The Formation of Candomblé: Vodun History and Ritual in Brazil

2 The Formation of a Jeje Ethnic Identity in Bahia in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

35 2 The Formation of a Jeje Ethnic Identity in Bahia in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Some Notes on the Demographic Fluctuations of the Jeje in the Recôncavo and in Salvador Having reviewed the Portuguese and Bahian slave trade on the Mina Coast, we can now examine the possible processes that led to the formation of a Jeje ethnic identity among the African population in Bahia in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. What was the demographic importance of this forced Jeje migration to Bahia? Unfortunately, the data on the evolution and demographic structure of the Bahian population of the eighteenth century is either very imprecise or does not exist. According to Kátia Mattoso, the census information of this period is not to be trusted and does not allow us to quantify, with even a minimum degree of assurance, the total count or the proportion of freed or enslaved blacks and mestizos. The nineteenth century presents a different situation, however. Basing her figures on an 1808 census found in the Regional Archive of Cachoeira by the U.S. historian Catherine Lugar, and on the official census of 1872, Mattoso concludes that blacks and mestizos constituted 78.3 percent (43 percent free and 35.3 percent enslaved) of Bahia’s population in 1808, decreasing to 72.4 percent (60.2 percent free and 12.2 percent enslaved) in 1872. The enslaved proportion of the population drops significantly as the century advances.1 The insufficient data and very general figures make it more difficult to characterize the contingent of Africans within that population and more specifically the Jeje, one among the many African groups. The most recent estimates suggest that between 1701 and 1810, Portuguese vessels destined for Bahia left the Slave Coast with approximately 656,000 Africans, of whom some 598,200 arrived.2 Between 1801 and 1851, an estimated 328,500 African slaves arrived in the port of Salvador.3 The estimates of the annual average importation for this period vary according to several authors, between 5,600 and 7,700 Africans, and show a marked increase commencing in the 1840s, when the trade was ostensibly prohibited by the English. For example , from 1846 to 1850, on the eve of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, 36 the formation of a jeje ethnic identity the estimated annual average was 8,700 Africans.4 A portion of this population was in transit to other destinations, housed at times for months in the city’s warehouses built by the merchants for that purpose. Few authors have presented information regarding the ethnoracial categories of the eighteenth-century slave population, and the available data is generally insufficient.5 In order to fill this lacuna partially, I consulted the inventories from 1698 to 1820 that correspond to the tobacco-growing region of the Recôncavo (the municipality of Cachoeira and its districts), kept in the Arquivo Regional de Cachoeira (Regional Archive of Cachoeira, ARC), as well as those from 1750 to 1800 that relate to the sugar-producing area (the municipalities of São Francisco do Conde and Santo Amaro da Purificação) of the Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia (Public Archive of the State of Bahia, APEBa).6 The data from these inventories was complemented by similar research performed by João José Reis for the period 1801–20, from which table 1 Ethnoracial Composition of the Slave Population in the Tobacco-Producing Area of Cachoeria (1698–1820) 1698–1729 1730–49 1750–79 1780–1800 1801–20 N. % N. % N. % N. % N. % Gentio da Guiné 32 9.3 — — — — — — — — Angola 59 17.1 51 16.6 85 21.9 87 29.8 155 19.3 Benguela 36 10.4 10 3.2 10 2.6 9 3.1 14 1.7 Other Central African 46 13.3 13 4.2 23 5.9 6 2.1 10 1.2 Mina 122 35.4 128 41.6 105 27.0 72 24.7 102 12.7 Jeje 39 11.3 106 27.1 115 29.6 60 20.5 237 29.5 Nagô — — 5 1.6 35 9.0 51 17.5 159 19.8 Hausa — — — — — — 2 0.7 81 10.1 Other West African 11 3.2 20 6.5 15 4.2 5 1.7 46 5.7 total africans 345 100.0 308 100.0 388 100.0 292 100.0 804 100.0 Central Africa Subtotal 141 25.2 74 12.4...