Igbo DNA Matches

One thing we have been interested in ever since our Haitian parent's 23andme results came in was the Igbo connection with Haiti. As we have indicated through our exploration of notarized records mentioning slave origins in the Sud-Est of Haiti, the "Ibo" were a consistent presence among the enslaved African population in Bainet in the 1700s. Perhaps many if not most were acquired via smuggling with the British in Jamaica, since the coast of southeastern Nigeria was not frequently used by the French slave traders of the 18th century. One also notices that Igbo matches are the most frequent sub-Saharan group for both our parent and myself. Indeed, my parent and I even share one Igbo match, the only sub-Saharan African we match with at least 20 cM of shared ancestry among our matches. Intriguingly, our Haitian parent likewise matched 4 members of a single Igbo family on Ancestry. 

An additional plus of Ancestry's match features is the ability to view posted family trees. Perusing these trees indicated that most of our parent's Igbo matches have roots in 3 parts of Igboland: Abia, Imo and Anambra. Unfortunately, some family trees were not public or were not posted at all, but the results are suggestive enough as is. These three regions, all contiguous or nearby each other, may suggest our Igbo forebears hailed from the same region. Of course, people have moved around since the 1700s and there could be other factors at play here. However, some of these matches appear to have deep roots in these areas, particularly 4 matches from a single family with roots in Abia. If their family tree, which seems to stretch back into the 1800s, is a reliable indicator, they likely have roots in this part of southeastern Nigeria in the 1700s. 

On 23andme, Our Haitian parent only had 5 Igbo matches we could find (plus 2 individuals whose surname suggests Ibibio origins). We foolishly did not keep a record of birthplaces for specific areas or regions of southeastern Nigeria, but the Ibibio matches appear to have roots in Akwa Ibom and were higher matches than any of the Igbo. We wonder if this could also indicate Ibibio ancestry, although we lack any matches with chromosome browser features to explore the connection. 

The Igbo in Haiti

 

The Igbo peoples have left a cultural legacy in Haiti that survives to this day. The Ibo nanchon in Haitian Vodou, for instance, attests to this Igbo legacy. Whilst perusing runaway advertisements, we focused on Ibo captives in Saint Domingue to look for anything distinctive. As we expected, since the French slave traders were usually not bringing many captives from the Bight of Biafra to Saint Domingue, many Igbo slaves in the colony appear to have been smuggled through other colonies. The above case of Marie, for example, illustrates the example of an English-speaking Igbo in Aquin. One wonders if she was brought to Saint Domingue from Jamaica or another British colony in the Antilles. The "Ibos" of Saint Domingue were also briefly described by Descourtilz and a few other writers on the colony's Africans, often noting their propensity for suicide. 

Another trend we noticed with Igbo captives is a certain degree of ambiguity about their precise "national" origin. Some were listed as Bibi, presumably for the Ibibio peoples of southern Nigeria. Francois, the man above, could have been either one or perhaps from another group in southeastern Nigeria. 

Yet again, another runaway slave was seen as either Bibi (Ibibio) or Ibo. 

Some runaway Igbos from other colonies were identified precisely. For example, Margueritte came to the colony from Mississippi. 

Something we have written about elsewhere is the consistent presence of Ibos in colonial Bainet, in the Sud-Est of Haiti. Three newly arrived Ibos absconded from the Chaumeil habitation in Bainet.

Another Ibo, Marie, was identified as an Anglophone person.

Once again, another Ibo, Etienne, spoke English. This one was "owned" by a free black woman.

As for Saint-Emilion, a runaway described above, he was either Ibo or Chauma. We could not identify Chauma at all, but it indicates once again how ambiguous and problematic the "national" labels assigned to Africans in Saint Domingue truly were.

Alexandre, another Ibo maroon, spoke English.

Jean, an Ibo runaway, similarly spoke English.

We found the above case interesting for its description of an Ibo runaway who spoke Nago (Yoruba). Assuming the Ibo identification is accurate, one wonders if he learned "Nago" in West Africa. 

African Ancestry in Bainet and 23andme

A very close Haitian relative born in Bainet recently received their 23andme DNA results. In some ways, it's a confirmation of our likely Igbo ancestry. Indeed, the Igbo people were the only specific African ethnic group detected as a very close match in our relative's results. This was not a surprise since our closest African DNA match on Ancestry DNA was with an Igbo Nigerian. Furthermore, the "Ibo" were a consistent and major part of the enslaved African population in Bainet and other areas of Haiti during the colonial period. 

An attempt to show how our relative's African ancestry is broken down in Ancestry's 2024 Update.

Thus, the genetic evidence as well as the historical records (notarial records mentioning slaves by nation, the patterns of the French slave trade, and the smuggling of captives from Jamaica to Haiti's southern coast) point to ancestry among Igbo and/or closely related peoples in southeastern Nigeria. However, just as on Ancestry DNA, our relative also had Yoruba Nigerian DNA matches with various customers. We likely descend from a plethora of individuals from various ethnolinguistic backgrounds across what is Benin, Togo, and Nigeria.

Sadly, the lack of a Benin/Togo category on 23andme leads to a more inflated Ghanaian score for our close relative. The 2024 Update for Ancestry DNA pointed to very strong "Benin & Togo" as well as "Nigeria" scores. Indeed, Ancestry DNA's problematic update even suggested or pointed to ancestry in the East-Central and northern Nigeria for our relative. But 23andme, however, only detected a close match with the Igbo. 23andme's algorithm also gave our relative a higher Senegambian/Upper Guinea score, which we suspect may be due to possible "Bambara" or "Mandingue" ancestry that may be registering as Sierra Leone and Liberia. Lastly, the overall 23andme scores suggest ancestry in West Central Africa is a rather small part of our African origins. And this is in spite of the ubiquitous presence of captives from West Central Africa in Saint Domingue. I guess people with roots in the South really do, on average, harbor less Central African ancestry.

An attempt at showing the regional breakdown of sub-Saharan African ancestry. The general patterns are similar to those observed via Ancestry's results.

One of the benefits of 23andme for understanding African ancestry is seeing assigned mtDNA haplogroups. Our relative's haplogroup, L1b1a, is common in sub-Saharan Africa. This is no surprise and seems consistent with the African ancestry of Haitians. The maternal ancestry of our people, after all, is undoubtedly an African affair. One only wishes 23andme could have indicated some possible distant matches for West and Central Africa to shed more light on our African ancestry. Perhaps a better idea of the distribution of L1b1a would have also helped here. Ultimately, we find some broad commonalities between Ancestry DNA and 23andme here, and both companies estimated our close relative at about 89-90% sub-Saharan African ancestry, overwhelmingly West African. 

Exploring African Matches

Whilst searching for matches on the maternal side, we also sought to take note of any African matches. Going by family trees and surnames, we only encountered a few on Ancestry DNA. Unlike our Haitian parent, we did not find any matches with Malians or people from Sierra Leone. Nonetheless, we did find it interesting to note a shared 10 cM match with a person bearing a Ga surname. The Ga, who speak a Kwa language, would have been present in Saint Domingue to some degree, and can be found in Ghana. Since the French slave trade along the Gold Coast was on a smaller scale, it is possible Ga or related groups may have been acquired via intra-Caribbean slave trading or, perhaps, via the Slave Coast. The more surprising match, and of course the weakest, was with a Ugandan person at 8 cM of shared DNA. This is almost certainly due to the common ancestry of Bantu-speakers in Uganda and populations in Central Africa. I guess this is perhaps evidence of Central African ancestry that Haitians bear, although I did not detect any closer matches with Congolese or Angolans. 

The more common and to be expected matches were with Igbo and Yoruba individuals from Nigeria. We seem to have inherited, through the maternal side, matches with members of one particular Igbo family. Based on a posted family tree, all of their ancestors were Igbo and they seem to hail from Owerri. What we found remarkable here is the rather high 23 shared cM with one of these Igbo, only somewhat smaller than our Haitian parent's shared 29 cM with this individual. This does seem to strongly suggest Igbo and southeastern Nigerian peoples contributed heavily to the genetic makeup of Haitians. One finds evidence of this in records of the French slave trade and plantation inventories in Saint Domingue. As for the Yoruba matches, this is not too surprising either, as the "Nago" were undoubtedly present in Saint-Domingue. Yoruba or people from southeastern Nigeria and Benin with related genetic components were clearly present in Haiti. Through Ouidah, Porto-Novo, Badagry (which is recalled in the name of a lwa in Haitian Vodou) and other ports of call along the Slave Coast, captives of Yoruba origin were sucked into the hell of Saint Domingue.

Overall, the results of this search demonstrate the largely Lower Guinea ancestry in Haitians. We were surprised to not find Mali or Mandinka matches, like our Haitian parent, but in the future more users from Senegal, Mali, Sierra Leone, and other parts of Africa might upload their results and show up as matches. What is most striking for now is the strong Igbo connection, something noted in our Haitian parent's African matches. Trying to check for African matches assigned to our other side should be next, although the vast Hispanic customer base showing up as matches presents more difficulties for finding them. As a side note, it was also amusing to see distant matches with white people in Quebec, showing matches from the maternal side with France-associated ancestry. 

Igbo and African Ancestry

Roseline Siguret's tabulation of African slave "nations" in the Quarter of Jacmel (from "Esclaves d'indigoteries et de caféières au quartier de Jacmel (1757-1791)"

After reading FonteFelipe's recent blog on African ancestry and matches of his sample of 30 Haitians, we decided to reexamine our own African matches on Ancestry. Unfortunately, we could only find 2 obvious African matches, both Igbo-descended individuals. With one of them we share 23 cM of DNA. Our Haitian parent, who, unsurprisingly, has more African ancestry, shared 29 cM with the same Igbo individual. In addition, they also had African matches who, based on their surnames and publicly posted genealogies, hailed from Mali, Congo, Nigeria, and what appears to be Sierra Leone. The known ethnic breakdown is Igbo, Yoruba, and Mandinka. We could not easily determine the ethnic background of the other Africans. Needless to say, our Haitian parent's African matches were usually of a low degree of shared cM of DNA, 8-16. Her ethnicity estimates assigned 1% Yorubaland, 2% Nigeria-North Central and 2% Nigerian Woodlands (in addition to Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast & Ghana, Benin & Togo, Cameroon, Western Bantu Peoples). She received a whopping 27% Benin & Togo and 21% Nigeria in the latest update. While there are many problems with her results in the update (her European ancestry is assigned mostly to Spain, even though her previous results assigned the largest European percentage to France), looking at her African matches does suggest some generally useful information on Haitian ancestry. The preponderance of Nigerian matches is likely a reflection of the greater number of Nigerian customers of Ancestry as well as the deep ancestry of Haitians in Nigeria, Benin & Togo and neighboring areas that supplied many of the African captives enslaved in Saint-Domingue. Here is a table breakdown illustrating her matches:

After her match with one Igbo person at 29 cM shared DNA, the next closest match was at 16 cM with someone bearing a Yoruba name. As suggested by FonteFelipe and the work of scholars such as Geggus, there clearly was a larger presence of Igbo and people from the Bight of Biafra in Saint-Domingue's south (which included Jacmel, in the calculations of Geggus). This noticeable Igbo presence is attested to by plantation inventories, testaments, and other contracts mentioning the enslaved population in 18th century Bainet. After Creoles, Igbos were one of the most common groups. The Yoruba ancestry and related Benin/Togo is possibly, in part, represented by the large Creole population among the slaves in Bainet during the second half of the 18th century. Many of the Creoles were likely the children of people who were purchased from the Slave Coast, which would have included various groups represented in Saint-Domingue (like the "Aradas"). This also could have accounted for the "Senegalese" results in our parent's ethnicity estimates. After all, if Senegal was important early on in the French slave trade, then some of the Creoles may have harbored ancestry from Senegambia. As for Mali connection, we assume this to be a sign of ancestry from "Mandingues" and, perhaps, Bambara, in Saint-Domingue. The Bambara would have reached Saint-Domingue through slave trading networks in Senegal, as was likely the case for "Mandingues" who may have not always been clearly distinguished from the Bambara. Interestingly, the Bamana were present among the enslaved in Bainet and one of them played a prominent role during the Haitian Revolution in the Sud (Gilles Bambara). 

Sadly, without more data from African customers or better ethnicity estimate information on African reference panel groups (such as directly telling us which ones we share DNA with), we are still left with only a general picture. Nonetheless, the Igbo contribution to our African ancestry seems very likely based on our shared DNA with one Igbo family. Furthermore, it seems our African ancestry probably includes Mandinka or Malinke (and Bambara?) ancestry as well as Yoruba. To some extent there was undoubtedly a Congolese or Central African contribution, though "Congos" in Bainet could have included Mondongues, Loango, Kongo, and others. As for "Senegal" and areas like Nigeria-North Central, we assume that could be Hausa and Wolof or Fulbe ancestry. Perhaps the "Senegal" and Mali ancestry is slightly inflated by Poulard or Fula, while Nigeria-North Central is from the Hausa or another another northern Nigerian population whose name was not recognized or used in Saint-Domingue. There definitely was a small flow of captives from northern Nigeria, but usually of Hausa or Nupe origin in Saint-Domingue's nomenclature for African "nations." We can only hope that subsequent updates see improvements in the area of Nigeria and West Africa as a whole.