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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity in "Portuguese" Accounts on "Guinea of Cape Verde" (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries)

Author(s): José da Silva Horta

Source: History in Africa , 2000, Vol. 27 (2000), pp. 99-130

Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3172109

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/3172109

EVIDENCE FOR A LUSO-AFRICAN IDENTITY IN "PORTUGUESE" ACCOUNTS ON "GUINEA OF CAPE VERDE" (SIXTEENTH-SEVENTEENTH

CENTURIES)'

Jost DA SILVA HORTA UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA

[

Portugal and Western Africa have built a common history since the middle of the fifteenth century. In this century the Portuguese mari- time expansion was a pioneer movement within the European expan- sion process. It established an uninterrupted connection between soci- eties that had never met before. After a short period of Portuguese warlike activities (1436-48), the African resistance to enslavement, in- ter alia, forced a radical change of strategy. By 1460 the Portuguese had explored the western African coast as far as the present Sierra Leone, and had begun to establish with African societies a fairly peaceful relationship founded on mutual trade interests. Within this context, Christianity, although it might be faced in a different way by each culture, constituted a common "language," a path to find ap- proaching ground and fulfil reciprocal needs.

From the beginning, the Portuguese Crown attempted to establish

I am indebted to Eduardo Costa Dias and Peter Mark for their extensive discussions of

the manuscript. I owe a special mention to Stephan Biihnen who thoroughly com- mented on the paper and gave a number of suggestions, which significantly improved the final version. I am particularly grateful to Paul Hair for all his valuable criticism and comments on the text. Maria de Sousa carefully revised the English and, in the pro- cess, contributed to its final presentation and title. None of the foregoing is responsible for errors and omissions the paper may have. The mission to the Gambia and Senegal and the research which made this paper possible were for the most part supported by the Centre of Portuguese Expression Literature of Lisbon University (CLEPUL), and also by the Board of Directors and History Department of the Lisbon University Fac- ulty of Letters. 'First presented as a paper delivered to the Fourth International Conference on Mande Studies (13-17 June 1998) Serrekunda, the Gambia. The paper is part of the work for a doctoral thesis about the discourse and representation of African societies on the Portu- guese texts related to "Guinea of Cape Verde" (late sixteenth and seventeenth centu- ries).

History in Africa 27 (2000), 99-130.

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100 Josd da Silva Horta

a monopoly on the European coastal and riverine activities, an at- tempt that was progressively challenged, in loco, by the French, the English and the Dutch, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centu- ries. But the State interests were also challenged by illegal private traders that came both from the Iberian Peninsula and Santiago Is: land and had their own agents in Guinea.

The geographical basis for trade activities (legal and illegal) were, at least until the 1560s, the Cape Verde islands, which were discov- ered ca. 1460-1462. Trade-together with the strategic value of the archipelago to the Atlantic navigation-was the reason why the colo- nization of the main island, Santiago, began very early, in 1462, fol- lowed, at the end of the century, by Fogo island. The Cape Verde Is- lands, and perhaps firstly Santiago, got their name from the relative proximity (some three hundred miles) to the coast section where the Cape Verde (the present Cap Vert) was perceived as the most con- spicuous geographical feature. The Guinea of Cape Verde, the con- temporary expression that will be discussed later in this text, was, in general, the coast which was connected with the archipelago eco- nomically as well as in administrative, political, legal, and religious terms.

Santiago Island, currently named "Ilha do Cabo Verde" (Cape Verde Island) or simply "o Cabo Verde" (Cape Verde) was the first location of a Portuguese trading-station ("feitoria") of the Senegambia and Upper Guinea Coast, where ships in transit to or from Guinea were ordered to make a call, according to a royal char- ter of 1472.2 Later on this situation was changed, the position held by Santiago being surpassed by Cacheu (in present Guin&-Bissau) and by direct trade routes to and from the Guinea Coast.'

Santiago inhabitants or those who had the status of "moradores" (dwellers) had some kind of trading exclusivity on the "Guinea" coast granted by Afonso V since 1466, in order to promote the coloniza- tion. But the "Guinea" coast of the 1466 charter had the widest

meaning of "Guinea" in contemporary official documents, which in- cluded all the Saharan coast and the section of sub-Saharan coast al-

ready discovered by the Portuguese, with one very important excep- tion: the trade of the Portuguese feitoria of Arguim. In practical terms, this meant for Cabo Verdeans the coast south of the Senegal river as their north "limit." Within the very important trade restric- tions introduced by the Royal charter of 1472, I shall only refer the

2Maria Manuel Ferraz Torrnio, "Actividade comercial externa ide Cabo Verde: organizal;io, funcionamento, evolqt5io," Hist6ria Geral de Cabo Verde ed. Maria Emilia Madeira Santos and Luis de Albuquerque (henceforth HGCV) (2 vols.: Lisbon, 1991-95),1:239 et passimn. 'M. M. F. Torrio, "Rotas comerciais, ageitcs econ6micos, rncios de pagamento," HGCV 2:17 et passim.

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 101

one which relates to the south "limit." From that time onwards, the legal Cabo Verdean trade ended at the north of "Serra Leoa."4

The continuing flow of African slaves brought to the island from the frontier coast made Santiago's colony viable. Very soon Santiago became a creole society, as described by Teixeira da Mota, with a large majority of slaves-for instance, in 1582 there were 1,708 "moradores" and 11,700 slaves-and a high degree of miscegena- tion.' Free "mulattos," many of them with trading interests on the Guinean Coast, rose socially and the island became, culturally, a Luso-African cultural mixture. Although in a different political con- text, outside Portuguese sovereignty, a similar process was taking place along the coast and the rivers of the Guinea of Cape Verde with the "lanqados" and "tangomaos:" Portuguese and Cabo Verdean who lived illegally in the Guinea coast with their Luso-African descendants.

What then does Luso-African mean? This paper reviews the evi- dence in favor of considering it a question of "ethnic identity" in the Senegambia and along Upper Guinea Coast of the sixteenth and sev- enteenth centuries. This was first suggested by Jean Boulegue, George Brooks, and Paul Hair.' In discussing the material culture of that group, Peter Mark distinguishes a Luso-African "ethnic group" among other African ethnic groups, considering it as a constructed identity.7 Recently, Mark was able to follow the evolution of Luso-Af- rican identity, examining its linguistic, religious, material and physical aspects, as far as the early nineteenth century.m

'About the evolution of Santiago's trade prerogatives and limits, see Torrao, "Actividade comercial," 237-45. 'A. Teixeira da Mota, Dois escritores quinhentistas de Cabo Verde. Andrd Alvares de Almnada e Andre Dornelas (Luanda, 1970), 26; idem., Sonme Aspects of Portuguese Colonisation and Sea Trade in West Africa in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Bloomington, 1978), 7. 'ean Boulegue, Les Luso-Africains de Sndgamnbie , XVIe-XIXe siacles (Lisbon, 1989); George Brooks, Perspectives on Luso-African commerce and settlement in the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau region, 16th-19th centuries (Boston, 1980); idem., "Historical Per- spectives on the Guinea-Bissau Region, Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries" in Carlos Lopes, ed., Mansas, escravos, grumetes e gentio. Cachen na encruzilhada de civilizar6es (Bissau, 1987), 25-54; idein., "Cacheu: a Papel and Luso-African Entrep6t at the Nexus of the Biafada-Sapi and Banyun-Bak Trade networks," Mansas, 173-97; idem., Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society and Trade in Western Africa, 1000-1630 (Boulder, 1993); P. E. H. Hair, "Hamlet in an Afro-Portuguese Setting: New Perspec- tives on Sierra Leone in 1607," HA 5(1978), 21-42. 'Peter Mark, "Constructing Identity: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Architecture in the Gambia-Geba Region and the Articulation of Luso-African Ethnicity," HA, 22 (1995), 307-327 and "'Portuguese' Architecture and Luso-African Identity in Senegambia and Guinea, 1730-1890," HA, 23 (1996), 179-96. Quite unintentionally (though understandably), the title was inspired by Peter Mark's 1996 paper. The in- verted commas I have used on "Portuguese" do not necessarily have the same meaning as in Mark's title.

"Peter Mark, "The Evolution of 'Portuguese' Identity: Luso-Africans on the Upper Guinea Coast from the Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century," JAH 40 (1999), 173-91.

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102 losd da Silva Horta

The evidence of a Luso-African identity was reached in part from the study of sixteenth and seventeenth century texts written by Cabo Verdean officers and traders. The omissions, i.e., "silences," of these

sources on the lanqados and tangomaos contrast with other European accounts, including accounts of clergymen, mainly Jesuits, and office- holders from Portugal. This contrast led me to approach the problem of the cultural identities of those "Cabo Verdean writers" within the

very complex social and cultural nuances that seem to have existed between two groups: the Portuguese who just came from Portugal generally to do business (and/or to hold a position) in Santiago island and in the Guinea coast, i.e. tile "Rein6is" (having the attributes of the place they came from, in this case "o Reino," the metropole); and

the Africans with no links with thile Portuguese or with the Afro-Por- tuguese traders and communities.

It is not the purpose of this paper to study every aspect of Luso-Af- rican identity., Some central aspects remain unresolved historical is- sues. Within the recent literature there is sometimes a shifting mean- ing of "Luso-African." On the one hand, there is a specific meaning: the Luso-African as a restricted category of Afro-Portuguese, descen- dants of Portuguese lanqados and tangomaos (frequently the latter categories are used equivalently in Portuguese written texts, some- times not) living in the "Guinea" coast."' They have evolved to an "ethnic group," defined by a number of items (religion, language, professional specialization, and material culture), which distinguishes them from other Portuguese and Cabo Verde islanders trading on the coast. On the other hand, the term Luso-African has also been ap- plied to all Afro-Portuguese descendants, whether they were born in "Guinea" or in the Cabo Verde Islands. This shifting use is sometimes confusing since, for instance, a Cabo Verdean is not necessarily a "Other aspects have been covered by the scholars quoted above and, among others, by Avelino Teixeira da Mota, "Contactos culturais Luso-Africanos na "Guine do Cabo Verde," Boletim da Sociedade de de Geografia de Lisboa 69(1951), 659-67 (this and other papers make Teixeira da Mota the pioneer of Luso-African studies on Guinea); Antr6io

Carreira, Cabo Verde. formaqio e extiniio de umna sociedade escravocrata (1460.1878) (Bissau, 1972), chapter 2; M. E. Madeira Santos, "Os primeiros 'lanyados' na costa da Guin: aventureiros e comerciantes" in Luis de Albuquerque, ed., Portugal no Mundo

(6 vols.: Lisbon, 1989), 2: 25-36; idem., "Langados na costa da ;Guinc: aventureiros e comnerciantes," Mansas, 67-78; M. M. F. Torro, ,"Actividade comercial," esp. 249- 255; Philip J. Havik, "Women and Trade in the Guinea Bissatu Region: The Role of Af- rican and Luso-African Women in Trade Networks from the Early 16th to the Mid 19th Century," Studia 52(1994), 83-120; idem., "Comerciantes e conculbinas: s6cios estratigicos no comnrcio Atlaintico na costa da GuinE" in A Dimensfio Atldntica da Af- rica. (Sio Paulo, 1997), 165-68; Maria da Graqa Nolasco da Silva, "Subsiolios para o estudo dos 'lanmados' naa Guin," Boletim Cultural da Guind Portugnesa, 25(1970), 25- 40, 217-32, 399-422, 513-62. "'For a discussion on the origin and the meaning of the two words see Hair, "An Ethnolinguistic Inventory of the Upper Guinea Coast before 1700," African Language Review 6(1967), 54; Carreira, Cabo Verde, 47-73; Boulkgue, Luso-Africains , 11-14; Brooks, "Historical Perspectives," 35-36.

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 103

Luso-African in the sense of being a "mulatto" Luso-descendant, and he might be a black man or even a white man (Cabo Verde-born Por- tuguese).

It is therefore necessary to pay attention to the complex set of problems posed by ethnic identity, which could lead, schematically, to the following situations:"

a] Portuguese (arrived originally from Portugal), both legal trader and/or (illegal) lanqado (the distinguishing line sometimes being difficult to clear);

b] Cabo Verde-born Portuguese, Cabo Verde-born Luso-Africans, Cabo Verde-born Africans, all the former being Cabo Verdeans, whether they had become lanqados, living illegally on the coast, or trading visitors, legal or illegal; there is a growing tendency to dis- solve these legal/illegal distinctions in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries;

c] African-born Luso-Africans; d] Africans tout court, though within the former there were groups

which identified themselves as "Portuguese."

It has already been remarked and it deserves to be stressed here again that Luso-African ethnic identity is not necessarily determined by the color of the skin. "Lusitanity" is far from being defined in "ra- cial" or geographical terms: it is mainly a question of culture, which only partially overlaps with the former terms.'2 Ultimately, one is Luso-African if one identifies one as such and is accepted as such. In some of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources, this could be represented by the use of apparently clear significants such as "Portu- guese," "Christian," or "white man" ("branco" in Portuguese, in- cluding black men, "Negros")."' Identity has great fluidity and can be changed, within certain limits, according to the circumstances." "Grumetes" continually shifted their identity. The term "grumete" is a Portuguese word for cabin boy or apprentice seaman who were sea- men from the maritime groups of Senegambia and the Upper Guinea Coast hired by the Portuguese and Luso-Africans traders. They were indispensable in guiding the latter into the rivers and along the coast, and also to build and repair ships, and to serve as traders."s Within

"I am generally following the categories that can be found or infered from George Brooks' papers on langados and Luso-Africans. "2Stephan Biihnen, personal communication. "Teixeira da Mota, "Contactos," 663-64. "Brooks, "Historical Perspectives," 45-46; Mark, "Constructing Identity," 317; idem., "'Portuguese' Architecture," 190. "'On grumetes see Teixeira da Mota, "Contactos," 663; Guind Portuguesa (2 vols.: Lisbon, 1954) 2:23-25; Brooks, Landlords, 136, 194-95 et passim. For the identifica-

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104 Josd da Silva Horta

certain social contexts it might be preferable for a grumete to present himself as African, within others it might be preferable to present himself as a member of the Luso-African community, as "Portu- guese."

The meaning of these ethnic categories and their names (ethnonyms) can be examined in Portuguese texts and obviously de- pends on the classification system in use by a certain author. There- fore, the actual cultural identity of the author himself is relevant to the understanding of the Luso-African one.

Luso-African or Afro-Portuguese can also be used in the sense that someone has a Luso-African cultural background or inheritance and belongs to a Luso-African culture or, widely, a Luso-African world ("milieu Luso-African"), even if not having any African blood in his veins.'6 In fact, despite all the nuances and changing "ethnic" distinc- tions of the time, we have not only a Luso-African world but, more specifically, a Cape Verdean-Luso-African world, in which one could be (or could be seen) as an insider or an outsider.

This world is well represented in a number of accounts written in Portuguese in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including the early accounts of Valentim Fernandes (Description, ca. 1507) and Duarte Pacheco Pereira (Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, ca. 1505-1508), and particularly the Brief Treatise on the Rivers [or Kingdoms] of the

Guind do Cabo Verde (ca. 1594) of Andre Alvares de Almada and the untitled description or memorial of Andr6 Donelha(ca. 1615)."7

The accounts of Valentim Fernandes and Duarte Pacheco Pereira

represent the first great synthesis of the new geographical knowledge of Africa collected since the mid-fifteenth century, published in a time when there was already a general knowledge of the African Atlantic coast.

tion of grumetes as "Christians" see also Teixeira da Mota, "Contactos," 663; and Havik, "Comerciantes," 165-68; Havik, "Missionmirios e moradores na costa da Guine: os padres da Companhia de Jesus C os tangomnios Portugueses' no principio do siculo XVII," Studia 56, forthcoming. '6Hair, "Hamlet," 27; Brooks, Landlords, 143; idem., "Cachcu," 185; Bouligue, Luso- Africains, 17.

"Valentim Fernandes, "A descripiam de Ceuta por sua costa de Mauritania e Ethiopia pellos nomes modernos prosseguindo as vezes alguas cousas do sartio da terra firme" in CWdice Valentim Fernandes, ed. Jose Pereira da Costa (Lisbon, 1997):1-115. This new edition corrects numerous errors of the earlier one, on which the French transla- tion of 1951 was based; Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo De Situ Orbis, ed. Joaquini Barradas de Carvalho (Lisbon, 1991); Andri Alvares de Almada, Tratado Breve dos Rios de Guind do Cabo Verde, ed. A. Brisio (1.ishon, 1964). See also, Brief Treatise on the Rivers of Guinea, text first org. by T. da Mota together with incomplete annota- tion, ed., English translation, introduction, and notes otn chapters 13-19, by P. E. H. Hair, notes on chaps. 1-6 by Jean Boulegue (Liverpool, 1984); Andre Donelha,

DescriCeio da Serra leoa e dos Rios (de Guind do Cabo Verde (1625), ed. A. Teixcira da Mota, English trans. and notes by P. E. H. Hair (L.isbon, 1977).

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 105

Fernandes, a Renaissance man, was originally from Moravia (in the present Chec Republic). From ca. 1493/95 to his death ca. 1518 he lived in Portugal, where he acculturated himself. He was one of the introducers of printing in Portugal. Fernandes compiled and became the author of several works containing descriptions of overseas re-

gions where Portuguese were present during the time of Jo,o II and Manuel. He is best known for a long and very important description of African coastal regions from Ceuta (in Morocco) to Cape Mount (in present Liberia).

Pacheco Pereira, who had explored the African coast on Jogo II's service, attained fame as a soldier in India, and, thirteen years after having written the Estneraldo, became Captain and Governor of Sao Jorge da Mina. His book, dedicated to Manuel and making an eulogy of the king's power in Africa, is simultaneously a cosmography, a ma- rine guide, an ethno-geographical description, and a chronicle. Fernandes' and Pereira's texts have survived in manuscript form in their time, as did the later writings of Almada and Donelha. Both had collected part of their data among local informants in oral and writ- ten accounts, from either Portuguese, Cabo Verdeans, or Africans.'" In contrast to Pacheco Pereira, Fernandes had no direct African expe- rience. Yet the thoroughness of his description of African reality matches, if not exceeds, that of Pacheco Pereira. Fernandes was only to be surpassed by Almada and Donelha.

Almada and Donelha were Cape Verdean writers and were deeply involved in trading activities on the "Guinea" coast in the late six- teenth century.'1 Much more is known about Almada's origins and life than about Donelha's2". The son of a mulatto ("parda") mother

'5For a wider perception of the Portuguese presence in Guinea until the middle of the seventeenth century and the texts reflecting it, see Hair, "Discovery and Discoveries: The Portuguese in Guinea, 1444-1650," Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 69(1992), 11-28.

About the Portuguese texts on Gtuinea of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century see Jose da Silva Horta, "A representagio do Africano na literatura de viagens, do Senegal a Serra Leoa (1453-1508)," Mare Libermn 2 (1991), 209-339, esp. 213-20; and cover- ing in a systematic way the sources up to the mid-sixteenth century, see Hair, "The Early Sources on Guinea," HA 21(1994), 87-126. ~"Teixcira da Mota, Dois escritores , 22. '"A great part of what we know about Almada and Donelha is in Teixeira do Mota, Dois escritores, and in his introduction to his edition of Donelha. Hair summarized Teixeira da Mota's data about Alinada in the introduction to his English translation of the Brief Treatise. Some comments mainly about Almada by Ilidio Cabral Baleno, "Press6es externas. Reacqoes ao corso e a pirataria," HGCV, 2:160-61, 176-78. and by M. E. Madeira Santos and Maria Joao Soares "Igreja, missionaCqio e sociedade," ibid., 435, help to give a context to their activities and attitudes. The documents about Almada were published or referred to by Christiano Josi de Senna Barcellos, Subsidios para a Histdria de Cabo Verde e Guiine (Lisbon, 1899), 175-77, 190 and, more thor- oughly, by Ant6nio Brfisio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana. Africa Ocidental, 2nd ser. (henceforth MMA) 3:428-30; 5:472-77. See a systematic summary of the essential data about Almada and his family by Iva Cabral, HGCV, 2:515.

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106 Josd da Silva Horta

(grandson of a black woman) and a white father, Almada was born into one of the most important families of Santiago. He traded for many years on the Guinea coast, with several voyages between the 1570s and 1590s, like Donelha, and approximately in the same pe- riod. As captain of a company he had rendered outstanding military services to the Portuguese Crown in the defense of Santiago island. For these services he received in 1599 the habit of the military Order of Christ from king Philip III (actually conferred ca. 1603). Although the knights of the Order were also granted a pension to assure the maintenance of their status, it was mainly an important honorific dis- tinction. It would give Almada the kind of social prestige and accep- tance he wanted to have, even within the "white" society of Lisbon, where he went in the 1580s, representing Cabo Verdean interests, and where he may have written his account.

Almada was a "mulatto," and it was rare for "mulattos" to be granted the habit of Christ.' To be a member, the "purity" of the blood had to be proved, and in the case of the "gentile"'2 (which in- cluded black blood) royal dispensation was needed to surpass the condition. This is clear evidence of the growing process of Africanization on Santiago, a process that extended to the social elite of the island." Almada's profile helps perhaps to understand why, in his treatise, he supports on the one hand the Crown and general Por- tuguese positions and, at the same time, defends a colonization project by Cabo Verde traders.24 Andre Donelha, his contemporary, was to do the same in his memorial: support a Cabo Verdean settle- ment in "Serra Leoa." The request for this settlement had been made by Almada in Lisbon, but was not granted."2 This was a region where

"'Opinion, personally communicated, by Fernanda Olival (tvora University) based on her work on the Order of Christ to the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries. I wish to ex- press here my gratitude for all the data she made available for this paper, concerning the men linked in some way with the Order of Christ. In the lists of Cabo Verde archi- pelago officials until 1562, compiled by Angela Domingues and Iva Cabral (HGCV, 1:431-46), no habit of Christ is mentioned. According to the long list of "vizinhos" of the Ribeira Grande (compiled by Iva Cabral, HGCV, 2:515-45, which covers the period until ca. 1650), Almada was the first mulatto to receive the habit of Christ.

"'In the Iberian cultural context since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, all the "infidels" who were neither Jews, nor Muslims were generally considered Gentiles. Hence, most Africans would be integrated in this anthropological category. See FranCois de Medeiros, judaisme, Islam et Gentilitd dans /I'wvre de Raymond Luile (PhD., Universirtt Mfinchen, 1976), 170-77; Horta, "A imagein do Africano pelos portugueses antes dos contactos," in O Confront do do Olbar. 0 encontro dos pouos na dpoca das Navegacdes portuguesas. Sdculos XV e XVI. Portugal, Africa, Amdrica (Lisbon, 1991), 43-70; idem., and "Represenra;.io," 258-59. 231va Cabral, "Ribeira Grande: vida urbana, gente, mercancia, estagnaqilo," HGCV, 2:270-72. In 1647 Almhnada held a post in the Santiago city council, ibid., 515. 24It is well to remember that he also was "procurador" of metropolitan traders' interests. 1'M.E. Madeira Samtos, As estratdgicas ilhas de Cabo Verde ou a "fresca Serra Leoa":

una escolba para pam a politica de expanszo portuguesa no Atlaftico (Lisbon, 1988).

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 107

the Cabo Verdean traders were forbidden to trade, de jure, but where, de facto, they traded widely.

After Valentim Fernandes's Description and Duarte Pacheco Pereira's Esmeraldo, Almada's Brief Treatise represents a turning point. He depicts the new Luso-African synthesis on Guinea coastal societies, reflecting the Luso-African cultural stock. According to Edgar Morin, a cultural stock is knowledge that can only be appro- priated by the members/agents of a culture that hold that culture's code.'" The code necessarily included the ability to speak Portuguese, Creole, or any practical vocabulary that enabled the user to prosper and/or survive in the region. It included also shared categories and so- cial values, and the trading know-how that respected the rules of rela- tionship with African societies."

The relation of the Cabo Verde archipelago with Western Africa- what Brooks defined as an economic, social, and cultural nexus-is part of that cultural stock, and led to a specific mode of perception of Senegambia and the Upper Guinea Coast, as expressed by the con- temporary concept of "Guine do Cabo Verde."zn This concept is rel- evant as a category of perception of the African space in a Luso-Afri- can perspective. This concept is also valuable in understanding the genesis and continuity of the text production in that part of "Guinea" during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries.

As already pointed out, the area of Senegambia and Upper Guinea Coast regions, from north of the present Senegal to Sierra Leone, was variously named in Portuguese texts "Guine do Cabo Verde," "Rios de Guine do Cabo Verde," or simply "Cabo Verde." This label, which was common in texts since the end of the sixteenth century and per- sisted at least to the end of the seventeenth century, may have ap- peared for the first time in the beginning of the sixteenth century, or even in the last quarter of the fifteenth century.

An early indication of the category of "Guinea of Cabo Verde" seems to have appeared in a small text of Valentim Fernandes. This text was not the Description, for which he is best known, but it was written some years earlier, in 1502, in a small and forgotten section of the first travel collection to be printed in Europe of which he was the editor. The collection became known as Marco Paulo. The section

was based on a unknown book produced at the end of the fifteenth

U'Edgar Morin, "De la culturanalyse i la politique culturelle," Communications 14 (1969), 7. 27For instance, the respect for the basic landlord/stranger pattern, as depicted by Brooks, Landlords. "Ibid., 143.

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108 Josd da Silva Horta

century (in Jodo I's time) and was intended to depict the provinces that belonged to the royal title of Manoel.12 The title included "Senhor de Guind" and-since 1499 (the date of the return of Vasco da Gama from his first voyage to India)-[Senhor] da Conquista, e da Navegaiio e Comercio de Eti6pia, Aribia, Pdrsia e da India").

The reference to Guinea is made within the provinces of Ethiopia and within the Manueline imperial ideology that is striking in the text. Fernandes wrote of "a vossa Guind," which means "your Guinea," that is, the king's. In general, as I have noted above,Guinea included in a wide meaning all the Atlantic Africa, beginning on the Saharan coast (where the Portuguese had traded since the middle of the fifteenth century). But the Guinea Valentim Fernandes was writ- ing about was the land of the Ethiopians or Blacks and the sections in which it was divided:"'

"About Ethyopias how many they are and how far they go. .. Ethyopia is a common term for many provinces, of which the first be- gins in your Guinee, at Cabo Verde(Cape Verde). Following the coast as far as the Red Sea strait, all these provinces are in the Scriptures called Ethyopia . However each one has [also] another name, for Ptolemy calls your Guynee Ethiopia austral (South Ethiopia). In this Ethiopia do Cabo verde (Cape Verde Ethiopia), as far as River Casamanse all [men] are circumcised .. ."31

Valentim Fernandes wrote either "this Ethiopia from Cabo Verde as far as River Casamanse . . . " or "this Ethiopia of Cabo Verde as far as the River Casamanse." Why should he begin in the "Cabo Verde" (the present Cap Vert on Dakar peninsula) and not north- wards in the Senegal river? Because even then the trade northwards was unimportant? At that time that does not seem to be the case: the French incursions into the area had not yet the power which would later expel the Portuguese trade from the Senegal river. Decades later

2'This section was forgotten in its Africanist interest; see text and commentary in Jose da Silva Horta, "La perception du Mand6 et de I'identit6 mandingue dans les textes europiens, 1453-1508," HA 23 (1996), 81. The book, which basically translated into Portuguese the oriental travel accounts of Marco Polo, Nicol6 di Conti, and Geronimo da Santo Stefano, had a recent second addition: Marco Paulo: o Livro de Marco Paulo: o Livro de Nicolau Veneto: Carta de Jeronimo de santo Estevam. ed. F M. Esteves Pereira (according to the edition of Valentim Fernandes, Lisbon, 1502), Lisbon, 1922). "'Not translated in Horta, "Perception." Here I am only registering the original punc- tuation.

""Das Ethyopias quantas som e atee onde se estendem. Etbyopia he huu comiu vocabulo de muytas prouincias, das quaes a primeira se comneqa em a vossa Guinee, no Cabo Verde, seguindo a costa do mar atee o estreyto do Mar roxo, todas estas prouincias se chamam Ethyopia em a escriptura, porem cada hua destas tern algun outro sobrenome. Ca ho Ptolomeo chama a vossa Guynee Ethiopia austral. Em esta Ethiopia do Cabo verde ae a o ryo de Casamansa som todos fanados...," Fernandes, Marco Paulo, fol. A iiij'.

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Euidence for a Luso-African Identity 109

(in 1565 and ca. 1600) there were still projects of exploring or even conquering the river region."' In a contemporary text of Fernandes, Duarte Pacheco Pereira's Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, it is clearly stated, using the same Ptolomaic terminology, that "South Ethiopia" ("Infe- rior ou Eti6pia Baixa oucidental [Western Lower Ethiopia] or Guinea") began at the Senegal River."

It is known that later Portuguese-Cabo Verdean descriptions about the region begin upwards on the Senegal river, although other ones, like Francisco de Andrade's official report (1582), and the Francisco de Lemos Coelho's descriptions (1669 and 1684), start at the Cape Verde.34 Both derive from a period when the Portuguese navigation and trade that they wanted to describe to their readers were restricted to the section south of the cape. Nevertheless, in his 1684 account Lemos Coelho feels the need to justify why he did not begin it in the Senegal river."3 It is possible that with time, as the perception of Afri- can space becomes mainly a commercial one, this real trade frontier would stress a different expressiveness of the concept of "Guini do Cabo Verde," as Guinea from the Cape Verde to the south.

Very probably in Fernandes's piece, "Cabo Verde" is not the cape itself, but the region associated with it, as represented by the use of the expression "Ethiopia do Cabo Verde." An almost decisive argu- ment in favor of this interpretation is the way this passage was under- stood by Rodrigo Santaella in his Cosmographia breve introdutoria en el libro de Marco Paulo , written in 1503, one year after Fernandes's piece. The Castilian clergyman wrote:

".i. . ethyopia is a common word to many provinces peopled with Blacks. And beginning with the westernmost part the first is guinea which is said cabo verde and following the sea shore as far as the Red Sea strait all those provinces are called Ethiopias. And those from this Ethiopia de guinea as far as Casa Mansa are from Mohammed sect ...'3

32Teixeira da Mota, Some Aspects, 17; idem., "Un document nouveau pour I'histoire

des Peuls au S6n0gal pendant les XV,ne et XVl.me sikcles," Boletinm Cultural da Guind Portuguesa 24(1969), 783-84. "Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo, 1/27, 605.

"Francisco de Andrade, "Relaqio," MMA, 3:97-107; Francisco de Lemos Coelho, Duas descrii:des seiscentistas da Guind, ed. Damniao Peres (Lisbon, 1990). Coelho was one of the "Portugais du XVIIe, mi-marchands mi-marins, sillonnant sans reliche par les rios [of Guinea]," Nize Izabel de Moraes, "La Petite C6te d'apris Francisco de Lemos Coelho (XVIIe siccle)," BIFAN 35B(1973), 240. 3'Lemos Coelho, "Discrip;,io da Costa de Guine e SituaCfio de todos os Porros e Rios della, e Roteyro para se Poderem Navegar todos seus Rios...1684" in Duas descri46es, 95.

6". . . ethiopia es nombre comun a muchas prouincias pobladas de negros. E comengando a la parte mas occidental la primera es guinea que dizen cabo verde e siguiendo la costa dela mar fasta el estrecho del mar bermejo todas aquellas prouincias se lHaman ethiopias. E los desta Ethiopia de guinea fasta casa mansa son dela seta de

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110 Josd da Silva Horta

There are two complementary later passages, which epitomize similar quotations. They both are from the writings of the Jesuit Baltasar Barreira. The first one, in the beginning of a well-known document about slavery written in 1606, reads:

What in general terms can be said about the Blacks who in this Guing, called Cabouerde, are sold and purchased ...3.

The second one, comes from the famous description of the Cabo Verde islands and the Guinea coast, dated from the same year:

What thing is it this Cabouerde, concerning the Islands, and the dry land ...

And, when he begins the description of the Guinea coast, he portrays a Cabo Verdean point of view by saying:

This part of Africa the Portuguese properly call Guin6 begins at the Rio ?enaga and continues along the coast until Cabo Ledo or Serra

Lyoa .. .38

Two additional examples in favor of the argument included two of the most relevant "Guinea" descriptions of the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century: the already quoted Andre Alvares de Almada's Brief Treatise of the Rivers of Guinea, and Andre Donelha's description. The following key expres-

sion can be found in those texts: "our Guinea" ("nosso Guine")..9 What did they mean by that? "Guinea of the Portuguese or Portugal- Portuguese Crown" in general, or "Guinea of Cabo Verde island, Santiago, and of Cabo Verdeans"?

"Whose" Guinea is Almada writing about? It is of course the Guinea of the Portuguese. He is a patriot, he wants to support politi- cal and religious interests of the Portuguese Crown. But "his" Guinea

mabhomad . . ." Rodrigo Santaella, Cosmiographia breve introdutoria en el libro de Marco Paulo, Sevilha, Juan Varela, 1518, f. I Aiiv, the text abbreviations are solved. I am quoting the second edition by way of the exemplar in the Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon, as I could not consult the British Museum excmplar of 1503. To Santaella ref- erences see A. A. Banha de Andrade, Mundos Novos do Mundo: Panoramna da difusio, pela Europa, de noticias dos Descobrimentos Geogrificos I'ortugueses (2 vols.: Lisbon, 1972), 1:365-66. 37"O0 que em geral se pode diser por parte dos ncegros que nese ct Guin, chamado Cabouerde, se uendcm e compram .. ." MMA, IV, 190. 38. . . que cousa hd este Caboucrde, quanto As Ilhas, e quanto i terra firmc ..."; "Esta

parte de Africa que os Portugueses propriamente chama6 Guini come;a no Rio C(enag6i e corre pella costa td o Cabo Ledo oa Serra Lyoa . . ." MMA 4:159, 162. 3"Almada, Tratado, v.g. 25, 77; Donelha, DescripCto, v.g. f.l, 84/85.

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 111

is simultaneously that of Cabo Verde, mainly the island of Santiago. Its interests do not always fit the Crown's strategy for the region and his "contratadores "-private merchants from the Iberian Peninsula, who rented trading sections of the coast.4" The greater evidence of that are the omissions, from his account-as in that of Donelha- about illegal, but very common, trading activities on the Upper Guinea coast. Brooks noticed that the accounts are very weak and in- complete, even deceptive, regarding the region south of Cabo da Verga and Rio Nunez (in present Guin&e-Conakry), "the silence" on the kola trade being perhaps the most striking example. This trade was only revealed by missionaries and later writers by the soldier Francisco Pires de Carvalho and Lemos Coelho, in a different context of the region, facing different political and economical circum- stances."4

Cabo da Verga (and the near Nunez river) was the beginning of the "Serra Leoa" region, the one theoretically forbidden to Cabo Verdean traders without royal permission.4 By their silence, both Almada and Donelha are practicing solidarity with the interests of their fellow Cabo Verdeans, participants in the wealthy business of kola trade among other illegal trade in the "Serra Leoa" region. Even the fiery Almada, when relating "lanqados" damages-because of their alli- ances with European rivals of the Portuguese, and consequent dam- ages to the Crown and Cabo Verdean traders-betrays that solidar- ity.4.3

Nevertheless, the official help of the crown, mainly military and religious, through the religious orders such as the Jesuits was sought and welcomed by Almada.44 This happened, perhaps, not only be- cause of his genuine patriotism and Christian spirit, but also because that presence could help the trading interests of the Cabo Verdeans within the Luso-African world against situations of personal insecu- rity.

This kind of duality or, rather, versatility, which is part of the shift- ing identity of Almada and Donelha according to the circumstances, is present in the very concept of "Guin6 do Cabo Verde."'4 It is

4"On this subject see M. M. F Torrio, "Rotas."

4See Brooks, Kola Trade and State Building: Upper Guinea Coast and Senegambia., 15th-17th centuries (Boston, 1980), 9-15; idem., "Cacheu," 192-94. About Francisco Pires de Carvalho and his account, see Guy Thilmans and N. I. Moraecs, "Le Routier de la c6te de Guinie de Francisco Pirez de Carvalho (1635)," BIFAN 32B(1970), 343-69.

4-For the different and changing meanings of "Serra Leoa" see Hair, "The Spelling and Connotation of the Toponym 'Sierra Leone' Since 1461," Sierra Leone Studies 18 (1966), 43-58. "4Almada, Tratado, 22-31. "Ibid., 75. "See M. E. Madeira Santos, "Igreja e sociedade em Cabo Verde nos seculos XVI- XVII," Lecture given in the Academia Portuguesa da Hist6ria (to be published in the Academy Anais ), which deals with the biological and cultural mintissage of the Cabo-

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112 Josd da Silva Horta

present in the ambiguous meaning of the expression-Guinea near the cape or Guinea of the islands. It is also present in the section of western Africa that the concept is supposed to depict or that Cabo Verdeans attributed to themselves. Perhaps Teixeira da Mota was the first historian to notice the ambiguity both of the concept (name given by the proximity of the Cape Verde, or by the strong relation- ship of the region with Cape Verde's Santiago) and of the space with an uncertain south limit, streched from the Senegal River to the Serra Leoa, starting on Cabo da Verga."4

Furthermore, sometimes "Serra Leoa" is integrated-as, implicitly, in Almada's treatise title-and other times it is excluded in an explicit way in official documents or views on "Guinean" trade (as in Fran- cisco Andrade's report), corroborating the Portuguese crown's pro- hibitive laws. There seem to be indications of a turning point, at least in the Santiago official view, some years after the composition of Donelha's description. In a 1634 document, in the handwriting of the Governor and Captain-General of Cabo Verde, it is stated that "the district of Guinea extends from the Senegal River to the whole of Si- erra Leone."47 Significantly, reference to a Donella (probably our Donelha) as one of the experts on the subject is made on the document's margin as proof of that statement." This begs the ques- tion of to what extent the accounts of Almada and Donelba were able

to influence Cabo Verdean policy. The kind of double identity that allows Almada and Donelha to

sustain Portuguese official positions on the Guinea trade and, at the same time, to belong to the Luso-African world is also manifest in the ways of expressing identity in their accounts. One example is the use of the personal pronoun "os nossos," which means "our men" (and the corresponding adjective and possessive pronoun), when dealing

Verdian clergy-defined not as a syncretism, but as an interpenetration within which the clerics partook in two cultures (European and African)-suggested to me the socio- cultural approach of these Cabo-Verdian writers representing a case of cultural duality. 4'Teixeira da Mota, "Origem da casa indigena rectangular no litoral da "Guini do C:abo Verde," Boletinm Cultural da Guind Portuguesa 7(1952), 157; idemn., "Introduc- tion" in Donelha, Descri4io, 54/55. In previous papers he hesitated both as regards the north and the south limits, understandably I would say. See from Teixeira da Mota: "Contactos," 659-60; idem., "Import^ncia dos antigos documentos gcogrficos portugueses para o estudo etnol6gico das populari'es oestc-africanas," in II Confer&ncia Internacional dos Africanistas Ocidentais Actas (4 vols.: Lisbon, 1952), 4:396; idemi., "O Centro de Estudos da Guine I'ortuguesa. Hist6ria e perspectivas," Boletim Cultural da Guine' Portuguesa 10(1955), 654, 656. 47"Distrito" or administrative region, a concept which tends to substitute the idea of "limit" (of the island's intervention on the coast). On this change see Zelinda Cohen, "Administraqio das ilhas de Cabo Verde e seu distrito no segundo seculo de

colonizaio (1560-1640)," HGCV, 2:191-206. I"See the document quotation and commentary in Tcixeira da Mota, "Introduction ," in Donelha, DescriCio, 18/19.

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 113

with trading activities of Africans, "lanqados" and "tangomaos" and European rivals. The same applies to proper nouns like "Portuguese," "os Brancos," "os Negros," or "os inimigos." These categories and the relations between them-that is, the identity classification system in use-is complex and ambiguous in both writers. At present I have not yet reached an overview of this topic. I am, however, advancing a brief, and necessarily fragmentary, interpretation, treating it as no more than a hypothesis.

Donelha follows a binary scheme whites/blacks, including in the former category the "lanqados" or "tangomios," or Portuguese (whether they are Christian or Jews)/French/Jalofos ("Wolof")/ Mandingas, etc.49 Within the Portuguese he occasionally distinguishes between those from "this island" (Santiago) and those from Portugal ("do Reino," the Rein6is), a distinction that never clearly occurs in Almada.s" But when he puts the verbs in the first person plural ("we trade"), it is impossible to make that distinction, which becomes ob- vious only when he refers to "our limit [of Cabo Verde islands].",'

Donelha assumes his proximity with "tangomaos," with whom he learned some useful vocabulary, and with whom he traveled along the Guinea rivers, and with African "Christians," some of them he names as his friends." One of the details we know of Donelha's life (all given by his own account) is that he had in Santiago a "schoolfellow at the school where children learn to read and write"-a son of a Temne beca (a refugee from the Mane invasion, living with other Temne in a separate town in Sdo Domingos-near a town of "tangomaos"), who sent him to the island. Years later, this Temne friend went so far as to invite Donelha to take ship and join him in Serra Leoa, where he was to return with royal status (Donelha just says he did not get permis- sion to take up the invitation).-1 Another friend, a former Manding slave in Santiago, whose Christian name was Gaspar Vaz, is an excel- lent example of a "grumete," shifting his Muslim identity to a Chris- tian one, showing the material signs of his former faith, when facing a Christian like Donelha, to whom he would need to render services. Through Gaspar Vaz, Donelha was accepted as a spectator in a judi- cial court among Muslim Manding, in the end being received by the dignitary (a sandeguil, the "duque" of Casio in the tangomao termi- nology), who had conducted the court among his bixirins (marabouts). Donelha also had a long talk with a bixirim, etc."

"Ibid., Descri(Co, v.g. 98/99, 102/03, 108/09, 110/11, 128/29. '"Ibid., 134/35 "Ibid., 138/39.

S-Ibid., v.g. 146/47-148/49, 162/63. S3lbid., 108/09-110/11 , 130/31, 166/67. S4Ibid., 160/61.

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114 Josd da Silva Horta

All the above are merely examples of the way Donelha moves com- fortably along the coast and rivers, appearing to assimilate quite naturally into the Luso-African networks. They also are indications that he is probably a Cabo Verdean-born Luso-African, "mulatto," as Almada."A Almada reveals, however, some nuances in his use of the' nouns and pronouns, already mentioned. On the one hand, when re- ferring to the coast and rivers of the Senegambia section, there are "Portuguese" who are allies of "the enemies," French and English, though qualified as "os nossos" to distinguish them from the Africans ("os Negros")." On the other hand, concerning the Upper Guinea Coast, where the Cabo Verde-lanqado network had other facilities, the former sharp distinction is lost: in general terms, the langados are portrayed less aggressively, considered as recoverable, "os nossos" brancos/"os Negros," representing the main binary relationship, as in Donelha's description.17 Notwithstanding, these categories of Portu- guese or white are not as clear as one might think. They have very broad meanings, as did the lanqados and tangomaos and, implicitly their families participating families in trade are included in the same group with which both authors identify themselves. Certainly in Almada's case, at least in a binary logic of trading partners, one can only belong to the "white" side, "ours," or to the black counter- part."

We are now able to return to the question posed earlier, about "who" was Guinea. The answer is dual, but I would say that in Donelha's case we have a more exclusive Cabo Verdean answer than in Almada's."Y Be that as it may, the "Guinea of Cabo Verde" concept implies a representation of power: an European or Euro-African power projected onto the African regions. In what way was Guinea considered to "belong" to the Portuguese and (or) the Cabo Verde is- landers? To clarify this problem and that of the Portuguese-Cabo Verdean relationship with African societies, we have to move back- wards again to Fernandes' piece in Marco Paulo. In what way did Guinea "belong" then to the king of Portugal? What was the nature of the power emanating from that association?

At this stage it is necessary to consider once more the question of the representation of power. West African spaces, at least since the

"I am grateful to Maria Joao Soares, researcher of the Centro de Estudos de Hist6ria e Cartografia Antiga (Instituto de Investigaqo Cientifica Tropical, Lisbon), with whom I have discussed some of these evidence for a possible mulatto origin of Donelha. SAAlmada, Tratado, v.g. 2, 10, 23. 7"Ibid., 60, 68, 71, 73, 75, etc.. SSIbid., v.g. 102-03, 115. "His strong patriotism and Portuguese sclf-identifying representation leads hiin, some- times, to a wider Portuguese perspective of "our" interests, as when beyond "our Guinea," he also writes, for instance, "our India" ibid., 109.

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 115

early sixteenth century, were individually perceived in their politic di- mension, as well as linguistic and religious. Nevertheless, African spaces were, above all, perceived within wider political spaces that only made sense to outsiders, as spaces where European expansion and authority, in reality or in fiction, was projected. "Guinea" had a political meaning to the Portuguese crown, among other spaces which were part of a representation of overseas imperial power.

Within this perspective, the work of Duarte Pacheco Pereira helps us to answer the above question. Mentioning the power of the Manoel over the "Ethiopia of Guinea" (in Fernandes' sense), he states that the king had only the commerce of that region."' That is the rea- son why his description of Africa emphasizes the trade with Africans as belonging to the king and intentionally omits the rivers where the Portuguese, at least officially, had no commerce with the autochtho- nOIS.6 1

Fernandes' description of the sovereignty of the Mandemansa (the "emperor" of Mali) is of considerable interest: a great lord, very rich, who receives taxes ("pirias") from his vassals, taxes which were the supreme symbol of imperial power. In an almost official discourse, as was Fernandes' piece of 1502, it means the acknowledgment of the political supremacy of Mali over West Africa and of the purely com- mercial dimension of Portuguese presence in that region. A "mythi- cal" dimension, since the Portuguese crown, or even the Portuguese and Luso-Africans, had never been masters of the western African trade.

In my view, this image persists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although in a new social, economic and cultural context, and once again expressed within the concept of "Guinea of Cabo Verde." In this context, there is a passage of Almada's account, very well known to specialists in Mande/Mali history, which deserves to be quoted here:

The king of Casamansa rules the Banhuns because he subdued them by conquest. Yet he himself owes obedience to a Farim called Cabo, whose position is like that of an emperor, since he lives in the hinter- land; and this Farim owes obedience to another ruler who is over him. In this way, one ruler is subject to another until Mandimansa is reached, the emperor of the blacks. . .62

At this point the Oporto manuscript of the "Brief Treatise" adds and mentions that the same applies to Kasa Mansa, the other kings in

""'a quinta parte 6 Eri6pia Infirior [sic] ou Grande, da qual Vossa Alteza somente possui o comarcio"; D. P. Pereira, Esmeraldo, Book I, chap. 5, 545. ~"Horta, "Representa~iio," 290. .'Almada, Brief Treatise, 73; idem., Tratado, 70.

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116 Josd da Silva Horta

the Gambia River and the Sumbas/Mane.A. The Lisbon version con- tinues like this:

[Mandimansa] who is emperor of the blacks of our Guinea of Cape Verde, and it may be that the blacks of Congo and Angola also obey him.64

There is a similarity between this general view of the power of the Mandemansa, shared by Doneiha and the Jesuit Manuel Alvares, and the one of Fernandes in 1502 and 1507 (and earlier accounts)." The former, though in a different context of Malian history, maintained or even reinforced the same image of Mandemansa's supreme power over the Blacks, this category of Blacks being an European general identification category of Africans as a whole. This image was bor- rowed, to a certain extent, from African sources which described the Mandemansa's power as based in a pyramid of polities, as Stephan Biihnen has defined it." This chain of investitures of power would spread in an octopus fashion over the societies which were under the Mande political influence. Hence, in the late sixteenth and in the sev- enteenth centuries, the Mandimansa was still the common political reference throughout the regions of Luso-African presence, as wit- nessed by authors like Almada, Donelha and others. This was their starting point to project the powerful image of the Mandemansa throughout black Africa in general.

This political representation would be shared, at least, by the Por- tuguese, Cabo Verdeans and Luso-Africans who were in contact with Manding traders and the Mande world since the earlier contacts in Guinea. The italicized sentence in the above-quoted passage suggests that within the same region, the same Guinea, there would be a sphere of the blacks and, implicitly, a sphere of the whites. Further- more, it seems to me that in this Luso-African perception (in the wide sense), within the "Guine do Cabo Verde" the Mandemansa and his "empire" might be considered the African-that is, "black"-politi- cal rule counterpart of an economic influence of "our Portuguese" (to use an Almada's expression). In this image, there is a clear association

'1Ibid. 6'I follow here Hair's translation of the text of Almada's Tratado, which publishes the variant of the Lisbon manuscript, which I insert in the body of the text. See Brief Trea- tise, 75. The italics of the sentence are mine. "Donelha, Descrifio, mainly 118/19, 120/21. M. Alvarcs, Ethiopia Menor e Descripfdo Geograpbica da Provincia da Serra Leoa, manuscript at the Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, Res. 3, E-7, fol. 76. See as well P. E. H. Hair, ed., An Interim Translation of Manuel Alvares S. J., "Eti6pia Menor e Descripfio Geografica da Provincia da Serra Leoa" [c. 16151 (Liverpool, 1990); Horta, "Perception," 81-82. "Stephan Biihnen, "Brothers, Chiefdoms, and Empires: on Jan Jansen's 'The Represen- tation of Status in Mande'," HA 23 (1996), 113-14n8.

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 117

of the "Guin6 do Cabo Verde" with the Manding political sphere. We do not know to what extent the political and the trading spheres were seen as being shared by blacks and whites' "ours." In this general conception of the presence of whites in Western Africa, it seems that it still remains, even among such experienced men as Almada and Donelha, a certain myth of something which was aimed at, but never achieved: the safe control of the economic space where the Portu- guese, Cabo Verdean, and Luso-Africans were competing.

As in the earlier representations, Manding political supremacy over the blacks is never contested. Each, black and white, would be- long to a different level of power co-existing in the same space. But the integration of the whole of it in the "Guin6 do Cabo Verde" sug- gests it was granted to "our Guine" a very large spatial dimension. I would speculate that the "Guine do Cabo Verde," beyond its coastal frontiers (from Senegal to "Serra Leoa"), and even beyond the physi- cal limits of riverine and marigot navigation, was conceived as com- prising all "Guinean" space where there were, or, potentially could be, Portuguese, Cabo Verdean, and Luso-African economic inter- ests.f7 This, of course, also included the sphere of action of "lanqados" and "tangomaos."

In the perception of "ethnopolitical" spaces in the Portuguese eth- nographic descriptions of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the deeper hinterland frontiers which were depicted were the Fulbe's (mainly in Senegambia's "Grio Fulo") and Manding's (mainly to the Upper Guinea hinterland). In Almada's words, the Manding ("Mandingas") are those that "cingem," which means "circum- scribe" other "kingdoms" ("reinos") and "nations" ("naq6es"), i. e., ethnic groups. He even uses several times a very suggestive metaphor of frontier limits: the Manding would be like a hinterland wall, "the wall" of "Mandingas," extending "behind" or "above" several coastal nations."5

Perhaps to Luso-African agents, Manding-ruled political and eco- nomic spaces were the last hinterland frontiers, the eastern limits of a chain of commerce which began on the west coast. In this hinterland context, Manding traders (and associated political and religious dig- nitaries) were simultaneously the last partners, and the rivals who stood in their way-the first big barrier, the "wall" which could not be circumvented to penetrate the mysterious and chimerical economic networks of the eastern savannas.

"'On1 this subject see the maps of Western Africa published by Teixeira da Mota, Guind, 2: 24; Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (New York, 1980) 5, 73; and Brooks, Landlords, 17. "See Almada, Brief Treatisc, v. g. 63, 66 (Tratado, 60-61, 63).

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118 Josd da Silva Horta

III

As a category of African space representation, "Guinea of Cabo Verde" gave rise to an autonomous literary corpus, which had that specific Guinea section as target.

Valentim Fernandes' Description seems to be the first to take into account one of the boundaries of the "Guind do Cabo Verde." It is no accident that his account of ca. 1507 stopped precisely at Cape Mount, then considered the southern limit of "Serra Leoa." In ending his account, which began in Ceuta, at the south frontier of "Serra Leoa," he was certainly relying on the viewpoint of local informants, which included those of the "lanqados," some probably from Cabo Verde.'9 In this section I shall consider the dimension of the genesis and development of this literature about the "Guind do Cabo Verde" in connection with the Luso-African culture.

Following (and agreeing with) Hail; I argue that both Almada and Donelha, their contemporary Bartolomeu Andre (a former lanqado in "Serra Leoa"), and possibly Sebastiio Fernandes Caqao (a former lanqado as well, mainly in the Beafada region), among others who have written accounts on "Guinea"-are "Afro-Portuguese" as far as their "cultural background."7"

It has already been asserted that only a few Europeans who visited Guinea were literate, the great majority having not registered their ex- periences, although of course they might have transmitted them orally.7 Writing is an operation carried out by some elite members of that Afro-Portuguese society of Cabo Verde, of which Almada and Donelha are examples, and of the Afro-Portuguese Guinean milieu, as Sebastio Fernandes Caio and Bartolomeu Andre. The latter were Portuguese, at least in the Jesuits' words, that had lived illegally for many years in the Guinea coast.

Concerning Sebastiio Fernandes' origins, his cognomen Caqio (also written Cassio and Casio) may be a name he was given among Luso-Africans, a local nickname ("nome da terra"), perhaps derived from Caqo or Casio (Cassan), an important port in the Gambia

river, or simply a Portugues name derived from a fish name (cafilo, dogfish). He was, most probably, a New Christian but, given the record of military services he rendered to the Crown (capturing an English ship in "Serra Leoa"), his Jewish origin was not an obstacle to receive the prestigious habit of Christ (ca. 1593).72 As already

"6Brooks, Landlords, 323. 7"Hair, "Hamlet," 27. 7'Brooks, Landlords, 324-25. 72Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisbon), Chancelaria da Ordem de Cristo, L" 10, fl. 135-pension chart ("carrta de tenga"), Lisbon, 20.3.1598, Sebastilo Fernandes is mentioned as "morador no Caho Verde," which does not necessarily mean he was a

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 119

noted, this habit was the ultimate proof of the legitimation process of the trading activities of the former locally-influential lanqados like him (for the Biafada region) and Bartolomeu Andre (for the Sierra Leone region). Nevertheless, both belonged to the Luso-African world and it is this condition that, ultimately, constituted their politi- cal value in the shifting crown and Jesuit perspectives.

The writings of these few men were addressed in one way or the other to those who did not belong to the world of "Guinea of Cabo Verde." The latter were not "priticos das coisas de Guin6" to use the Portuguese vocabulary from that time, meaning "not having practice or not being experts on Guinean things." They needed, at least at first, before they learned the local language and customs, to gain ac- cess to that knowledge about African societies which had become of strategic value." It is this specific capital of knowledge-based on their African experience or on the local traders informants they dealt with-that secular writers like Almada and Donelha, and Lemos Coelho justify and value their own accounts74.

The vocabulary which could be learned in the coastal and riverine Luso-African milieu deserves attention: Donelha's account, for in- stance, suggests that a number of words, both in Portuguese (like "duque") and in local languages, equivalent to African societies digni- taries (e.g., "sandeguil"Isatigui ?) could be learned among the Portu- guese who lived in Guinea." In addressing the Governor of Cabo Verde, newly arrived at Santiago, Donelha had to initiate him in the current code in both the islands and coast, which was a fundamental feature of Luso-African knowhow (a good example is the very mean-

Santiago resident, but only that he had the privileges of a "morador" or simply that he lived in the Guinea coast (doc. of 1607 in Brdsio, MMA, 4:295: "reside na Costa de Guin6"); the pension chart mentions the capture of an English caravel, which had ar- rived to the Sierra Leone peninsula port (baptized by the Portuguese "porto do Salva- dor"), the killing of some English, and the arrest of two Portuguese of the same caravel, who were taken by Sebastiio Fernandes to the Ribeira Grande prison in Santiago. The award ("merce) of the habit was granted by the king in 1593. In an earlier document ("Carta d'abito [habit chart] a Sebastiio Fernandez," 23.1.1598, Ibid., fl. 347-47') the king refers to him as "cavaleiro fidalgo de minha casa" (knight of my house) and men- tions the papal dispensation of his "blood purity" to receive the habit. The need of a dispensation by the pope is a strong evidence of his New Christian origins (or eventu-

ally "Moorish" ones). The career of Sebastiao Fernandes Cac;o in the Guinea Coast can be followed in the documents published by Brdsio, MMA, 4-5, passim. "See Orlando Gama, "Do Senegal i Serra Leoa (1580-1656). Espaqo e Estrategia, Poder e Discurso" (M.A., Universidade de Lisboa, 1997), forthcoming. '4Almada, Tratado, 2-3 (pr6logo); Donelha, Descrifdo, f.1; Lemos Coelho, "Descri;Io da Costa da Guine desde o Cabo Verde athe Serra leoa com Todas Ilhas e Rios que os Brancos Navegam ... 1669,";" idem., "Discripfioo. .. 1684" in Duas descrif6es, 3-4, 91-95. ? '"Donelha, Descriito, 148149. On this meaning of "sandeguil" as a political title (satigui or silatigui ), see Teixeira da Mota, ed. Donelha, 301n25S.

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120 Josd da Silva Horta

ing of "tangomao," a Luso-African word he feels he must give).7, Without this orientation he would not make himself understood.

This kind of bridge to the outside, or to the outsiders, seems to have begun very early. Perhaps the first signs of it are the accounts of Duarte Pacheco Pereira and Valentim Fernandes. One can wonder

who their informants were? Could they have been men who lived or had lived (e.g., the case of Alvaro Velho do Barreiro in Fernandes' ac- count)-whether in a legal or illegal situation (as langados)-or used to travel in a very regular basis to the coast? Who were the infor- mants of Joo de Barros, for the accurate description of Senegambia? Were not they the same kind of men?"

After decades of cumulative Luso-African relationships and oral ethnographical knowledge, we arrive at the end of the sixteenth cen- tury to find in Almada's account the first written synthesis of a di- mension that largely surpasses Fernandes' Description. And we have it because there was a need for it. Of course written information in

the form of official reports or informal ones, generally limited in length, came regularly to the metropole, to the seats of power to Lisbon or Madrid. But the real ethnological knowledge of Guinea must have developed and circulated by word of mouth. It was surely part of an oral culture about African matters, whose agents were, first

of all, Cabo Verdeans, coastal "lanqados," and Luso-Africans. Among them, this current knowledge was transmitted from one gen- eration to another: in this sense, it was a kind of tradition.71

The connection between this Luso-African oral culture and the

written accounts was made by men who had experience of years in the field. The majority of them belonged to the "Guinea of Cabo Verde" world, whether they were Portuguese or Cabo Verdeans. The Jesuits' letters and accounts, at least in a first phase, relied extensively on their oral information and their own written accounts.

"Donelha, Descriido, 108/09. "'About Barros's description of Senegambia integrated in the First Decade of his Asia, see Teixeira da Mota, "D. Jodo Bemnoim c a expediqi;o portuguesa ao Senegal em 1489," Boletim Cultural da Guind Portuguesa 26(1971), 67-72, and Suzanne Daveau, "Une ancienne technique agricole soudanaise" in 2000 ans d'bistoire africaine. Le Sol, la Parole, et I'Pcrit. Mdlanges en honimmage ir Raymond Mauny (Paris, 1981), 445-49. Daveau (ibid., 449) states that Barros transmitted "sans aucun doute I'opinion d'un informateur bon connaisseur de I'agriculture des populations du pays ouolof..." 78After having finished and presented the first version of this paper, I read a number of articles of P. E. H. Hair I had not seen before, published in the Africana Research Bul- letin (henceforth ARB ) that the author generously gave me access to. In some of them I found passages which show a perspective very similar to the one I have been trying to develop in this paper. For example, "[about the references of Bartomcu Andr6's letter to several aspects of the "Serra Leon" region ...1 they must represent the common knowl- edge and oral traditions of the Cape-Verde-Islands trading community," Hair, "Sources on Early Sierra Leone: (8) Bartolomeu Andre's letter, 1606," ARB, 6/3(1976) 39-40.

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 121

For example, in the case of "Guinea of Cabo Verde," there was not a real missionary policy until 1584, with the arrival of the first, and ephemeral, Carmelite mission." To the Jesuits in Atlantic Africa, the Kongo-Angola region was the first priority until the early seven- teenth century, not Cape Verde-Guinea. Thus one of the first really significant accounts that was written on the region was composed in 1585 by the intermediate of a Jesuit, Father Fernio Rebelo, profiting from the oral account (from 1578) of the former Captain-Governor of Cabo Verde, Ant6nio Velho Tinoco, who was the first in his post to travel to the Guinea Coast."'This account, which was sent to the higher dignitaries of the Jesuit order, proved to be a very important contribution to the genesis of the Jesuit mission. It contained consid- erable knowledge about local conditions which was vital to take a de- cision about the mission.

Seemingly, Almada's Brief Treatise circulated among the Jesuits and a synopsis of it was integrated in the Jesuit Guerreiro's printed collection of records of Jesuit missionary activity." The integration of the printed synopsis of the former within this Jesuit work gave it a wide European diffusion, its ethnographic information, influencing, not only the Jesuit texts, but "almost all the writings on West Africa between 1605 and 1800.'"n2 Note, for instance, that Barreira's 1606 account borrows Almada's list of ethnonyms, and even retains the way Almada perceived ethnic boundaries, with the concept of "cingir."a

"See Henrique Pinto Rema, O. F. M., Histdria das mniss6es catdlicas da Guind (Braga, 1982), 63. "'See Teixeira da Mota, "Apendice I: Ant6nio Velho Tinoco e a sua viagem a Guin6 (1574)" in Donelha, DescriiAo, 332/36. "See Hair, "Introduction," in Almada, Brief Treatise, 3-5. "Ibid., 5. The case of Barreira is emblematic: "He had only been in the mission for a period of a little over one year, and had only very limited experience of the Guinea mainland. His information came from Cape Verde Islands traders, and especially from a manuscript account of the mainland by one of these, Andr6 Alvares de Almada, part of which was to be summarized and later printed in the official Jesuit narrative of the mission." Hair, "Heretics, Slaves and Witches-as seen by Guinean Jesuits c. 1610," Journal of Religion in Africa 28(1998), 142n22. "As mere examples, other names could be presented in similar situations: Sebastiao Fernandes CaVio and Barrolomeu Andre, in letters of Barreira, Manuel Alvares and other texts in Jesuit co-authorship; Henrique Vaz de Lugo relating to the Fulbe section of the same Barreira's description, the latter being an especially interesting case: firstly, he was a Cabo Verdean, very probably Luso-African, probably born, as Almada was, in one of the powerful Santiago families (he possibly was an illegitimate son of Fernso Fiel de Lugo); secondly, he asked the king to be granted a habit of a military order (we do not know which one) but, as would frequently happen with mulattos and other pe- titioners with "blood default," he only received a post in Santiago as a reward for his services. In the words of the Conselho de Portugal, he was an "expert in Guinea things and particularly of the Fulos and Jalofos land" (apud Teixeira da Mota, "Document nouveau," 788); thirdly, these services consisted ini a mission into the Fulbe polity of

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122 Josd da Silva Horta

The Jesuits of the Guinean mission depended on the presence and mediation of those living and trading on Guinea's coast and rivers, like Bartolomeu Andr6 and Sebastiio Fernandes Caqito make it vi- able."4 In a parallel situation, Barreira himself clearly states how de- pendent he also was (as other missionaries certainly were), when writ- ing about Guinea at the request of his superior, on men' like Andre and Cagio, as well as Henrique Vaz de Lugo and Almada." Like other missionary enterprises, writing required "considerable experi- ence of the land and of the people who inhabit it."" That is why Barreira had to use the pen, "helped" by what he had seen, and by "the reports of certain trustworthy persons who have lived and trav- elled in these parts many years and know what there is to be found here."n7

Jesuit authors like Barreira and Manuel Alvares picked their way, trying to learn something of the local languages and also picking up information of their own, with impressive results, most notably Manuel Alvares in his Ethiopia Menor. If they relied on the available anthropological knowledge stock about Guinea (both in oral and written forms), they still kept their own perspectives and evaluation of the same African reality, sometimes contrasting with secular writ- ers like Almada and Donelha."X In this sense the Jesuit accounts are not Luso-African in nature.

I have been arguing that an oral culture was implicated in the early ethnological writings on Guinea. This is not only a matter of the way that knowledge on the African coast circulated. It goes deeply into the nature of that knowledge, namely the way the authors like Almada and Donelha are interested in depicting the history of Senegambia and Upper Guinea Coast polities and institutions. To some extent, they show a considerable respect for the African outlook on these

Fuuta Tooro ("Grilo-Fulo empire"), whose report we do not know, but we have an ap- proximate mirror in Barreira's description. "4Havik, "Mission'irios". As Hair has already stated: "It is true that the Jesuit mission devoted much of its energy to the conversion of African kings and their relatives, but at each point the Jesuits operated within an Afro-Portuguese presence, within a web of commercial and cultural ties centered on the Cape Verde Islands" "Hamlet," 36. On this topic see also Santos/Soares, "Igreja," 444. "For a reconstitution of the list of Barreira's informers see Teixeira da Mota, "Docu-

ment nouveau" and N. I. Moraes/Guy Thilmans, "La description de la c6te de Guinee du p&re Baltasar Barreira (1606)," BIFAN 34B(1972), 21-24, giving the general profile of each one.

"'Baltasar Barreira, "Description of the Islands of Cape Verde and Guinea, I August 1606," in P.E.H. Hair ed., Jesuits Documents on the Guinea of Cape Verde and the Cape Verde Islands, 1585-1617 (Liverpool, 1989), 13/f.l. See the original Portuguese text in MMA, 4:159. 9"Ibid.

"On the contrast between the former and Barreira see Teixeira da Mota, Dois escritores, 22-26.

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 123

matters, which they try to record. In these situations, as Jean Boulegue states, "la limite entre source &crite et source orale s'estompe.'" Or, as Beatrix Heintze puts it, the historian has to face "oral traditions as written sources." ~" The basis of this is the access

the early authors had to African oral traditions and (or) oral sources in general, both collected in Guinea and in Santiago.

Several examples of the record of oral sources are well known by African historians. I will concentrate on the passage of Donelha's ac- count about the Fulbe invasion, leaving the sahelian regions between the Senegal and Niger rivers (or even from the Massina) and which the Cabo Verdean writer follows till the Geba region (ca. 1470-80).9'

1 heard from my father, whom God keep, and from many old men, and also from many old Fulos who had come to this island from Guinea, that at the time when the island was discovered by Ant6nio de Nolle, a Genoese, at the command of the Infante Dom Henry, which was in the Year of our Lord 1460-and in the same year the Infante died-at this date [or] a few years before, a king of the Fulos, a great warrior, rose up and left his city with a great army... He entered the kingdoms of the Mandingas and, victorious, reached the great Gambia River, one hundred and forty leagues from the bar. Finding it large and deep, this Fulo king, who was called Dulo Demba, ordered the river to be blocked with a very great number of stones which the Fulos threw in. To enlarge the number of men that this king had brought together, people say that the river was blocked by each soldier throwing in one stone, but this cannot be true. What is certain is that it took many days to block it in such a way that it coUld be passed."2

The historical implications of the passage have been deeply dis- cussed by the experts."' I will only take up the comments of Teixeira da Mota and Jean Boulbgue about the nature of Donelha's sources. To the former, Donelha "entendit les details de l'invasion de la bouche de son pire, d'autres colons et de nombreux Fulas.""4 Teixeira

"'Boulague, Le Grand ]olof (XIII-XVIe sikcle) (Paris, 1987), 156 (referring to Almada and Donelha as sources for the history of the Jolof and Fuuta Tooro) . 9"Beatrix Heintze, "Written Sources, Oral Traditions and Oral Traditions as Written Sources. The Steep and Thorny Way to Early Angolan History," Paideuma, 33(1987), 263-87.

"According to Jean Boulikgue, "La Traite, I'Etat, I'Islam. Les Royaumes Wolof du XVCme au XVIIInme Siaclc" (Thhse d'etat, Universiti de Paris I-U.E.R., 1986), 215ff; Grand Jolof, 156ff. For a different interpretation of the Fulbe migrations of the fif- teenth century, see Oumar Kane, "Le Fuuta-Tooro des Satigi aux Almaami (1512- 1807)" (These d'&tat, Universit6 de Dakar, 1986), 116-67, 177-78n28. n9Donelha, Descri~io, 157/59 (the italics are mine).

".Most recently, Teixeira da Mota, "Document nouveau"; Bouligue, Grand Jolof; and Oumar Kane, Fuuta Tooro, in partial disagreement with Mota and Boulkgue. "'Teixeira da Mota, "Document nouveau," 817.

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124 Josd da Silva Horta

da Mota also considers it of note that Donelha gives correctly the year of the passing of Prince Henry (1460), a matter in which Joio de Barros-the great Portuguese historian of the sixteenth century-was mistaken, and gives the name of Antonio da Noli as the discoverer of Santiago, which is a point of controversy. For Boulegue: "Ce texte pr6sente I'inter&t assez exceptionnel de faire coincider une source orale africaine et une source orale europeenne (la seconde ref&ree A un evenement date).""'

In fact this seems not to be the only case in Donelha's account where an African historical process is related to a particular European historical event, the latter serving as a chronological reference point. In fact, there are at least two totally separate oral texts, of different themes and ethnic origins. On the one hand, the Fulbe invasion tradi- tion, to which we will return later. On the other hand, the tradition about the matrilineal descent within Wolof royalty-the parable of the leprous king-which Donelha overlapped with another tradition, related to an historical event-the conquest of the "reino de Geremeo" (Nammandiru/Ferlo) by the Buurba.'7 According to Teixeira da Mota and Bouligue, the former tradition was recorded among the Wolof by Donelha and also by Almada.9"

Boulegue argues that this tradition had to be widely diffused on the coast during the second half of the sixteenth century to be heard either by Almada and by Donelha. I wonder if the same oral tradition could have been recorded by them in a Cape Verdean transmission, as Boulegue seems to believe, stating that Donelha used "traditions orales aussi bien africaines que capverdiennes" in the brief Wolof his- torical account he gives us.99 Explicitly, Boulegue admits that this kind of transmission might possibly be applied to another theme corm- mon to both Almada and Donelha: the gifts given by the Damel to guarantee the loyalty of the powerful men ("os grandes").'H" Boulegue implicitly suggests something very important to the point being dis- cussed: that the Cabo Verdean transmission of African oral traditions

would help to explain the common information both accounts have, especially if, as Teixeira da Mota suggests, Donelha might have read a manuscript of Almada, although there are no signs of borrowed infor- mation in his account.'"

"The last important synthesis of the problem by Luis de Albuquerque is relatively con- sensual, and confirms the year of 1460 and the name of Antonio da Noli. See "O descobrimento das ilhas de Cabo Verde," HGCV, 1:39. "'Bouligue, Grand Jolof, 159. See Donelha, DescriCdo, 130ff. ""Donelha a plaqu6 le recit Ikgendaire sur un episode rdl mais de port&e 6phimrre.," Bouligue, Grand Jolof, 149n16. See ibid., 147, and Kane, Funta Tooro, 117, for iden- tifications of "Geremco".

"Teixeira da Mota, ed. Donelha, 285n220; Bouligue, Grand Jolof, 59, 166. "'Bouligue, Grand Jolof, 147. ""'Ibid., 166. 11"Teixeira da Mota, "Introduction," 35.

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 125

In his turn, and it is not a coincidence, there are no indications that Almada borrowed information from any previous accounts.'" The same applies to Lemos Coelho's description: in the internal context of the "Guin6 do Cabo Verde," the written expression was irrelevant to gather knowledge. What relevance might Almada's manuscript have to Donelha if he, who most certainly knew Almada, could easily talk with him about Guinea matters? As we have been arguing, it was part of an oral culture, made of listening, and of the description and the memory of experiences.

The Fulbe invasion-"oral source as written source"-confirms

the above stated. According to Bouligue and Teixeira da Mota, it was recorded by Donelha (I would add, in Santiago), coming from two different sources, the one European (or one should rather say, Cabo Verdean)-the "colonists"-the other one African, of Fulbe origin."'- Afterwards, in 1581, Donelha seems to have obtained locally, among the Biafada, some details of their victory over the Fulbe.'" Almada did the same among the Africans who lived near the point where the Gambia was crossed by the Fula army) allowing him, to include infor- mation absent from his contemporary's account.""-

What does it mean that both Wolof and Fulbe oral texts in Donelha's account have the same chronological marker or point of reference, the time of the discovery of the Santiago island? He starts the record of the Wolof tradition with the same ambiguous formula: "a little before or at the same time as this island was discovered, which was in 1460."" Is this a mere chronological coincidence of historical processes or events? Is the chronological reference undoubt- edly valid to date them? This is the view of Oumar Kane and Jean Boulegue. But while the latter does not even mention the coincidence, the former connects in historical terms the two accounts coincident in

the date attributed by Donelha."'7

"' Almada and Donelha "both wrote on the basis of what was common knowledge among Cape-Verde-Islands traders." Hair, "Early sources. (3) Sandoval (1627)," ARB 5/2(1975), 84. 1'3Boultgue explicitly admits this possibility. "'4Donelha, Descrifio, 159. "'"Almada, Tratado, 54. '"Donelha, Descriiio, 131 (emphasis mine). '"'Briefly, at that time Jolof expansion policy, supposedly aimed at conquering Fuuta Tooro (in Donetlha's account the Siin and Ftiuta occur only as intentional war targets of the Buurba, mentioning as "the first war" the one made with "Geremeo") would have caused the contemporary migration of the Fulbe, the Dulo Demba invasion being part of it. Oumar Kane, with whom I had the opportunity to discuss this matter, points out and underlines the passage of Da Mosto (voyage of 1455) in which the name of a con- temporary Buurba, "Zucolino" (Cukuli or Cukli), is mentioned, according to him to be identified with Cukli Njiklaan, who appears in the traditional list of Buurba. Hence, Da Mosto would be an independent source which would confirm his statement (see Kane, Fiutta Tooro, 116-18.) However, according to Bouligue (Grand ]olof, 148-49),

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126 Josd da Silva Horta

Although I do not pretend to reject the chronology of both Wolof and Fulbe historical events, I would note here only that both histori- ans accept as a starting point of the reconstruction of the events re- ported the dating given by Donelha as solidly-based, because (as Bouligue states) he had a major European event as a chronological point of reference. Perhaps the question is a more complex one, im- plying the genesis and the structure of the oral traditions that were transmitted on Santiago island, both by Cabo Verdean born-Portu- guese or born Luso-African and Africans, like the above mentioned Fulbe and Wolof.

There would have been Cabo Verdean appropriations of African oral traditions brought to and transmitted on Santiago by Africans or even by the coastal Luso-Africans who frequently visited the island (or with whom contacts were very frequent). In the former situation, the only one that is clearly documented for the above-mentioned tra- ditions, is a reference to the "old fulos" ("antigos"), who had come in their early days to the island, and the Wolof. Were they slaves?""' Not necessarily. They could have been part of a number of free Africans who lived in Santiago, about whom there is a crucial passage in Donelha's account, when he cites his African informants about the great power of Mandimansa: " [I have been] talking with many Fulos, Jalofos, and Mandingas in Guinea, and with many who had become Christians and married in this island. . . ."" This implies that Donelha was able to talk with all of them both in Guinea and in the island.

A strong indication supporting the hypothesis of free Africans transmitting African traditions in Santiago, is directly connected with the Wolof tradition we have been dealing with. It comes in the orally- based account of Donelha, follwing his relation of the conquest of the "reino de Geremeo," the story of the leprous Buurba and, after his passing, the war between his son and nephew to succeed him. Finally Donelha recorded the seizure of power by the governor and military commander of Porto d'Ale in the Bawol, who poisoned the new ruler and became himself king of "Lambai" (Bawol) and Geremeo. Then, the "Jonais" lineage members-that is, the Jolof royal family""-was

this identification is nor chronologically possible, and he suggests other hypothetical identifications of Da Mosto's Cukuli, to more or less the same period. The most likely one in his opinion is that Cukuli-in his view Cukuli Mbooj-would not be the con- queror of the Nammandiru/Geremeo (and supposedly, in Kane's view, of Fuuta Toro), but his predecessor.

"'" thank Oumar Kane for bringing this theme to my attention. "'"Donelha, Descrifio, 123. ""'On the meanings of "Jonais" in Almada and Donelha's accounts see, among others, Bouligue, Grand olof, 147.

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 127

persecuted by this "tyrant" and among those who were not killed, a number fled to Santiago island.'-I

This was a voluntary migration of high-ranking Wolof who, the author states, traveled to Santiago with their slaves and ivory, stayed there, and became Christians. Following the account, later on-ac- cording to Donelha before ca. 1600-in the time of "Budumel" (the Kajoor's Damel), the successor of the "tyrant" king, a Cabo Verdean named Joao da Videira sailed to Porto d'Ale and "happened to say when he was there that he belonged to the line of the Jonais.""2 The Damel had killed immediately.

Whether this Cabo Verdean was in fact a descendant of the

"Jonais" or was only playing a dangerous game (the passage is not clear in that respect), this latter episode makes clear the importance of keeping this tradition alive among the "Jonais'" descendants living in Santiago. In fact, all the oraly-based stories about the Wolof which seem to be different traditions-it is very difficult to know on how many original oral texts Donelha based himself to make a unique chronological sequence arbitrarily-had the "Jonais" lineage as a common topic."'

We can ask ourselves if there were in Santiago similar traditions re- lated with the destinies of other African-originated families, who, as with the "Jonais," had refuge there. Were not then similar situations by that time, where Africans with royal status were sheltered in Santiago? Another example, also recorded by Donelha, is the similar case of the "Sapes" (most probably Temne) kings and their families who fled from Serra Leoa following the Mane invasions, first as refu- gees in Cacheu and afterwards in Santiago. Their presence in the is- land has certainly contributed to the well-known Donelha's and also Almada's oral based historical accounts of that issue."-

The Fulbe and Wolof traditions, of which Donelha undoubtedly had knowledge, became part of the historical memory of the island, and, in their turn, were transmitted in a rearranged form to future generations by Portuguese and other Europeans and, perhaps by Cabo Verdean-born Luso-Africans-Donelha's father and "many old men"--and not only by Cabo Verdean born-Africans. Here we are able to offer two different possible interpretations.

First, the stories recorded by the first European settlers' descen- dants (among whom, Luso-Africans were the majority)-whom

"'Donelha, Descrigco, 136/37. " Ibidem. "'Teixeira da Morta, ed. Donelha, 285/87n220. According to the former "stories which Donelha links together and presents as continuous history ... represent in fact events which were not in fact in close chronological sequence." "'See Donelha, Descriailo, 100/19; Almada, Tratado, chaps. 16-18. On the Mane inva- sion see Hair's annotation in the former edition and in the Brief Treatise.

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128 josd da Silva Horta

Donelha and his father might have been, whether their European ori- gins were Portuguese or (as the name suggests) Spanish or Italian- which might have borrowed from African memories, would have the time of the discovery as a "natural" chronological marker."' To some extent it might have functioned in a similar way as in African oral tra- ditions, as the society's foundation moment, beginning to "coagulate" the time in which previous events, related to Guinea, had happened. To Donelha and the Cabo Verdean "antigos," either the "in ancient times" of a Wolof tradition or the more precise (but relative) time (or chronology) of a concrete episode of the Wolof or Fulbe political his- tory had to be somewhere before the arrival of Antonio da Noli in 1460, even if, as might be the case, that chronological marker hap- pened to be accurate enough to date African historical processes. Be- ing a capital event, the memory of the arrival of the first colonists- among them some men who came with da Noli (including his rela- tives)-may have been carefully kept among their families."' The first settlers came to the island only two years later, so it could have been transmitted for three or four generations, from nearly 1462 to ca.1560 (according to Teixeira da Mota, Donelha was born ca.1550- 1560).I7

Second, the Africans, being questioned by Cabo Verdean colonists about the time when the events they reckoned had happened, may have made a sort of chronological rearrangement to the history of the island (in the Africans' view the earliest reference the settlers could have). Did the African old men want to show to Cabo Verdeans among whom they lived the kind of prestige given by their ancestry (a time before or at least coeval with the islanders arrival) and the no- table events experienced their ancestors? Or if they were slaves or former slaves, to show the same prestige to their actual or former Cabo Verdean masters. Both the hypothetical chronological marker and this chronological rearrangement could have been very close to the real time of the events.

We do not know for sure what conditions there would have been

on the island to transmit African oral traditions-how far, among Cabo Verdean-born Africans, the oral memory of their ancestors could be preserved. Most probably the insular situation, especially that of the slaves, had profound effects on the chain of tradition. Nevertheless, the continuous flow of slaves of different ethnic origins, into the island during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries- and, I would add, an undetermined number of free Africans (immi- grants and visitors)-may have assured the preservation of African

"'Teixeira da Mota, "Introduction," 20/21.

"'See Baleno, "Povoamento e formaio da sociedade," HGCV, 1:150. "'See Luis de Albuquerque, "Descobrimento," 39.

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Evidence for a Luso-African Identity 129

historical memories. In the same way that the acculturation process did not, still in the time of the Jesuit mission (and until the nineteenth century or even later), eradicate African religious rituals and cus- toms. 11

At least Donelha heard narratives of many Fulbe, suggesting that it would be quite easy for Cabo Verdean writers such as himself, Almada, and others, to gain access to African oral traditions, perhaps as part of everyday life. In more general terms, they would have been already reasonably informed about many African matters, even be- fore their travels to Guinea: it would certainly not be a totally new world to discover.

Returning to Donelha's passage on the Fulbe migration, it is evi- dent that he crossed the two traditions he heard, both Cabo Verdean and African-as he already seems to have done in the case of the Wolof traditions-to achieve his own synthesis. This is a common problem that oral historians have to face. When they study "oral sources as written sources" the supplementary mediation (of an outside origin) they have to deal with makes their work even more difficult.

This kind of synthesis was inevitable at the time. The two "trader- writers" we have been following faced a paradox or a contradiction which they tried to overcome within their cultural context. According to the contemporary "ethnographic" canons, history was an indis- pensable support, and western African societies did not have written historical texts at all-at least not easily accessible to a Lusophone writer-to help them in their task. This difficulty is very evident in Andr6 Alvares de Almada's work, and was certainly shared by Donelha and other authors of the "Guin6 do Cabo Verde." According to Yoro Fall, Almada was the first to mention the relationship be- tween the oral and the written-stating that time swallowed the events' memory-and the first to try to write down an oral text."' The Brief Treatise begins just with this subject: pessimistic at a first glance, the author leaves a subtle opening to accepting African oral records:

This [the absence of legible writings] being so, it is not possible to learn about notable things that happened in the past among them [the Blacks], although ["posto que"] their custom is to bring them as stories ["hist6rias]'2o

""Madeira Santos/Soares, "igreja," 453-57. "'Almada, Tratado, 1964, 1-2; Yoro K. Fall, "L'oraliti africaine dans les textes

portugais des XVe-XVIe siicles: implications dans le renouvellement des m&hodes de la recherche historiquc," unpublished lecture given to the Coldquio Internacional "Construiao e Ensino da Histdria de Africa (Lisbon, 8.6.1994). Yoro K. Fall's state- ments were taken from my notes in listening to his lecture. I gratefully acknowledge Yoro Fall for introducing me to this subject. '"Almada, Tratado, 1964, 1 (translation mine).

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130 Josd da Silva Horta

In summary, to be a Luso-African can have been more than having a father, or much more probably an African mother or grandmother. It is a question of an ethnic identity resulting from the cross-cultural situation in the Guinea of Cape Verde. Literature or, in particular, a mode of ethnographic writing may be evidence of that identity. Almada and Donelha were certainly, as Teixeira da Mota called

them, Cabo Verdean writers. I am not stating they belong to the Cape Verdean literature in the sense specialists on its origins consider it. These usually place it as beginning at the moment when the writers from the Cabo Verdean Islands are able "to free" themselves from

Portuguese-European esthetics and point of view. But it is no more ac- curate to define them simply as "Portuguese" writers, or their writ- ings as "Portuguese" accounts, with no further explanation. The same applies to defining them merely as examples of "Portuguese travel literature" or "Portuguese discovery or expansion literature." All those are inadequate labels to bridge this kind of cross-cultural lit- erature, emanating from an obvious ethnic encounter. Of course, we are talking about Portuguese texts, not simply because they were written in Portuguese, but in the sense that they all were written by cultural agents who were raised in Portuguese-Christian values and literacy patterns, and who considered themselves firmly Portuguese, even when they were Afro-Portuguese by birth.

At this stage one can ask: was not Almada's and Donelha's a Por- tuguese-European "ethnographic-geographical" writing? Their an- thropological discourse is largely of a Portuguese-Christian origin, as can be observed in a quick study of the anthropological categories they use or some typical value judgments-about Muslims, for in- stance. Their cultural background was not limited to Portuguese cul- ture, however. They also shared a part of Luso-African culture: whether taught by their own Creole or black mothers and grand- mothers (or even nurses), retainers and transmitters of an African in- heritance; or whether within the social context of the island, or de- rived from a long experience of the Guinea coast. This context en- abled them to write in the way they did about African societies and geography. We must search, of course, for their European-Portuguese features, i. e., anthropological categories or rhetorical ethnographic models, but their Luso-African specificity cannot be ignored. That is the reason why, in the paper's title, I have qualified the origin of the accounts as "Portuguese" and not simply Portuguese.

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Issue Table of Contents

History in Africa, Vol. 27 (2000), pp. 1-500

Front Matter
Eduard Vogel and Eduard Robert Flegel: The Experiences of Two Nineteenth-Century German Explorers in Africa [pp. 1-29]
Archival Sources on the Yemeni Arabs in Urban Ethiopia: The Dessie Municipality [pp. 31-37]
"A Smattering of Education" and Petitions as Sources: A Study of African Slaveholders' Responses to Abolition in the Gold Coast Colony, 1874-1875 [pp. 39-60]
African Historical Demography in the Years since Edinburgh [pp. 61-89]
Portuguese Documents on Africa and Some Problems of Translation [pp. 91-97]
Evidence for a Luso-African Identity in "Portuguese" Accounts on "Guinea of Cape Verde" (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries) [pp. 99-130]
Masking Sunjata: A Hermeneutical Critique [pp. 131-141]
Forget the Numbers: The Case of a Madagascar Famine [pp. 143-157]
The 1858-1859 Gbebe Journal of CMS Missionary James Thomas [pp. 159-192]
Of Hunters, Goats and Earth-Shrines: Settlement Histories and the Politics of Oral Tradition in Northern Ghana [pp. 193-214]
J.W. Davidson at Cambridge University: Some Student Evaluations [pp. 215-227]
Kenneth Onwuka Dike, "Trade and Politics", and the Restoration of the African in History [pp. 229-248]
Oral Historical Traditions and Political Integration in Ijebu [pp. 249-259]
Sibling Rivalry? The Intersection of Archeology and History [pp. 261-286]
A New Paradigm: The African Early Iron Age without Bantu Migrations [pp. 287-323]
The Chronology of Sudanese Arabic Genealogical Tradition [pp. 325-337]
Swahili History and Society to 1900: A Classified Bibliography [pp. 339-373]
Historical Tales (Ibiteekerezo) and the History of Rwanda [pp. 375-414]
Useful Anachronisms: The Rwandan Esoteric Code of Kingship [pp. 415-421]
Mambila Demography from Archival Sources [pp. 423-436]
References in the Humanities: Strategies of Being Open, Being Obscure and Being Misleading [pp. 437-442]
There Is a House on Castle Drive: The Story of Wulff Joseph Wulff [pp. 443-448]
The Ghana Public Records and Archives Administration Department-Tamale: A Guide for Users [pp. 449-453]
Finding What You Need in Uganda's Archives [pp. 455-470]
The Arquivo Historico de Moçambique and Historical Research in Maputo [pp. 471-477]
New Sources for German Colonial History in Dresden [pp. 479-480]
The Records of the University of Fort Hare [pp. 481-497]
Using the Missionary Sisters of Africa (White Sisters) Archives [pp. 499-500]
Back Matter