Creolizing Currents: Bambara

Dessein de Sauvages de Plusieurs Nations
Alexandre de Batz, 1685-1737
Peabody Museum, Harvard University (PM 41-72-10/2)

Africans, slave and free, were known to join the Indians, notably the Natchez, after 1729's massacre of the French, and Choctaw and Chickasaw.

Slave Voyages to French Louisiana
Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. www.slavevoyages.org (accessed September 1, 2012). To recreate this table, use "Configure columns" and then sort by "Year arrived with slaves."

Le Port de La Rochelle
N. Ozanne del., Y le Gouaz Sculpt.
De Veaux Edit. Col.

Two or more French ships sailed from the port of La Rochelle, in western France on the Atlantic during the French Colonial period in Louisiana (1718-1763). They landed in Senegal at Isle Gorée at the mouth of the Senegal River, Isle St. Louis or at Judah (Ouidah, Whydah) to purchase captifs, often Wolofs (Jolofs, Diaulaufs) and Bambara from their Mandingo captors. Ships would then sail to Isle Dauphine at the foot of Mobile Bay, Nouveau Biloxi on the Mississppi Sound or La Balise near the foot of the Mississippi River where the captifs disembarked. Some were used at the brickworks at La Balise, as carpenters, to load and unload ships, to row pirogues and boats, even as sailors. Others were brought to New Orleans to the Plantation of the Company of the Indies on the West Bank of the Mississippi as agricultural workers for rice, indigo, tobacco, sugar and much later cotton.

Pointe Coupée, Lousiana, 1732

Map by Le Sieur d'Anville showing how both engagés (indentures) and settlers from France and captifs from Africa arrived at the Poste de la Pointe Coupée or False River. In a copy made by Glenn C. Morgan, the cartographer lists the arrival of settlers and engagés for the Sainte-Reyne Concession.

On November 9, 1720 the Loire (ship) arrived at Ship Island (Isle Aux Vaisseaux) with workers for the Sainte-Reyne Concession. Most were from Hainault. By 1729 Hainault colonists De Cuir, Legros, Bonnett, Hainaud, Alard, Haussy, Pailliar, Anotiaú, Daublin, Bienvenu and De Coux were living along the banks of the Mississippi river at Pointe Coupée They along with other French settlers, formed the nucleus of the early settlement and Christian community there. They were soon joined by others, including the Hainault families of Calais, Delatte, Demaret, Guichard and Pourciau.

Code Noir 1727
Le Code noir, ou Edit... servant de règlement pour le gouvernement et l'administration de la justice, police, discipline et le commerce des esclaves nègres dans la province et colonie de la Loüisianne.... Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

The Code Noir de 1724, developed specifically for la Louisiane differed from the Code Noir of 1685 promulgated for the people of Saint Domingue, Martinique, Guadeloupe and other slave holding French Colonies, primarily in the Caribbean.

XVIII. Voulons que les Officiers de notre Conseil Superieur de la Loüisiane, envoyent leurs avis sur la quantité de vivres & la qualité de l'habillement qu'il convient que les Maitres fournissent à leurs Esclaves; lesquels vivres doivent leur etre fournis par chacune semaine, & l'habillement par chacune année, pour y etre statué pour Nous: & cependent permettons ausdits Officiérs, de regler par provision lesdits vivres & ledit habillement; dessendons aux Maîtres desdits Esclaves, de donner aucune forte d'eau de vie pour tenir lieu de ladite subsistence & habillement.

XIX. Leur dessendons pareillement de se décharger de la nourriture & subsistence de leurs Esclaves, en leur permettant de travailler certain jour de la semaine pour leur compte particulier.

XX. Les Esclaves qui ne feront point nourris, vêtus & entretenus par leurs Maîtres, pourront en donner avis au Procureur general du dit Conseil, ou aux Officiers des Justices inferieures, & mettre leurs memoires entre leurs mains; sur lesquels, & même d'office si les avis leur viennent d'ailleurs, les Maîtres seront poursuivis à la Requeste du dit Procureur general & sans frais, ce que Nous voulons ester observé pour les crimes & les traitements barbares & inhumaines des Maitres envers leurs Esclaves.

Ile St. Louis near the mouth of the Senegal River, 1814
"Vue de l'île St. Louis du Sénégal prise de côte de la mer." René Claude Geoffroy de Villeneuve, Illustrations de L'Afrique ou histoire, moeurs, usages et coutumes des Africains. Nepveu. Paris, 1814. Bibliothèque Nationale de France (ark:/12148/cb38495427c)

The city of Saint-Louis, also called Ndar in Wolof, is a regional capital in present-day Senegal. The French arrived in 1673 and named it after King Louis XIV. It was the capital of the French colony from 1673 until 1902. Between 1719 and 1743 ships from Brittany and from Bordeaux sailed to Saint-Louis to embark for Louisiana with captifs. The old quarter looks very much like New Orleans' French Quarter.

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