Mina_(Louisiana)

Mina (Louisiana)

Mina (Louisiana)

Former African-American community in Louisiana sharing a common language

The Mina were a community of well-organized, enslaved Black people in Louisiana who spoke a common language, most likely a dialect of Ewe that may have been related to Fon.[1]

The Mina

Though some historians include the Mina with enslaved Africans sold from Elmina on the Gold Coast, other historians believe they were Ewe people from the Bight of Benin.[1] As part of how some Louisiana slave-holders managed enslaved people at the time, the maintenance of African linguistic–ethnic communities was tolerated and even encouraged.[1] The Pointe Coupée Mina community arose following their enslavement and importation into Louisiana following 1782.[2] Among enslaved Africans whose ethnicity was recorded in official documents between 1719 and 1820, Mina were the third-largest enslaved ethnic group in Louisiana.[3]

Many Mina took part in the Pointe Coupée Slave Conspiracy of 1791.

See also

References

  1. [1]
    Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo (1992). Africans in Colonial Louisiana. Louisiana State University Press. pp. 319–321. ISBN 9780807119990. Retrieved August 3, 2012.
  2. [2]
    Speedy, Karin (1995), "Mississippi and Tèche Creole: two separate starting points for Creole in Louisiana", in Baker, Phillip (ed.), From Contact to Creole and Beyond, London: University of Westminster Press, p. 106, ISBN 9781859190869
  3. [3]
    Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo (2005). Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-2973-8. OCLC 646875495.
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