Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500-1900

321 Pages·2012·6.028 MB·English

by  Andrew Sluyter

YALE AGRARIAN STUDIES SERIES
James C. Scott, series editor
The Agrarian Studies Series at Yale University Press seeks to publish outstanding and
original interdisciplinary work on agriculture and rural society—for any period, in any
location. Works of daring that question existing paradigms and fill abstract categories
with the lived-experience of rural people are especially encouraged.
—James C. Scott, Series Editor
James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human
Condition Have Failed
Brian Donahue, The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord
Michael Goldman, Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the
Age of Globalization
Steve Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food
Parker Shipton, The Nature of Entrustment: Intimacy, Exchange, and the Sacred in Africa
Alissa Hamilton, Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice
Parker Shipton, Mortgaging the Ancestors: Ideologies of Attachment in Africa
Bill Winders, The Politics of Food Supply: U.S. Agricultural Policy in the World Economy
James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast
Asia
Benjamin R. Cohen, Notes from the Ground: Science, Soil, and Society in the American
Countryside
Parker Shipton, Credit Between Cultures: Farmers, Financiers, and Misunderstanding in
Africa
Paul Sillitoe, From Land to Mouth: The Agricultural “Economy” of the Wola of the New
Guinea Highlands
Sara M. Gregg, Managing the Mountains: Land Use Planning, the New Deal, and the
Creation of a Federal Landscape in Appalachia
Michael R. Dove, The Banana Tree at the Gate: A History of Marginal Peoples and Global
Markets in Borneo
Patrick Barron, Rachael Diprose, and Michael Woolcock, Contesting Development:
Participatory Projects and Local Conflict Dynamics in Indonesia
Edwin C. Hagenstein, Sara M. Gregg, and Brian Donahue, eds., American Georgics:
Writings on Farming, Culture, and the Land
Timothy Pachirat, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of
Sight
Andrew Sluyter, Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World,
1500–1900
For a complete list of titles in the Yale Agrarian Studies Series, visit
www.yalebooks.com.
andrew sluyter
Black Ranching
Frontiers
AFRICAN CATTLE HERDERS OF THE ATLANTIC
WORLD, 1500–1900
new haven and london
Copyright © 2012 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or
promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or
[email protected] (U.K. office).
Set in Scala and Scala Sans types by IDS Infotech, Ltd.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sluyter, Andrew, 1958–
Black ranching frontiers : African cattle herders of the Atlantic World, 1500-1900 / Andrew
Sluyter.
p. cm.—(Yale agrarian studies series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-17992-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Ranching—America—History. 2. Cattle herding—America—History. 3. Africans—
America—History. 4. Blacks—America—History. 5. Cattle herders—America—
History. 6. Frontier and pioneer life—America. 7. Social networks—America—History.
8. America—Social life and customs. 9. America—Race relations—History.
10. America—Civilization—African influences. I. Title.
SF196.A43S48 2012
636′.010896073—dc23
2012012359
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my family, the most patient teachers and loving students I know
This page intentionally left blank
contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Atlantic Networks and Local Frontiers 1
2 New Spain 19
3 Louisiana 61
4 Barbuda 98
5 The Pampas 140
6 The Tasajo Trail 169
7 Legacy and Promise 211
viii contents
List of Abbreviations 221
Notes 225
Index 297
preface
On a research trip along the Gulf Coast in 1988, I came across a road
sign south of Veracruz that caused me nearly to veer off the road. The
name of the approaching hamlet was Mandinga, the same as that of
the rice-growing ethnic group with whom I had worked in The
Gambia.
—Judith A. Carney, Black Rice (2001)
a decade after judith carney nearly veered off the road just south
of the port of Veracruz I visited her department at the University of
California at Los Angeles to give a seminar on the establishment of cattle
ranching in that part of Mexico in the sixteenth century. Her book on the
African origins of rice cultivation in South Carolina, Black Rice, would not
appear until three years later, so I was unprepared when she chided me
for failing to consider the role of blacks in my research. In a reaction
typical of an academic I protested that the lack of primary sources simply
precluded understanding much about the involvement of blacks. Now, a
dozen years later, my better-considered response has become the
diametric opposite: the very dearth of primary sources provides the imper-
ative to study them thoroughly rather than an excuse to ignore them.
The result has been a book about the role of blacks in establishing
cattle ranching in a range of places throughout the Americas. It joins
Black Rice and an increasing number of other efforts by historians,
anthropologists, and geographers. Collectively these works demonstrate
that Africans played significant creative roles in establishing production
systems so fundamental to the environmental and social relations of the
colonies that their consequences persist to the present. Such revisionism
counters characterizations of blacks in American history that emerged
during slavery and have lasted until today, for example, the political
ix