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SLAVERY AND THE CONTEXT OF ETHNOGENESIS: AFRICANS, AFRO-CREOLES, AND THE REALITIES OF BONDAGE IN THE KINGDOM OF QUITO, 1600-1800 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Sherwin Keith Bryant, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2005 Dissertation Committee: Approved by: Professor Kenneth J. Andrien, Adviser Professor Stephanie J. Shaw ___________________________ Professor Stephanie Smith Adviser Department of History Graduate Program © Copyright by Sherwin K. Bryant 2004 ABSTRACT Exploring the emergence of African slavery in the Kingdom of Quito, this dissertation argues that Quito was not only typical of large Spanish American slave societies, was in many respects the quintessential Spanish American slave society. Similar to New Spain and Peru, in Quito, African slavery emerged first within the urban center of Quito, and extended almost immediately to the kingdom’s rural periphery. A region dominated by a strong indigenous presence, the areas of modern-day Ecuador and southern Colombia were thought, until now, not to possess significant numbers of African-descended slave laborers. Nevertheless, the region was marked by slavery and possessed three principal slaveholding regions—Popayán, the north-central highlands, and the district of Guayaquil. Similar to other Spanish American slave societies, throughout Quito, Afro-Creole slave laborers commingled always with diverse racial and ethnic pools of coerced laborers. Although African slavery represented only one of several ways Spaniards chose to divide labor in the kingdom, enslaved Africans and their Afro-Creole descendants formed the critical quadrant of Quito’s work sector. Without them Spaniards would not have been able exploit the region’s natural resources on the scale witnessed over the course of the colonial era, as Andeans represented a highly visible, yet unstable labor source. Elites employed slave laborers as bodyguards, auxiliaries in conquest campaigns, and as a mobile supplemental labor force when Andeans proved unavailable due to death, migration, and resistance. Nevertheless, the role of the enslaved was not always auxiliary. From the earliest moments of the colony’s history, enslaved rebels and fugitives helped to order and reorder the colonial regime. Through flight, rebellion, and violent confrontation, the enslaved forced slaveholders into an array of arrangements, creating, at times, a context of fear that even judicial officials could not afford to ignore. The crown and its American surrogates responded to early colonial anxieties over slave flight and rebellion through a series of pragmatic ordinances and control measures, meeting out ii harsh punishments to incorrigible rebels and fugitives while maintaining a juridical space for slave laborers who complied with social norms and comported themselves as subjects of the Spanish King. Intended as a first attempt at providing the field with a comprehensive analysis slavery and slave life in the North Andes, this work looks comparatively at the realities of bondage in two of Quito’s three principal slaveholding regions—Popayán and Quito, while exploring Quito’s unique context for African and Afro-Creole identity formation. Unlike late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Mexico City, eighteenth-century Louisiana, and eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Virginia and South Carolina, all of which held ethnically diverse slave populations, Quito’s enslaved population did not feature sizable clusters of any one or two African ethnic groups that might have allowed for endogamous unions or the formation of communities based upon ethnic or socio-linguistic affinities. Consequently, the socio-cultural matrix was always polyethnic and polycultural. Thus, African-descended people in Quito engaged in at least two inter-related, ethnogenic processes occurring simultaneously. There, formerly discrete peoples from the interior of the Upper Guinea Coast, the Lower Guinea and West Central Africa were not only brought into contact with others from within their “culture zones,” but were also connected to individuals who fell outside of their culture zones. Arrival in the North Andes, then, precipitated two additional processes that ran concurrently with the previous two—intermarriage with Andeans and Afro-criollos (people of African descent born within the empire, both in Iberia and the Americas), and unions with the offspring of those unions and with Europeans; that is, the spawning and engagement of the so-called “castas” (e.g., pardos, mulattos, zambos, mestizos, morenos, etc). Ultimately, this study suggests that returning to the world that work, geography, and demography made is not only necessary, but also essential to understanding identity formation within the African Diaspora. Engaging those seemingly marginal Spanish American slave societies is fundamental to a greater understanding of black life and the formation of creole consciousness throughout the Americas. iii To Aliyah and Naiyah iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Before I could aspire to do academic work or even come to appreciate the importance of telling stories, my parents and grandparents emphasized the importance of history by ensuring that I understood my family’s legacy of struggle and hard work. One of my first history teachers was my paternal grandmother, Bessie Mae Bryant. Like her, I learned to appreciate the importance of the past during some of life’s most intimate and personal moments. For grandma Bessie and her sister, aunt Beulah, the moment came when they were washing the back of their grandmother—Katherine Hazard. There, they encountered the scars she bore as a result of a whipping she had received during “slavery days.” Reputedly an ex-slave of the “Bellamy Woods Plantation,” grandma Katherine recounted the horrors of slavery to her young granddaughters on that day. That story, told, sometimes with a little prodding but, usually in the context of grandma Bessie’s many admonitions that I hold dear our family’s legacy, left an indelible impression upon me. In many ways, writing about enslaved African and Afro-Quiteño grandmothers and grandfathers, and the children they reared, freed, and otherwise worked to shield from the masters’ lash, has been a rather personal endeavor. Consequently, this privilege and responsibility has been both wonderfully fascinating and, at times, extremely weighty. In addition to grandma Bessie’s many admonishments, my maternal grandfather, William Clemmons, provided me with a trust fund that will never run out—a glimpse of what hard work was really all about. A master carpenter and builder in his own right, granddaddy Billy employed me in his many housing construction and renovation projects throughout the Cape Fear River Valley in North Carolina. He taught me the trade just as he did his own sons, and for this I will be ever grateful. My memories of crawling under houses, tearing off and replacing shingles on the hot rooftops in mid-July and August while renovating and/or building houses are lasting impressions of the rewards of hard work and the centrality of perseverance in all of life’s endeavors. v In addition to grandma Bessie and granddaddy Billy, I benefited from the love and influence of several other senior family members, namely my maternal grandmother, Essie Mae Clemmons, and my two great-grandmothers—Bell Robbins and Laura Clemmons Kennedy. Although I did not interact with one of grandma Bessie’s first cousins—cousin Katie—much as a child, she also reinforced the importance of history and legacy just before I left for graduate school. It was cousin Katie who helped me as I began to reconstruct the Bryant family history in a more meaningful way, filling in some of the gaps in grandma Bessie’s stories while telling a few of her own. Learning about the experiences of certain family members during the Wilmington race massacre of 1898 was truly fascinating. Finally, the life of my paternal grandfather, Owen Hill, Jr., who entered the military as a young man in order to “learn to read and write, and get three square meals per day,” remains a source of inspiration. The professionalism and charisma that this soldier and gentleman displayed during his life was infectious and evident to all from the moment he entered a room, even as he suffered from severe dementia in his final years. As inspiring as my grandparents were, I would not have valued fully the importance of our family’s history and tradition, or the centrality of hard work in success without the guidance of my parents—Joe H. and Connie C. Bryant. Had they chosen to abandon the principles of faith and family—faith in our ability to bring about a better day through hard work, thrift, and the collective ingenuity of the family unit—I might have missed many of the important lessons that allowed me to value deeply the sacrifice that they and previous generations had made. Saying thank you is but small recompense for the tremendous amount of worrying, strategic thought, sacrifice and perseverance that each of you invested in me. I thank you mom especially for your emphasis upon social graces, right thought and right action. And Dad, I thank you for your many sermons on the importance of higher education. In addition to my parents and grandparents, I enjoyed the good fortune of having a host of aunts, uncles, older cousins, and community members supporting me along the way. I thank aunt Barbara for the biscuits from Biscuitville and for caring for me as if I were her very own son. The fellowship of my uncles Gregory, Wayne, Anthony, Curtwright, and Landon helped make me the man that I am. I thank them for coming to my basketball games and for reminding me that my performance in the classroom was what really mattered. In addition to her wonderful cooking, I thank aunt Laura Mae for her love and support. vi Thanks also for taking Earlene and I to “Sportsworld,” even if we did have to leave just before the party “got started.” I thank my late aunt Janice V.

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