One day in 1953, a Nation Dance ceremony was held in L’Esterre, Carriacou, for a three-year-old child born with dada hair, a rare type of curled, soft hair. Also called ‘Shango hair’, children with this hair texture were known as ‘Shango’s children’.Footnote 1 In Yorubaland, dada hair is regarded as a blessing from the gods and symbolises good luck and wealth for the children’s parents. Dada hair is ritually removed to disconnect children from the spirit world and to indicate their belonging to the community and the earth.Footnote 2 In Grenada, the traditional custom of ritually removing dada hair continued and a ‘Shango’ haircutting ritual was enacted. At first glance, the description of the dada removal ritual is similar to accounts of the Nation Dance: the ceremony featured a saraka, a salt-free ancestral meal called Parents’ Plate, the obligatory introductory ‘Koromanti Beg Pardon’ songs appealing for pardon, the playing of three drums, and the performance of Nation Dances. On closer inspection, however, two aspects are strikingly different from other Nation Dances: a ‘Shango’ haircutting ritual occurred within the ceremony and a Yoruba nation was added to the customary cycle of nations.Footnote 3 M. G. Smith, who observed the ceremony, noted the following about the dances: ‘Apart from the Congo and Kromanti, the Nations played were Manding (Mandinka), Ibo, Chamba, Temne, Arada (Dahomey), Moko, and Yarraba (Yoruba).’Footnote 4 The inclusion of the Yoruba ritual and nation stemmed from the arrival in Grenada of Yoruba-speaking recaptives a hundred or so years earlier.
Yoruba speakers were well represented among the 2,709 recaptive adults and children landed in St George’s harbour between 1836 and 1863. Some had been recaptured by the Royal Navy at sea en route to Cuba and arrived in Grenada emaciated, branded, and in shackles; others were recaptured and conveyed to Havana, Sierra Leone, or St Helena before embarking on emigrant vessels. The British withdrawal from the slave trade, their subsequent policing role in the suppression of the trade, and internal events within the Western African hinterland altered the demographic profile of Africans heading to Grenada. These changed demographics transformed Grenada’s cultural landscape through the addition of Yoruba elements and contributed to the development of African work. On the day of the ceremony in 1953, it was likely that the Carriacouans enlisted the spiritual heirs of these Yoruba exiles, the ‘Shango’ or African work practitioners, as they had done many times before, for their specialist services.Footnote 5
Anthropologist M. G. Smith, who observed and recorded the above ceremony, traced the origins and longevity of Grenada’s African work to the arrival of a large, homogenous group of liberated Yoruba people between 1849 and 1850.Footnote 6 This claim has been repeated in literature on liberated Africans in the Caribbean, running the risk of homogenising their backgrounds, overlooking earlier arrivals in the 1830s, and failing to fully consider the complex ways in which their cultures unfolded.Footnote 7 While the Yoruba and their successive generations undoubtedly influenced Grenada, the enduring legacy of their cultures are attributed to factors beyond their size. It is argued here that more important factors were the timing of their arrival – some thirty to forty years after British abolition – and the ways their respective cultures were embedded into and redefined by local and regional actors within the Eastern Caribbean Sea. Moreover, ships brought recaptured peoples of multiple ethnicities, and on one ship, of multiracial backgrounds. A detailed profile of the ethnicities, linguistic groups, and geographical origins of the recaptives substantiates this claim.
In addition to the changing ethnic profile of Africans, their shifting age and gender profiles enhance an understanding of the identities and experiences of recaptives. Smith’s unpublished field notes, ship registers, the Voyages Database, and travel accounts provide raw information for constructing a more comprehensive demographic sketch of liberated Africans. Many of these sources also permit analytical understanding of how Africans experienced abolition, an often neglected chapter within the historiography. Some records also reveal their experiences before and after capture at reception depots and at sea, their largely involuntary recruitment and transportation, and their means of survival and modes of resistance to these dislocating and traumatic processes.
Age and Gender Profiles of Liberated Africans
During the transatlantic slave trade, two-thirds of Africans trafficked across the Atlantic were male.Footnote 8 Mortality rates of men were higher in the Americas, and in compensation, more men were purchased to balance gender ratios on plantations.Footnote 9 This pattern also reflected African factors: their productive and reproductive labour roles invested women with high value in West African societies, and they were more likely to be retained.Footnote 10 In the Grenadian data, the proportion of males was similar to the wider Americas, and increased during the era of abolition: 62 per cent of enslaved Africans were male, compared with 73 per cent of liberated Africans. The higher numbers of males, particularly youth and young boys, aboard ships departing the Bight of Benin and Sierra Leone – Phoenix (1836), Florida (1837), Clarendon (1849), Brandon (1849), and Atlantic (1850) – averaged around 74 per cent and were possibly attributable to civil wars in Yorubaland, a factor which I explore later in this chapter.Footnote 11
Although data on age in the Voyages Database varies by the national registration of the vessel, there is consensus among historians that an unprecedented number of children were held captive and transported to the Americas in the nineteenth century.Footnote 12 Their numbers peaked from the 1820s to 1850s because children were cheaper to acquire and could be boarded onto ships in larger numbers – to fulfil the voracious demands of Cuban and Brazilian markets.Footnote 13 For American enslavers, particularly in the coffee markets of Brazil, children were regarded as advantageous for picking coffee and sorting the seeds. For the Cuban market, it is possible that children were in demand for use in domestic service and occupations entailing apprenticeship.Footnote 14 The Grenada data for ships departing Western Africa is largely consistent with trends in the wider nineteenth-century slave trade. A significant proportion of the recaptives arriving in Grenada on ships intercepted between 1836 and 1839 were classified as children – the highest proportion ever recorded for the island.Footnote 15 On the Negrinha (1836), the Phoenix (1836), and the Louise Fredericke (1839) – 26 per cent, 75 per cent, and 47 per cent respectively – were under fourteen years of age.Footnote 16 On the Brandon (1849), which carried the largest numbers of recaptives to Grenada, 56 per cent were aged under fifteen.Footnote 17 The number of children trafficked from West Central Africa during the nineteenth century grew, though this is not reflected in the Grenadian data.Footnote 18 Apart from the Tartar (1860) which carried 43 per cent of children (under fourteen), the number of liberated children on ships from West Central Africa was lower than during the legal slave trade. The reason why is unclear. For all recaptives, the process of abolition – enslavement, the middle passage, recapture, adjudication, and removal towards Grenada – was turbulent and disorientating, and would have been particularly bewildering for children.
The low proportion of mature adults among the recaptives accorded with nineteenth-century patterns of enslavement. On the Negrinha, fourteen recaptives were aged thirty and above, and three were in their forties; on the Phoenix, twelve recaptives were in their 30s and none were above this age group. On the Brandon, the majority of recaptives were in their 20s, and only one was in their 30s.Footnote 19 The number of mature adults among liberated Africans was unsurprisingly low given the traders’ preference for young captives.
The Ethnic Origins of Grenada’s Indentured Africans
Untangling the ethnic roots of nineteenth-century Africans is more difficult than determining their age and gender because colonial administrators were notably inconsistent in recording the ethnic backgrounds of Grenada’s liberated recaptives; a slippage which means that in many cases, it is only possible to identify their final ports of embarkation at coastal regions. Historians of Africa have studied the different ethnic groups caught up in the transatlantic slave trade, and the resultant data is valuable for deducing the ports and ships of embarkation for specific groups. However, a stated port of departure is sometimes misleading as it does not mean that a ship embarked all its captives from that port, or even from the port’s coastal region. Moreover, ports or coastal regions do not tell us much about the homelands of African captives. An internal trading network could push an ethnic group towards more than one region; for example, Hausa speakers were sent towards the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra, and the Gold Coast.Footnote 20
The following discussion explores the Bight of Benin, Sierra Leone, and West Central Africa regions in turn and their respective ports but, in light of the above complexities, it will pay attention to African commercial networks which pulled peoples from the interior towards the coast.
Sierra Leone Region (Galinhas and Sierra Leone)
Negrinha, no. 1 (1836)
The first recorded vessel carrying recaptives was the Negrinha. Departing from Galinhas (in present-day Sierra Leone), in 1836 the slave ship displayed Portuguese colours en route to Cuba. Intercepted at sea by HMS Vestal, the Negrinha was sent to Grenada, the nearest island. By the time they arrived in the Caribbean, the involuntary passengers had endured a forty-day journey, during which time, thirty perished and 335 survived to land in Grenada. The Negrinha was discovered to be a Spanish ship, deceptively sailing under Portuguese colours to avoid capture by British patrols.Footnote 21 In accordance with the terms of the Anglo-Spanish treaty of 1835, British vessels were authorised to apprehend and board suspect Spanish vessels, even when there was no evidence of captives onboard. The treaty’s equipment clause allowed that in instances where an apprehended ship was found carrying shackles, large quantities of water, an unusually sized boiler, or spare planks that could be used to create a second slave deck, British naval officers could reasonably presume that the ship intended to engage in trafficking activities and be legally seized. No such treaty existed between Britain and Portugal until 1839, and Spanish traders exploited this loophole, flying Portuguese flags in efforts to evade capture.Footnote 22
Galinhas rose to prominence as a slave market at the end of the eighteenth century. British abolition in 1807 and the establishment the following year of a vice-admiralty prize court in Freetown inadvertently led to increased trafficking activities at Galinhas, due to its proximity to the colony of Sierra Leone. Most Africans sent through Galinhas came from its intermediate hinterland or from communities near the various rivers which entered the sea at Sherbro Island. Commonly, captives taken to Galinhas for sale had been captured as a result of wars in the Mende country and around the Mano River. Others had been enslaved as punishment for debt, witchcraft, or adultery.Footnote 23
In Grenada, local officials enlisted forty recaptives – all male – into the 1st West India Regiment and sent the rest to work as indentured labourers. The Negrinha register contains rare insights into the identities of its human cargo because, unusually, officials recorded the ‘native’ names of the captives.Footnote 24 Sierra Leone-based researchers have linked the names with modern-day equivalents, showing the recaptives’ multi-ethnic and multi-religious backgrounds and experiences.Footnote 25 To date, these researchers have identified forty-nine Mende speakers, as well as twenty-two Mende/Sherbro, twelve Kono, seven Sherbro, seven Temne, four Fula, three Kpelle, two Kissi, two Limba, two Mandingo, one Loma, one Loko, and one Grebo, with the rest associated with more than one ethno-linguistic group. Mende and Sherbro names are conjoined here because from the early nineteenth century, Mende speakers moved towards Sherbo areas on the Sierra Leone littoral, thereby complicating distinctions between these ethno-linguistic groups. Indeed, cross-ethnic identification was commonplace within Sierra Leone’s interior; a person identifying as Sherbro could also express an ethnic identity from one or more ethnic group, such as Mende or Temne.Footnote 26
Beyond their ethno-linguistic identities, the analysis also revealed remarkable biographical details, such as Islamised or Christianised names; time, season, or place of birth (such as villages, forests, or hills); the birth order of a child among siblings; names invoking aspirational characteristics (such as fighter or warrior); and names associated with initiation rituals. Consider Gbanabom, a twenty-year-old man from the Sherbro ethno-linguistic group: his name signifies the first initiate within the Sherbro secret society. Or Kema, an eleven-year-old girl, whose name is associated with the Mende/Kono ethno-linguistic group: an appellation bestowed to the first girl who emerged from an initiation ceremony to guide the other girls for the remainder of the ritual. Among the Sherbro, Mende, Temne, and Kono, initiation into the Poro society (for men) and Bondo society (also known as the Sande society, for women) began at puberty and prepared initiates for adulthood through the transmission of critical knowledge. Initiation ceremonies included circumcision, ceremonial scarification, village seclusion, and a complex system of masks, dances, and songs.Footnote 27 Thus, liberated Africans who experienced initiation introduced into Grenada a deep, sacred knowledge of their respective societies, a knowledge unrecorded by European record keepers.
The names of the Negrinha recaptives indicate that some who arrived in Grenada had already been exposed to Christianity or Islam. Celia (or Cecelia), age eight, one of four recaptives with Christian-derived names, could be of Sherbro or liberated African origin. Perhaps Celia was among the Sherbro speakers who encountered missionaries on the coast in the early nineteenth century and adopted Christian names in the process of conversion. Celia could also be from one of the Sherbro peoples who acquired Christianity and Christian names as they intermingled with Christianised recaptured Africans in Sierra Leone.Footnote 28 Perhaps Celia was in fact a liberated African already residing in Sierra Leone or elsewhere in Africa; this would imply that she had been re-enslaved, losing her freedom at some point within Western Africa before being transported for sale at Galinhas.Footnote 29 The six Muslim-identified names within the register, such as Fema (Islamised Mende name for Fatima), Brima (Islamised Mende name for Ibrahim), and Ali, represent the spread of Islam in southern Sierra Leone by the nineteenth century. These Muslim names may not reflect an Islamic religious identity, however, as some Africans may have received or adopted Muslim names without practising Islam.Footnote 30
Clarendon, no. 5 (1849), Brandon, no. 7 (1849), and Atlantic, no. 8 (1850)
Sierra Leone was a major reception depot and a place of settlement for Africans recaptured by the British Navy. In 1808, a vice-admiralty court was established by the British to condemn ships trading illegally and was replaced by the joint Courts of Mixed Commission in 1819.Footnote 31 The Liberated African yard at Freetown received 99,752 recaptured adults and children from illegally trading vessels, who were subsequently either settled in Sierra Leone or sent to the British Caribbean.Footnote 32 MacDonald, the governor of Sierra Leone, was aware of the different geographical and ethno-linguistic backgrounds of Africans sent from Sierra Leone on the Clarendon (1849), the Brandon (1849) and the Atlantic (1850), as he often received correspondence bearing such information. Incomplete record keeping, however, means that it is difficult to trace the geographical origins of these recaptives. To identify their possible backgrounds, the original slaver and its port of departure on the African coast must be determined and matched with the receiving emigrant vessel. But because these Africans were sent to Grenada via a major reception depot rather than directly from a slaver, unless noted in the Sierra Leone correspondence, it is no easy task to identify the original slaver or port of departure. Furthermore, clues from liberated African names cannot be gleaned for the Clarendon or the Atlantic, as the names of recaptives were not recorded upon their departure from Sierra Leone, and the practice of recording names of Africans on ships landing in that colony was abandoned after 1848.Footnote 33
In the case of the Clarendon it is possible to identify the original vessel carrying the recaptives by examining those adjudicated at Sierra Leone immediately prior to the Clarendon’s departure on 24 February 1849. Three slavers were seized and sent to Sierra Leone between November 1848 and that date: the Brasiliense (666 survivors who embarked at Ouidah were emancipated on 23 November 1848); the Quatro Andorinha (361 survivors embarked at Lagos were emancipated on 12 December 1848); and the Jacinto (294 survivors embarked from the River Brass were emancipated on 28 January 1849).Footnote 34 It is likely that Africans aboard the Clarendon would have been recaptured from the Jacinto, which departed from the River Brass because recaptives from the first two ships possibly boarded the emigrant ship Una, which sailed for Jamaica on 11 January 1849 with 367 Africans aboard. The remainder might have resisted the recruiters’ appeal to emigrate, or quite possibly were among the 541 Africans remaining in the yard when the Clarendon, the next emigrant vessel, arrived.Footnote 35 It is likely that a greater majority of those in the yard were Africans from the Jacinto. Arriving at Freetown on 27 January, the Jacinto was the last ship to arrive prior to the Clarendon’s departure, and its captives would not have been emancipated in time for embarkation on the Jamaican-bound vessel, the Una.
Hence, the 250 Africans aboard on the Clarendon were most likely a mixture of peoples who departed from Ouidah, Lagos, and the River Brass. The ethnicities of those from the Bight of Benin will be discussed in the next section, but what were the likely ethnicities of Africans from the River Brass? Trade in enslaved Africans on the River Brass rose sharply in the second quarter of the nineteenth century because patrolling the lagoons and creeks of the delta was nearly impossible so British preventative measures were more effective at other ports on the Bight of Biafra. Captives from the Brass River were drawn from the Igbo country and beyond, such as down the Niger, from the Igala peoples, and other northern Nigerian groups.Footnote 36 Some Yoruba speakers were also sent from the River Brass.Footnote 37
Information on the backgrounds of emigrants onboard the Brandon (1849) is much clearer, as the official recorded the name of the slaver, along with the given ethnicities of the captives who disembarked at Sierra Leone. HMS Rattler captured 317 Africans from the Brazilian slaver Conquistador (port unspecified, Bight of Benin), which was adjudicated at Freetown on 24 November 1849.Footnote 38 Richard Fisker, the emigration agent, identified these new arrivants as ‘Accoos’ (Aku: derived from the Yoruba greeting ‘o ku’ and used in Sierra Leone to describe people from Yorubaland and its adjacent lands).Footnote 39 Fisker also noted the presence of ‘Housas’ (Hausa people originating from Central Sudan, to the north of Yorubaland).Footnote 40 That the recaptives had been placed under undue pressure to emigrate was apparent: it was reported that of the 139 Africans from the Conquistador who emigrated on the Brandon, seventy-five had consented after being ‘solicited’ to emigrate on the very same day of their liberation. Five days later, another sixty-four, primarily children, consented to join those departing on the Brandon after having been subjected to daily entreaties to join the emigration scheme.Footnote 41
John McCormack, Acting Collector of Customs, reported that 156 of the recaptives he described as ‘Akoos’ refused to emigrate. He attributed their refusal to news of the death of an ‘Accoo’ sailor on the Conquistador. The unknown Yoruba sailor had cautioned recaptives against emigration to the Caribbean, warning that they would ‘hardly get paid’ and that the ‘country was altogether bad’.Footnote 42 Visiting the yard, McCormack sought to refute the sailor’s negative stories, appealing to the recaptives to choose emigration for ‘their own good’.Footnote 43 He implored the liberated Africans to place their ‘trust and confidence’ in the government, and warned them of the ‘serious expense’ that would befall them should they refuse to emigrate.Footnote 44 Neither veiled threats nor entreaties impressed the recaptives, who remained unconvinced that emigration to the Caribbean would be advantageous. McCormack later wrote of his frustration that the recaptives ‘either did not or could not appreciate what was told them’.Footnote 45
Fisker was particularly concerned about the influence these ‘refractory people’ could have over some recently arrived 230 ‘Congos’ in the yard. Moving to prevent the minds of the other nations in the yard ‘being poisoned against emigrating’, Fisker recommended recaptives be removed from the yard as soon as possible.Footnote 46 Still, many resisted emigration, which suggests that unknown numbers of recaptives were involuntarily transported to other Caribbean territories. Having been removed from the yard after refusing to emigrate, some ‘Akoos’ were transported to the Western District, where they were to be settled.Footnote 47 They attempted to flee on the journey but were later recovered. According to McCormack, the Africans explained that they had attempted escape because they were afraid that they would be returned to the yard and then shipped to the Caribbean.Footnote 48 In all, 139 Yoruba and Hausa recaptives from the Conquistador were embarked on the Brandon. Two others had ‘secreted themselves’ onboard the Brandon.Footnote 49 According to Fisker, the stowaways ‘evinced a great dread’ of being returned to the yard, having witnessed several recaptives from the Brandon being brought back because of sickness.Footnote 50 It was reported that to avoid being sent to Grenada, two other Africans absconded from the Brandon prior to its departure in November 1849. In total, 465 people boarded the Grenada-bound Brandon at Freetown.Footnote 51
The passengers aboard the Brandon represented a diversity of African ethnicities, even beyond the Bight of Benin interior. On 23 November 1849, 324 ‘Kusoos’ were boarded.Footnote 52 The label ‘Koso’ (and its variants ‘Kossa’ and ‘Kossoh’) referred to Mende peoples, but was used more widely to describe peoples of the Sierra Leone hinterland.Footnote 53 Mende-speaking peoples were numerous within Sierra Leone, having founded Kosso Town to the west of Freetown around 1813 and, at some point, another Kosso Town at Waterloo.Footnote 54 They joined other recaptives in villages where people of different ethnic groups co-resided, among them ‘Aku’ (Yoruba), ‘Ibo’ (Igbo), ‘Kalabari’ (Calabar), ‘Moko’ (those from the Cameroons), and ‘Popo’ (those shipped from Grand and Little Popo).Footnote 55 An 1841 report identified the ethnic backgrounds of liberated African children in government schools as ‘chiefly Akoos, Koosohs and Eboes’, highlighting the visibility of Mende speakers in Sierra Leone.Footnote 56
In the early to mid nineteenth century, Mende speakers were captured and sent to the barracoons at Galinhas. From there, the captives were sent to the Liberated African Department at Freetown before they settled in that country or emigrated to the Caribbean. Trafficking of African captives was finally stamped out at Galinhas between 1849 and 1850 following six armed expeditions and three blockades by the Royal Navy.Footnote 57 Mende peoples aboard the Brandon had possibly been passengers on HMS Alert, which on 11 October 1849 brought 215 Africans from the barracoons at Galinhas to the Liberated African yard. They might also have formed part of the group of between 200 and 300 African peoples HMS Alert planned to receive from Galinhas in the days following 11 October.Footnote 58 These recaptives could have arrived in time for embarkation on the Brandon. Yoruba and Hausa people accounted for 30 per cent of the Brandon’s cargo; they were likely displaced persons from Yorubaland and to the north of Yorubaland; the other 70 per cent of the passengers had been displaced from Mende country. Indeed, a brief note in a travel journal dated 22 January 1850, one month after the arrival of the Brandon in Grenada, noted the ethnicity of one of these recently arrived recaptives. Nineteenth-century traveller John Candler observed that a recaptive named Romeo and described as ‘Mendian’ [Mende] had begun to speak English.Footnote 59
The Atlantic sailed to Grenada on 4 January 1850 and was to be the last of the three emigrant vessels that sailed from Sierra Leone. Though there is no list among the Sierra Leone correspondence that offers any information about Africans who sailed on the Atlantic, the documents show that the Brazilian slaver California – which embarked captives at Ouidah and was captured near that port – had provided most of the emigrants for the Atlantic.Footnote 60 Initially, eighteen Africans from the Liberated African yard were embarked on the Atlantic, and it was intended that the surviving 296 recaptives onboard the California would make up the rest of the Atlantic passengers. However, an outbreak of smallpox meant that the California was quarantined immediately on arrival. The recaptives were kept onboard for nearly three weeks before they could be transferred to the Department. Initially, many among them had consented to emigration but it appears that time spent in quarantine had ‘strengthened’ their resolve to remain in Sierra Leone. Once freed from quarantine, thirty-nine recaptives refused to emigrate.Footnote 61
Some 257 emigrants, including Africans from the California, a few persons from the Liberated African Department, and four boys from the Liberated African school were conveyed on the Atlantic to Grenada.Footnote 62 The ethnicities of those aboard the California, which departed from Ouidah, will be discussed in more detail when analysing displacement from the Bight of Benin: it is likely that those from the Liberated African Department yard and school, including eighteen earlier embarked, were Yoruba, Hausa, ‘Kossos’, and ‘Congo’. Their ethnicities are gleaned from descriptions of the Africans who disembarked from three separate slave vessels weeks prior to the Atlantic’s arrival but then refused to emigrate.Footnote 63
Bight of Benin
Phoenix, no. 2 (1836), Florida, no. 3 (1837), Louise Fredericke, no. 4 (1839), Clarendon, no. 5 (1849), Brandon, no. 7 (1849), and Atlantic, no. 8 (1850)
Between the mid eighteenth century and the turn of the nineteenth century – excepting the decade between 1770 and 1780 – the Bight of Benin was the least used embarkation region for slave ships heading to Grenada. Britain had withdrawn from the slave trade after 1807, and consequently abandoned its fort at Ouidah in 1812. However, British cessation had little impact on the trading of captives from this region.Footnote 64 During the era of abolition, the Bight of Benin was a popular embarkation region for captives on slave ships heading to Cuba and Brazil: 34.4 per cent of Grenada’s recaptives were embarked at this Bight before they were recaptured (Table 3.1). It became common for slave ships to wait off the coast while captives were gathered onshore; they were then boarded in large numbers to reduce time spent on the coast, lessening the chance of seizure.Footnote 65 The volume of captives sent to the Americas only declined when Britain destroyed the slave depots at Lagos in 1851 and annexed that port in 1861.Footnote 66
Table 3.1 Recaptives to Grenada, 1836–1863
| Date of arrival | Vessel name | Embarkation region | Africans landed | Gender (male/female%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1836 | Negrinha | Galinhas | 335 | 65/35 |
| 1836 | Phoenix | Little Popo | 484 | 75/25 |
| 1837 | Florida | Lagos | 280 | 80/20 |
| 1839 | Louise Fredericke | Lagos via Havana | 169 | 57/43 |
| 1849 | Clarendon | Sierra Leone | 248 | 76/24 |
| 1849 | Ceres | St Helena | 85 | 95/5 |
| 1849 | Brandon | Sierra Leone | 463 | 69/31 |
| 1850 | Atlantic | Sierra Leone | 259 | 70/30 |
| 1860 | Tartar | St Helena | 92 | 72/28 |
| 1861 | Akbar | St Helena | 122 | 68/32 |
| 1862 | Athletoe | St Helena | 57 | 100/0 |
| 1863 | Barbara Campbell | St Helena | 115 | 58/42 |
| Total No. landed in Grenada | 2,709 | |||
Following the arrival of the first slaver, the Negrinha (1836), the subsequent arrival in Grenada of two Cuban-bound Portuguese slavers from the Bight of Benin provides evidence of the persistence of trafficking in African peoples, decades beyond British abolition in 1807. The Phoenix was captured near the coast of Grenada after departing from Little Popo/Aného, and eventually landed 484 Africans in October 1836.Footnote 67 Upon arrival, seventy-three men and boys and three women enlisted in the 1st West India Regiment and the remainder were consigned to work as labourers.Footnote 68 En route from Lagos to Cuba, the Florida (1837) was intercepted and captured between Trinidad and Grenada. Poor shipboard conditions and sickness among the 280 Africans forced the ship to land in Grenada with its human cargo, rather than proceeding to Sierra Leone for adjudication. The Florida was owned by the notorious Francisco Felix de Souza, a Ouidah-based Brazilian slave trader. According to the Florida’s master, three Black men on the muster roll – Nuno, a domestic, and two sailors, Alexander and Joas – were detained along with the recaptives in Grenada. However, the men’s existence was denied by the boatswain and there is no further record of them after landing. It was commonplace for sizeable numbers of recaptives to be enlisted in the West India Regiment, and 112 males were recruited in this manner, while the remaining men, women, and children were indentured.Footnote 69
What was the context of the displacement of Africans on the Phoenix and Florida from the Bight of Benin in the 1830s? Further, what factors explain the prominence of Yoruba and Hausa groups among the Africans onboard the Brandon, and what can be said about the likely ethnicities of those onboard the Clarendon and the Atlantic from 1849–50? Push factors, which forced the dispersal of Africans through the Bight of Benin, are traceable to the 1820s collapse of the Oyo Empire, which lay in the hinterland of the Bight of Benin. Its collapse led to a sharp rise in the number of captives sold from the Bight after 1815, and especially from the late 1820s to the 1840s.Footnote 70 In Yorubaland, internal and external conflicts weakened the Oyo Empire, and coupled with the presence of Europeans seeking Africans for the trade, triggered the Yoruba civil wars of the early nineteenth century. Many Yoruba towns and settlements were destroyed, and by 1836, Oyo, the capital district, was abandoned. The peoples’ resultant displacement provided an unprecedented pool of enslaved Yoruba-speaking Africans for the labour markets of the Americas. Most were transhipped from ports in the Bight of Benin, particularly Lagos, the most direct and closest outlet for most of Yorubaland.Footnote 71
It is likely that many of the captives carried from Lagos aboard the Florida were Yoruba speakers, displaced from their homes following Oyo’s fall. Yoruba captives were also prominent at Ouidah when, during the nineteenth century, the Dahomian military targeted western Yoruba towns.Footnote 72 Departing from Ouidah, the California may have carried large numbers of Yoruba peoples, who were then transferred onto the Atlantic. Moreover, as the Clarendon probably embarked some of its recaptives through Ouidah and Lagos, it is likely that some Yoruba speakers journeyed on the Clarendon alongside recaptives from the River Brass. The demographic profiles of people sent through the Bight of Benin dramatically altered because of the Oyo Empire’s disintegration; it is estimated that before 1800, when Oyo was a major supplier of captives, the Yoruba constituted around 10 per cent of Africans forced to leave the Bight of Benin, with Gbe speakers (Ewe, Fon, etc.) heavily concentrated among the captives.Footnote 73 Between 1780 and 1808, sixteen ships carrying 3,683 survivors arrived on the island from the Bight of Benin.Footnote 74 It is possible that these earlier arrivals of Yoruba and Gbe speakers carried their worship of the orisas to Grenada. Unfortunately, there is no archival evidence of these traditions during slavery. Moreover, the conditions of plantation slavery meant that they had little autonomy over their religious lives, preventing them from conducting public rituals such as feasts and drumming, which inhibited the establishment of ‘community-based’ Orisa practice.Footnote 75 After the 1820s, Yoruba peoples formed the vast majority of captives departing from Bight of Benin ports, accounting for as many as eight in ten people in the decade between the 1830s to 1840s, and seven in ten in the 1850s.Footnote 76
In Hausaland, Central Sudan, the outbreak of jihad in 1804 and the emergence of the Sokoto Caliphate in the early nineteenth century produced a surge in the number of captives at Bight of Benin ports. Historian Paul Lovejoy estimated that from 1810 to 1865, African adults and children from Central Sudan comprised 10–25 per cent of all captives taken from eastern ports on the Bight of Benin.Footnote 77 Captives seized from Central Sudan reached the Bight of Benin through the Nupe Kingdom and the Old Oyo Empire, and along the Niger River, before passing down the creeks of the Niger Delta.Footnote 78 Their numbers would have included many Hausa peoples and also members of the Yoruba, Borno, and Nupe groups.Footnote 79 Central Sudan captives were probably represented as Yoruba by European officials, especially if they had been retained in Yoruba country before reaching the coast.Footnote 80 The religious practices of the Central Sudan and Yoruba captives is also relevant: a significant proportion of Muslims (mainly from Central Sudan) formed part of the captured population by the early nineteenth century. Further, both Muslim and orisa adherents would have been included among displaced Yoruba speakers following the breakdown of the Oyo Empire.Footnote 81 Africans conveyed to the Americas from the Bight of Benin included Yoruba speakers and ethnic groups such as the Aja-Fon, the Voltaic peoples of Northern Benin, Hausa, and Nupe. These recaptives carried their belief in orisas and Islam, contributing to the creation of African work and the extension of the saraka rite.
As neither the African names nor the ethnic origins of those onboard the Phoenix (1836) were recorded by administrators in Grenada, their ethnic backgrounds are difficult to discern.Footnote 82 However, due to its geographical position on the far western part of the Slave Coast, the ethnicities of those transported from Little Popo (the main slaving port of the western Slave Coast, modern Aného, Togo) likely differed from captives sent through Ouidah and Lagos to the east, areas that supplied the California and the Florida, respectively.Footnote 83 Data sourced from the Havana Mixed Commission Registers from 1826 to 1839 confirms that the majority of peoples taken from Little Popo were from non-Yoruba groups.Footnote 84 In the eighteenth century, as the historian Robin Law stated, diverse peoples were sent through ports on the western Slave Coast, but he argued that these captives would have been able to communicate with Akan, Ga-Adangme and Gbe speakers.Footnote 85 British suppressionist activities in the nineteenth century boosted the trade in captives at Little Popo and altered the ethnic mix of peoples at that port. Royal Navy patrols suppressed the slave trade from the Gold Coast where they were based; hence, slave traders explored other, less tightly controlled ports for embarking captives. Traders on the eastern Gold Coast sent their captives to ports on the western Slave Coast, including Little Popo. Consequently, Akan and Ga-Adangme people, who would commonly have been sent through Gold Coast ports, comprised the majority of captives at Little Popo.Footnote 86 Thus, Africans onboard the Cuban-bound Phoenix would have included western non-Yoruba groups, such as the Akan and Ga-Adangme.
Evidence from a slaver which loaded captives at Little Popo eleven years earlier may shed light on the possible ethnic origins of the Phoenix recaptives. In 1825, the Spanish slaver, the Ninfa Habenera, was recaptured by a British cruiser, whose commander reported that the captives had been ‘stolen from their families living under the British flag’ in Accra and transhipped to Little Popo.Footnote 87 On arrival at Little Popo, most of the Africans were kept onshore to evade capture by British ships. However, the captives were later discovered and sent to Sierra Leone where they were liberated. The register of Africans onboard bears evidence of Akan names, such as ‘Cuffee’, ‘Quamina’, and ‘Cudjoe’.Footnote 88 Thus, ships departing from Little Popo were likely to have Akan speakers among its captives.
Cuba
Louise Fredericke, no. 4 (1839)
The revised Anglo-Spanish slave trade treaty of 1835 empowered British cruisers to stop and detain suspected Spanish slavers and bring them before the Anglo-Spanish Mixed Commission Courts (in Sierra Leone or in Havana) to be condemned. The British government agreed to receive into her Caribbean colonies Africans emancipated from those slaving vessels. The Sierra del Pilar (1839), which departed from Lagos in 1839 with 255 Africans, was one of six slavers condemned at Havana between 1836 and 1841. Like the Negrinha in 1836, it headed towards Cuba, flying under subterfuge Portuguese colours. However, after seventy-eight days at sea, the vessel was detected and pursued by HMS Pickle. During the course of the chase, the Spanish crew threw twenty-four of their illegally held captives overboard, hoping to avoid the consequences of their illegal trading. The captives’ lives were saved, however, because they were rescued by the Pickle’s crew. The Sierra del Pilar’s captain next tried to run his vessel onshore in Cuba in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid capture. On examination in Havana, the Sierra del Pilar was proven to have been registered as a Spanish vessel.
A total of fifty-three captives died; most succumbed during the journey from Lagos, and some during the pursuit and capture by the Pickle; another thirty escaped (with the crew) into the woods after being run ashore at the Isle of Pines, an island 31 miles south of Cuba.Footnote 89 One hundred and seventy-three recaptives were put under the charge of Dr Madden, the superintendent of liberated Africans at Havana; with the Sierra del Pilar destroyed, and limited space on the Pickle, the captives were immediately transferred onboard HMS Romney, where they received their tickets of emancipation.Footnote 90 The Romney served as a hulk for the Africans liberated at the Court of Mixed Commission at Havana awaiting transportation to British colonies.Footnote 91 It was guarded by fifteen African soldiers – among them some liberated Africans – from the 2nd West India Regiment from Nassau, Bahamas.Footnote 92
The preponderance of women in the African population in Grenada was a factor prompting Madden’s proposal to despatch the emancipados (57 per cent of whom were males) to that island. Madden was also swayed by concerns of the lieutenant governor of Grenada, who had previously written to him of the labour shortage, giving his assurance of the better treatment liberated Africans would receive on the estates.Footnote 93 In June 1839, 172 recaptives and a detachment of the 2nd West India Regiment (who acted as interpreters) were embarked on the Louise Fredericke to Grenada.Footnote 94 Details concerning the organisation of the journey may be gleaned from the correspondence between Madden and the Louise Fredericke’s captain. Headmen and headwomen were designated and distinguished by red ribbons on their shirt collars. Headmen oversaw the cooking and distributing of food, headwomen were given charge of separate messes. Two meals were served a day, one at ten o’clock and another at three o’clock, consisting of vegetable provisions, yuccos (cassava), plantains, and beans. When such provisions ran out, rice, salted meat and fish, and tassago (sun-dried meat) were provided. The recaptives were to be treated as ‘white men would be in similar circumstances’ and physical punishment was to be avoided, unless for mutiny or theft. In the case of an attack by pirates, the crew were to defend the recaptives, and if necessary, arm every adult male onboard.Footnote 95
Typical of those taken from the Bight of Benin in the mid nineteenth century, the evidence of the ethnicities onboard the Louise Fredericke suggests that the Yoruba were well represented. The Voyages African Origins Database, which draws from the Registers of Liberated Africans at Havana and Freetown, has identified the linguistic origins of the names of 118 Africans aboard the Sierra del Pilar. One hundred and fourteen recaptives were associated with the Yoruba language group and four names belonged to three other unidentified groups.Footnote 96 Indeed, Madden identified the nation of the Sierra del Pilar recaptives as ‘Nago’, an ethnonym for the Yoruba in the Americas. ‘Nago’ was popularly used in Brazil and in the French and British Caribbean.Footnote 97 For example, in 1953, an informant of the anthropologist M. G. Smith referred to those who venerated orisas in Grenada as ‘Anango’ people.Footnote 98 Based on the ethnonyms and a linguistic analysis of recaptive names, most of the Louise Fredericke’s recaptives and the accompanying soldier–interpreters were Yoruba speakers, as was commonplace with those embarking at Lagos in the mid nineteenth century.
St Helena
Ceres, no. 6 (1849), Tartar, no. 9 (1860), Akbar, no. 10 (1861), Athletoe, no. 11 (1862), Barbara Campbell, no. 12 (1863)
In contrast to the recaptives from Sierra Leone, there is a dearth of information concerning the ethnicities of recaptives on emigrant vessels sailing from St Helena. The first step in deducing their ethnic backgrounds would be to identify the port at which they originally embarked. In most cases, Foreign Office documents state the port of departure for recaptured vessels at St Helena: from 1849, the first year of the arrival of liberated Africans in Grenada from St Helena, all captives embarked at West Central African ports.Footnote 99 West Central Africans formed a majority of those captured and involuntarily transported during the era of abolition because of the demand for captives on sugar and coffee plantations in Brazil and Cuba. Historian Joseph Miller’s research concluded that between 1851 and 1867, West Central Africans constituted 85.9 per cent of Africans sent across the Atlantic.Footnote 100
While the port of departure of recaptured vessels has been generally documented, less is known about the vessels which supplied Grenada-bound emigrant ships departing from West Central Africa. Only in one instance can the recaptured vessel be identified. On 3 December 1860, HMS Falcon brought the slaver James Rose, which had embarked 272 Africans at the Congo River, to St Helena for adjudication. Fourteen had perished on the journey.Footnote 101 The majority of the surviving recaptives, 241 in total, were sent to St Vincent and Grenada on the emigrant ship Akbar, on 20 December 1860.Footnote 102 The James Rose was en route to Cuba under an American flag.Footnote 103 Because there was no Anglo-American treaty permitting searches of American vessels until 1862, Cuban ships commonly displayed American flags as protection against interception and searches by British anti-slave trade patrols.Footnote 104
The Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron turned their attention to the trade south of the equator and Portuguese and Spanish merchants attempted to avoid British naval ships by diverting their trade north of Luanda to Cabinda, Ambriz, and especially the Congo River (north of the port of Mpinda). Traders also focused on Benguela in the south of what is present-day Angola.Footnote 105 This increased trade along the Congo River and its tributaries to the north is reflected in the numbers of recaptives at St Helena departing from the Congo River: for example, from 1860–63, 83 per cent of all recaptives brought to St Helena were embarked at the Congo River.Footnote 106
Establishing the probable ethno-linguistic backgrounds for recaptives from West Central Africa is possible by examining trafficking networks in the coastal interior. Joseph Miller has described the extreme violence engendered by slave raiding in West Central Africa as a ‘frontier zone’, transforming the economic, political, social, and demographics of the region.Footnote 107 He emphasised that by the mid nineteenth century, this frontier zone of violence had moved east, drawing captives from deeper into the West Central African interior.Footnote 108 However, using lists of liberated Africans from Cuba and Brazil and slave registers drawn up by Portuguese officials in Angola between 1831 and 1855, the historian Daniel B. Domingues da Silva has recently argued that the vast majority of captives originated from communities near the ports, travelling shorter distances than proposed by Miller, with the majority leaving from northern ports after the mid 1840s.Footnote 109
Domingues da Silva suggested that 72 per cent of captives belonged to three primary language groups: Kikongo, Kimbundu, and Umbundu. Many Kikongo speakers came from the disintegrated Kingdom of Kongo; others from Ngoyo, Kakongo, and Yaka kingdoms. The majority of the Kikongo speakers were from the Nsundi ethnic group and had been captured by Kikongo speakers at Boma, at the mouth of the Congo River. Kimbundu speakers were captured as a result of internal conflicts, judicial proceedings, debts, and kidnapping. They were drawn from Kisama, Libolo, Ndembu, Ndongo societies, and centralised states such as Holo, Hungu, Kasanje, Shinje, and Songo. The last numerically significant group was the Umbundu, the majority of whom came from centralised states including Mbailundu, Viye, Wambu, Kiyaka, Ngalangi, Kivula, Ndulu, Kingolo, Kalukembe, Sambu, Ekekete, Kakonda, and Kitata. They were also captured from decentralised societies such as Mbui, Hanya, and Ndombe. Most had been enslaved through raids to pay for debts or as the result of judicial proceedings. Their Portuguese capturers channelled them through forts along the Coporolo River and the slopes of the Angolan highland, such as Quilengues, Dombe Grande, and Caconda.Footnote 110
Domingues da Silva concluded that these three linguistic groups had not been displaced because of warfare arising from the expansion of the Lunda Empire. Rather, they were mostly enslaved due to debts, raids, judicial proceedings, and kidnapping, and represented various ethnic groups. Although they were ethnically diverse, da Silva maintained that they often spoke the same language and shared similar traditions and customs.Footnote 111 The extent of their shared linguistic and cultural traits may be overstated: in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro, the West Central African population, who formed the overwhelming majority of the city’s Black population, were ethnically and linguistically diverse.Footnote 112 Indeed, an 1843 description of dances performed by West Central Africans recently liberated from a slaver at Rupert’s Valley, suggests diversity and a marked distinction between ‘nations’. A surgeon reported that ‘Angolas’ [used widely to refer to Africans purchased south of Cape Lopez, often referring to the Kimbundu from Lunda and its hinterland], ‘Benguilas’ [from the port of Benguela, in the south of Angola], ‘Congous’, [the Zaire River region], ‘Bhiddus’, ‘Cabundas’ [exported through the port of Cabinda, north of the Congo River, a possible reference to Mbundu peoples], and ‘Vishu Congous’ each had their unique dances and songs. When the Benguela dance was performed, however, ‘all present join[ed] in turn’, either by dancing, singing, or clapping.Footnote 113 It is unclear what groups or regions some of these nations represented; although named after ports or regions within West Central Africa, these Africans were often collectively known as ‘Kongo’ in the Americas.
Excavations in 2008 at Rupert’s Valley revealed the skeletal remains of 325 recaptives and provide some detail about the age, gender, and cultural traditions of recaptives at St Helena. Children numbered highly among these human remains: 54 per cent were aged under eighteen. Of this group, 6 per cent were young children, 32 per cent were older children, and 15 per cent were classed as adolescents. Of the adults, 19 per cent were young adults, 20 per cent were adults in their prime, and 5 per cent were mature adults. The oldest individual was forty-six years of age. The gender of the children could not be identified; among the adults, 84 per cent were male. These findings confirm the predominance of a young and male population of recaptives, consistent with the patterns of the nineteenth-century slave trade. Excavations also reveal some of the personal possessions that Africans carried with them to St Helena: a copper bracelet worn by a young girl, a glass bead and cowry shell necklace worn by a mature adult woman, a glass bead and horn necklace belonging to a young child, and a glass bead buried with a mature adult man.Footnote 114 Over one-third of the teeth of the skeletons were modified into distinctive patterns by filing or chipping.Footnote 115 Tooth modifications were commonly carried out for aesthetic purposes, and were sometimes performed around puberty as a means of group identification.Footnote 116
The ethnic, linguistic, religious, and geographical backgrounds of liberated Africans were distinct from enslaved Africans arriving in the previous centuries. The Nation Dance is a form of historical record which documents groups from the Bight of Biafra, Gold Coast, Senegambia, West Central Africa, and smaller numbers from the Bight of Benin before the abolition of the British slave trade. After 1836, the demographics changed, with ships arriving in Grenada that had embarked from just three regions, the Bight of Benin (34 per cent), Sierra Leone (48 per cent), and St Helena (17 per cent), conveying Yoruba speakers and West Central Africans, and generally represented a greater diversity of peoples from the broader hinterland of the Bight of Benin.Footnote 117
Where available, lists of recaptives are useful in determining the ethnicities attributed to liberated Africans: on the ship Brandon (1849), 70 per cent of passengers were labelled as Kosos and the remainder as Yoruba and Hausa. While many Yoruba people were undoubtedly conveyed on ships departing from the Bight of Benin – the most common embarkation region for recaptive Africans in Sierra Leone – a rather more heterogeneous group of peoples disembarked at Freetown. These included groups from the Bight of Biafra, West Central Africa, and within the Sierra Leone region itself. Sierra Leone officials described as Hausa some recaptives on ships departing the Bight of Benin, as was the case with the Brandon (1849) and the Atlantic (1850). The Clarendon (1849) probably also carried some recaptives from the Bight of Biafra, and the Atlantic probably had Kosos and Congo peoples. Indeed, historian David Eltis posited that no more than one-fifth of the 39,000 Africans who were directed to the British Caribbean after 1834 were Yoruba speakers. He suggested that groups of Igbo and some West Central African peoples were numerically greater and more heavily concentrated than the Yoruba.Footnote 118
These Africans may have augmented existing groups on the island. During enslavement, West Central Africans and Biafran groups were conspicuously present in fugitive advertisements and bills of sale and formed the Igbo and Congo nation in the Nation Dance. Recaptives who hailed from these regions may have sought solidarity among these existing national groupings.Footnote 119 The same cannot be said for the Yoruba; smaller numbers left the Bight of Benin before British abolition, with Yoruba speakers underrepresented among those Africans. The Yoruba only arrived in significant numbers several decades after the end of the British slave trade, carrying with them new and distinctive practices, such as Orisa worship. These spiritual and musical practices of the first-generation Yoruba would reverberate over generations, forming a new ‘nation’ and coalescing with the rhythms, songs, and dances of the well-established Nation Dance ceremony in 1953.
