In June 1836, just before the arrival of Grenada’s first recaptives, a British official claimed that recaptured Africans elsewhere in the Caribbean were more industrious, obedient to their employers, and thankful for the ‘benefits’ of their new situation than the formerly enslaved.Footnote ¹ Plantation owners hoped the recaptives sent to Grenada would be of a similarly co-operative and pleasing disposition. It appeared that the Grenadian planters were well-pleased with their indentured labourers – for a few years later, in 1850, they spoke warmly of liberated African workers as generally ‘good-humoured’, ‘docile’, ‘fond of amusement’, and ‘content.’Footnote ² The same year, Colebrooke, governor of the Windward Islands, echoed those sentiments, writing that since the recaptured labourers were the victims of warfare with ‘the most peaceable and improved’ of the African ‘tribes’, they proved themselves ‘docile’ and industrious, once their confidence had been won.Footnote ³ But like the formerly enslaved Africans before them, the recaptive labourers of Grenada were neither docile nor content and resisted the conditions of their new situations in Grenada and strove to carve out independent lives. In doing so, they drew upon some of the same strategies that had worn down the plantation system during enslavement.

Newspaper accounts, Colonial Office correspondence, magistrates’ reports, and missionary records bear witness to the liberated Africans’ desire to claim and exercise cultural, social, and economic agency, much to the dismay of their employers and government officials who complained of the labourers’ strivings to live as free and independent women and men. By addressing the biases and prejudices discernable within these records, it is possible to interpret and understand the meanings recaptives attached to their actions. As early as 1837, a newspaper account reported that planters were demanding legislation to govern and limit the mobility of recaptives, particularly domestics, who were said to, ‘without any reason in more than one instance [have] quitted their employment and not returned. Having little or no knowledge of the relative dues of master and servant, they think they can with impunity leave their occupations to visit their acquaintances and countrymen and after remaining away for sometimes are afraid to return.’Footnote ⁴

Desertion – temporary or permanent – was one of the most common means through which liberated African peoples sought to assert their personhood; some accounts carefully recorded details of absconders, and newspaper advertisings of rewards offered for their return demonstrate the will of bonded peoples to claim space, time, and ownership of their own bodies. They deserted the plantations on which they resided to spend time with ‘acquaintances and countrymen’ – a husband, a wife, a friend, a lover, a shipmate, or simply to escape the oppressive surveillance or a break from physically demanding labour regimes. Recaptive labourers in Grenada proved themselves to be other than the subservient and malleable workers Europeans sought and challenged their indentured status and the controls that maintained their subjugation. They withdrew from their places of work to find shipmates or others of their own or of similar ‘nations’. They spoke African languages along with French Creole, and most rejected English Protestantism in favour of Roman Catholicism. Such choices by the first-generation of liberated Africans hindered the process of creolisation and was critical to the making of African work.

Contesting Indentureship

A confrontation on Clarke’s Court Estate in St George demonstrates the contention between estate owners and liberated Africans, how officials sought to acquire the ‘confidence’ of Africans, and the continuities between the treatment of apprentices and of recaptives. In September 1836, twenty-two Africans from the Negrinha were indentured on the estate, including a four-week-old baby. Fifteen recaptives aged fourteen and over and indentured for six months were to receive maintenance such as clothing, accommodation, food, medical care, and four pence per week in wages. Seven Africans under fourteen were to be indentured for at least three years with maintenance but no pay.Footnote ⁵ Soon after, eight of their number were on trial in a police court for a violent assault on Mr Gilchrist, their estate manager. As identified in the manager’s submission, three of the accused were Robert Weston (noted in register of the Negrinha possibly as Quandana, 28, although the last name differs), Bill Smith (Oussa, 34), and Tom Sutherland (Ganah, 29).Footnote ⁶ Researchers in Sierra Leone have traced the ethno-linguistic origins of seven names of the Clarke’s Court Estate recaptives: three names belonged to the Mende group, two to the Temne, one to the Kpelle, and one name is linked to either the Mandingo or the Fula group. Oussa’s name is affiliated with the Mende group; unfortunately, the names of the other accused, Quandana and Ganah, could not be linked to any sociolinguistic group.Footnote ⁷

According to Gilchrist, Quandana struck the estate’s hospital nurse, after she threatened to report him to Gilchrist for stealing sugar cane. Estate owners were not known to be overly generous with wages or allowances, and, not surprisingly, recaptives sometimes resorted to stealing when the opportunity arose. Stealing could be conceptualised as a form of compensation, although there is no record of how recaptives in Grenada perceived their act.Footnote ⁸ Gilchrist attempted to punish Quandana by sentencing him to confinement, though Quandana strenuously resisted that and enlisting the help of two other Africans, Foumbie, 25, and Clarke (whose European name matches the given name of two Africans on the Negrinha, Bouyeh, 15, and Colli, 10), he attempted to wrestle the room key away from Gilchrist. It was later alleged that Foumbie bellowed a ‘war cry’ which caused all the recaptives to leave their accommodation on the estate to observe the tussle between one of their own and the manager. Quandana eventually escaped from the room, after Oussa, the eldest among the estate’s Africans and described as their ‘chief’, forced open its window. Led by Oussa, the Africans approached Gilchrist, brandishing hoes and knives. Ganah moved to strike Gilchrist, but a warning shout from the nurse alerted him to the danger and he was able to avoid the blow and to secure the hoe from Ganah. Undeterred, Ganah made it to the kitchen where he found a knife, clearly intending to use it on the manager.Footnote ⁹

The narrative printed in the newspaper is silent about how the confrontation between the Negrinha Africans and Gilchrist ended that day. It is clear that eight of the Africans, including Quandana, Oussa, and Ganah, were brought before a magistrate, who took the decision to pardon them all. In doing so, he made it ‘seem’ to the Africans that they were being pardoned only through Gilchrist’s intercession, an act of benevolence intended to have a salutary effect on them.Footnote ¹⁰ The events on Clarke’s Court Estate illustrate how magistrates sought to gain the confidence of recaptured Africans so they would continue to provide their labour to the planters. The altercation also demonstrates that liberated Africans were neither docile nor content and suggests their similar ethno-linguistic background may have facilitated their efforts to resist the circumstances of their indentureship.

Gilchrist’s identification of Oussa as a chief is highly pertinent. Oussa was the eldest of the recaptives and his seniority likely earned him his title. The designation of chief signals the significance of a leadership structure (perhaps based on African cultural groupings and a shared language, given that Oussa was one of at least three Mende speakers) in the pursuit of freedom. Further, the involvement of Clarke, one of the youngest male recaptives, who may have been 10 or 15 years old, provides a glimpse into children’s indispensable role in the struggle for freedom.

Such moments of contention also reveal how indentured Africans were punished within the master–servant relationship. Gilchrist attempted to place the recalcitrant liberated Africans in confinement – an act of punishment he had employed to quell dissent by African Grenadians during the period of apprenticeship prior to full abolition in 1838. He was no doubt aware that this mode of punishment had been outlawed in the Abolition of Slavery Act of 1833.Footnote ¹¹ Perhaps the recaptives too were also apprised of its illegitimacy as an act of punishment and felt their actions to evade such a punitive measure were a legitimate response to an illegitimate punishment. The similarities in punishment demonstrate continuities in the experiences of apprenticed African Grenadians and liberated Africans.

Desertion was a persistent challenge for planters and officials in the mid nineteenth century. Its prevalence among the liberated African community illustrates one avenue through which they sought to cement and create bonds with other Africans as they shaped their own experiences. Employers of indentured Africans and other immigrants were required to report any instance of desertion within twenty-four hours of the miscreant’s absence or be liable to a fine. Furthermore, harbouring, concealing, or employing indentured labourers contracted by other planters, or removing or soliciting them from their estate, also resulted in a penalty.Footnote ¹² Although not as frequent as during enslavement, employers published notices of fugitive Africans in local newspapers. In August 1860, one such notice reported that Peate, a ‘recently imported African’, had been missing from Upper Latante Estate, St David, since the previous month. He was described as ‘Congo’ and ‘of a sulky and gloomy disposition’, ‘short in stature’, and around forty years old. Peate had reportedly made his way towards an ‘abode of parties’ – perhaps fellow recaptives with whom he had journeyed from West Central Africa.Footnote ¹³ It is notable that officials employed ‘Congo’ to describe peoples from West Central Africa. The Tartar (July 1860) was the first emigrant vessel to be sent to Grenada for ten years, and it is probable Peate had been transported on that vessel from West Central Africa via St Helena.

The stipendiary magistrate for St Andrew recorded similar attempts by Africans to connect with their countrymen and countrywomen: due to the imbalance in the ratio of women and men among liberated Africans on estates, men showed a ‘great inclination to procure wives from their own countrywomen if possible and they either induce women to remove themselves from other estates, or the men to remove themselves.’Footnote ¹⁴ During the illegal slave trade, the proportion of males transported increased: 73 per cent of Grenada’s recaptives were male. The proportion of males, particularly young men and boys, onboard vessels such as the Clarendon (1849), is likely attributable to the Yoruba civil wars as well as European preferences. Another factor in the movement of recaptives from their original estates of indentureship was the division of recaptives who had journeyed on the same ship across several plantations. On many estates such as Snell Hall, La Fortune, Morne Fendue, Plains, Chambord, and Woodford, the recaptives from the Clarendon (1849) were divided and integrated among other labourers. Planters of other estates such as Concord, Corinth, Hermitage, Bacolet, and Sagesse, preferred to separate them from the other labourers, and placed them in homes by themselves.Footnote ¹⁵

Officials believed the former arrangement encouraged the faster creolisation of new arrivals. Nevertheless, Africans had their own views about being separated from loved ones and shipmates and responded accordingly. For example, twelve men and four women from the Clarendon were assigned as labourers on the Tivoli Estate, in St Andrew (Figure 5.1). Four miles away, four men and four women from the same vessel were indentured on Plaisance Estate in the parish of St Patrick.Footnote ¹⁶ Africans from both estates frequently visited each other: several labourers from Tivoli regularly visited Plaisance on weekends, and likewise some labourers from Plaisance frequently spent entire days visiting friends and family at Tivoli. Indeed, Robert Reith, owner and manager of Plaisance, accused the visitors of loitering, and ordered them off the estate.Footnote ¹⁷ Reith provided the reason for the frequent visiting between the two estates, noting that the Clarendon recaptives on both estates were of the ‘same nation’.Footnote ¹⁸

Figure 5.1 Map showing the locations of Mount Rose, Tivoli, and Plaisance Estates.

Thirteen, sixteen, and eight Africans from the Clarendon were located, respectively, on these estates.

Figure 5.1 long description.

Adapted from Golbez/maps, ‘Blank map of the parishes of Grenada’.

Figure 5.1Long description

Map locations of Mount Rose, Tivoli, and Plaisance Estates. Markers indicate thirteen, sixteen, and eight Africans from the Clarendon on these estates, respectively.

Africans throughout the Americas commonly tried to seek out and locate other Africans from their own nations, that is, people with whom they shared similar ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. This happened on both large and smaller plantations where Africans from adjacent estates could interact, as did the recaptives from the Clarendon.Footnote ¹⁹ It was also observed by Will, an African Grenadian supervisor, that Africans assigned to Plaisance visited Tivoli to see their ‘shipmates’.Footnote ²⁰ Thus, although it was noted many of these Africans were of the same ‘nation’, their shipmate experience was also formative in community building. Schuler, a historian of liberated Africans in Jamaica and British Guiana, observed that the shipmate bond represented the forging of an African solidarity and that the recaptives would certainly need the comfort and solidarity of their shared experience while in the reception depots of St Helena and Sierra Leone, and throughout their journey to the British Caribbean.Footnote ²¹

Robert Houston was one of the liberated Africans at Tivoli who often visited other Africans at Plaisance Estate, which was discouraged, particularly during the week. As a list of recaptives with their European and African names is not available for the Clarendon, Houston’s African name is not known; however, his anglicised name likely derived from Robert Houston of Clerkington, Scotland, an enslaver and the owner of Tivoli Estate.Footnote ²² Robert Houston had consanguineous ties with several partners in Alexander Houston & Co., Glasgow’s largest eighteenth-century merchant firm: he was the son of the Scottish enslaver Andrew Houston of Jordanhill, the nephew of Alexander Houston of Clerkington, and the grandson of Alexander Houston Sr of Jordanhill.Footnote ²³ A few weeks before the expiration of Houston’s indenture, he had ‘formed a connection’ with a woman named Susey, who was of the same nation, and resided at Plaisance Estate; Susey would later become his wife.Footnote ²⁴ Susey asked Robert Reith, the owner and manager of Plaisance Estate, if her husband could join her at Plaisance. Houston also repeatedly requested that he be employed on the same estate where his ‘countrywoman’ resided, and eventually, Reith agreed. Perhaps Reith had agreed because he had heard of the punishment and ill-treatment Houston experienced at Tivoli.Footnote ²⁵ According to Houston’s translated account – it was reported that Houston spoke ‘Negro French’ – he had given notice of his intention to leave towards the end of his year of indentureship at Tivoli to the then manager of the estate, Robert McQueen.Footnote ²⁶

It was Houston’s understanding that in giving fifteen days’ notice of his intention to leave the estate where he had served his indentureship, he had fulfilled his contractual obligations.Footnote ²⁷ Yet after Houston had left Tivoli and commenced work on Plaisance, McQueen wrote to Reith complaining that Houston was still under contract at Tivoli. Houston, however, refused to return to Tivoli, insisting he had ‘three interpreters of his nation’ to prove he had given the required notice.Footnote ²⁸ Houston defiantly remained at Plaisance, assisting his wife in her garden. McQueen proceeded to charge him with breach of contract, and Houston was taken before O’Sullivan, the stipendiary magistrate. In the event, Houston was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for four weeks. Reith too was made to answer a charge of inveigling after evidence was submitted indicating that he had promised Houston higher wages, a house, and that he would be permitted to be christened. The magistrate charged Reith with inveigling and inducing Houston to work on his estate, for which offence Reith was fined twenty shillings.Footnote ²⁹

The Colonial Office correspondence provides a glimpse of Houston’s treatment at Tivoli, and how recaptives forged communities of solidarity to contest and survive the challenges of their new environment. Houston had claimed he had been ill-treated at Tivoli, and prior to appearing before the magistrate, with the help of an interpreter, an African woman named Queenie, he stated ‘he would rather have his throat cut first’ before returning to Tivoli.Footnote ³⁰ In a statement Houston gave from the gaol, he claimed that he had not received any wages from his employer during the first eight weeks of his indenture. Adamant in his refusal to return to Tivoli, Houston was taken before ‘the white people’ (the magistrates), but they ‘neither understood’ nor listened to him.Footnote ³¹ It is possible Houston’s reputation as a troublemaker had preceded him and influenced the magistrate’s decision-making, for Stipendiary Magistrate O’Sullivan wrote that Houston had a ‘very unruly disposition’, and furthermore, this was Houston’s second court appearing during his indentureship at Tivoli.Footnote ³² In his first court appearance, Houston was charged with breach of contract, imprisoned for two days, and then taken to the capital where he remained for seven days before being sent back to Tivoli. There he received back pay of wages for three weeks, though one week remained outstanding.Footnote ³³ Tivoli’s manager claimed he had given Houston’s brother his final payment, although whether this was the case cannot be confirmed.Footnote ³⁴

According to the late manager of Tivoli, Mr Dalrymple, Houston had been treated kindly and, as per the indentureship contract, was provided with the regular allowance and provisions for the six months before current wages were paid. Food was cooked for the indentured Africans, although apparently it was not to their taste or liking, for they later requested they be allowed to cook for themselves. Dalrymple cast further aspersions on Houston, describing his character as ‘very bad’ and claiming Houston was a regular menace who often caused him ‘a great deal of trouble’.Footnote ³⁵ Indeed, Dalrymple had become so concerned by the behaviour of Houston and other recaptives on the estate he had requested that a stipendiary magistrate visit them, perhaps to remind them of their contractual obligations.

Dalrymple’s account provides a glimmer of information about a potential strike among the recaptives. He described Houston as a ringleader who persuaded other Tivoli recaptives to abscond in a body to Mount Rose – under two miles away – where thirteen other Africans from the Clarendon lived and laboured. Arriving at Mount Rose, they encouraged the Africans to leave the estate with them. The records do not state their intended destination.Footnote ³⁶ Douglas, the superintendent of the African indentured servants at Tivoli, was sent to bring them back. There is no information on where he brought the Africans back from or what happened to them when they returned. Douglas recognised the influence and leadership of Houston for he claimed that he ‘ruled all the other Africans and that if he advised them not to work, they would do nothing at all’.Footnote ³⁷ Indeed, Dalrymple divulged that Houston had regularly persuaded other Africans to down their tools and leave work early.Footnote ³⁸

The case of Houston also shows that liberated Africans, like apprentices before them, were punished when their employers deemed them troublesome or uncooperative workers, and they could be imprisoned for alleged or actual breaches of contract. As labourers they were expected to adhere to similar recruitment and engagement terms found in the Master and Servant Act, which was supervised and enforced by justices of the peace and stipendiary magistrates. Combined with the private agreement of work for wages and the effective criminalisation of workers’ breach, this system of informal justice provoked resistance, conflict, and possibly the ultimate goal of repeal.Footnote ³⁹ Governor Colebrooke of Barbados, who also administered the Windward Islands, eventually overturned Houston’s imprisonment of thirty days and remitted the fine imposed on Reith. He took the view that in offering Houston a house and wages, Reith’s actions were motivated by the desire to protect Houston and to support his desire to reside with his wife on Plaisance Estate. Indeed, during the trial, Reith stated that if Susey wanted to leave Plaisance and live with Houston at Tivoli, she could ‘depart tomorrow without any notice’.Footnote ⁴⁰ In addition, Colebrooke asserted the preferred action was for McQueen to have informed Houston of the specifics of the law, rather than proceed against him for a breach of contract.Footnote ⁴¹ Colebrooke also strenuously disagreed with the magistrates’ decision to proceed against Houston, merely to make him an example to others. He also made clear his disapproval of the underhanded means by which the magistrates brought such proceedings: they administered oaths to the witnesses in the investigation who were examined in the absence of the concerned parties.

Houston’s influence and leadership over other Africans was a factor when his appeal was considered. Colebrooke thought Houston to be a ‘man of intelligence’, such that he was ‘likely to have influence with his countrymen’, and thus, it was important to recognise the injustice perpetrated against Houston. Colebrooke recognised that in being seen to be even and fair, the apparatus of justice, the planters, and white society in general would retain the confidence of liberated Africans.Footnote ⁴² Several measures favourable to the recaptives were recommended in the wake of Houston’s successful appeal. First, the legislative council was to provide for an appeal from magisterial decisions.Footnote ⁴³ Second, the local authorities should ensure recaptives were not assigned to estates where there was reason to doubt they would be well treated.Footnote ⁴⁴ Last, as suggested by Reith and agreed by Colebrooke, with the consent of the stipendiary magistrate, Africans over fourteen years of age could receive the equivalent in wages in lieu of supplies during the first six months of their contracts. These measures were promoted to secure their labourers’ contentment and to prevent disputes between them and estate managers.Footnote ⁴⁵ Inadvertently, Houston and Susey’s desire to live together – if the proposals were implemented by officials – may have led to improved living and working conditions for future African arrivals.

Houston’s case illuminates the depth of white concern over desertion and illustrates that freedom was nominal. As a result, recaptives sought equality before the law. They also sought to overcome distribution patterns that separated them, and defiantly left the estates to visit friends from the same vessel and/or the same nation in their quest to re-establish bonds and forge solidarity. It also offers some insight into the process of creolisation: Reith’s promise of christening Houston may indicate Houston’s intentions join a Christian denomination, signalling their adaptation to Creole society. However, the account of Houston shows that the process of creolisation was not rapid as anthropologists Mintz and Price argue: Houston needed an interpreter in court and he and other Africans continued to speak their languages a year after their indentureship commenced. Aware of these cultural choices, Colebrooke was of the view that ‘although the Creoles are kind to them’, newly arrived Africans in the Windward Islands ‘prefer to associate with each other, or with native Africans, who had formerly settled in the colonies’, but ‘rarely with the Creole negroes’.Footnote ⁴⁶

‘Bending Their Bodies’ at the Mention of Jesus: Christian Instruction

Colonial officials believed that the master–servant relationship represented the best means through which liberated Africans would become civilised, a process that would be accelerated by providing moral and religious instruction to the recaptives. In the words of one commentator, employers of ‘free’ African labourers were the ‘only true emancipators’ because they ‘emancipate the African from his fetish worship and clannish warfare’.Footnote ⁴⁷ How successful was the teaching of European moral and religious beliefs, and what can it reveal about the recaptives’ own religious and moral outlook? Instruction began almost immediately after embarkation and focused on the young. Days after the arrival of the Phoenix in October 1836, a rector was appointed to the St George Parish church to baptise all the young Africans, three days a week over several weeks.Footnote ⁴⁸ That same month, the rector of St George baptised 84 recaptives from the Negrinha (which had landed at the end of September) and the Phoenix. In 1837, after the arrival of the Florida, he baptised a further 63 Africans.Footnote ⁴⁹

The rector of St Andrew and St David wrote that it had been his practice to baptise all African children under twelve years of age brought to his churches between 1849 and 1850: he had baptised between thirty and forty children.Footnote ⁵⁰ By 1854, it was reported that most African children had been baptised into the Church of England, Presbyterian, or Wesleyan congregations.Footnote ⁵¹ According to the rector of St David, adults could not be baptised without having received preparatory instruction by Church of England ministers.Footnote ⁵² As the provision of instruction was limited, many adult Africans were not baptised by the Anglican Church. The rector of the Church of England in St George admonished employers of liberated Africans to grant their labourers time for instruction – otherwise ‘there is no hope of any of them being baptised by the Church of England’.Footnote ⁵³ As a result, many adult Africans were baptised into the Roman Catholic Church.Footnote ⁵⁴ In the parishes of St John and St Mark, most of the Africans had been baptised by the Roman Catholic priest.Footnote ⁵⁵ Roman Catholicism would be an important ingredient in the making of African work.

Employers were held responsible for ensuring that indentured labourers received Christian instruction and, by the terms of the 1849 contract, they were enjoined to allow ‘sufficient time and opportunity for the education and religious instruction of Africans’, including a ‘decent and Christian burial’ for deceased Africans. Planters preferred to baptise and instruct Africans in the Church of England.Footnote ⁵⁶ However, the Church of England often opposed the burial of Africans deemed to have not been properly instructed. In 1850, it was reported that an ‘African boy’ had drowned on Plains Estate while bathing in a pond. The parish clergy refused to bury him, and he was instead interred on the estate after a service conducted by the manager.Footnote ⁵⁷

Although the reason for the clergy’s refusal to provide a Christian burial service for the young African was not stated by the stipendiary magistrate, religious leaders felt that church burials for unbaptised Africans were doctrinally and ideologically inappropriate. Earl Grey, the colonial secretary, wrote that to provide a Christian burial for Africans was ‘anomalous’ and ‘inconvenient’ for persons who were mostly ‘mohammedans or idolators’, and went further by suggesting that the term ‘Christian’ be omitted from the liberated African contracts.Footnote ⁵⁸ Later that year, liberated Africans were assured they would receive a ‘decent burial’, though still not a ‘Christian burial’, which was reserved for the baptised.Footnote ⁵⁹ This issue provides a rare glimpse into the varied religious heritages of recaptives.

Day schools for recaptured Africans were supported, wholly or in part, by public grants. Additionally, various denominations opened Saturday, Sunday, and night schools on numerous estates in every parish.Footnote ⁶⁰ There was rivalry among denominations for the instruction of liberated Africans.Footnote ⁶¹ For example, in 1836, a Wesleyan minister railed against the Roman Catholic Church, citing it to be an ‘insuperable obstacle’ to their mission on the island. The minister claimed the main way in which this ‘mountain’ could be overthrown was through the establishment of schools for children.Footnote ⁶² In 1858, a visitor to the island observed there were ‘several children of African parents’ liberated from slave vessels at a Methodist school on the island.Footnote ⁶³

However, the Roman Catholic Church was active in the provision of religious schooling to African children: in St Andrew, where the estates had received the highest number of African labourers, 78 per cent of children attended Roman Catholic schools, 12 per cent went to Church of England schools, and 10 per cent attended Wesleyan schools.Footnote ⁶⁴ One reason for the low levels of attendance at Church of England schools was offered by a local official: recaptives were said to have been prevented by the Roman Catholic minister and their appointed African Grenadian godfathers and godmothers from attending Church of England schools.Footnote ⁶⁵

Notwithstanding the denominational struggles for their spiritual souls, the instruction of liberated Africans in schools was not as successful as was hoped. Emigration agents believed liberated African adults and children showed a ‘strong disinclination’ to attend schools.Footnote ⁶⁶ In December 1852, there were 276 liberated children aged under fifteen on Grenada’s estates; only twenty-four attended parish and day school. The previous year, attendance had been nominally higher, with thirty-four out of 270 children attending schools.Footnote ⁶⁷ In the largest parish of St Andrew, the rector had established a Sunday school from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. for the exclusive instruction of liberated African adults and children; three or four attended on the first and second Sunday, but thereafter, ceased to attend, causing the special service to be discontinued.Footnote ⁶⁸ In St David in 1851, two teachers were employed to visit each estate twice a week in the evening to instruct recaptives. During that year, 198 Africans attended, but on expiry of their indentureship, the visits were terminated, as the Africans ‘could not be induced to attend’.Footnote ⁶⁹ In the same parish, an adult night school was initiated at Baillie’s Bacolet Estate supported by Dr Wells; while nineteen received instruction, it was reported only one African attended the school.Footnote ⁷⁰ The fall in the number of indentured recaptives under instruction was ‘considerable’ in St David and St George.Footnote ⁷¹ Decreased attendance was attributed to difficulties obtaining teachers, the ‘unwillingness’ of Africans to attend schools, compounded by their ‘ignorance’ of English and Creole French.Footnote ⁷² This suggests that despite receiving instruction and interacting with Creole-speaking African Grenadians, liberated Africans continued to speak their heritage languages for considerable time after their arrival.

Critics also blamed the low attendance on the influence of African Grenadian godmothers and godfathers. The stipendiary magistrate of St Andrew reported that although Africans were encouraged to attend schools, they showed ‘no great inclination to do so’, and most preferred receiving instruction from their ‘godmothers among the Creoles’.Footnote ⁷³ In 1849, due to the absence of schools on many estates, most African adults and children were placed under the care of the ‘best conducted and intelligent creoles’.Footnote ⁷⁴ It was noted that African Grenadians who became sponsors for children to prepare them for baptism, were, according to one rector, ‘neither so able nor so willing to fulfil their solemn engagements’.Footnote ⁷⁵

African Grenadian sponsors were also responsible, it was said, for the Creole French spoken by liberated Africans – sponsors in some cases spoke ‘nothing but a sort of patois or Creole French, one of the most difficult in the world to understand’.Footnote ⁷⁶ It was observed that Africans combined most of the words of their languages, of which there were many ‘according to their different tribes’, with Creole French, making it ‘scarcely possible to teach them anything but to labour’.Footnote ⁷⁷ So claimed Hutcheson, explaining their unwillingness to attend schools.Footnote ⁷⁸ During enslavement and immediately after emancipation, non-Roman Catholic religious leaders and officials similarly discouraged the use of Creole French. According to a Presbyterian minister in 1854, Africans came into contact with Creole French, a ‘barbarous jargon’ and the ‘corrupt and broken vernacular of the country’, which must be ‘uprooted’.Footnote ⁷⁹ Colebrooke, governor of the Windward Islands, even went so far as to instruct the governor of Grenada that French Patois should be ‘in every way discouraged’ in schools.Footnote ⁸⁰ The recaptives’ use of Creole French reveals the impact of African Grenadians on the cultural preferences of liberated Africans.

The many explanations put forward for the recaptives’ reluctance to attend religious instruction in schools and churches included the economic preferences of liberated Africans. Money was a part of the problem, for according to one stipendiary magistrate, the recaptives showed unwillingness to attend instruction, in part because they were ‘fond of money and do not like to part with it’.Footnote ⁸¹ In St Andrew, recaptives were all allotted provision grounds; some very industrious individuals made money by growing and selling foodstuffs, which supplemented the low wages for their agricultural labour. While Africans were given time to attend markets, churches, and schools, some clearly rationalised that it was more productive and economically rewarding to use that time to pursue their own interests.Footnote ⁸²

The Colonial Office noted that the indentured people’s disinterest in religious instruction was abetted by employers, who neglected to pay the necessary expense.Footnote ⁸³ Colebrooke thought some employers showed a ‘most laudable interest’ in the religious instruction of the indentured labourers and their families.Footnote ⁸⁴ Some emigration agents suggested that school during the day made it difficult for labourers to attend had they felt so inclined.Footnote ⁸⁵ Stipendiary magistrates were also criticised because many had failed to be proactive in fulfilling their remit to visit liberated Africans on the estates to assess the progress of their instruction. Indeed, the stipendiary magistrate responsible for the parishes of St Andrew and St Patrick (which received the majority of indentured labourers) had failed to make a single visit to any estate in those parishes or to make any enquiries concerning the religious education of liberated Africans, beyond the purposes of renewing their indentureship contracts or to collect statistical data for his reports.Footnote ⁸⁶ The lack of progress in the instruction of Africans can be understood in light of their attendance level in December 1852: of 743 Africans remaining on estates in Grenada, only 84 were attending schools.Footnote ⁸⁷ Later, it was remarked by Lieutenant-Governor Keate that efforts to educate Africans through the intervention of the proprietors and managers of estates had proved a failure.Footnote ⁸⁸

The liberated Africans’ general disinterest in attending church equally concerned some stipendiary magistrates. In an 1850 despatch to the Windward Islands, Colebrooke believed liberated Africans adopted a degree of pragmatism in seeking to become Christians, ‘thereby avoiding the reproach of heathenism’ which the ‘Creoles sometimes apply to them’.Footnote ⁸⁹ Africana religious studies scholar Dianne Stewart has observed that nineteenth-century Africans of Trinidad may likewise have been ‘motivated by a desire for respectability and acceptance among their Afro-Creole Roman Catholic neighbours’.Footnote ⁹⁰ Wesleyan Methodist ministers provided positive reports of African church attendance in 1837, 1853, and 1854. In the first of those years, it was recorded that at the upcoming anniversary of the Wesleyan Sunday school, the children, ‘especially a large class of the lately captured Africans’, would ‘afford considerable satisfaction’ in the recitation of passages from the Bible and Catechism.Footnote ⁹¹ The 1853 report stated several African immigrants had joined the Methodist Society and that these new members had shown ‘simple earnestness and general propriety of conduct’.Footnote ⁹² In 1854, the Wesleyan Methodists described Africans as being some of the most consistent church members.Footnote ⁹³ The report of 1854 concluded that except for the Wesleyan Methodist minister, ‘all the ministers of religion expressed their anxiety for the well-being and religious and moral instruction of the people’.Footnote ⁹⁴ In St Patrick, the Roman Catholic Church proved to be the most popular church attended by the recaptives who arrived in 1849 and 1850. Even so, their attendance, was comparatively low; in the half-year ending December 1851, of nearly 400 indentured Africans, seldom had more than twenty attended Sunday services at the Roman Catholic Church.Footnote ⁹⁵

In Carriacou, where fifteen Africans were indentured in 1850, all liberated Africans attended church, but less regularly than on their arrival. An 1854 report complained of their unwillingness to attend church and criticised the irregular attendance of those few that did, in spite of several inducements of clothing and ‘many extras’.Footnote ⁹⁶ In December 1852, only 301 out of 743 Africans still indentured on Grenadian estates attended church.Footnote ⁹⁷ Seeking to increase their attendance, Colebrooke suggested that Africans be baptised before embarkation and a Catechist or layperson (who could act as an interpreter) appointed to each ship to provide religious instruction during the voyage.Footnote ⁹⁸ There is no evidence that Colebrooke’s suggestion was adopted; however, baptisms of liberated Africans were common among West Central African recaptives in St Helena in the 1860s.

Measures to induce the indentured Africans to regularly attend church, including Sunday and day schools, were put forward by religious and governmental officials. The practice of appointing African Grenadian godparents – blamed by officials for preventing recaptives from attending schools and steering them towards Roman Catholicism – was strongly discouraged. Instead, one idea considered was to place liberated Africans under the spiritual charge of rectors who would provide religious instruction and prepare them for baptism. One rector suggested that the existing system whereby proprietors and/or managers stood as godfathers was beneficial for ensuring the instruction of recaptives and should continue for future African immigrants.Footnote ⁹⁹ Colebrooke proposed that Africans be required to make a modest contribution towards the maintenance of the schools, the rationale being that having invested in the system, they would be ‘induc[ed] … to send their children to the schools’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Yet another recommendation proposed by a rector was the extension of indentureship to increase opportunities for instruction.Footnote ¹⁰¹ As no recaptives were sent between 1850 and 1860 and there is very little information about those sent after 1860, it is not clear whether any of these measures were implemented.

Authorities and religious officials measured the religiosity of Africans and their progress in Christian instruction in several ways. One was their ability to repeat by rote sections of the Catechism, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. For attending a Methodist Sunday service, some liberated Africans were rewarded by the chief judge for correctly reciting part of the Catechism.Footnote ¹⁰² On Grenada’s sister island of Carriacou, the fifteen Africans indentured in 1850 could all repeat the Lord’s Prayer, and many of them could also recite the Commandments.Footnote ¹⁰³ Nevertheless, the Presbyterian minister for St Patrick and St Andrew observed that while some could ‘repeat something like the words of the Lord’s Prayer, of the Creed and of the Ten Commandments’, he suspected the words held ‘neither sense nor significance’ to the Africans.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ He continued to say that while the indentured labourers would ‘bend their bodies at the mention of the name of Jesus’, that is, make a motion to pray, they were unable to tell ‘who or what he was’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ These and other instances led some to question the extent to which the indentured labourers truly did understand or embrace their new learning.

Taking into consideration the low attendance and conversion rates in the early 1850s, there is a dearth of information concerning the non-Christian religious practices and beliefs of liberated Africans. Ministers’ reports were predisposed to writing about the challenges and successes of Christian conversion, omitting any traces of African beliefs and practices. In addition, there is no available statistical data that allows an informed discussion on the religious affiliation of liberated Africans. However, the appearance of four Muslims among the general population in the 1844 census and sixteen in the census of 1851, particularly sparked official interest. Although numbers are not available, some African Muslims had been among liberated Africans arriving in the colony, particularly between 1850 and 1851.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Indeed, in 1851, Colebrooke noted that recaptive Africans were mostly ‘mohammedans or idolators.’Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The 1861 census, which included Indian labourers who had arrived since 1857, of the non-Christian population were 242 Muslims, 704 Hindus, and 175 were ambiguously categorised as being of ‘non-Christian denominations’.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Non-Christian populations were also recorded on the census in 1881, 1891, and 1901. In addition, two new categories, ‘Other’ and ‘Not described’, appeared in the latter two censuses. In the ‘Other’ column, sixty-five persons were listed in 1881, forty-seven in 1891, and 113 in 1901. Perhaps this category may have included those who adhered to African religious practices. In 1891 and 1901, a total of 220 were categorised as ‘not described’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ It is noteworthy that while officials took care to name Indian religious affiliations, none of the Grenadian censuses sought to include the same information for Africans. This omission possibly stemmed from the tendency of Africans to outwardly identify themselves as ‘Christian’ if pressed, rather than admit to being adherents of African religious cosmologies, which had been subject to repression during and after enslavement. Indeed, Africans in the Caribbean practised African religious belief systems while at the same time following – or at any rate professing – to be converts to Christianity.Footnote ¹¹⁰

Dismayed at the slow rate of progress of religious and moral instruction to the indentured and their children, Lieutenant Governor Hamilton wrote to Sir J. Pakington, secretary of state for the colonies, complaining that the promised arrangements for the education of African children failed to progress as extensively as he had hoped. Pakington’s response in 1852, mandated that in future, no more recaptive Africans should be sent to Grenada, unless better provision was made for their instruction.Footnote ¹¹¹ Indeed, no more recaptives were sent to Grenada until 1860.

Archival sources on the third wave of African immigration – from 1860 to 1863 – are scant. Apart from the narrative of Peate, the West Central African fugitive, and general information on the arrival and allocation of West Central Africans, nothing is known about how these new arrivants responded to indentureship and subsequent religious conversion in Grenada. For some reason, after the mid 1850s, officials appear to have been less concerned with liberated Africans as a distinct group because they are rarely mentioned in Colonial Office reports or correspondence. Consequently, official data on liberated Africans who arrived in the 1860s are scarce, and as will be shown in the final chapter, newspapers and oral accounts of their presence prove more fruitful sources for documenting the experiences of West Central Africans in late nineteenth-century Grenada. These sources also allow greater insight into their involvement in and impact on African work.

Adapting to Grenada: Becoming Creole

So slow was the pace of the Colonial Office’s plans for the progress of the instruction of liberated Africans and their children, that by the mid 1850s, officials were clearly disappointed and aggravated by the failure to improve their rates of school and church attendance. Just as frustrating was that the Roman Catholic Church appeared to be the preferred church among recaptives, for it attracted more liberated Africans than any other denomination. Employers encouraged indentured African labourers to become members of the Church of England, which had been introduced to Grenada by English planters in the late eighteenth century. But their indentured labourers showed reluctance to join in worship with their employers.Footnote ¹¹² As had happened during the apprenticeship period and after emancipation in 1838, missionaries and colonial officials believed that the indentured labourers’ adoption of Roman Catholicism and their persistence in maintaining Creole French as the lingua franca were obstacles to the success of their civilising mission.

That the religious choices of recaptive Africans was influenced by African Grenadians represented a serious matter of concern to colonial officials and missionaries. Indeed, before the arrival of liberated Africans, Anglican rectors had expressed their concern over the influence of ‘old Negroes’ on the religious choices of new African arrivals in the late eighteenth century.Footnote ¹¹³ As previously discussed, there were mid nineteenth century reports of some Africans being prevented from attending Anglican schools by their Creole godfathers and godmothers, from whom it was said, they preferred to receive religious instruction.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Archival records leave inadequate information about the godparenting system, but it is clear it was considered significant to Grenadians of African and Asian heritage. Hesketh Bell, the late nineteenth-century colonial official, stated that African Grenadians became sponsors and godparents of indentured South Asians after they were baptised. Bell believed that African Grenadians forbade marriage between children sharing the same godparent, as the children were considered siblings. Further, sponsors for the same child were committed to help each other, and sponsors would do everything they could to assist their godchild.Footnote ¹¹⁵ These kinship ties, formed through the godparenting system, speaks to ways in which the religious lives of both recaptives and Indian labourers were shaped by the formerly enslaved population.

African Grenadians shouldered much of the blame for the reluctance of the recaptives to embrace the Anglican Church. When it was observed that many recaptive Africans initially baptised into the Church of England, Presbyterian, or Wesleyan denominations had been re-baptised Roman Catholic, their decision to desert the Anglican Church was believed to have been influenced by their Creole sponsors. On the Concord, Black Bay, and Palmiste Estates in St John, when African children and adults were re-baptised into the Roman Catholic Church, the rector of St John and St Mark claimed they had been ‘persuaded’ to convert by some African Grenadian labourers, some of whom were their sponsors. The response was to advise greater care in recommending and selecting sponsors, who presumably would be Anglicans.Footnote ¹¹⁶

The role of African Grenadians in shaping the religious choices and practices reveals the influence of pre-emancipation religious cultures on liberated Africans. The embrace of Roman Catholicism among liberated Africans can be seen as an important element of the gradual process of creolisation, which by extension can be read as resistance to the Christian denominations preferred by the planters. To summarise, as Dianne Stewart has pointed out for Trinidad, recaptives looked beyond European colonial institutions, taking ‘cues and direction … from their ex-enslaved Afro-Creole neighbors’.Footnote ¹¹⁷ It also provides early indication of how African Grenadians absorbed recaptive cultures. To colonial administrators, the re-baptism of liberated Africans into the Roman Catholic Church (of which most of the ‘native peasantry’ were members) was sound ‘proof and consequence’ of the ‘absorption of the African element’ by the African Grenadian Creole population.Footnote ¹¹⁸

As discussed earlier, Robert Houston and other liberated Africans acquired the French Creole language from the African Grenadians they worked and lived alongside. This language acquisition also demonstrates part of the process of creolisation, which, this book argues, was slow. As Warner-Lewis has shown, liberated Africans in Trinidad also became English and/or French Creole speakers; the latter served as the medium of communication between Africans who spoke numerous languages and dialects and created a bridge across which they could communicate and build unity with the African Caribbean population.Footnote ¹¹⁹

In the mid 1850s, the lieutenant governor of Grenada reported to Secretary of State Colebrooke that the Africans had now become ‘so entirely mixed up with and assimilated’ into the native peasantry that their instruction could not be promoted separately or exceptionally.Footnote ¹²⁰ Indeed, the Colonial Office congratulated itself that their strategy to ‘diffuse’ recaptives among the wider population had proven successful.Footnote ¹²¹ For instance, in a report forwarded to the secretary of state for the colonies, the author expressed difficulty in writing specifically about these immigrants, for so ‘generally absorbed in the native population’ and ‘hand in hand with the rest of the peasantry in their social habits’, had they become that they could not easily be discerned as a distinct social group.Footnote ¹²² In a response to an act passed in Sierra Leone which conferred the rights of natural-born subjects on liberated Africans in that country, Grenada followed with a similar act in 1856 which placed resident and domiciled liberated Africans on the ‘same footing’ with and conferring on them the same ‘rights and privileges’ as African Grenadians.Footnote ¹²³ Henceforth liberated Africans would possess the rights of Her Majesty’s natural-born subjects, with the capacity to take, hold, convey, devise, and transmit real and personal estate within Grenada.Footnote ¹²⁴ Thus, government officials thought both African Grenadians and indentured Africans had become sufficiently assimilated into a homogenous group.

However, liberated Africans remained a distinctive group and creolisation took much longer than officials envisaged. As historian Adderley argued for Trinidad and the Bahamas, Africans remained a distinctive presence even as they became African Creoles.Footnote ¹²⁵ In Grenada, nineteenth-century Africans remained culturally distinct through their recreation of Orisa worship, which combined Yoruba traditions with cultures encountered in Grenada, such as Roman Catholicism, the Spiritual Baptist Faith, the Nation Dance, and obeah. The extent to which they were persuaded to be re-baptised into Roman Catholicism merits consideration. A stipendiary magistrate attributed re-baptism into Roman Catholicism as the indentured servants’ ‘imitation’ of African Grenadians, though he was of little doubt that the real attraction of Roman Catholicism for liberated Africans were the ‘more attractive externals’ of the faith.Footnote ¹²⁶ It was reported that the ‘gilt images’ and ‘gaudiness’ of Roman Catholic imagery resulted in more proselytes and overfilled churches as the newly-arrived Africans preferred such aesthetics.Footnote ¹²⁷

However, attraction to Roman Catholicism was not superficial as whites thought – as Dianne Stewart maintained, Roman Catholicism appealed to recaptured Africans as ‘they witnessed and experienced first-hand African Roman Catholic traditions unfolding around them and could locate familiar niches of cultural negotiation and imprints on a religious structure that was not immune to Africana cultural penetration’.Footnote ¹²⁸ Moreover, Roman Catholic priests were receptive to this negotiation; unlike English-speaking Anglican ministers, Roman Catholic clergy conducted lessons in French Creole, the common language of Africans old and new to Grenada.Footnote ¹²⁹ In fact, Anglicans and colonial officials discouraged French Creole, probably due to the prevalent belief that Roman Catholic priests ‘encouraged’ French Creole as the language of instruction to preserve the African descended population from the ‘influence of the English clergy and missionaries’.Footnote ¹³⁰ The historian David Trotman has argued that in Trinidad, liberated Africans’ pragmatic acquisition of French Creole served as a ‘shield’ against English Protestantism, demonstrating a desire to exercise autonomy over their religious lives.Footnote ¹³¹

Roman Catholicism held yet other appeals which can be discerned by an analysis of the cultural histories of liberated Africans. Although there is a paucity of evidence to support the syncretic religious practices among West Central African recaptives in Grenada, scholars have demonstrated that elsewhere in the Americas, Roman Catholicism may not have been unfamiliar among some liberated West Central Africans; rather it represented continuity of an intercultural religious practice which began in West Central Africa.Footnote ¹³² Bearing this in mind, it could be argued, that with or without the persuasion of African Grenadians, liberated Africans appropriated Roman Catholicism, including its paraphernalia and aesthetics because they perceived it to be compatible with their own religious beliefs and practices – and it became a critical element in recreating African work.

Examining how Africans contested the circumstances of their indentureship allows us to reconsider the meanings of freedom to mid nineteenth-century recaptives. As shown in the previous chapter, the objective of the mutineers of the 1st West India Regiment was to return to Africa; similarly, indentured Africans sought to reconnect with their homelands through forging communities and bonds of solidarity with fellow shipmates and ‘countrymen’ and ‘countrywomen’ – those originating from or nearby similar regions. Despite their ethnic heterogeneity, the Negrinha recaptives on Clarke’s Court Estate and Houston and the other Africans from the Clarendon, all demonstrate that bonds based on shared linguistics, regional origins, or shipmate relationships were important for Africans seeking greater freedom during indentureship. Indeed, as noted, it was observed that recaptives preferred to associate with each other or Africans who had arrived earlier, rather than African Grenadians.

Moreover, the general reluctance of first-generation Africans to attend church and school, and the rejection of Anglicanism in favour of Roman Catholicism is indicative of how Africans sought to shape the contours of their own religious lives. These choices would support the recreation of Yoruba religious belief and practice in Grenada. By re-establishing old bonds and creating new ones based on common experiences and similar ethnic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds, recaptives remained culturally distinct in Grenada. But at the same time, their appropriation of Roman Catholicism and Creole French also meant that recaptives were adapting to Grenada’s already creolised society. That adaptation was facilitated by the failure of the indentureship scheme in alleviating the perceived labour shortage, along with the settlement patterns and experiences following their indentureship.