7

 Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo.  Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The
Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth
Century.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1992.


     Gwendolyn Midlo Hall wrote  Africans in Colonial

Louisiana to illuminate the cultural ramifications of the

African slave introduction to Louisiana.  Hall laments the

narrowly national focus of previous Louisianian studies and

seeks both to demonstrate international influences on the

region and the cultural influence of African on "all

Americans."1

     Hall's position at the University of New Orleans and

her African-American or mulatto children may cause her to

overreach in her desire to show intact African cultural

structures in Louisiana and the effects of that culture on

America.  Her feminist stance leads her to ignore male

slaves in some sections of her work.2  In addition, her

class-consciousness is signified by the gratuitous use of

titles in the front matter Dedication to her children.3

     Hall uses a "dynamic, developmental approach to culture

formation" reminiscent of the Foucaultian power-in-play

approach in Chain Her By One Foot.  Oddly, Hall claims a

radical separation from structuralism but then shows careful

attention to African and Creole speech, song, myth and other

artifacts precious to the semiotic camp.

     Sources (largely manuscript) for Africans in Colonial

Louisiana were collected from the archives of at least three

countries: France, Spain, and the United States, a fact

which Hall is careful to point out in the acknowledgements

in the Preface.4  Hall mines both narrative and quantitative

information for this cliometric monograph (Hall's CD-ROM of

databases relating to Afro-Louisianian history has just been

released).  Occasional translations are used, but the author

is skeptical: "published and translated documents cannot be

relied upon."5  She is critical of the states of some

archives, most pointedly the Louisiana Historical Center of

the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans.  Hall uses

secondary sources to provide additional narrative to flesh

out some of her quantitative analysis (which follows the

lead of Curtin's Atlantic Slave Trade), and demonstrates a

massively-encompassing familiarity with various media,

whether folk songs and proverbs (recorded by George

Washington Cable), personal interviews, professional

journals and histories.

     In the first chapter, Hall demonstrates "the chaos of

French Rule."  This unruly situation is important to point

out to show that Creole culture could not be "passed on and

enforced from the top of the social hierarchy."6  Hall

points out that France was, because of War of the Spanish

Succession, in poor condition to undertake a colonizing

effort.  Census records show only a sparse white population,

and some of those were prisoners or maltreated and

destructive soldiers.  Deportation-for-profit was an early

example of the international effects of the colonies, and

was only a small fraction of that "dangerous and unstable

world."7

     The next section describes Senegambia, the most

important source for Louisianian slaves while the colonies

were under French control.  Hall discusses the special

relationship of Senegambia to the Company of the Indies, a

tie that would continue to skew Senegambia contributions to

New World slave populations.  Because of this tie, Hall

believes Senegambia is the to understanding Afro-Creole

culture.  Agricultural goods, techniques, animals,

cosmology, numerology, status of slaves, social (rather than

geographical) hegemonies, and alliance-building skills would

all transplant to the New World.

     The third section discusses the logistical problems of

slave mortality and Senegambian willingness (and capability)

to revolt.  Speed of transport was critical to minimize both

exposure to disease and the foment of rebellion.8

Ironically, even after the goods were delivered in

Louisiana, securing payment for them was traditionally

problematic.9  Revolt was common whether in holding centers

in Senegambia (Goree), on  ships (le Courrier de Bourbon),

or on the colonies themselves.  Unexpectedly, Hall's

quantitative analysis indicates extremely low mortality

rates for Senegambian slaves en route to Louisiana, positing

that their West African origins shortened the journey

somewhat.

     The fourth chapter discusses "The Bambara in

Louisiana", particularly interacting with Indian slaves.

Alliance-building skills led to groups of Indian and African

slaves running off together into the woods or swamps to

escape.  They also demonstrated an ability to cooperate in

such ventures as the Natchez massacre, which complicated

French intentions to cause friction between slaves of the

different races.  Eventually American and British pressures

caused the French and Indian terms to grow closer, with some

weakening of the formal links between Indians and Africans

(although informal links were still in place).

     The fifth chapter details treatment of slaves in

Louisiana and their labor and escape behaviors.  Skilled

labor was in short supply, and such undertakings as wet rice

farming required relatively advanced techniques to regulate

the waters.  Hall attributes the introduction of indigo

processing to Africans, though her argument for this is

weak.10  The skillful manipulation of legalities (Code Noir)

shows that the Africans were shrewdly aware of their own

self-interest and how to secure it.  In this early period

race was not necessarily a marker of legal privilege (or

social privilege, for that matter, a situation that will

change immeasurably a short time later).11  Of special

interest is a chart showing compensation required by a black

executioner who presumably had whites in his list of

victims.12

     Chapter six begins a discussion of the Afro-Creole

culture.  Since French import of slaves occurred in a well-

demarcated time between 1719 and 1731, and since most of the

slaves came from Senegambia, Hall argues for an essential

similarity in the acculturating process.13  Black populations

vastly outnumbered whites, and models of plantation culture

with organized whites running fragmented blacks is

inaccurate.14  Instead the lush geography of the region, and

skilled African (and Indian) populations resulted in

Louisiana being "clearly, the most Africanized slave culture

in the United States."15  African praxis, including charm-

making and herbalism, perservered in the colonies, and many

slaves kept their African (Islamic) names.16  Many slave

families were preserved, and worked together.17  Birth rates

remained high, although this varied by nationality.18

Reverence for elders (or ancestor worship) made for "highly

transportable cultural material."19  Language, perhaps the

most important cultural material of all, is introduced here:

creolized language.  The language took the structure of

French vocabulary with African grammar.20  This language was

(and is) in use by white Creoles as well.21  Hall ends the

chapter with the unlikely explanation that Afro-Culture

survived because its qualitative superiority was prima facie

evident.22

     Chapter seven tells of Afro-Creole adaptation to the

cypress swamps of Louisiana.  The rot-resistant cypress

provided wood for tools, buildings, and market.23  Slaves

made permanent or semi-permanent settlements in the swamps.

Production evolved from a raider model to trade.  Maroon

communities circling the plantation lands gave the slaves a

base of power from which to address the master.24  One

particular case of collective power under a former slave,

St. Malo, demonstrated that the swamps could be a nether

region useful for transportation, communication and general

subversion.  The maroons were often well armed and well

supplied with ammunition.25  Resistance to St. Malo and other

agitators surfaced in such groups as the "syndic of the

Cabildo of New Orleans."26  Hall notes that the swamp

activities and language of modern poor whites in the swamps

is directly from Afro-Creole culture.27

     The eighth chapter deals with race-mixing in the

frontier settlement.  In this period race mixing "was

extensive" in places like Pointe Coupee.28  This openness is

tied back to the nature of frontier community.29  Indian

intermixing, less important in English colonies where Indian

depopulation was extensive, was common in the French

colonies.30  African concubines were common among white

masters.31  These mulatto children were frequently invisible

in censi.32  Declining census records of black females

suggest they were passing into white population.33

     Hall mentions two main venues for emancipation: mulatto

children of the concubine were sometimes bought/freed, as

were the concubines themselves.  Males paid for themselves,

and their female relatives bought black females.34  This

female network is of special interest to the author, as is

the understanding that concubinage was a "major road out of

slavery for slave women and their children."35

     The ninth chapter details the new influx of variable

slave nationalities under the Spanish assumption of

Louisiana after the French and Indian War.  Hall remarks the

transition to Spanish control was slow, and many social and

even administrative functions still were in French.36  The

supply of slave into Spanish Louisiana was from different

locales, introducing the possibility of multinational family

units.  Increasingly broken up families led to the

development of "fictive" as well as biological kin

orderings.37  The outbreak of the American Revolution led to

slave unrest, which will become intensified in the next

chapter.

     The tenth chapter details the reaction of the Afro-

Creole slaves to the French Revolution, again showing

sensitivity to Continental influences.  War between France

and Spain left New Orleans in chaos; economic life was

disrupted and slave control became more problematic.38  This

unrest crested in the 1795 Pointe Coupee plot, detailed in

Chapter 11.  This plot, although quite real, would form the

mythic basis for vicious racism in Louisiana, even though it

was not inherently a race war.39

     In conclusion, Hall states the racism of modern

Louisiana is not based on the presumed bestial nature of

Afro-Creoles, but rather on their demonstrated ability to

stage an organized uprising.40  The limits placed on racism

by the Spanish occupation fell away as Spanish interest

declined, and this continued racism is present in present

oppression.

     Hall's work reveals an intact, and supple African

culture in American not present in Berlin's article, where

everything related to African culture was destroyed.

Perhaps Louisiana is an exception. Another difference is

Berlin's claim that slaves were cheap; this is dissonant

compared to Hall's claims that the slavetraders had frequent

troubles selling their goods in the French colonies.

Stylistically, Hall hobbles her work by frequent self-

congratulation on mastery of languages and travel to

archives, disregard for issues faced by male (or child)

slaves, and her heavy and continual reliance on the passive

voice.

jason carr

_______________________________
1 Page xiv.
2 As on page 311 where she discusses violence against one
gender (females), or on page 48 where she implies that only
violence to female genitalia can be rightly called sexual
mutilation.
3  Page v.  Dr. Haywood Hall, Jr., and Rebecca L. Hall, Esq.
4 Page xv.
5 Page 414.
6 Page xiv.
7 Page 26.
8 Page 62.
9 Page 63.
10 Page 124.
11 Page 131.
12 Page 132.
13 Page 159.
14 Page 160.
15 Page 161.
16 Page 166.
17 Page 168.
18 Page 175, 183-4.
19 Page 186.
20 Page 188.
21 Page 194.
22 Page 200.
23 Page 202.
24 Page 203.
25 Page 216.
26 Page 226.
27 Page 236.
28 Page 239.
29 Page 240.
30 Page 242.
31 Page 257.
32 Page 259.
33 Page 262.
34 Page 272.
35 Page 274.
36 Page 302.
37 Page 301.
38 Page 318.
39 Page 344, 373.
40 Page 376.

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