Louisiana: Converging Cultures (original) (raw)

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Enslaving Colonial North America

No African experience in the colonies was exactly the same. African people found themselves in different physical and social environments in the Chesapeake, the Lowcountry, Louisiana, and the Northern Colonies. Africans asserted new identities, created their own cultures, and resisted enslavement, while helping to build the physical, cultural, and intellectual foundations of colonial North America. By the end of the colonial period, race-based slavery was the law of the land and the basis of the economy. Africans were enslaved for life.

Malachy Postlethwayt was an economist and advocate of the slave trade. The author of The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce in 1757, Postlethwayt was also employed by the government-sanctioned slave trading enterprise known as the Royal African Company. In 1745 Postlethwayt declared, “Are we not indebted to those valuable people, the Africans, for our Sugars, Tobaccoes, Rice, [and] Rum,” shedding light on the demand for and contributions of enslaved African people in the Western Atlantic World.

[A] colony of half-breeds who are natural idlers, libertines, and more rascally than those of Peru.

Antoine-Simon Le Page Du Pratz, 1758

Roots & Routes: Forced Migration to Louisiana

Africans were shipped to Louisiana in great numbers between 1727 and the 1740s. They came largely from Bambara, Gambian, Akan, and Kongolese peoples. Disease, harsh conditions, and a poor economy undermined the colony. Migration from Europe and Africa mostly halted until 1776, creating an isolated and highly interdependent set of cultures.

Africans Transported into the Gulf Coast from:

Louisiana: Converging Cultures

French and Spanish Louisiana was one of the most diverse and chaotic colonial settings on the North American continent. People of different cultures encountered one another on plantations, in markets, and in the uncharted swampland. The interactions among Europeans (mostly French and Spanish), Native Americans (mostly Natchez and Choctaw), and enslaved Africans (mostly Bambara, Fon, and Yoruba) shaped the territory. Enslaved Africans navigated these cultural crossings by establishing their own economy and resisting slavery.

Veüe et Perspective de la Nouvelle Orléans, 1726

Desseins de Sauvages de Plusieurs Nations, 1735

Los Adaes, Louisiana

Los Adaes sat at the crossroads of Spanish, French, and Native American empires, allowing extensive trade networks to crisscross colonial Louisiana. It served as a vital military outpost connecting the Red River to Mexico City. Traversing river and road, the people of Los Adaes conducted illegal trade by crossing Caddo, Spanish, and French imperial boundaries. In places like Los Adaes, people of African descent moved within and between societies to secure a measure of freedom. The multicultural space required cultural dexterity for survival and to build alliances.

Across all levels of society, people in colonial Louisiana had to rely upon one another. Largely cut off from European trade networks, communities of free and enslaved west Africans and Europeans had to sustain themselves. They learned hunting techniques from Native Americans and traded to their advantage. The artifacts shown here were recovered from Los Adaes.

It was not practiced and not the custom for the negroes to ask the permission of their masters for what they should do.

Charles Joseph Loppinot, 1774

Black Business

The most important work for enslaved African people happened during their free time. They rented out their labor and cultivated their own food for survival. They also traded widely in local markets—selling baskets and sifters made from willows and reeds and offering berries, palmetto roots, sassafras, and game. Enslaved people and maroons met regularly in the cypress swamps to trade, cultivate food, and extend community networks.

Market Folks, New Orleans, 1819

Louisiana Timeline