Atlantic Creoles is a term used to describe people of predominately Congolese and Angolan heritage in Africa, the Americas, and Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries who also had ancestral or cultural ties to Europe. Some of these people, from mixed race cosmopolitan communities in West African trading centers, were transported from Africa as the 'Charter Generation' of enslaved people during the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Historians have noted that their exposure to different cultures gave them expert abilities in trading, negotiating and interpreting; and many who arrived in their new homelands as enslaved people managed to win their freedom. Examples of Atlantic Creoles in Colonial America included Anthony Johnson, John Punch and Emanuel Driggus (his surname was possibly derived from Rodriguez). The original Atlantic Creoles of Colonial America eventually assimilated into Black, White, Native and Creole communities in the United States. In Latin America and the Caribbean, they influenced the development of the diverse cultures thereIra Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998 Pbk, p.39"Individual Stories- Individual Heroes" , Slavery and the Making of America, WNET, accessed 30 September 2011 Atlantic Creoles and their descendants are known to be multilingual, often speaking the national languages of the countries and creole languages that formed from the fusion of African, European, and Indigenous American languages.
History
Starting in the 15th century, Europeans, mainly the Portuguese, began to settle in regions of Africa such as Nigeria and Angola. Soon an early Atlantic Creole culture began to form with cultural diffusion and admixing occurring. Some of these individuals would travel with Europeans in the exploration, colonization and settlement of the Americas in the late 15th century and early 16th century such as Juan Garrido and Juan Valiente. Later, when more European populations began to establish themselves in Africa and the trans-atlantic slave trade ramped up, genetic, cultural and political admixing took place. In the multicultural trading ports of 16th century West Africa, the Atlantic Creoles were frequently outcasts in both African and European cultures, but they were admired for their abilities to navigate between the two worlds, earning them reputations as expert traders and negotiators. Though their intercultural abilities allowed them to succeed in the changing West African societies, they could also be enslaved when they fell out of official favor or into debt or criminal activity while others were the children of African elites who were sent to Europe to study. These original indentured and enslaved Creoles that experienced forced settlement in the Americas were joined by captive Africans that continued to admix genetically and culturally up to the 19th century which expanded and grew Atlantic Creole culture. With later migrations Atlantic Creole culture can be found throughout the Americas and the world, as Jane Landers notes, the Atlantic Creoles were "merchants, enslavers, linguists, sailors, artisans, musicians, and military figures" who "interacted with a wide variety of European and Amerindian groups and helped shape a new Atlantic world system."
Atlantic Creoles in the United States
The historian Ira Berlin writes that Atlantic Creoles were among what he called the 'Charter Generation' in the Chesapeake Colonies, up until the end of the seventeenth century. Through the first century of settlement, lines were fluid between black and white workers as the color coded caste system didn't solidify until later; they often both worked off passage as indentured servants, and any captives were less set apart than they were later. The working class lived together, and many white women and black men developed relationships. Some of these White Europeans were also captives forced to the colonies as the practice of forcing convicts to the US colonies from Britain was also going on. Many of the new generation of Creoles born in the colonies were the children of European indentured servants and bonded or captive workers of primarily West African ancestry. Amerindian, and Malagasy admixture also occurred up through the 19th Century.
According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, incorporated into colonial law in 1662, children born in the colony took the status of the mother; when the mothers were enslaved, the children were born into bondage, regardless of paternity, whether or not their fathers were free or enslaved. This was a change from common law tradition, which had asserted that children took the status of the father. Paul Heinegg and other twentieth-century researchers have found that 80% of the free people of color in the Upper South in colonial times were born to white mothers (thus gaining freedom) and African or Creole fathers.Paul Heinegg Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware (2005), accessed 15 Feb 2008 Some male captive Creoles and Africans were freed in the early years as well, but free mothers were the predominant source of most of the free families of color.Taunya Lovell Banks, "Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit – Subjecthood and Racialized Identity in Seventeenth Century Colonial Virginia", 41 Akron Law Review 799 (2008), Digital Commons Law, University of Maryland Law School, accessed 21 Apr 2009
According to Berlin, most of the original admixed Atlantic Creoles were descended from Portuguese and Spanish fathers, primarily in the trading ports of West Africa; they had Iberian surnames such as Chavez, Rodriguez, and Francisco. In later generations, they sometimes modified them, resulting in surnames such as Driggers, Chavis, and Chavers. In the Chesapeake Bay Colony, many of the Atlantic Creoles intermarried with their European neighbors, adopted Anglo-Saxon surnames, became property owners and farmers, and captured others in turn. The families became well-established, with numerous free descendants by the time of the American Revolution.
In 2007, Linda Heywood and John Thornton used "newly available data from the DuBois Institute and Cambridge University Press on the trade and transportation of enslaved people" in their new work on the relation of Central Africans to the Atlantic Creoles. They found strong support for Berlin's thesis that the Charter Generations of enslaved Creoles, before 1660, came primarily from West Central Africa.Gayle K. Brunelle, "Central West Africans in Diaspora", History-Net, July 2011, accessed 30 September 2011
They also noted that in the Kingdom of Kongo (northern present-day Angola), the leaders adopted Catholicism in the late 15th century due to Portuguese influence. This led to widespread conversion of the people. They formed a type of African-Catholic spirituality unique to the region, and the people frequently adopted Portuguese names in baptism. The kingdoms were Christian for nearly 400 years and many of their people were taken as captives by the Portuguese.John Thornton and Linda Heywood, "A Forgotten African Catholic Kingdom" , The Root, 12 August 2011, accessed 30 September 2011 The historians argue that numerous people from Kongo were transported to the North American colonies as captives, especially to South Carolina and Louisiana. Kongolese Catholics led the Stono Rebellion in 1739. Thornton and Heywood estimate that about one in five Creoles are descended from Kongolese ancestors.
Brunelle says that the enslaved Kongolese, rather than the small admixed communities around European trading posts, were the source of most early Atlantic Creoles with Iberian surnames in North America. Many were Christian, were admixed and multi-lingual, and familiar with some aspects of European culture. The Dutch colonies in New York were also populated by numerous enslaved Atlantic Creoles from the Kingdom of Kongo.
Regional and ethnic variations Tidewater Virginia and Maryland
The first Africans in Virginia were from parts of Angola that were settled by the Portuguese since the late 15th century. Many were multilingual and baptized. This creolization is attributed as the possible reason why some were able to gain freedom in colonial Virginia and Maryland. Some of these Creoles were Emmanuel Driggus, Sebastian Cane, John Francisco, and John Graweere.
Another such person was Anthony Johnson who sailed to Virginia in 1621 aboard the James. The Virginia Muster (census) of 1624 lists his name as "Antonio not given," recorded as "a Negro" in the "notes" column.Breen 1980, p. 8. Historians have some dispute as to whether this was the Antonio later known as Anthony Johnson, as the census lists several "Antonios." This one is considered the most likely.
Johnson was sold as an indentured servant to a white planter named Bennet to work on his Virginia tobacco farm. (Enslavement laws were not passed until 1661 in Virginia; prior to that date, Africans were not officially considered to be captives).pbs.org Indentured Servants In The U.S. Such workers typically worked under a limited indenture contract for four to seven years to pay off their passage, room, board, lodging, and freedom dues. In the early colonial years, most Africans in the Thirteen Colonies were held under such contracts of limited indentured servitude. With the exception of those indentured for life, they were released after a contracted period. Those who managed to survive their period of indenture would receive land and equipment after their contracts expired or were bought out.Horton (2002), p. 26 Scholar Adam Kulikoff suggests that the period between 1650 and 1690 was when Black people assimilated to white society in Tidewater Virginia and Maryland. He concludes the rise in the Black population during this period resulted in repression by White people, noting several racial laws were passed in Virginia between 1660 and 1686. Philip D. Morgan speculates that by the 1780s, most slaves in the Piedmont were Tidewater Creoles born in Virginia.
Gullah region
Historically, the Gullah region extended from the Cape Fear area on North Carolina's coast south to the vicinity of Jacksonville on Florida's coast. The Gullah people and their language are also called Geechee, which may be derived from the name of the Ogeechee River near Savannah, Georgia. Gullah is a term that was originally used to designate the creole dialect of English spoken by Gullah and Geechee people. Over time, its speakers have used this term to formally refer to their creole language and distinctive ethnic identity as a people. The Georgia communities are distinguished by identifying as either "Freshwater Geechee" or "Saltwater Geechee", depending on whether they live on the mainland or the Sea Islands.
Because of a period of relative isolation from whites while working on large plantations in rural areas, the Africans, enslaved from a variety of Central and West African ethnic groups, developed a creole culture that has preserved much of their African linguistic and cultural heritage from various peoples; in addition, they absorbed new influences from the region.
Melungeons
As the Color lines continued to evolve groups of free Creoles and White Europeans began to travel together forming small tribes or clans that didn't fit with the various White, Creole and Black African populations.