Stories
What does it mean to seek narratives about Black life in documents produced by enslavers, colonial administrators, and imperial officials? The manuscript documents that comprise slavery's archive limit access to the inner lives and experiences of enslaved Africans and people of African descent.1 By weaving together threads of individual lives strewn across multiple “documents” in the archive, Keywords for Black Louisiana creates “stories” that center the lived experiences of Black people along the Gulf Coast. While we do not reject the primacy of the manuscript document as a repository of information about the past, by focusing on stories instead, we forge a documentary editing praxis we hope will disrupt the reproduction of epistemic violence of slavery’s archive.
The stories selected here offer insights into the Black experience in Louisiana during the eighteenth century. Each story includes a title, a short abstract of the story told across the selected documents, and transcriptions/translations of the documents themselves. Below you have the option to view transcriptions in the original French or Spanish or English translations individually, as well as the option to view transcriptions and translations side by side. Each document is also accompanied by page images of the original manuscript source.
Antoine Is Willing to Burn It All Down
In 1793 María Juana began a prolonged suit for the freedom of her son Antoine Sarrazin. After years of unsuccessful litigation Antoine decides to take matters into his own hands, joining the Pointe Coupée rebellion of 1795.
Baptiste Is Freed by the Spanish Governor
Baptiste Bourguignon successfully sues for his freedom on the basis of his Native ancestry, following the lead of his half-siblings Pierre Morsu and Marie Paget.
Catharina Knows Her Worth
Catharina, an enslaved woman, claims her freedom on the grounds of coartación and argues for a feasible path to freedom for herself and her daughter, Felicité.
Chef Dominique and Family Stay Together
As enslavers make a deal for the sale of an enslaved family of eight, the family manages to stay together, at least in the short term. The patriarch of the family is a chef de cuisine about to go improve his skills in France.
François Became More Ill Along the Way
The health of François, a skilled hunter, quickly declines due to mistreatment; he dies from his illness.
Guillermo, Catalina, and Her Children
The execution of an enslaver’s will offers a window into the lives of some of the individuals she enslaved and their own relations and well-being.
Hypolite Seeks Care
The various resources that Hypolite manages to access during a long, painful illness shed light on medical care for the enslaved in colonial Louisiana.
Janette and Pierre: Enslaved Children’s Experiences on the same Plantation
Short summary about this story.
Jeannot’s Freedom Song
When an enslaver named Corbin goes missing, Jeannot insists that he does not know a thing about what happened.
Louison the Runaway
A glimpse of Louison, a fugitive caught as she claimed her freedom, appears in a legal dispute.
Mama Comba’s Gombeau
Mama Comba answers for guests who attended one of her feasts, where she served the first documented gombeau.
Marie Aram’s Husband Works for Her Freedom
François Tiocou and Marie Aram, a married couple, navigate an arrangement to work for Marie’s emancipation after François earns his freedom fighting in the Chickasaw Wars.
María Juana: Fugitivity and Freedom
María Juana relentlessly fights for her freedom within and beyond the court.
The Two-Year-Old Son of Marianne Dies from Worm Disease
A young enslaved boy dies of disease, raising questions about his access to care and opening a window into his mother’s grief.
- Dorothy Berry, "The House Archives Built," Up//Root, June 22, 2021, the-house-archives-built; and James H. Sweet, “Reimagining the African-Atlantic Archive: Method, Concept, Epistemology, Ontology,” Journal of African History 55, no. 2 (2014): 147-59, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43305182. ↩