Atlantic Creoles
Atlantic Creoles are people with origins in the transatlantic settlement of the Americas via Europe and Africa. They descend from European and African ancestors, many of whom were Lusophones in the 15th and 16th centuries. Atlantic Creoles and their descendants are multilingual people who are of Creole Descent.
History of Atlantic Creoles
Starting in the 15th century, Europeans, mainly the Portuguese, began to settle in regions of Africa such as Nigeria and Angola. Soon an early Atlantic Creole culture began to form with cultural diffusion and admixing occurring. Some of these individuals would travel with Europeans in the exploration, colonization and settlement of the Americas in the late 15th century and early 16th century such as Juan Garrido and Juan Valiente. Later, when more European populations began to establish themselves in Africa and the trans-atlantic industrial kidnapping complex ramped up, genetic, cultural and political admixing took place. In the multicultural trading ports of 16th century West Africa, the Atlantic Creoles were frequently outcasts in both African and European cultures, but they were admired for their abilities to navigate between the two worlds, earning them reputations as expert traders and negotiators. Though their intercultural abilities allowed them to succeed in the changing West African societies, they could also be enslaved when they fell out of official favor or into debt or criminal activity while others were the children of African elites who were sent to Europe to study. These original indentured and enslaved Creoles that experienced forced settlement in the Americas were joined by captive Africans that continued to admix genetically and culturally up to the 19th century which expanded and grew Atlantic Creole culture. With later migrations Atlantic Creole culture can be found throughout the Americas and the world, as Jane Landers notes, the Atlantic Creoles were "merchants, enslavers, linguists, sailors, artisans, musicians, and military figures" who "interacted with a wide variety of European and Amerindian groups and helped shape a new Atlantic world system."US Atlantic Creoles
The historian Ira Berlin writes that Atlantic Creoles were among what he called the 'Charter Generation' in the Chesapeake Colonies, up until the end of the seventeenth century. Through the first century of settlement, lines were fluid between black and white workers as the color coded didn't solidify until later; they often both worked off passage as indentured servants, and any captives were less set apart than they were later. The working class lived together, and many white women and black men developed relationships. Some of these White Europeans were also captives forced to the colonies as the practice of forcing convicts to the US colonies from Britain was also going on. Many of the new generation of Creoles born in the colonies were the children of European indentured servants and bonded or captive workers of primarily West African ancestry. Amerindian, and Malagasy admixture also occurred up through the 19th Century.According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, incorporated into colonial law in 1662, children born in the colony took the status of the mother; when the mothers were enslaved, the children were born into bondage, regardless of paternity, whether or not their fathers were free or enslaved. This was a change from common law tradition, which had asserted that children took the status of the father. Paul Heinegg and other twentieth-century researchers have found that 80% of the free people of color in the Upper South in colonial times were born to white mothers and African or Creole fathers. Some male captive Creoles and Africans were freed in the early years as well, but free mothers were the predominant source of most of the free families of color.
According to Berlin, most of the original admixed Atlantic Creoles were descended from Portuguese and Spanish fathers, primarily in the trading ports of West Africa; they had Iberian surnames such as Chavez, Rodriguez, and Francisco. In later generations, they sometimes modified them, resulting in surnames such as Driggers, Chavis, and Chavers. In the Chesapeake Bay Colony, many of the Atlantic Creoles intermarried with their European neighbors, adopted Anglo-Saxon surnames, became property owners and farmers, and captured others in turn. The families became well-established, with numerous free descendants by the time of the American Revolution.
In 2007, Linda Heywood and John Thornton used "newly available data from the DuBois Institute and Cambridge University Press on the trade and transportation of enslaved people" in their new work on the relation of Central Africans to the Atlantic Creoles. They found strong support for Berlin's thesis that the Charter Generations of enslaved Creoles, before 1660, came primarily from West Central Africa.
They also noted that in the Kingdom of Kongo, the leaders adopted Catholicism in the late 15th century due to Portuguese influence. This led to widespread conversion of the people. They formed a type of African-Catholic spirituality unique to the region, and the people frequently adopted Portuguese names in baptism. The kingdoms were Christian for nearly 400 years and many of their people were taken as captives by the Portuguese. The historians argue that numerous people from Kongo were transported to the North American colonies as captives, especially to South Carolina and Louisiana. Kongolese Catholics led the Stono Rebellion in 1739. Thornton and Heywood estimate that about one in five Creoles are descended from Kongolese ancestors.
Brunelle says that the enslaved Kongolese, rather than the small admixed communities around European trading posts, were the source of most early Atlantic Creoles with Iberian surnames in North America. Many were Christian, were admixed and multi-lingual, and familiar with some aspects of European culture. The Dutch colonies in New York were also populated by numerous enslaved Atlantic Creoles from the Kingdom of Kongo.
Tidewater Creoles
The first Africans in Virginia were from parts of Angola that were settled by the Portuguese since the late 15th Century. Many were multilingual and baptized. This creolization is attributed as the possible reason why some were able to gain freedom in colonial Virginia and Maryland.One such person was Anthony Johnson who sailed to Virginia in 1621 aboard the James. The Virginia Muster of 1624 lists his name as "Antonio not given," recorded as "a Negro" in the "notes" column. Historians have some dispute as to whether this was the Antonio later known as Anthony Johnson, as the census lists several "Antonios." This one is considered the most likely.
Johnson was sold as an indentured servant to a white planter named Bennet to work on his Virginia tobacco farm.. Such workers typically worked under a limited indenture contract for four to seven years to pay off their passage, room, board, lodging, and freedom dues. In the early colonial years, most Africans in the Thirteen Colonies were held under such contracts of limited indentured servitude. With the exception of those indentured for life, they were released after a contracted period. Those who managed to survive their period of indenture would receive land and equipment after their contracts expired or were bought out. Most Lumbee families have progenitors of Tidewater Creole origin, often those released from indentured servitude in Tidewater counties whose descendants moved inland. They received land grants after moving inland in areas such as Bladen County and Robeson County.
Gullah Creoles
Historically, the Gullah region extended from the Cape Fear area on North Carolina's coast south to the vicinity of Jacksonville on Florida's coast. The Gullah people and their language are also called Geechee, which may be derived from the name of the Ogeechee River near Savannah, Georgia. Gullah is a term that was originally used to designate the creole dialect of English spoken by Gullah and Geechee people. Over time, its speakers have used this term to formally refer to their creole language and distinctive ethnic identity as a people. The Georgia communities are distinguished by identifying as either "Freshwater Geechee" or "Saltwater Geechee", depending on whether they live on the mainland or the Sea Islands.Because of a period of relative isolation from whites while working on large plantations in rural areas, the Africans, enslaved from a variety of Central and West African ethnic groups, developed a creole culture that has preserved much of their African linguistic and cultural heritage from various peoples; in addition, they absorbed new influences from the region.
Louisiana Creoles
or Gulf Coast creoles are people originating from the inhabitants of colonial Louisiana before it became a part of the U.S. during the periods of both French and Spanish rule. French, Acadian, African and Amerindian cultures merged to form a distinct Atlantic Creole culture while the racialized system operated atypically as compared to the rest of the United States, which made social mobility easier for Creoles of Color creating a distinct class system.Melungeon Creoles
As the Color lines continued to evolve groups of free Creoles and White Europeans began to travel together forming small tribes or clans that didn't fit with the various White, Creole and Black African populations.Free Creoles are documented as migrating with white European-American neighbors in the first half of the 18th century to the frontiers of Virginia and North Carolina, where they received land grants like their neighbors. For instance, the Collins, Gibson, and Ridley families owned land adjacent to one another in Orange County, North Carolina, where they and the Bunch family were listed in 1755 as "free Molatas ", subject to taxation on tithes. By settling in frontier areas, free people of color found more amenable living conditions and could escape some of the racial strictures of Virginia and North Carolina Tidewater plantation areas.
Historian Jack D. Forbes has discussed laws in South Carolina related to racialized classification:
In 1719, South Carolina decided who should be an "Indian" for tax purposes since American slaves were taxed at a lesser rate than African slaves. The act stated: "And for preventing all doubts and scruples that may arise what ought to be rated on mustees, mulattoes, etc. all such slaves as are not entirely Indian shall be accounted as negro.
Forbes said that, at the time, "mustees" and "mulattoes" were terms for persons of part-Native American ancestry. He wrote,
My judgment is that a mustee was primarily part-African and American and that a mulatto was usually part-European and American . The act is also significant because it asserts that part-American with or without African ancestry could be counted as Negroes, thus having an implication for all later slave censuses.
Beginning about 1767, some of the ancestors of the Melungeons reached the frontier New River area, where they are listed in the 1780s on tax lists of Montgomery County, Virginia. From there they migrated south in the Appalachian Range to Wilkes County, North Carolina, where some are listed as "white" on the 1790 census. They resided in a part that became Ashe County, where they are designated as "other free" in 1800.