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. 

Madras Indian

One must be careful when interpreting the "nations" reported of runaway slaves in Saint-Domingue. This is also true for cases of "Negro Indians" or "Black Indians," who may have usually been people from India or South Asia. Although undoubtedly only a very tiny part of the slave population in Saint-Domingue, they occasionally appeared in the colony's press as runaway slaves. Sometimes they are assigned very specific regions of India, such as Bengale, Coromandel, Malabar, or the Mascarenes (where the French enslaved many Indians). In this case, however, we have encountered, for the first time, an Indian from Madras. This specific Indian runaway, Jean-François, was probably the subject of a runaway ad posted in May 1790. Without this additional description of him in the newspaper, we would not have figured out he was from Madras, or supposedly from Madras (a Tamil, then?).

Laurent the Hauza

Whilst perusing the corpus of runaway slave notices posted on the excellent Le marronnage dans le monde atlantique site, we came across another early appearance of Hausa maroons before the 1770s, in 1767 this time. In this case, it was a Laurent, of the "Hauza" nation, who fled from his owner in Port-au-Prince. So, even if one accepts the theory of Debien that the Gambary "nation" in Saint Domingue did not refer to the Hausa, one still has evidence for imports of "Hausa" people as early as 1767. As our aforementioned reference to Nupe captives, referred to by a Yoruba appellation for them, in Saint-Domingue also dates to around this time, we suspect the influx of Hausa, Nupe and northern captives, from areas beyond Oyo, began to increase by the 1760s. This period in Oyo was the emra of Gaha's usurpation, and one of expansion. Gaha and Abiodun, who retook effective power as alafin of the kingdom, appear to have favored the sale of northern captives to the coast. According to Robin Law's masterful analysis of Oyo, extensive trade links to the Nupe and Hausaland were in place, including Yoruba traders from Oyo with a quarter in Kano during the 18th century. In exchange for horses, natron, cloths, and slaves, Oyo reexported goods acquired from the coast. Again, according to Law, by the 18th century, many Hausa slaves were imported, some of whom were resold at Porto Novo.