immediately allow one to draw valid conclusions about cultural survivals, but it at least opens the way
for an enquiryinto the dynamics of New World slave culture
and the way in which African elements were incorporated.
On the other hand, it is often meaningless to distinguish
between one African and another in a slave context,and in
some instances it is positively misleading to harp on the
"tribal origins" of black slaves in the New World. This is the
principal point borne out by an examination of the close
relationsbetweenUpper Guinea and Spanish America.
Sierra Leone had innumerabletribal and political groupings, and yet a sixteenth-century
European observer appreciated that "all these nations are called in general 'Sapes', in
the same way that in Spain several nations are called "Spaniards." Like the Akan of Ghana, the Sapi constituteda single
language cluster,whichwas part of the West Atlanticfamily.23
Their linguistic grouping is termed 'Mel', and a few Mande
(Susu and Djalonke) had also become acculturatedwithinthe
same milieu as the 'Mel' speakers. It was claimed in the
sixteenth century that every Sapi understood every other
Sapi. This is not to be taken literally,but there was mutual
understanding based on a common socio-political structure
and on similar economic,religious, and educational activities.
Aguirre Beltran, in his discussion of the tribal origins of
Africans carried to Mexico, noted that Sapi was a generic
name referringto several Upper Guinea peoples.24What he
failed to perceive was that the very existence of a culture
entitysuch as the Sapi was a challenge to his preconception
22 (a) A. Ramos, Os Culturas Negras no Novo Mundo, 1946, p. 165. (b)
Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, London, 1967, p. 153.
23 P. E. H. Hair, "An Ethnolinguistic Inventory of the Upper Guinea Coast
before 1700", African Language Review, Vol. 6, 1967.
24 G. Aguirre Beltran, "Tribal Origins of Slaves in Mexico" Journal of
Negro History, Vol. XLII, 1957.

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that it was worthwhile to speak in terms of the 'tribal'

origins of New World Africans. Quite apart from the imprecision of the term 'tribal' and its pejorative overtones,it is
functionallymisleading in this context. The Mani-Sapi confrontation was not based fundamentally on tribes, as expected, but on class and chiefdoms-two of the social categories which determined the fate of individual Africans.
After these Africans from the southern section of Upper
Guinea were shipped to the New World, the narrowerclassifications were transcended. It was reported that in order to
teach them the catechism, it was necessary to distinguish
between the Baga, Kokoli or Djalonke.25 It is clear that for
all other purposes such distinctionswere irrelevant.
Though less closely welded together than the Sapi, the
other ethnic groups of Upper Guinea all shared many things
in common.One binding factor was the existence of regional
markets at which people gathered for social as well as
commercial reasons. In Cartagena, it was noticeable that
many of the Africans from the northern sector of Upper
Guinea already spoke more than one language. Banhun and
Djola could communicate; Papel were often multilingual in
relation to Banhun, Casanga, Balanta, Mandinga and
Beafada; Balanta often spoke Papel and Mandinga; and
Nalu usually understood the Beafada.26 Adding the Bassarel
and the Coniagui (who were closely connectedto Beafada and
Mandinga), one can produce a complete inventory of the
Upper Guinea peoples who sufferedenslavement; and apart
fromthe Mandinga, no group was singled out culturallyfrom
the rest. Both the slavers and the slaveowners who dealt with
these Africans invariably referred to them collectively as
escravos de ley. This name was born of the fiscal arrangement by which the Iberian monarch had a one-thirdinterest
in the sale price of these slaves, but it came to mean "slaves
of the highest quality", since they were alledged to be
good-natured, happy, diligent and faithful.27This allusion
was also an idle stereotype.
25 P. Alonso de Sandoval, op. cit., pp. 576-577.
26 Ibid, pp. 60, 92.
27 Arquivo Historico Ultramarino (Lisbon), Cabo Verde, caixa I, letter of
16 Nov. 1635, and Guin6, caixa I, Decision of the Overseas Council in Nov. 1643.

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Throughoutthe literature on the Atlantic slave trade and

New World slavery, one can find references to particular
tribes being characterized as fierce,idle, docile, or otherwise.
Slavers and planters built up a scale of preferencesand were
selective in their purchase of African captives. Slavers undoubtedlyshowed a preferencefor one region over another;
but such shifted over time, varied according to nationality,
and was based on consideration much more solid than the
ephemeras of "tribal characteristics". The European
had to assess the social and political conditions,the possibility of making contact with African rulers who were cooperative or who could be compromisedinto undertakingthe local
end of the operations, the volume and regularity of the
supplies, the prices, availability of forts and barracoons, the
strength of European competitors,and a number of other
determinantsof profitability.It was the sum total of such
factors as these which caused Upper Guinea, Congo, Angola,
Dahomey, and Calabar to become the principal slave suppliers
at certain times or to be completelyignored by slavetraders
at other times.
What is to be made of the specificassertions that preferences were based on tribal character? At times,this seemed to
have been a rationalization of other importantfacts. Traders
indicated what they felt about various groups depending
upon how those groups reacted to Europeans and European
trade. In Upper Guinea, the Djola and the Balanta were
"savage cannibals" because theydid not tolerate Europeans;
while the Casanga and the Temne were much more favourably portrayed,since theywere willing to play host to resident
European traders. The differencesin approach to the Europeans were based on the nature of social organization. On the
one hand, the Djola and Balanta were "stateless societies"
with no ruling hierarchywith whom European slave traders
could deal, while on the other hand the Temne and Casanga
had a rulingclass with a pattern of conspicuous consumption,
and this class responded to the lure of European goods. In
the minds of the slave traders such differenceswere not discernible,being regarded as inherentcharacter traits.
There is only one instance where the allegation about
character on the upper Guinea Coast seemed to have been

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JOURNALOF NEGRO HISTORY

accurate and decisive as far as slave procurementwas concerned. It was said that the Bijago men were prone to commit
suicide as a last resort when captured, and thereforePortuguese traders on the coast avoided them.28Besides, Labat
reported that the Bijago were noted for rebellion on board
ship and were sold with great difficultybecause of their
ferocityand tendencyto escape, harm themselves,or commit
suicide.29This is really an unusual situationbecause, in general, the supposedly adverse tribal characteristicsdid not stop
European slave traders from purchasing whomever was
offeredto themin Africa,nor did it preventEuropeans in the
Americas from grabbing any serviceable African, especially
since labour was chronically short. Indeed, it is when one
pursues the question of tribal characteristics within New
World society that one findsthe greatest inconsistenciesand
contradictions.
When a preferencefor a given set of black slaves did exist
in the Americas, it was tied to practical considerations, as
was the case on the African coast. Upper Guinea captives
were undoubtedlypreferredin large areas of Spanish America. The reason seems to be that the Guinea of Cape Verde
was the first region with which the Spanish American
slaveowners had constant organized contact, with a few
Spanish Americans moving to reside in Upper Guinea and
several Portuguese serving as agents in Mexico, Cartagena,
and Panama.30 This kind of organization clearly had mutual
benefits,for slavers and slaveowners were informedand more
solicitous of their own needs. There would obviously have
been far greater opportunityto provide Upper Guinea captives in the required volume, with regularity,and in good
physical condition,as distinctfromAngola (which, up to the
firstdecade of the seventeenthcentury,was supplying Spanish America occasionally and incidentalto theirmain Brazilian interest). To some extent, also, practice seemed to have
established precedent, familiarity,and confidence; and the
28Alvares de Almada, "Tratado Breve dos Rios de Guine," Monumenta
Missionaria Africana Africa Ocidental, 1569-1700 (2nd series, vol. III, Ed.
A. Brasio), p. 318.
29 J. B. Labat, Op cit, vol.
V, p. 198.
80 A.H.U., Guin6, caixa I, No. 54, Petition of June 1647, and A.G.I., Santa
F6 37, report of 10th July 1590.

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atmospheresurvived for some time after the heyday of

the Upper Guinea-SpanishAmerican connection.In the
latter part of the seventeenthcentury,ships destinedfor
Spanish Americawere willingto pay almostthriceas much
for an Upper Guinea captiveas the English were paying.31
Indeed,theRoyal AfricanCompanywarnedits Sierra Leone
agents not to bother with slaves because Africans from
Upper Guineawere"the worstin esteem" and weredisliked
aboutthose
This was a comment
bytheBarbadianplanters.32
AfricanswhomtheSpanish termed'ideal', showinghow subjectivethe evaluationswere.
Assigninga peculiarset ofbehavioraltraitsto anyhuman
groupis always an unscientific
operation,whetherconducted
on Africans,Asians, or Europeans.In this sense,the search
for tribal originsis entirelymisleading.The stereotypeof
Upper GuineaAfricansin SpanishAmericahad twoaspects.
Firstly,theywere supposedto have been very happy since
theywere given to music,song, and dance. Secondly,they
were loyal and non-rebellious.The firstcontentionseems
justified,but it was not peculiarto Upper Guinea Africans.
On thecontrary,
theresortto song and dance was an important survivaltechniqueof all Africanstransportedto the
New World.Festivitieswerecloselytied to religion,and this
reflectedthe prevalence of these features in all African
societies.The secondallegationaboutfidelity
is contradicted
the
for
rebelliousness
by
evidence,
(like conformity)ran
theNew Worldforthewholedurationof slavery.
throughout
It was in its religiousmanifestation
that Africanculture
survivedbestin theNewWorldenvironment,
especiallywhen
protectedby an outwardadherenceto Catholicism.Between
1605 and 1635, Sandoval personallybaptized 40,000slaves,
most of whomcame fromGuinea to the provinceof Cartagena.Pedro Claver of theJesuitorderalso carriedout his
missionin the Colombia-Bolivianarea from1610 to 1654,
and was subsequently
canonizedforhis workamongslaves.33
31 Public Record Office, T70/10, Thurlow to the Directors of the Royal
African Company,15 March, 1678.
32 Ibid., T70/50, Directors to John Case, 24 Aug., 1686.

88 J. M. Henao and G. Arrubla, History of Columbia, 1938, p. 117.

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JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

It is very unlikelythat Catholic effortsachieved much more

than formal conversion, change of names, and African appropriation of Catholic saints and the Catholic calendar. It
was admitted that in Mexico "true religious conversion was
and although Sandoval prided himself on giving
difficult",34
adequate preparation to those he had baptized, he also mentioned the festivals which were celebrated by Africans.35
Mexico and Colombia also had their religious brotherhoods,
widely known from Cuban and Brazilian examples as cabildos or cofradias. These were the organizers of the celebrations, serving both as the guardians of elements of African
culture and the creators of new syncretismscharacteristicof
Latin America.
Popular festivals knownas diablitos formedthe principal
diversion of the city of Antioquia in Colombia up to the
middle of the last century.The festival which started on the
28th December was a veritable carnival. The diablitos (little
devils) wore featheredhats and fantastic costumes; popular
sketcheswere made on the year's events; and most of the day
was given over to dancing, singing, and story-tellingin the
streets.36Upper Guinea Africans were sent to the mining
areas of Zoragossa and Antioquia in great numbers, and
could scarcely be overlooked in tracing the roots of these
traditions. It is interesting to note that in Upper Guinea
itself, 'Catholics' engaged in the same pratices. In GuineaBissau, African converts matched those in Antioquia with a
ceremony which started on midnight of 1st November and
lasted for three days. One writer described the ceremony:
"They leave their houses to gather at the door of the
church, from which they proceed with candles, walking in
procession, singing in all the streets Ave Marias mixed with
native songs. Men and women with fantastic dress, as if it
were carnival.'37
What was common to Antioquia and Guinea-Bissau also
appeared throughoutthe Catholic countries of America, and
allows one to perceive that there was a particular African

34 P. Alonso de Sandoval, Op cit (Editor's introduction).

35 p. Alonso de Sandoval, Op cit, p. 444.
36 Artur Ramos, Op cit, p. 257.
37 Henrique Dias de Carvalho, Guine, Apontamentos Ineditos, Lisbon, 1944,
p. 74.

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response to socialization under slavery, quite apart from the

fact that one region or another had more pronounced Akan,
Fon, or Ibo influence.The same conclusioncan be drawn from
a study of music. African influenceon the folk songs of the
Americas shows the same trends in Mexico, Panama and
Venezuela with more reknownexemplificationin Cuba. In the
gulf area and other parts of Mexico today, "the songs and
dances reflecttheir African origin. Totally improvisatoryin
character,the music is full of rhythmiccomplexities."38The
point is that these survivals spring from a commonfount of
African practice during the slave epoch, irrespectiveof tribal
origins. When the Spanish Americans insisted that Upper
Guinea slaves were especially given to song and dance, they
were probablymakinguse of the moral escape clause by which
every group of slaveowners allowed themselvesto believe that
"our slaves are the happiest of earthlybeings".39 Of course,
African drumswere also beaten as a call to rebellion,and this
is yet another sphere where tribal origins can be shown to be
largely irrelevant, in spite of numerous contemporaryand
academic assertions to the contrary.
There was a sharp contradiction between the supposed
loyalty of Upper Guinea esclavos de ley and the prevalence
of slave rebellionsand escapes throughoutthe area which the
Spanish called Tierra Firme and Nueva Espanha, and notabl yin Panama, Mexico, and Colombia. Panama had a predominantly black population in the sixteenth century, carried
there to serve the rich transit trade across the Isthmus
and to work in the gold placers. Upper Guinea was the
principal area of provenance. In Panama, the maroons did
not simplyfleefromtheir masters to seek refuge in the bush,
but theyalso returnedto harass the commercialand economic
activity of the whites. They fought protracted guerilla wars
from about 1540 until 1574 when the Spaniards had to come
to terms with them.40In neighbouringCartagena, the situa38 Beatrice Landeck, Echoes of Africa in Folk
Songs of America, New
York 1960, p. 91.
39 Marvin Harris, Patterns
of Race in the Americas, New York 1964.
40 (a) Documentos Ineditos para la Historia de
Colombia, Bogota, 1960, Vol.
VI, Document No. 1480 and 1566.

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JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

tion was not much different.In fact, the formerslaves were

mobile to ignore the Spanish administrativefronsufficiently
tiers and to carry out commonstruggles in Panama and Cartagena. In Mexico, it is estimated that in 1579, there were
2,000 maroons at large amounting to one-tenthof the black
population. Recent research on Mexico has provided considerable detail on the series of attempteduprisings, successful
rebellions,and retaliatorymaroon activity against the Spanish during the sixteenth century and the early part of the
seventeenth,41so that throughout the period when these
Spanish American colonists had a preponderance of esclavos
de ley in their midst,they were witness to the African revolt
for freedomand dignity.
Freedom strugglesalways produced individuals of stature
who co-ordinated and inspired their own people. One such
person was Domingo Bio, who led a revolt in Cartagena in
1599-1600,with a plan to unite most of the 20,000 slaves then
in that province. It was said of Bio that "he had the support
of all the nations of Guinea in this city and province" (of
Cartagena).42 In spite of a tendnecyto present their slaves
as the world's happiest people, slaveowners did have to face
reality fromtime to time. A report on the 3,000 slaves in the
mines of Zaragossa in 1598 frankly admitted that "from
among these it is only natural that there are some who are of
hostile disposition and others who will flee when maltreated".43 This statement, with its implications that elementsof accommodationand rebellionwere foundtogetherin
any group of slaves, amounts to a simple recognitionof the
slaves' humanity.Because slavery challenged that basic fact
and because the racist ideology of the bourgeois world has
hardened that challenge into dogma, there has arisen the
inviduous necessity of having to assert the humanityof the
black man. The search to clarifythe record can be confusedif
one accepts any claims that this or that tribe consistently
41 See Edgar Love, "Negro Resistance to Spanish Rule in Colonial Mexico,"
Journal of Negro History, Vol. LII, April 1967; and David Davidson, "Negro
Slave Control and Resistance in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1650," Hispanic American
Historical Review, Vol. XLVI, No. 3, Aug. 1966.
42 A.G.I., Santa F6 38, Letter from the Governor, 28 March 1600.
43A.G.I., Santa F6 37, Letter from the Governor, 22 Oct 1598.

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AFRICANS ENSLAVED IN THE NEW WORLD

345

displayed particular syndromes of aggression, submission,

melancholia,or laziness.
There is no doubt that the African origins of New World
slaves can be conducted with more success by synthesizinga
variety of informationculled fromboth sides of the Atlantic,
as has been attemptedhere with referenceto Upper Guinea
and some parts of Spanish America. There is also no doubt
that this operation has value in a cultural sense. Understanding of Afro-Brazilian culture certainly arises from knowledge of the religious beliefs and practices on the former
"Slave Coast", and the same applies to the Afro-Cuban
cultural manifestationswhich are linked to the "Lucumis"
or Yorubas. However, the similarityof African survivals in
the New World points not to tribal peculiarities but to the
essential oneness of African culture. That culture was the
shield which frustratedthe effortsof Europeans to dehumanize Africans throughservitude.The slave may have appeared
in a profitand loss account as an 'item', a 'thing', a piece of
'property', but he faced his new situation as an African, a
worker, and a man. At this level of perception, it is quite
irrelevantto enquire fromwhich tribe or region a particular
Africanoriginated.
UniversityCollege, Dar es Salaam
Tanzania, East Africa

WALTER RODNEY

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