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The Atlantic Creoles

The beginning of the Creole Culture in the new World

 

is a term used to describe early slaves during the European colonization of the Americas ( The Name Atlanta denoted the area of origin or the Atlanta Coast) .

These slaves had cultural roots in Africa, Europe and sometimes the Caribbean. They were of mixed race, at first mostly with a European father and African mother. Some lived and worked in Europe or the Caribbean before coming (or being transported) to North America. Examples included John Punch and Emanuel Driggus (possibly derived from Rodriguez).

There was an emergence in the Chesapeake Bay region in the 17th century of what historian Ira Berlin (1998) called "Atlantic Creoles". He identified such people arising first on the west coast of Africa and of mixed parentage, born where European and African peoples came together - at trading ports, for instance. They grew up in multilingual environments and often worked as go-betweens for Africans and Europeans, or sailors, merchants and traders. Later some traveled to the Caribbean, North America, or Europe.

Atlantic creoles were among the charter generation in the Chesapeake Colony. Through the first 50 years of settlement, lines were fluid between black and white workers; often both were indentured servants, and slaves were less set apart than they were later. Many relationships grew between white women and black men.

The new generation of creoles were the children of freed slaves and indentured servants of European, West African, and Native American ancestry (and not just North American, but also Caribbean, Central and South American Indian: see Forbes (1993)) who were born in the colonies. When the mothers were white, as was often the case, the children were considered free. These families with white mothers and African or African American fathers were the origins of most of the free people of color during the colonial period.

Some of these "Atlantic Creoles" were culturally what today might be called "Latino", bearing names such as Chavez, Rodriguez, and Francisco. Many of them intermarried with their English neighbors, adopted English surnames, became property owners and farmers, and owned slaves. The families became well-established, with numerous descendants by the time of the American Revolution.

Source Wikipedia.com

 

The Atlantic Creole Origins Established in 1492 by the Portuguese, Elmina , in West Africa a trading post with a population of between 15000 and 20,000 was the largest of some three dozen outpost in the region. The People both long term residents and Foreigners soon begin to mix geographically and genetically .. European men took wives among the African and before long children were born of these unions. Elmina sprouted a substantial array of Euro/Africans mostly of Portuguese and African Descent..These Men and Women of mixed birth , Whos swarthy skin, European demeaner gave them an insiders knowledge of both African and European Culture but were denied acceptance into either Culture.. These People of Mixed Race ancestory were equally sneered by both African and European alike..When they adopted African ways and African dress Europeans declared them outcast. .When they adopted European ways, wore European clothes and crucifixes, employed European names and comported themselves in the manner of White Men Africans denied them the right to hold land and inherit property..(Tangosmaos commonly called by the Portuguese)..Non the less both African and Eurpoeans alike both conceded that these Creoles were shrewed traders with a mastery of intercultural negotiations and found advantage in dealing with them Atlantic Creoles were not the only product of the coming together of the African and European Race..People of West african descent could be found along the entire Atlantic Coast.. By the mid 16th centuary the number of Creoles swelled as the the slave trade prospered and by the mid 16th centuary over 10,000 Black People resided in Lisbon Potrugal alone, where they composed ten percent of the cities population.Seville Spain had a Mulatto and Black population of over 6000.As centers of Iberian slave trade these cities distributes slaves throughout Europe Hernando De Soto Multi Racial Moors accompanied De Soto on his Discoveries in the New World .. .Click on photo to enlarge You can see the Multi Racial moor on the very top left hand corner ..Some of these slaves escaped bondage and took there place among the atlantic Creoles..As Europeans expanded there reach across the Atlantic, Creole People of African Descent migfrated with them., some willing some not.. .Men of Color drawn from Creole Communities of Europe accompanied Columbus to the Americas , Cortes, De Soto, and Pizarro and marched with Balboa ..Whever they went the Atlantic Creoles extended the use of the destinctive language of the Atlantic Creole and planted their institutions of the Creole Community .. With the settlement of the Americas the Creole Community begun to appear on the Western side of the Atlantic..To be sure the Creole Communities of Bridge town, Cap Francais, Havana, Mexico City and San Salvadfor differed from those of Elmina and Seville , as almost all people of color in the New World were slaves but they shared many of the same characteristics of their counterparts in the Old World..., exhibiting the same cosmopolitian qualities.. They too were intimate with the Language of the Atlantic areas and understood something of it's Religion,Trading conventions and judicial systems..By the middle of the 17th Centuary they too began to take their place as cultural brokers on the Western side of the atlantic,The New World Source good Related Links Creole Chronology The Moors   Black Conquistadors

 

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Well documented from 16th Centuary text

Creole: Version A

Garcilaso de la Vega, "The Inca," writing in the early 1600's, tells us: "The name was invented by the Negroes... They use it to mean a Negro born in the Indies, and they devised it to distiguish those who come from this side and were born in Guinea from those born in the New World....

The Spanish copied them by introducing this word to describe those born in the New World, and in this way both Spaniards and Guinea Negroes are called criollo if they were born in the NewWorld."

Recent scholarship has determined that this Spanish adoption of black usage dates from the 1560's, before which time the "word creole applied.... exclusively to Negroes."

Later practice in the Spanish empire seems to have been variable, with most South American creoles eventually fixing on purity of white blood as a mark of their kind, while in other areas, particularly the Caribbean islands, the distinction continued to apply to all those indigenous to the religious regardless of race."

Garcilaso de la Vega Royal Commentaries of the Incas (2 vols.; Austin, 1966)

 

The Unknown Creole Lady	Adah Isaacs Menken,

 

	Now! Thats a Creole

Creole: Version B

The term Creole (Spanish -- Criollo) was introduced in 1590. It derived from the Latin word “crear”, which meant, “create.” In 1590, Father J. de Acosta decided that the mixed breeds born in the New World were neither Spanish, African, Indian, but various mixtures of all three, thus a created race.

So he identified them as "Criollos"

At that time, and for approximately 250 years afterwards, the word Creole, for the most part, only signified that a person was born in the new World. And it did not refer to color or race. For a time, in the Catholic colonies the term Mulatto was predominate because there were no white women to produce unmixed white offsprings.

Eventually, the Creole identity made its way to Jamaica as testified by Rev. James Ramsey in 1788. Ramsey wrote, “In every case within my knowledge, the farther back the Negro could trace his Creolism, the more he valued himself, the more he was valued.”

Also, it was reported by J.A. Rogers that some time during the eighteenth century, blacks from South America began to apply the term Creole to their children born in America, in order to distinguish them from slaves freshly imported from Africa. And like the term Mulatto, the term Creole evolved through succeeding generations and became a term for racial identity.

Too White to be Black Too Black to be White

Creole Chronology ©1994 (Permission granted) by Gilbert E. Martin

More on the definition of a Creole..You decide

1. A person of European descent born in the West Indies or Spanish America.

2. 1. A person descended from or culturally related to the original French settlers of the southern United States, especially Louisiana.
   2. The French dialect spoken by these people.

3. A person descended from or culturally related to the Spanish and Portuguese settlers of the Gulf States.

4. often creole A person of mixed Black and European ancestry who speaks a creolized language, especially one based on French or Spanish.

5. A Black slave born in the Americas as opposed to one brought from Africa.

6. creole A creolized language.

7. Haitian Creole.

 

19th Century Creole	Dr. Roudanez

 

Mulatto

The term Mulatto originally applied to a person whose parents were of distinctively different races.

In this work Indians are considered as being different from Caucasians and Africans. Thousands of the New World mixed breeds were of African-Indian extractions. The Mulattoes in the West Indies extended the term beyond the first generation of half breeds by applying the term to their own offsprings.

Consequently, as the term was extended from generation to generation, it applied to any person of mixed ancestry. And by the open and continued use of the term in the latter sense, a Mulatto race evolved on Hispaniola,

the Mulatto race grew into a separate nation. And resulting from the Haitian revolution, which began in August of 1791, Haiti’s Mulatto nation, in conjunction with its counterparts from Martinique and Guadeloupe, bolstered and fortified the Creole nation already developed in Louisiana.

Occasionally, other Mulatto types from Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Jamaica became parts of the melting pot; the only real melting pot the United States ever had.

Rosa Parks	American Mulatto

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