Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous Families in 18th-Century Amazonia: Social Networks, Race, and Freedom, Maranhão, 1740–70

For decades, historians have studied the formation and meaning of family among enslaved people in the Americas. Yet, families of enslaved people are framed almost exclusively as an African and Afro-descendant problem. This presentation centers on two questions. First, who did Indigenous enslaved people decide to marry in captivity? Second, were “mixed” marriages, both Afro-Indigenous and between people with different legal statuses (free(d) and enslaved), a strategy for social mobility? Scholars have established that African enslaved from a particular cultural zone in Africa tried to find another enslaved African with a similar background to marry in the New World. Indigenous enslaved people made similar choices based on the analysis of Catholic parish records from the freguesia Nossa Senhora da Vitória in São Luís between 1748 and 1773. To understand Indigenous enslavement, it is equally important to overcome the image of genic Indigenous peoples. They came from specific areas of the Americas and brought notions of kinship and labor to the colonial world, including marriage practices. Afro-Indigenous marriages were rare in Maranhão. Afro-Indigenous marriages occurred more often in the 1760s after the publication of another law abolishing Indigenous enslavement (1755). This norm guaranteed the freedom of Indigenous people and their maternal descendants. In this context, a marital arrangement with an Indigenous woman was valuable since it secured the freedom of one’s heirs. Moreover, I contend that for Afro-descendant men in São Luís, marrying Indigenous women allowed them to participate in the local networks of Indigenous workers and consequently move beyond enslavement. Marriage practices between Indigenous and African enslavement reveal how people forged spaces of autonomy within the colonial sphere.