Mina (Louisiana)

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The Mina were a well-organized African-American community of people in Louisiana enslaved from the Bight of Benin and sharing a common language, most likely a dialect of Ewe or Gen.[1]

The Mina

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. ^ a b Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo (1992). Africans in Colonial Louisiana. Louisiana State University Press. pp. 319–321. ISBN 9780807119990. Retrieved August 3, 2012.
  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. ^ 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.