Snapshot of the Slave Population in Bainet

1764 map of Bainet's bay and coastline, showing where the Perronneau plantation was located in that era. It was an indigo or cotton habitation.

Although most of the documents necessary to even begin to understand the complex origins of the slave population in Bainet are sitting in French archives, we were surprised to see some of the notarized records from 1793-1794 digitized on Family Search. We are referring specifically to Minutes notariales, 1704-1803, from the Notariat of Saint-Domingue. One document stood out to us as particularly interesting in that it consists of a list of slaves, part of a donation by the widow of Nicolas Perronneau. Although sometimes hard to decipher, it names about 61 enslaved people and their various nations. We attempted a crude table breaking down the enslaved population by national origin, avoiding issues of gender and age:

What we find useful out of this random sampling of the enslaved population from 1793 is the huge number of Creoles. The preponderance of Creoles among the plantations in this region has been noted elsewhere, especially in an article on indigo and coffee plantations by Roseline Siguret, "Esclaves d'indigoteries et de caféières au quartier de Jacmel (1757-1791)":

Siguret's article only analyzes 2 Bainet indigo plantations from the 1770s, but the results are similar in the disproportionately Creole presence. Our 1793 sample did not include nearly as many nations. However, it is possible that many of our Creoles were in fact children of parents from some of these nations, like Poulards, Aradas, Bambaras, or Cotocolis. Indeed, we noticed that many of the Creoles were rather young, suggesting a population whose African-born parents may have only landed in Saint Domingue in the the few preceding decades. The other conspicuous presence is that of the Ibos and Congos. It would seem that the enslaved African-born population of Bainet was heavily derived from Ibos and Congos by the late 1700s. 

Part of the 1793 list of bonded people

Of course, one would need data on coffee plantations in the interior and additional indigo or cotton estates for more accurate generalization. Coffee plantations, especially those started more recently, may have relied more heavily on imported Congos and featured a smaller workforce. The more established coffee, cotton, and indigo plantations were more likely to have disproportionately Creole slaves. This might explain why the widow of Nicolas Perronneau's "property" included such a disproportionately 

Creole population.

Useful table in David Geggus's "The French Slave Trade: An Overview"

Trying to make sense of the African population of Bainet in the late 18th century will require far more research than what was attempted here. However, the sample from 1793 does seem to follow Siguret's general observations. Instead of more Congos than Ibos, our sample included far more Ibo. Nevertheless, we are talking about an enslaved population that was heavily Creole, Congo, and Ibo. Our 1793 sample includes a few Mine, a Senegalese, and 1 Nago. Our forebears were a heavy mix of Congos, Ibos, and Creoles. Creoles with deeper roots in the colony may have been far more likely to have origins in the Bight of Benin and Senegambia. That could explain the "Arada" and "Nago" influences on the Creole culture of the island. In other words, we are "Congo" in the mornes, "Arada" (and Ibo) in the plains or lowlands.