On Magloire Ambroise...

Whilst perusing an article on Magloire Ambroise by Alix Ambroise in the Revue of the Haitian Historical Society, we noticed some inconsistencies. according to Alix Ambroise, Magloire was born on the Pasquet habitation. He married Theophile Cangé, the daughter of Pierre Cangé. However, when checking the parish registers, we came across a Marie Rose Theophile who was the daughter of Jean Louis Cangé and Marie Charlotte Favre. It would seem that Alix Ambroise, presumably a descendant of Magloire Ambroise, the hero of Jacmel, made an error.

Careybana

Although this is purely speculative, one wonders if the place name, Careybana, may have simply meant a flooded or wet plain. Identified in the Spanish chronicles as an area situated on a plain with a large concentration of people in the cacicazgo of Xaragua, the first part of the name, Carey, bears a slight resemblance to a Palikur word for a flooded plain. According to Launey's book on the Palikur tongue, kariy means flooded plain. While Palikur is an Arawakan language distantly related to Taino, we suspect carey and kariy might be related terms. Sadly, we could not find any similar words in Island Carib, Garifuna, or other Arawakan languages. In the Arawak of Suriname, however, Goeje did record kalhao or kalho as words for grass. Perhaps it is far more likely that Careybana simply meant a wet plain where seaturtles could be easily caught near the coast, assuming carey is really the Taino word for sea turtles.

Christianity in the Sudan

Giovanni Vantini's Christianity in the Sudan is a dated work which, by and large, is mainly about Christian Nubia. Heavily based on the corpus of "Oriental" sources (plus some European ones) Vantini published, much of the text is like reading that compilation with some narrative commentary. It was a refresher for certain points in the history of medieval Nubia that we have forgotten about, but without any deeper investigation of the source materials, rather limited. Fortunately, advances by archaeologists and studies of Old Nubian and other textual sources has shed more light on the nature of the Nubian political system, economic structure, and religion. For instance, Dotawo is now more widely accepted as being the same state as Makuria. Sadly, Alwa, in Upper Nubia, remains a mystery in Vantini's text, but that is no surprise given the year this work was published (1980). More intriguingly for those interested in the later centuries of medieval Nubia, one can find here useful Western sources on Nubia and some important references to the Vatican's attempts to replant the Christian seed in Nubia. Some of this correspondence even touches upon the Kwararafa south of Borno, confusingly believed by some Europeans in Tripoli to have been Christians. Last, but certainly not least, some European sources also alluding to the survival of Christianity in pockets of Nubia as late as the 1740s suggest fruitful areas of research for scholars interested in Christian traces in Nubian culture. Some observations noted here on possible areas of Christian Nubian influence in Kordofan and Darfur also suggest medieval Nubian kingdoms really did exert some degree of influence to the west of the Nile...Indeed, the place name in the Dilling area mentioned in the famous Tabaqat may be further evidence of this.

Jimmy...

Classic from Disco Dancer.

India del agua

 

In the Dominican form of Vodou, Indian spirits are often associated with water. We found this number, "India del agua" by Conjunto Batey, to be particularly beautiful and charming.

The Northern Factor in Ashanti History

Ivor Wilks wrote an intriguing monograph several decades ago, The Northern Factor in Ashanti History. Due to our similar interest in the "northern factor" in Yoruba history (and, to a lesser extent, Dahomey and Borgu history), we found it imperative to actually read it. Wilks presents what may be a sometimes exaggerated role of Islam in 18th century and early 19th century Asante, but it does seem quite likely that trade routes to the North through Begho and later centers was of paramount importance. Like the Oyo Yoruba state, the Asante state appears to have tapped into both Atlantic and broader Sudanic/trans-Saharan trade routes. 

Unlike Oyo, the Ashanti did not require large amounts of imported horses for cavalry units. Nonetheless, the gold and kola nuts of Ghana were highly valuable commodities that brought traders from both the Western and Central Sudan into the region. Through control of or taxation of trade routes used by these northern traders, the Asante state could derive great revenues as well as import cloth and other goods not available from the trade with Europeans on the coast. Aspects of this history is revealed by written sources from Gonja and the north. European accounts plus other sources similarly shed light on the importance of these northern ties that linked this part of Ghana with the Middle Niger, the Sahara, and Hausaland. 

West African Muslims from far afield, in addition to Muslims from areas to the north conquered by Asante, were also a valued community for their literacy, the esteem in which their religion was held, and their economic importance. Whether or not Dupuis's "sketch" of Asante history as revealed to him by manuscripts and conversations with notable Muslims in Kumasi is very reliable for how the Asante themselves saw their history, it is nonetheless important to recall that the Asante rulers sponsored a history, or chronicle,  written by Muslims. The attempt by Wilks to reproduce the accounts given to Dupuis reveals just how problematic this source material can be, though it does reveal how one could and should endeavor to utilize Arabic and European sources (plus oral traditions) to make sense of the history of the Asante. 

23andme African Matches

Our Haitian relative's African matches are quite similar to their results on Ancestry DNA. One conspicuous difference is that she now has fewer (obvious) Yoruba matches. She also had fewer Upper Guinean matches, the only example here being someone with a Fulani surname (common in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Gambia) who she shares 0.17% of her DNA (she also matches another Fulani with 0.12% shared DNA). That person's results were 53.6% Senegambian & Guinean, 29.6% Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone and 7.6% Nigeria, so we cannot say with greater certainty where exactly in West Africa they hail from. The few matches from Central Africa (Congo) were also consistent with her matching patterns on the other site, too. Intriguingly, there were a few "exotic" matches, including one with a North African or Egyptian who harbored significant sub-Saharan African ancestry (including 12.5% Nigerian). The other match was with a half-white Kenyan Kikuyu, but we did not include them in the results since the match could be due to shared European ancestry. For similar reasons, a half-Yoruba British person was excluded, since the shared DNA could also be partly due to European ancestry.

What was a surprise to see here was matches with people from Calabar and other parts of southern Nigeria outside majority Igbo areas. Nonetheless, they were mainly clustered in southeastern Nigeria, which seems to match the Ancestry Composition report identifying Igbo as a "Very Close" genetic group (including various Nigerian ethnic groups, however).  As for the one obvious Yoruba match, it was with someone bearing a Muslim name. We suspect one of the unspecified Nigerian matches was also Yoruba. As for her Ghanaian match, it was with someone likely hailing from the Ga-Adangme group. The Congolese matches were with people whose exact ethnic background we could not determine based on surnames alone. 

As one might expect for a Haitian looking at distant genetic matches with modern African individuals, the amount of shared DNA is usually low. Surprisingly, the closest match was with someone at 0.54% shared DNA, with roots in Akwa Ibom, Nigeria. It does seem rather likely that captives imported into Saint Domingue's southern coast (many likely smuggled by the British) included a large number from the Bight of Biafra and today's southeastern Nigeria.