Constructing Identity: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Architecture in the Gambia-GebaRegion and the Articulation of Luso-African EthnicityAuthor(s): Peter MarkReviewed work(s):Source: History in Africa, Vol. 22 (1995), pp. 307-327Published by: African Studies AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171919 .Accessed: 19/07/2012 19:59

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CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY: SIXTEENTH- AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE IN

THE GAMBIA-GEBA REGION AND THE ARTICULATION OF LUSO-AFRICAN ETHNICITY*

Peter Mark Wesleyan University

The precolonial architectural history of the northern Upper Guinea coast from the Gambia to the Geba rivers has yet to be studied in depth. Yet this region, the first to be visited and described by European travelers in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, is among the best-documented parts of sub-Saharan Africa for the four centuries of precolonial African-European contact. The establishment of communities of Luso-African traders in the sixteenth and seventeenth century makes the Gambia-Casamance-Bissau area important to the study of early sustained cultural interaction between Europeans and West Africans.

One result of the establishment of Portuguese and Luso-African trading communities was the development of a distinctive style of architecture, suited to the climate and making use of locally-available building materials. The history of the trade itself has been extensively studied by George Brooks.' His work, along with that of Jean Boulegue, provides a firm foundation for the study of local architecture and living space.2 It is not my intention to rewrite these excellent sources, although much of my material is drawn from the same primary documents they have used, and although, in presenting the historical context from which seventeenth-century coastal architecture developed, I necessarily cover some ground that Brooks has already trod.

In addition to the history of building styles, several related questions that are highly significant to the history of European-African cultural interaction need to be addressed. These questions include: what were the respective roles of Africans, Europeans, and Luso-Africans in the development of a distinctive architectural style? Is it possible to discern the influence of evolving Luso- African construction on local African architecture? And of local building styles on Afro-European construction? In other words, to what extent does architecture reflect mutual, two-way interaction between European and African society?

Not surprisingly, European written descriptions of the Gambia- Casamance-Geba region focus on commercial centers and villages that were located along trading routes. For more than two centuries beginning in the early 1500s, Portuguese 'lanqados,'3 Luso-Africans from the mainland, and Cape Verde Islanders were the commercial middlemen for the overseas trade in

History in Africa 22 (1995), 307-327.

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this region. Villages that contained communities of lanqado or Luso-African traders are, consequently, disproportionately well-represented in the written record. Chroniclers who visited the coast, and the often anonymous informants of those authors who, like Fernandes, never set foot in Africa or who, like Barbot, never visited this part of Upper Guinea, were themselves Europeans or Cape Verdeans. They tended to concentrate their attention upon the local

lanqado (European) and Luso-African communities. Furthermore, their discussions of buildings and living space are clearly subordinate to concerns about trade, although they do describe the fortifications that protected their communities. The one architectural idiom that is sufficiently well-documented to trace its historical development is the form of housing that came to be known as "the Portuguese style" or "a la portugaise."

The abundant references to Portuguese-style dwellings help document interaction between local African construction techniques and building forms on the one hand, and styles, materials, and techniques brought to West Africa from Europe on the other. Nevertheless, several factors complicate the historian's task. First, with the exception of the port of Cacheu, nowhere do seventeenth-century physical structures survive. Second, contemporary written descriptions of local African buildings are almost all cursory and they are widely separated both geographically and chronologically. In a region of considerable cultural diversity, one cannot necessarily draw conclusions about construction in one locale on the basis of architecture in another community. Thus, any attempt to use pre-nineteenth century written sources to describe the early evolution of building styles outside of the trading "escales" will be necessarily sketchy.

With two exceptions Luso-African architecture is much more fully documented than local African buildings. Village layout and building forms are relatively well-documented from the sixteenth century for the people known as Floups living near Rio San Domingos (Cacheu)4 and, from the late seventeenth century, for the Bagnuns and northern Floups of Vintang and Fogny. This clustering of sources is significant, as the two societies that are relatively well-documented are culturally and linguistically related. The Floups of San Domingos-also referred to as Felupes in Portuguese sources and as Floops in English records--spoke a form of the Joola language (also Diola; Jola) of the Bak language family. They were closely related to the "Floups" of the Vintang-Fogny area north of the Casamance River, referred to by de la Courbe and Labat.5

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Floups were renowned for their refusal to participate in trade with Europeans. One may ask why they, more than other local populations, attracted the attention of foreigners whose primary interest lay in trade. One obvious answer is that Floup architecture so impressed the visitors that those who saw it were moved to write about it. Another possible explanation is that not all Floup groups deserved their reputation for avoiding commercial contact with Europeans.6

The earliest published description of architecture in the Rio Geba- Casamance area is found in Valentim Fernandes' account from about 1506.

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Although Fernandes, a German living in Portugal, never traveled to Africa, he had informants who were familiar with the Gambia-Geba region. His description of the Casamance River "where a lot of trade is carried out" and where a melange of peoples including Balantas and Floups lived under a Manding ruler at whose court there were many Portuguese traders,7 briefly mentions "the house of the king."' He then writes of the Mansa Falup, the king of the Floups living between the Casamance River and San Domingos (the future site of Cacheu). These Floups were bellicose warriors. The king's habitation was:

qercada de estacas de paos e maneyra de barbacha e cinco destas cercas tem em volta e assy hd dentrar e n6 direyto e dentro de todo tem sua praga onde elle esta assentado e esta casa tem derrador de sy huum esteyro dagoa e he muy forte casa9

The defensive strength of this royal compound, surrounded by five concentric circles of stakes, each with a single entrance facing in a different direction, and with a heavily fortified central enclosure that was also protected by a tidal waterway, is consistent with the warlike image sixteenth-century chroniclers present of Floup society. Similar defensive elements are referred to in much later descriptions of Floup architecture. One is left to guess at the form of the central courtyard and building. The fact that the structure is described as "very strong" makes it likely that the material used in construction was sun-dried clay soil rather than wattle or vegetal fiber, the only other commonly used materials.

This is the most detailed description of any local community in Fernandes' narrative. He does mention that several villages between the Gambia and the Casamance Rivers were surrounded by palisades.10 These communities, whose populations he gives as 5000 to 10,000-a gross exaggeration, but characteristic of Mande (and Mande-influenced) peoples in its use of round numbers such as ten thousand to indicate a very large number" 12-each have their own ruler. Furthermore, Fernandes writes that the compound of the Mandi Mansa, a Manding ruler in the lower Gambia, was surrounded by six rings of stockades, with the portal of the inner palisade guarded by archers.13

The image emerges of a political situation characterized by the absence of centralized authority and by instability or warfare. Significantly, Fernandes' informants were describing the Gambia-Geba region during the first 40 or 50 years of contact with Europeans. The Atlantic slave trade had not yet attained either the scale or the economic importance it would have in the later sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth century. The instability reflected by the presence of these early fortified villages may not have been caused by that commerce. Rather, it may reflect a situation that predated the Atlantic slave trade.

Fernandes' account also contains probably the earliest description of Luso-African architecture. While the specific reference is to Sierra Leone, the

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building style is that common to Portuguese langados and Afro-Portuguese traders in the Gambia-Geba region. The houses of the rich, Fernandes writes:

som fectas de adobes e de tijollo pera coser e dentro bem cayadas e de defora c6 cree ou barro brico e de dentro muy bem lavradas e s6 as melhores casas de toda Guynee.'4

The use of mud or mud bricks covered on the exterior with chalk or white clay--or perhaps, if Fernandes misunderstood his informant, with lime- recalls the white limed outer walls of Portuguese forts and trading castles from Elmina to Mombasa. Elmina, the earliest of these fortresses, dates to 1482, while the East African bastions are roughly contemporary with Fernandes' account. More plausible than postulating an influence on coastal housing construction of military architecture is the hypothesis that both the houses and the military structures shared a common inspiration, a theory recently proposed by Teixeira (see fn. 46).5

The most important historical source for the northern Upper Guinea Coast in the sixteenth century is the Tratado Breve dos Rios de Guind do Capo Verde, written about 159416 by Andre Alvares d'Almada, a merchant from the Cape Verde Islands. Almada had lived on the coast during the 1560s and 1570s. His account is based on extensive first-hand experience. The major transformation that had occurred in the three generations since Fernandes' time was the expansion of the slave trade throughout the Gambia-Geba region. Almada describes the Gambia as "e Rio de grande trato de escravos," while the local Manding were "muitos guerreiros" and had constructed fortresses along the Gambia and its tributaries." These strong wooden redoubts, surrounded by palisades of stakes attested to increasing instability, a result, one may surmise, of the slaveraiding which was now widespread.18 Indeed, in the Casamance estuary the Floups and the closely-related "Arriatas" had only recently learned to protect themselves by military means from Manding slave raids.19 These groups thus managed to escape the growing depradations of slaveraiding. The Bagnuns however, and their Floup neighbors south of the Casamance river, were involved in the slave trade.20 Furthermore, the Cacheu river, then called the Rio de San Domingos,21 was the center of an extensive trade in slaves.22 Over the next century, as the political fortunes of local "kingdoms" rose and fell, each of the resident populations--Floups, Bagnuns, Cassas (who spoke a Bagnun dialect), Papels (Buramos), Beafadas, and Bijogos- were at various times slave traders and enslaved.23

Almada's account depicts a region in which slaveraiding and the resulting lack of security had grown significantly since the beginning of the sixteenth century. All the local peoples either participated in the trade or provided some of its victims or, like the Arriatas, were forced to take strong defensive measures to isolate themselves from that commerce. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, as Brooks has pointed out, all the coastal peoples, including the Portuguese, were subject to repeated raids by Bijogos warriors from the adjacent Bissagos archipelago.24 Almada provides only three descriptions of local African buildings in the Casamance-Geba area. One of

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY 3 1 1

these, however, clearly shows that the Buramos or Papels were forced to live in dwellings that were more labyrinths than houses, for protection against the Bijogos' slave raids.1

The Bijogos' depradations continued into the second decade of the seventeenth century. In 1607 the Portuguese undertook a project that would lead to the reconstruction of their fort at Cacheu. Their intent was to protect commerce and the inhabitants against the islanders, who were described as having laid waste to twelve "kingdoms."26

Almada's second description of local dwellings is of Farim. Located at the head of navigation on the Cacheu river, this trading "escale" was over 100 kilometers from the coast and hence was protected from the Bijogos' seaborne attacks. Almada writes:

The houses of these people are of the same type as those in Casamance, covered with leaves with large circles of straw attached to stakes, made into a wall called 'tapadas', behind which circles are arranged the houses, in accord with the means of the owners.27

This description resembles housing compounds still found today in the adjacent Upper Casamance near Kolda. Both Farim and Kolda lie beyond the low-lying coastal land crisscrossed by tidal "marigots" that was home to most of the Floups and Bagnuns. Here, in a drier ecological zone, construction in "banco" or dried mud gives way to walls in woven palm leaves and other vegetal fibers.

The final passage in which Almada describes local dwellings focuses on the physical layout of the habitations. The Beafadas, unlike other African societies with which Almada was familiar, did not construct their houses in compact villages. Rather, their dwellings were built at a distance from each other. In each isolated compound lived an extended family under the authority of the eldest member.28 Casamance peoples today exhibit a wide range of settlement patterns. Even among just the different Jola groups there exists a wide range, from the densely populated villages of Buluf to the isolated and widely separated farms of the Floups of San Domingos. This range of housing patterns is also documented during the nineteenth century; Almada's description is evidence that the variety is of considerable age.

In addition to the diversity of settlement patterns that existed at any given moment, one needs to consider the element of change over time in response to political and economic factors and to climatic change.29 Among factors affecting change in housing patterns and building design, the most immediate was warfare, frequently in the form of slaveraiding. Virtually every European chronicler from Fernandes to the late colonial period refers to villages surrounded by stockades, to palisaded housing compounds, or to fortress-like dwellings. Protection against attack was a recurrent theme in the Gambia-Geba region from the sixteenth to the late nineteenth centuries. The need to make one's compound secure from attack circumscribed the options for construction and played an important role in the elaboration of local architectural forms.

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European written descriptions of settlement patterns and of architecture along the northern Upper Guinea coast proliferate during the seventeenth century. Both local African structures and Luso-African forts and houses are relatively well-documented during this period. As Portugal lost its commercial monopoly to Dutch and, later, to French and English traders, both anglophone and francophone travelers added their narratives to the historical record.

The most detailed and reliable description of the Gambia-Geba region, however, is that of Francisco de Lemos Coelho, a Portuguese trader who spent 23 years on the coast between about 1640 and 1665, who lived in Cacheu and Bissau, and who had visited the Bissagos Islands.30 Coelho's Description of the Coast of Guinea, written in 1669, was expanded and revised in 1689. His detailed description of Cacheu, with its Portuguese and Luso-African communities, is of crucial significance for our understanding of seventeenth- century Portuguese colonial architecture in West Africa. He also offers useful information about settlements along the Bagnun-Bak trading route from the lower Gambia to Cacheu. This route led from the Gambia south bank up Vintang Creek and then overland through eastern Fogny (present-day Kalounayes or Kajamutay), following the Soungrougrou to the Casamance river, thence overland to the Rio San Domingos.

Coelho's comments about Vintang (or Bintang), the Bagnun village that was the northern terminus of this trade route, are limited to commercial considerations. Six leagues south, in the Bagnun "kingdom" of Sangr6degu, he slept in the village of Jamai. "The whites," he writes, "used to live in this village, which is stockaded around because of war."31 The direct causes of this war, linked to the slave trade, are addressed by Coelho's French contemporary, Sieur Nicolas Jajoulet de la Courbe. Coelho was himself involved in the slave trade. He inadvertently provides information about some of the building skills or crafts that may have been used in the region when he reports that 17 of his own slaves, including carpenters,32 had run away from him. While these men likely specialized in boat-building, their skills may also have been used in house construction.

Most of Coelho's descriptions of architecture and village layout focus on the Portuguese settlement at Cacheu. The history of this community has been written by Brooks; here I concentrate on the buildings. There were two main streets built along the river, Rua de Diante (Front Street), where the wealthy lived, and Rua de Tabanca, at the foot of the fortification.33 Cacheu, as Brooks observes, was further divided into Vila Fria, containing the parish church and the houses belonging to the Commandant, and Vila Quente, where most of the free black population lived.34

Cacheu, founded in the 1580s,was officially recognized as a "vila" or town in 1605.35 Sixteen years later the town contained 70 or 80 houses of Portuguese merchants.36 The original fort, dating from the foundation of the community,37 was rebuilt after 1615 using slave labor.38 Brooks estimates the population at that time to have been about 1500, of whom a third were probably Cape Verdeans or Portuguese.39 Cacheu was an important slave-

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trading port for captives from the entire coastal area from Vintang south to Beafada country."

Of particular interest in Coelho's account of Cacheu are his descriptions of the strong house or fort, including the materials of which it was constructed and the manner in which it was built, as well as a detailed account of the houses and storage buildings of the Portuguese community. The passage on the strong house is worth citing at length:

Its only resemblance to a fort is that it is made of stone and lime, that it belongs to His Highness and is maintained in his name, and that the Commander resides there with the 25 soldiers allocated to him, of whom often...not as many as three are actually present. Overlooking the water, the Strong House has a terrace of stone and lime, so small that in the rainy season it is thatched over like the other buildings.41

The stone and lime were locally available, the stone from a nearby reef.42 The lime was produced by burning the abundant quantities of sea shells.43 In this respect the strong house differed from the earliest Portuguese fortress in West Africa, at Mina, constructed in 1482 of stone imported from Europe.

These materials afforded solidity, a measure of security, and relative durability. The use of slave labor in the construction of the fort, as well as the connection to the Crown, would have intensified the association of the structure with physical and social power. Symbolically, the stone construction would have been associated with permanence and with elevated status.44 This symbolism is borne out by the fact that one other structure in Cacheu was built of stone and lime: the parish church, another symbol of Portuguese authority.45

The technique of covering the walls with lime is also encountered in Portuguese settlers' dwellings along the East African coast in the seventeenth century.46 East and West African styles may have had a common origin in the architecture of the Algarve in southern Portugal.47 The term "Portuguese style" or "maison a la portugaise" is apposite. The earliest expressions of this idiom date from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; in East Africa with the forts at Mombasa and elsewhere along the coast, and in West Africa at Mina and in the houses cited by Fernandes in Sierra Leone.

There were, of course, practical as well as symbolic reasons to build forts of stone. And the use of lime may have served to cool the interior of the buildings by increasing the amount of sunlight reflected away from the exterior wall. But by the end of the seventeenth century whitewashed faqades had clearly taken on a symbolic meaning as indicators of wealth and social standing.

The symbolic association of the Afro-Portuguese housing style with status and wealth is reflected in the writing of another contemporary of Coelho, the French-born Jean Barbot. Although Barbot, as he freely admitted, never visited Cacheu, he did interview two pilots who visited the town about 1680.48 Barbot writes:

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The inhabitants of Cacheu, who are almost all Portuguese mulattoes, are entirely supported by the trade they have with these regions... They all live in Portuguese style and are dependent on the King of Portugal.49

But it is another chronicler, who did visit the region in the 1680s, the Frenchman Jajolet de la Courbe who, in his description of the settlement of Albreda in the Gambia, defines houses "a la portugaise." Jajolet de la Courbe arrived in Albreda in June 1686. There, living among a largely Muslim Manding population he found "certains negres et mulatres qui se disent Portugais, parce qu'ils sont issus de quelques Portugais qui y ont habit6 autrefois."O5 These "Portuguese" were distinguished from the rest of the population by their language, Creole, and by their profession: they were traders. Jajolet de la Courbe was received by a wealthy trader, a woman, the "courtesan" named La Belinguere, in her Portuguese-style house:

Elle nous receut fort civilement, dans une case a la portugaise, c'est a dire ayant des murailles de terre blanchies, et un petit vestibule devant la porte oh l'on nous fit asseoir 9 l'air sur des nattes.51

Labat, who borrowed his material on this part of the coast from Jajolet de la Courbe, gives a similar description of houses belonging to the Portuguese in Cacheu: "Les maisons n'y sont que de terre battue, blanches dehors et dedans avec de la chaux."52 Confirmation of these descriptions is found, a century later in Mollien's description of the house of the commander at Geba:

Je dois convenir qu'elle 6tait aux yeux d'un Europ6en, assortie a l'h6te qu'on y recevait; c'6tait une grande maison carrie en terre, composee d'un rez-de-chauss6e, et couverte en paille; la lumiere p6n6trait a peine dans l'interieur; a c6td de la chambre oi le commandant couche, se trouve plac6 le cachot oi l'on renferme les malfaiteurs. Un vestibule t6ndbreux pr6cede ces deux pieces, c'est la que le commandant reqoit les visites53

Similarly, in Jillifry on the Gambia the English trading house was "bitie a la portugaise" and surrounded by a palisade, while Vintang contained

"plusieurs maisons portugaises qui surpassent celles des negres [et] qui 6taient de terre."54 Significantly, however, Portuguese-style houses were not the exclusive privilege of Portuguese and Luso-Africans. South of Vintang, Jajolet de la Courbe observed that the king of Fogny lived in a house that was also "faite A la portugaise."55 And the most impressive dwelling in Vintang belonged to English traders.16

Throughout the Gambia-Casamance-Bissau region during the seventeenth century, wherever the presence of Luso-African traders provided a model, houses in the Portuguese style were adopted by local rulers and merchants as

symbols of social status and wealth.5' What was meant by houses "A la portugaise" may have varied slightly from one observer to another, but this definition generally entailed construction in dried earth or sun-dried bricks--the

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local soil has a high clay content, making it well-suited for adobe and 'banco'--covered with lime to give a whitewashed effect, and a vestibule in which to receive visitors.58

For traders, this vestibule was important. Commerce in the Gambia-Geba region was based on personal relations between host and guest, who was often a traveling merchant." Visiting traders were welcomed and given accommodations by their hosts, who in turn received a percentage of their guests' commercial gains, as well as the prestige that accrued to those who hosted foreign visitors.60 Among many Manding and Jola even today, to accord hospitality to strangers is deemed an important social virtue.6I Landlord-stranger relations were based, as Brooks observes, on reciprocity: "hospitality and protection for traders and their goods [in return for] the first opportunity to trade with the strangers."62 The vestibule served both as the locus for extending the expected hospitality, and as a transitional space between exterior public space and interior private space.

If the traders' houses served to welcome visiting merchants and to transact business, one may well ask where the goods were kept. Many of the items exchanged-kola, iron, glass beads, amber among imports; ivory and wax among exports--could have been stored in rooms or storage areas in the house, but what about the slaves who constituted an important part of the commerce? Where were captives kept during halts on the way to the coast? Travelers, even those involved in the slave trade, are not explicit on this point. However, some of the Portuguese merchants' houses were located within fortified compounds. At Geregia, for example, while the village itself was surrounded by a double barrier of stakes, presumably for defense, the "maisons a la Portugaise" located inside these walls were themselves enclosed within a second palisade.63 The inner wall would not likely have been needed for protection against attack. It probably served to keep captives inside. Labat writes:

On voyait au milieu d'un grand nombre de cases de Negres renfermies dans une double enceinte de gros pieux de 10 ' 12 pieds de hauteur, 7 ou 8 maisons a la Portugaise... qui 6taient encore enferm6es dans une seconde enceinte de palissades, avec une tres petite porte 6troite et basse, qui semblait plut6t tre le guichet d'une prison.64

For the captives who were very likely held in this inner courtyard while on their way to the coast, a prison is precisely what the structure was.

In the riverain trading centers and at the more remote "escales," Luso- African merchants erected their distinctive style of architecture. These people played a central role as middlemen along the north-south trade route that connected the Gambia to Cacheu. Labat's description, published in 1728, of the overland journey purportedly made by Andr6 Brtie but probably made in 1685 by Jajolet de la Courbe, offers vivid descriptions of Luso-African communities along this route. Vintang, the northern terminus, had diminished in size by the date of this visit, but it was still an important village:

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Il y a un nombre de maisons baties a la portugaise...Les Portugais sont en assez grand nombre dans ce lieu; ils y paraissent riches, leurs maisons quoique couvertes de feuilles de latanier, sont belles, grandes et bien meubl'es pour le payis [sic]: Ils ont une Eglise plus grande et plus propre que celle de Gilfroy.65

The houses served to show off the wealth of their merchant owners while at the same time functioning to receive traveling merchants. The narrator, welcomed by a wealthy "senhora," widow of a Luso-African merchant and herself a wealthy trader, was received, appropriately, in the vestibule.66 There, he was served-equally appropriately--kola nuts imported from Sierra Leone via Cacheu.

In Geregia, seven leagues south of Vintang, Labat mentions seven or eight "maisons a la portugaise, couvertes de feuilles de latanier, fort grandes et fort propres.67 Likewise, there were "Portuguese" in each of the successive trading stops: Pasqua; James, a center for trade in bees' wax and where "Les Portugais...ont plusieurs belles habitations;"68 and at Guinguin south of the Casamance River.69 In Cacheu, Labat describes the Portuguese houses, then continues:

Elles sont couvertes de feuilles de lataniers pendant la saison haute, ou des pluies; et pendant le reste de l'annee elles n'ont qu'une simple toile A voile qui les d6fend du soleil et de la rosee.70

The change of roof covering protected the dwellings against the considerable risk of fire during the dry season.7" The use of sails, while unusual, is consistent with practice elsewhere on the coast. In nineteenth-century Freetown, for example, the masts and other wooden parts of no-longer serviceable sailing ships were used in house construction.72 In Cacheu, the practice of removing thatched roofs during the dry season continued into the nineteenth century. In 1818 Mollien observed:

Les maisons placees sur le bord de la mer sont construites en pierres, celles qui se trouvent dans l'int6rieur de la ville ne sont qu'en terre, et couvertes en paille.73

The clear demarcation between wealthy inhabitants and the rest of the population, reflected in the use of building materials, had become common in coastal trading centers and cities by the nineteenth century.

II

Building Style and "Portuguese" Identity

The whitewashed Portuguese houses expressed and embodied the social role of the Luso-Africans who lived in them. Just as their layout facilitated the commerce that was carried out inside, so too their distinctive white exterior represented the distinctive identity of the members of the local Luso-

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Portuguese community. By the late seventeenth century, members of the Luso-African communities, especially in remote areas, were physically indistinguishable from other local African populations. Yet they called themselves "Portuguese" and they considered themselves to form a group. It is significant that membership in the "Portuguese" communities of the Gambia, Casamance, and northern Guin6 was not racially defined. Rather, it was based on several cultural characteristics. First, to belong to the "Portuguese" community was to be a trader.74 Just as professional traders throughout the Mande diaspora came to be identified as "Dyula" or "Juula," so too these traders were known as "Portuguese." Besides the identification by profession, the Portuguese spoke a distinctive language; to belong to the Portuguese community was to speak Creole; thus, Jajolet de la Courbe's remarks about the small group of Creole-speaking "blacks and mulattoes" in Albreda "who call themselves Portuguese."

The Frenchman's somewhat skeptical response to this Portuguese community is enlightening. He seems to be comparing these "Portuguese" to the inhabitants of Portugal, a group to which they clearly did not belong. He is also imposing a definition of ethnic identity based on physical appearance. In early European travel narratives, skin color was often the first characteristic emphasized in descriptions of West Africans.'7 Neither in physical appearance nor in the material conditions of their life did these "Portuguese" resemble de la Courbe's conception of Portuguese. Clearly, the "Portuguese" of Senegambia were using a much more fluid understanding of identity as a cultural, a linguistic, and a professional identification, one which can and often does change over time.

That the Luso-Africans constituted a group with their own cultural identity, based on economic specialization, language, and religion, has been noted by Boulegue.76 Brooks, in his more nuanced study of langados, Cape Verdeans, and Luso-Africans, also notes that group identity was founded on these characteristics, as well as on the shared material culture of the traders.77 I do not claim to have "discovered" Luso-African identity. Rather, I stress the fluidity of this identity, which is congruent with the long history of changing "ethnic" identities in the Gambia-Casamance region, but which contrasts markedly with definitions of ethnicity based upon physical appearance.78 And, of course, I emphasize the specific role played by architecture in articulating "Portuguese" professional status and cultural identity.

A crucial element of "Portuguese" identity in the Gambia-Geba region, as Boulegue notes, was indeed their religion. These "Portuguese" all considered themselves to be Christians, even those living far from the nearest cleric and who had never had the sacraments administered to them. Thus, for example, the small groups of Luso-Africans in Geba79 and in Ziguinchoro0 all considered themselves Christians. There is a centuries-old tendency among non-Muslims in the Casamance and northern Guinea-Bissau for each "ethnic" group to have its own religious shrines and rituals.81 In this respect, too, by constituting themselves as a separate group with their own religion, as well as a distinctive

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profession and a unique language, Luso-Africans were following local models .82

Along the coast and in the immediate hinterland from the Upper Casamance to Kaabu, where communities of diverse ethnolinguistic origin have lived in close proximity for centuries, the defining characteristics of identity still include language, profession, religion,...and architecture. From a distance it is often possible to identify who lives in a community by the form of the houses. Even today the thatched and woven round houses of the Fulani are readily distinguished from the substantial, rectangular houses, built in banco, belonging to the Manding. In the Lower Casamance, where dried earth construction prevails, the Jola build with courses of dried mud, while the more recent immigrants, the Manding, use dried mud bricks. Seventeenth-century Luso-Africans' houses of lime-covered, sun-dried bricks were adapted to their social and economic role as middlemen in long-distance trade. The houses provided a location to welcome visitors and to conduct business. These dwellings constituted one of the defining symbols of the wealth and the identity of the "Portuguese." The Luso-Africans, just as much as the Bagnuns with whom they traded, were an "ethnic group." Viewed in this context, the repeated references to houses built "a la portugaise" assume added sociocultural significance.

III

African Influence on the "Portuguese" Building Style

Although houses built "a la portugaise" incorporated European architectural elements, they also made use of local building materials. The result was a hybrid construction, neither wholly European nor entirely West African. The major African elements in private dwellings were the walls and the roof (which perhaps doesn't leave much else!). The use of sun-dried bricks rather than stone for most private dwellings was a significant "Africanization" of the southern Portuguese model of construction. Only the forts, some churches and, by the nineteenth century, a few of the houses in Bissau were constructed of stone.83 Not only the Luso-African traders in the hinterland, but also European and Cape Verdean merchants living in trading centers such as Cacheu used adobe bricks. While adobe had less durability than stone, its use also dramatically reduced building costs and the labor required for construction. Interestingly, no local industry tied to stonecutting, brick- making, or lime production seems to have developed in the Gambia-Geba region before the nineteenth century. By contrast, in St. Louis, Jajolet de la Courbe reported that he himself set some of the local "whites" to work making bricks and lime.84

The other important African element in dwellings built "a la portugaise" was the roof. Appropriating local materials and construction techniques, Portuguese houses were roofed with thatch85 or covered with fan palm leaves.*86 Thatched roofs are characteristic of African architecture in the Gambia-Bissau

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region. They are far less expensive than tiles or slate, which were reserved for churches and forts. Another local material, palm leaves, provides a temporary covering; fast to install, they are used even today to protect buildings under construction and for temporary structures. According to Coelho, the parish church in Cacheu was roofed with tiles."7

At Cacheu, Coelho mentioned another category of building besides the fort that did not have a thatched roof. These were the "cumbetes" or storehouses covered with earth. Coelho's rather enigmatic description of "a building with earth on top" does not offer sufficient information for us to determine the method of construction.88 In the rainy climate of the coast, flat adobe roofs would not last long. Perhaps adobe would be adequate for a very small surface area such as a storehouse. The non-flammable material was necessary, however:

The 'cumbetes' are the store houses of all residences, in order to counter the danger of fire. Because they have earth on top, even if the town is burned down, as very often happens, what is stored...is never burned.89

It is interesting that no mention is made of these roofs being removed during the dry season, as were the roofs of local houses. Perhaps for these small storehouses, the Portuguese of Cacheu were following a local model for building durable, fire-resistent dwellings. A comparison to local granary construction will enable us better to cover this topic.

Another feature of Portuguese-style houses whose origin was not necessarily European was the vestibule. The practice of constructing houses with eaves that extend far beyond the outer walls so as to create a roofed space before the entrance, or even a continuous veranda around the house, is surely indigenous to the Gambia-Geba region. By adding a second, outer wall beneath the outer extremity of the roof, local architects would effectively have created a vestibule. Such spaces are common in northern Jola communities. They may well represent a local architectural form, one that has the advantage of offering a shaded living area that is closed to wandering cattle, but open to the evening sea breeze.9 It is possible that the Portuguese learned to construct their houses with vestibules, by following local architectural examples.

IV

Verandahs

The development of the verandah in West African architecture poses a complex historical problem. Verandahs, roofed porches that extend around part or all of a dwelling, are common to many cultures throughout West Africa. They also became an integral element of European colonial architecture. They existed on plantation houses from eighteenth-century Virginia; they appeared in East and West Africa; they are characteristic of British colonial buildings in

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India and French colonial structures in southeast Asia. In short, the verandah is a nearly ubiquitous phenomenon in tropical and sub-tropical climates. It is possible that verandahs developed independently in several cultures, for they are a logical architectural adaptation, providing shade for the walls of the building and permitting air currents to flow through the structure. Any attempt to establish specific historical origins for the verandah might therefore be pointless.91

While it may not be possible to determine either European or African origins, close observation of local architecture in Guinea-Bissau supports the thesis that vestibules and semi-enclosed roofed porches are indigenous to this region. Round buildings are indigenous to the Senegambia, Guinea-Bissau, and the Futa Jalon. No one would argue that such structures were introduced here from Europe. The congruence of building materials, design and function further suggests that in Casamance and Guinea-Bissau, round houses of dried earth have long incorporated porches.

The Papels, the Manjaks, the southern Floups, and the northern Jolas (formerly called Floups) all construct round houses. These dwellings are often provided with a vestibule or verandah, as among the northern Jolas of Buluf or, in the case of impluvium houses built around a circular central courtyard (southern Floups or Jola-Esulalu; Manjak), with an interior porch. Perhaps the best-documented example of such architecture is a round dwelling of the Nalu peoples, from south of Rio Geba, documented by Teixeira da Mota in 1948.92

The walls of the Nalu house take the form of two concentric circles of dried earth. These walls are connected at four points by short, transverse walls that form radii of the circle. The inner circular wall is pierced by two opposing doors. In line with these doors, the outer wall is interrupted both front and back for about one-eighth of its circumference. The roof extends to cover both inner and outer walls. The resulting structure thus includes both an enclosed verandah on either side of the house and an open porch or vestibule in front and in back.

Round houses are inherently stable. The structure of the Nalu building assures maximum strength, since the short transverse walls serve as buttresses that convey lateral thrust from the inner to the outer circular wall. In addition to their structural role, the double walls provide a shaded porch and a transitional space between exterior and interior; furthermore, the inner circumference is shaded from the sun and the house receives cross-ventilation through the front and rear vestibules. In other words, both structurally and functionally this is an optimal design. Such a marriage of form and function does not suggest that the verandah was borrowed from a foreign source--where it would have been part of rectangular dwellings--and then reinterpreted to fit a round design.

Teixeira de Mota also published the ground plan of a circular Manjak house from Caio in northern Guinea-Bissau.93 This doughnut-shaped dwelling was built around a central courtyard and it was about 28 meters in diameter. The eaves and roof extended beyond the inner circumference of the building to

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY 321

create a shaded verandah around the courtyard. Impluvium houses were also common among the southern Floups; the large courtyard offered protection for cattle and humans against raids. Here too, the verandah was built on the interior, bordering the courtyard. Impluvium houses in which this verandah is framed by impressive columns of sculpted mud are still found among the Jola- Esulalu, south of the Casamance River.94 This variation of the verandah, too, could well have developed from local round houses without European influence.

V

Luso-African Influence on African Architecture

Luso-Africans transformed Portuguese architectural models by adapting them to the local climate and by using local building materials. By the late seventeenth century "Portuguese style" houses had definitely influenced some local African communities, as well. Luso-African dwellings served as symbols of social status and wealth wherever they were found, even in the hinterland along the Vintang-Cacheu trade route. It is, therefore, not surprising that some local Africans of high social standing used elements of the Portuguese building style for their own habitations.

Jajolet de la Courbe describes two local rulers, one Floup and the other Bagnun, who lived in houses built after the Portuguese style. Significantly, both rulers lived in communities that carried on extensive trade with Portuguese or Luso-Africans. Near Vintang, Jajolet de la Courbe met the "king of Fogny." This Bagnun ruler, whose subjects included Floups as well as Bagnuns,95 invited his guest to an audience in an antechamber or vestibule "car sa case est faite a la portugaise."96 The characteristic feature of Portuguese style dwellings, an antechamber that served as intermediate space between the public (outside) and the private (interior), must have been as useful to a local ruler as it was to professional traders.

Since the time of Almada, the Floups had been reputed to avoid contact with the Portuguese (not an unwise practice, since their isolation helped to protect them against slave raids).97 But the Floups of Bolole, four leagues from the mouth of the Rio San Domingos north of Cacheu, did carry out commerce with the Portuguese in Cacheu.98 The community of Bolole was so striking architecturally that Jajolet de la Courbe describes it twice in his manuscript. It is "un des plus beaux que j'aye vu en Guinde et un des mieux

peupl6s."99 Each family compound had its own tower, made of sun-baked earth, which served as granary and protected the rice stores against fire. The custom of constructing fireproof granaries was certainly of considerable antiquity among these rice farmers, in a region where riziculture dates to the first millennium. Parenthetically, one wonders whether such granaries may have inspired the Portuguese at Cacheu to build their "cumbetes" or storehouses with earthen roofs. In fact the Floups of Bolole regularly sold their excess rice to the Portuguese at Cacheu and there is additional evidence of

322 PETER MARK

intercultural contact and influence. Many of the Floups had taken European names: "Ils sont tous ydolastres et n6antmoins t l'imitation des Portugais, ils se nomment presque tous d'un nom de saint."1?o

In this context of extensive trade and of intercultural borrowing, architectural influence, too, seems to have moved in both directions. The Floup king of Bolole's house was built, according to Jajolet de la Courbe, with a vestibule for the royal audiences, much like the residence of the king of Fogny. Jajolet de la Courbe's extraordinary description of the royal housing compound in Bolole is worth citing in full:

La case du roi est une des plus jolies que j'aye vui dans ce pays; il y avait au devant une grande place avec une avenue de deux rang6es d'arbres assez bien plant6s. La case est comme un labyrinthe, toute plant6e de bananiers comme celle du roy de Bissau avec quantit6 de cases d'espace en espace pour ses femmes et ses esclaves, et apres plusieurs tours et detours vous arrivez vers le milieu de la sienne, devant laquelle il y avait un vestibule couvert ou il escoute les palabres...nous le trouvames assis dans un fauteuil que les Portugais luy avaient donn6.'01

While the vestibule may reflect familiarity with Luso-African housing, the general layout of the compound is quite African. The many small dwellings reserved for the king's wives and slaves reflect local social organization, and especially the king's elevated status. (Only the wealthiest members of Floup society could afford to have many wives, and slavery was not common on a large scale.) The planting of trees, however, to define and order the spatial arrangement of the compound, is probably a foreign element introduced by the Portuguese. Even today in Casamance and Guinea-Bissau oral sources attribute the planting of mango and citrus trees, for shade and fruit, to European influence. While these trees are not actually part of the architecture, they are an important component in the human transformation of the environment and the creation of living space.

The labyrinthine layout of the royal compound recalls the fact that the devastating slave raids of the Bijogos were still part of living memory in the 1680s and that the Atlantic slave trade was then at its height. The "grande place" is a characteristic feature of Floup (and, by the nineteenth century, "Jola") village layout. Each village ("esuk") or even each ward ("kalol") has a central area used for community gatherings. The names of some contemporary Jola communities (Tenduk) reflect the longstanding practice of public gatherings, and suggest the great age of such "grandes places." Thus, in its organization of space and in its form, the late seventeenth-century royal compound in Bolole attests to the combination of elements of traditional Floup village spatial layout, of innovative responses to the existence of slaveraiding, and of selective borrowing from Portuguese village spatial organization as manifested in Cacheu.

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY 323

VI

In her study of the history of African cities, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch suggests that the roots of colonial architecture are to be found in the period before colonization.102 It is indeed during the period of the earliest European presence on the West African coast, and particularly among the Luso-Africans in Senegambia and Bissau, that one may seek the origins of an architecture adapted to the social needs, to the climate, and to the materials of sub-Saharan Africa. The first centuries of culture contact witnessed both African influence on "Portuguese" or Luso-African construction, and European influence on the architecture of local African elites. At the same time, the elaboration of a distinctive "Portuguese" style that was actually Euro-African architecture coincided with the establishment of a Luso-African "ethnic group" and, through the seventeenth century, helped to define that group.

Notes

I wish to thank David Henige, Paul Jenkins, and Jan Vansina, who read an earlier draft of this paper, for their helpful suggestions.

1. George Brooks, Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society, and Trade in Western Africa, 1000-1630 (Boulder, 1993); see also Brooks, "Perspectives on Luso-African commerce and settlement in the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau region, 16th-19th centuries," Boston University African Studies Center, 1980; see also Brooks, "A Nhara of the Guinea-Bissau Region: Mae Aurelia Correia" in Claire Robertson and Martin Klein, eds., Women and Slavery in Africa (Madison, 1983).

2. Jean Boulbgue, Les Luso-Africains en Sdnigambie (Lisbon, 1989). 3. For the role of langados see Brooks, Landlords; the langados were for the most part

Portuguese (some of them Jewish) who had settled on the coast, many of whom remained permanently and married local women.

4. From north to south the fluvial region may be divided into: Gambia River, Vintang Creek and Fogny, Soungrougrou (or Sangr6degu) Creek and northern Casamance, Casamance River, Kasa region, Rio San Domingos (Cacheu).

5. The inhabitants of the Cacheu-Lower Casamance-Fogny region today constitute the Jola people. Jola (or Diola) ethnic identity is, however, largely a product of the colonial period. On this point see Peter Mark, The Wild Bull and the Sacred Forest, Form, Meaning and Change in Senegambian Initiation Masks (New York, 1992). Before the late nineteenth century these different groups did not have a sense of common identity. Nevertheless, cultural and linguistic similarities existed then, as they do today, probably in part the product of migration from Kasa north into Fogny. This population movement, and the gradual displacement of indigenous Bagnun-speakers by Diola-speakers was described by late seventeenth-century observers, particularly Jajolet de la Courbe and Labat, who probably used Jajolet de la Courbe's account. The Diola-speakers had reduced the Bagnun-speaking population to a few villages in northern Fogny and along the Soungrougrou by the time of Bertrand-Bocand6's ethnographic study in 1849.

6. On Floup (or Jola) involvement in trade see, for example, the extensive commercial contact between the nineteenth-century people of Thionk-Essyl, north of the Casamance River, and the French at Carabane; Bertrand-Bocand6, "Notes sur la Guin6e portugaise ou S6n6gambie m6ridionale," Bulletin de la Socidtd de Gdographie 12(1849), nos. 67, 68. Bocand6 writes of the Floups who lived north of Cacheu and San Domingos, "Presque tous les habitants parlent trbs bien le cr6ole portugais," p. 327. That they spoke the local trading language

324 PETER MARK

strongly suggests involvement in trade; note that these are the same group described as traders by Jajolet de la Courbe.

7. Valentim Fernandes, Description de la Cote occidentale d'Afrique (Sinigal au Cap de Monte, Archipels), ed. and trans. Th. Monod et al (Bissau, 1951), 59.

8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 62. 10. Ibid., 57. 11. More accurate late nineteenth-century estimates placed the population of the largest

villages in the Casamance at between 2000 and 3000; see Archives Nationales frangaises, section Outre-Mer, S6n6gal et D6pendences I 96 ter.

12. The use of figures such as 10,000 to symbolize a very large sum is common in the Mande world. In 1500 the Gambia formed the western extremity of this culture area. Some of Fernandes' informants likely themselves had Mande informants. Thus 10,000 inhabitants should not be understood literally. See Mamadou Diawara, "Contribution to the Study of Social Differentiation in the Jaara Kingdom," HA 22 (1995).

13. Fernandes, Description, 37. 14. Ibid., 92. 15. Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch points out that the forts, whose construction materials

were largely imported from Europe, could hardly have served as models for domestic architecture. The difference in scale also made direct modeling unlikely. These comments, made apropos of African communities, are also pertinent to the local Luso-Africans. See Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Histoire des villes d'Afrique noire, des origines a la colonisation (Paris, 1993),158.

16. The Tratado Breve was not published until 1733. However, later seventeenth- century chroniclers had either direct or indirect access to Almada's account. Pierre Davity closely follows the narrative in his description of the Casamance region. Later authors such as Dapper relied on Davity (Adam Jones, personal communication). Dapper, in turn, was used by Barbot. Thus, as late as 1732 Almada's writing helped to establish European images of the Guinea Coast; see Barbot on Guinea, the Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa, 1678-1712, ed. Paul Hair, Adam Jones, and Robin Law (London, 1992), 166-68, 212-16, 225-27 et passim.

17. Almada writes, Tratado, 273, "Ha algumas fortelazzas de guerra chamadas por eles Cao-sans, ao longo do Rio e esteiros, fortes de madeira muito forte, fincada toda a pique e terra-plenada, com suas guaritas ..."

18. cf. ibid., 274: "Os escravos que hao e vendem cativam em guerras." 19. Ibid., 288, "a outra nao fugia nem se defendia; o uso disto os fez ja terem melhor

conhecimento, porque pelejam e se defendem e matam e cativam aos imigos;" On the identification of the "Arriatas" as Jola speakers see Peter Mark, A Cultural, Economic, and Religious History of the Basse Casamance Since 1500 (Stuttgart, 1985), 20ff.

20. Almada, Tratado, 289, "A terra de Iziguchor que sao Banhus qual ha trata de cero e escravos."

21. For an excellent description of the Portuguese and Luso-African trading networks see Brooks, Landlords, esp. 79-113, 260ff. On the changing appellation of Rio San Domingos see ibid., 229.

22. Almada, Tratado, 304, "Passante o porte de Cacheu...por causa do muito trato que havia nesta terra de escravos, mantimentos, muita cera..."

23. On the "ethnic" origins of slaves from this region see Stephen Btihnen, "Ethnic Origins of Peruvian Slaves (1548-1650). Figures for Upper Guinea," Paideuma 39(1993), 57- 110.

24. Brooks, Landlords, 263, citing Almada. For Almada see Ant6nio Brasio, ed. Monumenta Missionaria Africana. Africa Ocidental [MMA](13 vols.: Lisbon, 1952-88), 3:307, 317.

25. Almada in ibid., 307, "[as casas] sao muito boas, e sao mais labirinthos que casas. E fastem-nos desta maniera por causa de um nagao de negros chamados Bijagos...os quais tem continuademente guerra con estes."

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY 325

26. Ibid., 4:248 (1 May 1607): "os Bijogozos, os quais tem destruido doze Reinos, que ora estao despovoados . . ." "Matando e abrasando tudo (ibid., 4:255); see also Brooks, Landlords, 263.

27. Almada in Brisio, MMA, 4:299. 28. Almada in ibid., 332: "Estes Beafaras nao tem as suas casas aldeadas, como as

outros nacoes, senao afastadas algum tanto umas das outras, e as fazem segundo a posse de cada um. E no lugar donde as fazem vivem ami os parentes todos juntos, reconhecendo ao mais velho, a quem dao obediencia."

29. Climate change on a regional scale is a central theme of George Brooks' recent work.

30. Francisco de Lemos Coelho, Description of the Coast of Guinea (1684), intr. and trans. by P.E.H. Hair (Liverpool, 1985), introduction.

31. Ibid., 11. 32. Ibid, chapter 3, paragraph 7. 33. Ibid., 8. 34. Ibid., 18; see also Brooks, Landlords, 243. 35. Brasio, MMA, 4:88-89; dated 15 November 1605. 36. Ibid., 4:573; see also Guy Thilmans," Le routier de la c6te de Guin6e de Francisco

Pirez de Carvalho (1635)," Bulletin de l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire 32(1970)343-69. 37. See Brooks, Landlords, 243. 38. Brasio, MMA, 4:573. 39. Brooks, Landlords, 243. 40. For a statistical analysis of the ethnic origins of slaves from Cacheu see Biihnen,

"Ethnic Origins." 41. Coelho, Description, 20. The original fort, built in the 1580s and replaced shortly

after 1610, was again rebuilt in the 1660s; see Barbot on Guinea, 166. By the nineteenth century the fort was reduced to "rotten and indefensible wooden palisades and the bastions [to] no more than mounds of dirt;" Brooks, "Nhara," 305.

42. Coelho, Description, 24. 43. In the mid-nineteenth century Carabane, in the Casamance River, exported locally-

produced lime to Goree and to the Gambia; see H. Hecquard, Voyage sur la cote et dans l'intirieur de l'Afrique Occidentale (Paris, 1855),109.

44. For an analogous example of the symbolic association of stone construction with permanence and social standing see John Middleton's discussion of Swahili architecture in The World of the Swahili (New Haven, 1993), 5, 62ff.

45. Coelho, Description, 21. 46. Manuel Teixeira, "Portuguese Traditional Settlements, a Result of Cultural

Miscegenation," in Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 1/2(Spring 1990), p. 29. 47. Ibid. 48. On Barbot's sources see Barbot on Guinea, xxxvi-xlvi. 49. Ibid., 160ff. 50. Pierre Cultru, ed., Premier voyage du Sieur Jajolet de la Courbe fait ai la coste

d'Afrique en 1685 (Nendeln, 1973), 191. 51. Ibid., 196. 52. Jean-Baptiste Labat, Nouvelle relation de l'Afrique occidentale (5 vols.: Paris, 1728),

5:68. 53. G. Mollien, Voyage a l'intirieur de l'Afrique aux sources du Sendgal et de la

Gambie (2 vols.: Paris, 1820), 2:218-19. 54. Cultru, Premier voyage, 196, 201. 55. Ibid., 203-04. This king was himself a Bagnun who often launched slave raids

against the neighboring Floups; ibid., 207. 56. Labat, Nouvelle relation, 5:5. 57. In the trading village of Guinala south of Bissau on the Rio Grande, too, Jajolet de la

Courbe remarked the existence of several Portuguese style houses; Cultru, Premier voyage, 228.

326 PETER MARK

58. Under conditions of high humidity such as are common in coastal Guinea, lime may extend the life of adobe walls (Jan Vansina, personal communication, 13 September 1994).

59. On the importance of host-trader rapport, see Mark, Basse Casamance, 61ff; see also Brooks, Landlords,

60. In the nineteenth century, Diola men who traveled to the Gambia to gather and sell palm produce owed a percentage of the proceeds to their Manding hosts; see Mark, Basse Casamance, 98.

61. The Diola-Fogny language has a word for such hosts: "ajoeti." 62. Brooks, "Nhara," 296. 63. Labat, Nouvelle relation, 5: 12. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid., 5:5. The size of these houses probably permitted the owners to lodge African

"gourmets" (grumetes) who purchased wax in remote villages and brought it to the "escales;" see Labat, 5:50.

66. Ibid., 5:7. 67. Ibid., 5:12. 68. Ibid., 5:43. Elsewhere (Mark, Basse Casamance, 25) I identify "Jame" (as it is

spelled by Coelho; "James" is Labat's spelling) with the Kujaamatay, a region now inhabited largely by Joola speakers and extending from the Songrougrou west to Fogny. I find Biihnen's alternative identification of James unconvincing, as his argument presupposes a conscious and sudden switch from Bagnun to Joola identity, which is improbable; see Btihnen, "Place Names as an Historical Source," HA 19(1992), 76.

69. Labat, Nouvelle relation, 5:50. 70. Ibid., 5:65. 71. See also Brooks, Landlords, 243. 72. Odile Goerg, personal communication, 20 April 1994. 73. Mollien, Voyage, 2:245. 74. See, for example, Cultru, Premier voyage, 251, speaking of the 10 or 12 households

of "whites" in Geba; all were merchants. 75. See Mark, "Fetishers, Marybuckes, and the Christian Norm, European conceptions

of Senegambians, 1550-1760," African Studies Review 21 (1978), 91-99. 76. Boulbgue, Luso-Africains. 77. Brooks, Landlords, 194. 78. For example, for centuries northern Jolas, Manding, and Bagnuns have intermarried

and frequently changed their cultural identification; see Peter Mark, The Wild Bull and the Sacred Forest. Form, Meaning, and Change in Senegambian Initiation Masks (New York, 1992), chapter 2.

79. Cultru, Premier voyage, 251. 80. See Brisio, MMA, 4:665, "Relacdo da Cristandade da Guin6 e do Cabo Verde,"

dated 1621. 81. See Mark, Basse Casamance, 82. The neighbors of the Luso-Africans clearly understood their religion in this African

perspective of "to each his religion." This is unwittingly indicated in a 1606 report (Braisio, MMA, 4:203) by Fr. Baltasar Berreira that the Bijogos "quando veem nossas imagens de Christo ou de Nossa Senhora lhe chamam China do branco ou China do christao."

83. Mollien, Voyage, in 1818 describes some residences as constructed of stone. 84. Cultru, Premier voyage, 39. 85. Coelho, Description, 21. 86. Cultru, Premier voyage, 212. 87. Coelho, Description, 21. 88. It would not be advisable for the historian to extrapolate from twentieth-century

building techniques to reconstruct these seventeenth-century structures "with earth on top." Yet it is worth parenthetical mention that thatched houses in Guinea-Bissau are sometimes protected against fire by constructing an armature over the roof, made of long sticks that are covered first

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY 327

with leaves and thatch and then with clay soil. See Mario G. Ventim Neves in Avelino Teixeira da Mota, A Habitagdo Indigena na Guind Portuguesa (Lisbon, 1948), 148.

89. Coelho, Description, 21. See also Brooks, Landlords, 243. 90. In the dialect of the northern Diola community of Thionk-Essyl, the word for

evening, "gurussu," refers to the evening breeze. "Gurussu" derives etymologically from "erus," "wind."

91. This argument in favor of the independent development of verandahs in different cultures closely follows the reasoning articulated by Odile Goe'rg in her these d'6tat on the history of Conakry and Freetown. I wish to express my debt to Goerg, who has helped me to understand the complex social and economic factors underlying the development of architectural forms in coastal West Africa.

92. See Teixeira da Mota, HabitaFdo, 443. 93. Ibid., 294. 94. See Louis-Vincent Thomas, Les Diola (Dakar, 1959), for an introduction to Jola

architectual styles. On Jola-Esulalu impluvium houses see P. Dujarric, "L'habitat diola" in F.-G. Barbier-Wiesser, ed., Comprendre la Casamance (Paris, 1994), 151-67.

95. Cultru, Premier voyage, 207; see also Labat, 5:7. 96. Cultru, Premier voyage, 206. 97. Biihnen's statistics for the Peruvian slave trade partially bear out this point. For the

period 1548-1650, Floups constituted 8.6% of the 3167 African slaves from Upper Guinea identified in Peru. By contrast, those identified as Bran made up 27.4%, Biafada 17.3%, Mandinga 9%, and Bagnun 10.7% of the total; Biihnen, "Ethnic Origins." We do not, however, know total population figures for the region for this period.

98. Cultru, Premier voyage, 259. 99. Ibid. 100. Ibid., 260. 101. Ibid., 238. 102. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Histoire des villes, 151.