Slave Families on a Rural Estate in Colonial Brazil

Slave Families on a Rural Estate in Colonial BrazilAuthor(s): Richard GrahamSource: Journal of Social History, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Spring, 1976), pp. 382-402Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3786577 .

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382 journal of social history

SLAVE FAMILIES ON A RURAL ESTATE IN COLONL L BRAZILI

The family structure of the lower classes once received relatively little attention from historians and that of slaves perhaps even less. It was long assumed, for instance, that nuclear families were created by the industrial revolution rather than having been the typical family structure among the lower classes long before that. Slaves were believed to have had almost no family life at all, but to have been housed in virtual barracks, promiscuously procreating children who grew up with absent fathers and domineering mothers. In recent years social history has made long strides to cast aside the old certainties, although new ones have not yet emerged to take their place. What is already established is that past family life was both more varied and more complex than was once thought.2 Before new generalizations can be made bits and pieces of information must be gathered, sometimes painfully, from diverse cultural and societal contexts. The present article examines some information on 1347 slaves counted in 1791 on one estate in Brazil. Their age, sex, and fertility, the relative ages of husbands and wives, types of family groups, and workforce characteristics can be establiffied from some recently uncovered sources. Although, as I will note! there are several reasons to be cautious about drawing conclusions from this data for Brazil as a whole, it is striking that for this estate - with what was surely one of the largest holdings of slaves at any time anywhere in the Americas - many of the accepted generalizations about slave life in Brazil and elsewhere do not hold true. For the most part, these slaves lived in separate family units built around husbands and wives. Our entire view of what it meant to grow up as a slave may thus be altered. The typical married woman bore two children and began bearing them just before she turned 20. Men married mostly after age 25, but the spread in ages between husband and wife tended to be five years or less. Separation (or "divorce") occurred, but was not the norm. The proportion of skilled workers in this group was very high for a rural estate, reaching 30So for middle-aged males and including at least one literate pharmacist. Less than 2% were handicapped. In all, the characteristics of this group are so different from what we would have imagined that its examination may also suggest important questions for social historians of other places and other times. When the Jesuits were expelled from the Portuguese empire in 1759, their extensive properties were taken over by the crown. Among these estates was the immense Fazenda Santa Cruz about 35 miles west of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The Jesuits had early devoted attention to its development and disbursed large sums in draining its low-lying terrain to avoid fRooding and open up grazing land. By 1729 they possessed 11,000 head of cattle and had installed a pottery, a carpentry, a manioc-flour mill, a limekiln, and a fishery, not to mention a warehouse, an inn, and the church. Later they added a tannery and a pharmacy



SLAVE FAMILIES ON A RURAL ESTATE 383

Instead of sugar cane, as in northeast Brazil, the major focus of their activity was cattle raising and the production of staples for the urban market. Many of the estate's products (such as hides, maniocwflour, pots, and bricks) were processed in semimanufactories. Presumably other Jesuit establishments in the region depended upon it for necessary supplies, although the full history of the estate in Jesuit days has never been studied with much attention to these matters.3

Under royal control after 1759, the fazenda continued to render a large income despite repeated reports of mismanagement.4 In addition to cash income, it provided meat for the crews of the royal navy and charcoal for public facilities.5 A new administrator who took over in 1783 devoted most of his energy to developing and using the pasture lands for fattening beef bought in Sorocaba, a trading center to the south, and sold in Rio de Janeiro at a butcher shop owned by the fazenda. He also planted some land in rice and corn and built two new large manioc-flour mills. By the end of 1790 the viceroy was considering the recommendation of one of his advisors that a sugar mill be installed on the property.6 Although the mill was built and some prosperity ensued, the inconstancy of government policy and the vagaries of bureaucratic appointments soon led to renewed decline.7 Nevertheless, the land was not sold off and was still listed as a source of some public income at the very end of the nineteenth century.8

In 1791 a complete inventory was made of the Fazenda Santa Cruz at a time when responsibility for its direction passed from one bureaucrat to another. Among the property inventoried were 1347 slaves listed by name, age sex and family group.9 It is from this inventory that data on family life have been derived. The slaves were apparently summoned for enumeration to their huts which are known to have stretched in two rows perpendicular to the church and convent around a large square.l ° The inventory-taker began by listing the male he considered head of the household, if there was one, whom he then described as married, widowed, or single. He then must have asked the slave how old he was or made an estimate himself. This figure was listed with great precision, a precision that can hardly be justified even by the fazenda's ex-status as a Jesuit property irl which more than customary attention was presumably paid to baptism. The man's wife and children were listed next, along with their respec- tive ages. When there was no male head of the household, the woman was usually listed as widowed, although occasionally simply as "married." In many households there were unmarried daughters with children of their own. Finally, some men and women were listed as single and a few of these women also had children. What determined the differentiation between married-women-without- husbands and single mothers was probably not the record of a marriage contract but the answers rendered by the blacks or the vagaries of the annotator. Contrary to the conventional view we have had of slave relationships, this latter had the fixed idea of a relatively stable family life among the slaves and reported on it without surprise.l l

Of the 1347 slaves on this plantation, 363 were men, 448 women, and 536 children 14 years of age or younger. Of the adult malesS 1 15 were classified as single and, of the females, 145 (including 19 single mothers) The median age of all these slaves was 23*8 years, with the women being slightly younger (23.6) and




the men slightly older (24.0). If only adults 15 years of age and older are eounted, the difference irl age between men and women somewhat increases being 35.2 for the men and 33t8 for the women. The typical single male slave was 20.9 years old and his potential mate 20.3. Figure 1 and Table l provide a profile of the entire slave population of the fazenda by age and sex.

Figure 1. Sex-Age Pyramid

MALES FEMALES

perce



385 SLAVE FAMILIES ON A RURAL ESTATE

Table 1. Males And Females By Age Group

Age Group Males Females Males per 100 Females

0 4 80 92 88 5-9 89 100 89 94 10-14 90 85 106 15-19 48 70 } 68 \ 20-24 50 201 88 288 56 t 69 25-29 50 62 80 ( 30-34 53 68 77 X 35-39 44 40 1 10 4S44 44 126 3S 115 125 109 4549 13 16 81 5S54 25 24 104 55-59 8 } 3 262 60-64 10 26 1 1 30 90 86 65-69 3 3 100 70-74 5 13 38 75-79 3 10 2 } 15 150 } 66 80 and over 7 J 13 1 53 TOTALS 622 725 82

The disproportionately large number of women overall contrasts sharply with what we know about the Brazilian slave population in general, at least for the first half of the nineteenth century. As long as the slave trade continued and for a long time after its end in 1852, slave men in Brazil outnumbered the women. There is no indication in this inventory as to whether any slaves were born in Africa. None of their names reflects African tribal origins, and I assume they were all creoles.l 2 of course, even for creoles, any given plantation would be expected to deviate from the populational pattern as a whole.

The traditional view of slave life in the United States immediately leads to the suspicion, given such a large number of women, that this Brazilian estate was used for slave breeding Although there was apparently no need to purchase Africans, an administrator had purchased 80 to 100 new slaves between 1783 and 1789.1 3 Were they women? We do not know. But the relative ages of men and women can shed some light on the question of breeding. Table 1 shows that after the age of 35 their numbers were roughly balanced, except for the aged. But in the age grolap 15-34 the women outnumbered the men by almost half again as many.l4 On the other hand, peasant communities often reveal a low number of men of working age who are out of the village in search of work elsewhere. The analogous situation here would be that slaves were rented or loaned to other enterprises; there is evidence of this practice but no indication of its precise dimension. The structural parallelism is striking Table 1 also reveals a puzzling imbalance among children. Not only are there significantly fewer boys than girls below age 10 but the ratio of males to females is lower in the 5-9 age group than in the 10-14 group, that is, precisely when some might be entering the labor force and be of marketable age. The figures for the 0-4 age group are similarly mystifying, but it is to be expected that the age-sex pyramid will be distorted since it is based on a single observation at a precise moment in time for



journal of social history 386

a total population that, although impressive in terms of slaves on one estate, is very small in a statistical sense.

There is no way of knowing the number of children for every family in 1791, since the parentage of those offspring who no longer lived in the same household with their parents was not indicated. Also, and for the same reason, the inventory cannot indicate with any certainty the average age of parents at the birth of .their first child. To suggest the lower age limits of fertility and estimate family size we may isolate married fathers in the 25-29 age group (N = 35) since even their oldest surviving child would still tend to be listed at home. For them the median age of children was 4.7 years and the number of children per couple was 1.23. It is probably more valid to isolate married mothers in the same age group (N = 48). The median age of their children was 5.0 years and the average number of children 2.04. In general, slave women on this plantation began to bear children in their late 'teens and early twenties and bore two live children apiece. The fertility of single women this age is low (0.64 children per woman), but presumably this is partly because it was those who did not bear children who were considered still single. The median number of children per woman this age (whether single or married) was 1.73. Of the "married" women this age 6 or 12.5% were childless; another 7 single women this age were childless! making the percentage of childless women in the 25-29 age group a surprisingly high 21 Fo. Little in these figures lends strength to the belief that the slaves were used as breeders.l 5

A consideration of families among this slave population shows that almost half (47.75SO) of them were formed by mates and children and that almost a full 55% were built around man and wife (see Table 2). Married sons and daughters at Santa Cruz left or were forced to leave their parents and a married daughter rejoined them only if she were widowed, abandoned, or in effect divorced, and not often even then. In contrast, a large number of unmarried single men and women remained in their parents' household into their thirties. 1 6

The high percentage of married or widowed slaves represented by this and other tables below contrasts sharply with figures reported for Brazil as a whole a century later. l 7

Table 2. Households By Type

No. S0

1. Male and female 27 7.16 2. Male, female, and children 171 45.36 3. Male, female, children, and grandchildren 8 2.12 4. Male, female, and grandchildren 1 0.27

Subtotal 207 (54.91) 5. Female and children 50 13.26 6. Female, children, and grandchildren 3 0.80 7. Female and grandchildren l 0.27

Subtotal 54 (14.32) 8. Male and children 17 4.51 9. Male, children, and grandchildren 3 0.80

10. Male and grandchildren 2 0.53 Subtotal 22 (5.84)

11. Brother(s) and sister(s)a 8 . ] 2



SLAVE FAMILIES ON A RURAL FSTATE 387

12. Male alone 35 9.28 13. Female alone 50 326 14. Groups of males 1 0.27

Subtotal 94 (24.93) TOTAL 377 100.02

aIn oIlly one of these households were there members of both sexes over 15.

The enumerator assumed that the head of the household was the male whenever there was one of suitable age. The children were listed as his children. One of the most surprising features discovered here is the number (22) of men without wives who headed families. A comparable study for Jamaica seems to have found no instance of this type of family,l8 whereas at Santa Cruz there were two families headed by a father alone for every five headed only by a mother.

I>ter on, at the height of nineteenth-century coffee prosperity in Brazil, it is believed to have been common practice to house single slaves in large undivided barrack-like quarters, separating males from females.l 9 I'his was not the case on the Fazenda Santa Cruz. Seventy-seven of the single men aged 15-24 were listed with their parents as against only 14 listed separately. Among the same age group of childless single women 102 lived with their parents and 16 alone. Furthermore those males and females who did not live with their parents were listed in scattered fashion, either alone or in groups of 2 or 3, and not all together as would probably have been the case if they shared common quarters.2 °

Men tended to marry in their late twenties: as can be seen from Table 3, column 3, 88 percent of the men in their early twenties were unmarried, whereas this figure for men in their later twentles falls to 30%. It could be argued that this drop was an indication that the saleability of younger slaves encouraged the managers to regard them as single regardless of their relationships with women; one could speculate that, as slaves grew older and less saleable, the unions which they had established were considered more or less permanent. But larger societal factors must also be considered. It probably reflected, at least to a point the accepted norm regarding marriageable age.

In Table 3, columns 2 and 4 show the clustering of ages of the male and female partners. Men were older than women, as might have been expected, and has been noted. For the age groups over 35, men characteristically outnumbered the women, whereas the situation was reversed for groups under 35. Columns 6 and 7 list available marriage partners. There were 128 marriageable women under the age of 25, but only 92 men in the same age group. Even if the ages considered marriageable are extended to under 35 for the women (N = 163) and under 55 for the men (N - 137), the disproportion remains noticeable. The sharp decline in the number of women after age 35 is not matched by the men for another 10 years. Possibly late childbirth accounts for the decline of the female population at that age.

It is conventional to think of the age spread between husband and wife in colonial Brazil to have been very large. Probably this was the case only among the upper levels of society where marriages were arranged for the sake of




acquiring or preserving property. Slaves had no such concerns. As can be seen from Figure 2, the men on this estate were generally older than their wives: in the case of 178 couples the man was older than the woman whereas she was older than he in only 20 cases (in 13 they were the same age). But in the great majority of the cases (3 out of 4) the difference in age was only 5 years or less. Among couples in which the man was significantly older than the woman, the evidence suggests it was frequently his second marriage. In one case for instance, his 25-year-old daughter lived under the same roof with his 25-yeareld wife.

Table 3. Marital Status of Men and Women by Age Group

,> E E = E, t i >

,;; -3 aoO c t c 3 c z < <^, a t s: E t E c : F

l 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

15-19 0 0.0 0 0.0 48 70 48 70 2S24 6 12.0 30 34.1 44 58 50 88 25-29 35 70.0 43 69.4 15 19 50 62 3S34 43 81.1 52 76 5 10 16 53 68 35-39 38 86.3 27 67.S 6 1 3 44 4Q 4S44 36 81.8 30 85.7 8 5 44 35 45-49 1 1 84.6 7 43.S 2 9 1 3 1 6 5S54 21 84.0 12 50.0 4 12 25 24 55-59 5 62.5 2 66.6 3 1 8 3 6S64 7 70.0 5 4S.5 3 6 10 1 ] 65-69 1 33.3 1 33.3 2 2 3 3 7S74 3 60.0 1 7.7 2 12 5 l 3 75-79 2 66.6 0 0.0 1 2 3 9 80 and over 4 57.1 2 15.4 3 11 7 13 TOTALS OR AVERAGES 212 58.7 212 47*3 151 236 363 448

Appendix A presents information on the slave women on this estate. Of the 448 women, 212 or 47.3% lived with their husbandsS 126 or 28.1 percent lived with their parents, and the remaining 110 or 24.5% lived independently. Whenever the enumerator dealt with marrled women without husbands, he revealed a marked preference for the category 4;widow over"married-without-husband." But we may assume these two categories (columns 3 and 4) are almost synonymous, at least for the younger women. One-quarter of the widows were, in fact, under the age of 40. Whereas only 36 men were listed as widowed or single heads of households this number among women reached 91 (columns 3 plus 4). The difference between the ages of men and women-already noted --- is further evidenced by the sharp decline in the number of women past age 44.




Fyaure 2. Number Of Occurrences

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 4 S 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

. . X :W

10 1 10 ////,//F//>7////ffi//////7//////8|

WIFE OLDER tt@g,0 HVSBAND OLDEfl

20 e 20 |

NOTE: In 13 cases spouses were of the same aBe

Thirteen women, however, were over 80 years of age. There was only one childless woman over age 30 listed as single in the entire population. Could this suggest an androcentric society in which there was no room for the "old maid"? Of single mothers, almost all (17 out of 19) lived with their parents; but there were 10 married women, all of them under age 40, who lived without a husband, in addition to the 81 widows referred to above. The fact that no single mothers past age 35 (or 40 if we include wives without husbands) are listed probably indicates that children born to young single mothers did not remain with them to age 20, while older mothers were no longer considered single but allowed to live with a man.

ln the case of slave societies elsewhere it has been alleged that the male field hand may have been relatively divorced from the role of father and head of household, while the woman's location closer to the administrative headquarters, her use in domestic service, and her occasional role as the master's sexual partner gave her access to information about the master's world and thus, in a sense, to power denied her husband.2 1 The Fazenda Santa Cruz, of course, was not the type of agricultural unit reflected in this view. But, as we can see from Appendix B (column 6), only 64 or 17.6% of the men lived alone, relying on neither a woman or a parent, in contrast to the 24.5% (110) of the women who lived independently (Appendix A, column 13). These numbers tend to suggest that as a matter of fact more women than men were forced to make daily family decisions alone.

Another way to get at the question of female independence within this slave society is to return to the question of the number of men and women without




mates but with dependent children by age. Table 4 presents this information. The women are more than twice as numerous as the men and the disproportion is especially marked (S .6:: 1 ) for ages 20-40. Even allowing for those cases where children may have been born out of wedlock, the men were evidently much more readily separated from their children, sold off the estate, or dispatched to other locations, and their role within the family must surely have been corre- spondingly weakened. We should remember, however, that many of the men- both married and widowed - were not field hands and thus worked in or near the home where they would remain in control.

Table 4. Men and Women Without Mates and With Dependent Children by Age of Parent

Women Men Age Group Number % Number %

15-19 0 OO 0 OU

20-24 3 5.56 0 0.0 25-29 4 7.41 1 4.55 3S34 10 18.52 1 4.55 35-39 1 1 20.37 3 1 3.64 4044 4 7 41 6 27.27 45-49 6 11.11 2 9.09 50-54 8 14.8 1 3 1 3.64 SS-S9 1 1.8S 2 9.09 6S64 2 3.70 2 9 09 65-69 0 0-0 0 0.0 7S74 S 9.26 1 4.55 75-79 0 0.0 0 ().0 80 and over 0 0.0 1 4.55 TOTALS 54 100 22 100

The corollary to the disproportionate number of solitary women with depen- dents is the large number of children who were being brought up by their mother only. Table S shows that of those children under the care of only one parent, 77 were with a mother while only 23 were with a father. Forty-six boys would thus grow up without a father-image and 43 girls would mature having seen a mother coping with life alone. The opposite figures would be, for boys with only fathers, 9, girls without mothers, 23.

Once again, however, one is struck by the apparent stability of family life. Over three-quarters of the children were growing up with both a father and a mother and for the younger children this figure reaches four-fifths.22 The number of orphans is surprisingly low.2 3

Table 5. Children Under 15 With and Without Parents by Sex and Age

Boys

0-4 % S-9 % 10 14 % Total %

With neither parent 0 0.0 S 5.62 7 7.78 12 4.63

With mother only 11 13.75 12 13.48 11 12.22 34 13.12




With father only 1 1.25 2 2.25 6 6.67 9 3.47

With both parents 68 85.0 70 78.65 66 73.33 204 78.76

TOTAL BOYS 8Q 100.0 89 100.0 90 100.0 259 100.0

Girls

With neither parent 0 0.0 3 3.0 6 7.06 9 3.25

With mother only 20 21.74 11 11.0 12 14.12 43 15.53

With father only 2 2.17 4 4.0 8 9.41 14 5.05

With both parents 70 76.09 82 82.0 59 69.41 211 76.17

TOTAL GIRLS 92 100.0 100 100.0 85 100.0 277 100.0

All Children

With neither parent 0 0.0 8 4.23 13 7.43 21 3.92

With mother only 31 18.02 23 12.16 23 13.14 77 14.37

With father only 3 1.74 6 3.17 14 8.0 23 4.29

With both parents 138 80*23 152 80.42 125 71.43 415 77.43

TOTAL ALL CHILDREN 172 100.0 189 100.0 175 100.0 536 100.0

What changes occurred over time in the composition of this slave population? There is another inventorys made in 1768, that sheds some light on this question.24 Unfortunately, it fails to indicate the ages of the slaves and is therefore not susceptible to the kinds of analysis. so far undertaken. But the totals in each category are suggestive. As can be seen in Table 6, the total population had increased by 109 over the 23^year period. Interestingly, 17 freedmenS married to slave women were included in the earlier count and this fact leads one to believe that perhaps the same group, undifferentiated, was included in the 1791 figures cited heretofore. The number of women rose by 118 and that of men by 58 whereas the number of children decreased by 67. The most significant increases arise among single men (up 82) and women (up 88). However, many of those whom the 1768 inventory cited as children may have been over 15 and therefore included in what I have considered the single population in 1791. If one were to assume that the difference in the number of children was all accounted for in this way dividing this difference equally into male and female, then the additional single men would be 49 and single women 54. Such an estimate would almost precisely account for the increase in the total population. In any case, the increase of single men and women in almost equal proportion could be accounted for either by new acquisition or by the delaying of the marriage age. Married couples decreased by 43 while there were 49 more widows and 19 more widowers.




Table 6. Changes in the SLave Population over a 23-Year Period

Category 1768a % 1791 FO

Men with women 255b 20.6 212 15.7 Widowers 17 1.4 36 2.7 Single men 33C 2.7 115d 8.5 TOTAL MEN 305 (24.63) 363 (26.94) Wives with husbands 255 20.6 212 15.7 Wives without husbands 6 .5 10 .7 Widows 32 2.6 81 6.0 Single mothers e o 19 1 4 Single childless women 37f 2.9 126g 9.3 TOTAL WOMEN 330 (26.65) 448. (33.25) Children 603h 48.7 5361 39.8 TOTAL SLAVES 1238b 100.0 1347 99.8

aFigures are drawn from the original summary which has not been checked for accuracy or consistency,

bIncluding 17 freedmen married to slave women.

C"Rapazes cazadouros" of unspecified age.

dOver 14 years of age.

eNot distinguished in 1768; no doubt included in other categories,

f"Raparigas cazadouras" of unspecified age; no other single women are listed except widows.

gOver 14 years of age.

h"Filhos" of unspecified age.

Under 15 years of age.

More significant is the changing proportion of men and women. If one does not count young singles, there were 24 fewer men but 30 more women in 1791 than in 1768. These figures would indeed suggest that during this period a systematic policy had been pursued of selling off the men arld keeping the women, thus significantly increasing the number of "widows," wives without husbands, and single mothers. It could be argued that the increase in the number of women cannot be attributed to a breeding intent since the number of children failed to increase. But the acquisition of new slaves may have been made only at the very end of the period in question. We know that a significant expenditure was made for slave purchases sometime after 1783 and before the beginning of 1790.25 Furthermore, a lot more than 67 "children" of 1768 may have been over 15, in which case the number of children would actually have increased during the period and the number of young singles remained relatively constant or even declined.

Two types of information relating to the workforce - on skills and handicaps - were provided by the enumerator in 1791. Sixty-five of the slaves, including one woman, were listed as having a professional skill. Table 7 shows that the most common trade was that of carpenter, followed by musician.2 6 Construc- tion skills, including carpenter, mason, sawyer, and woodturner, accounted for 32 or almost half the number of skilled workers. Some of the potters may also have been brick and tilemakers (or kiln operators), so it is clear that construction




trades predominated. There was no butcher or gunsmith despite other evidence that the sale of meat and the rental of slaves to a gun factory had earlier represented sources of income for the estate.27 It is possible that additional slaves belonging to the estate, but off the premises at the time, were not listed in this inventory. At the time, the erection of sugar mills was said to be indicated because "almost aIl the trades and all the shops and installations needed" were present at Santa Cruz.28 Literacy is not indicatedS although in another part of the inventory, one of these skilled slaves? a boticano, attested to the accuracy of the list of the pharmacy's paraphernalia and medicines by affixing his signa- ture.29 Forty of these skilled workers were between the ages of 35 and 54 and in no case does there seem to have been any danger that they would die off before being able to teach younger men their trade. Musicians were among the youngest of this group, but several men in their forties were also so listed. The oldest worker was a weaver and the single woman was a potter.

Table 7. Skilled Occupations by Age Group

i a t S3 e i | E t X t E <

10-14 3 3 15-19 1 1 2 2S24 1 2 1 4 25-29 3 1 1 4 30-34 1 1 2 2 6 35-39 6 1 3 1 2 1 14 4044 1 4 1 1 3 2 12 4549 3 1 1 5 5S54 3 3a l 1 l 9 55-59 1 1 2 60-64 1 1 2 6549 0 7S74 1 1 2 75-79 0 80 and over 1 1 1 TOTALS 20 12 7 7 5 5 3 2 2 1 1 1 66

aOne is a woman.

Ihe proportion of skilled men to total male population was astoundingly high, reaching 30.16% in the middle-aged (35-54) group. Table 8 indicates either that the longer one lived, the more likely it was that one would have had the chance or be required to learn a trade? perhaps after having been worn out in the fields, or that skilled workers, perhaps by avoiding harsher forms of labor tended to live longer.30 If we assume that there may have been an additional male populatlon assigned to other establishments and that these required skilled hands, the number of skilled workers would be still higher. The fazenda's position as a publicly owned estate probably lessened the maximization of profit




and the concentration on export agriculture that may have characterized other money-making estates, and one must not forget the 60 or 70% of Santa Cruz slaves who were occupied tending cattle, stooping in rice fields, or hoeing beans and corn. Still, the number of skilled slaves implies, for a relatively large number of slaves, some sense of their own creative ability and thus of their selfhood.

Table 8. Proportion of Skilled Males to Total Males by Age Group

Age Group

15-19

20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75-79 80 or over TOTALS

Male Skilled Workers

4 3 6

14 12

s

7 2 2 o

2 o

I

60

Total Male Population

48 50

50 53 44 44 13 25

8 10

3 s

3 7

363

Percentage of Skilled

4.16 8.00 6.00

1 1.32 3 1.82 27.27 38.46 28.00 25.00 20.00

0.0 40.00

0.0 14.29 16.52

Table 9. Handicapped

Quebrado das costas (Hunchback)

M F

Age Group

5-9 10-14 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 4044 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75-79 80 and over TOTALS

Aleijado (Crippled)

M F

coxo

(Lame)

M F

l

1

1

l

2 6 8

0 1 0 1 1




One final bit of information provided by the inventory dealt with the handicapped. Presumably only those so badly injured or deformed as to be unable to work would have been listed here. More women were handicapped than men, although the total number is too small for any significance to be attached to this fact. The first four categories in Table 9 could all be lumped under the category "crippled," bringing this total to 11 and making the balance between men and women roughly equal for this group. The enumerator was evidently at greater pains to note the specific nature of the handicap for men than for women. Why there should have been more than twice the number of blind females than males is unknown. Aside from mere chance, it is possible that a blind male more easily suffered fatal accidents. A blind woman may have been considered more useful (even for childbearingl) and kept on the estate while blind men were released as beggars. It is impossible to know how many of these unfortunates may have been the victim of their foreman's rage. Quebrado das costas and estropiado are two categories that imply noncongenital deformities. There are no significant variations by age group. In contrast to what one might have expected from the growing literature on the harshness of slave life in Brazil, only 1.9 percent of the slaves were handicappedS ands despite corrections suggested above, this figure seems low.3 1

The data presented in this essay must be used with caution if one's purpose is to arrive at larger generalizations. To begin with, the number of slaves was exceptionally high for one estate. Why it was so high remains a puzzle. Medium- sized fazendas in Brazil at this time would typically have had only about 50

"Esteporado"a Cego Gotacoral GRAND (Maimed) (Blind) (Epileptic) TOTALS TOTAL

M F M F M F M F

1 1

1 1 2 3 1 1 1

2 1 2 2 4 1 2 1 3

1 1 1

1 2 2 2 1 2 3

o

2 2 o

1 1 2 o

1 1 1

o

1 1 1 1 2 1 0 4 9 0 1 9 16 25

1 13 1 25 25

aMisspelled for estropiado or estuporado, both of which mean crippleds paralysed, or maimed by implication after birth.



journal of social history 396

slaves, and one observer, writing from sugar-rich Bahia in 1781 > commented on a 44formidable' and '4immense' ex-Jesuit plantation with "good lands" which had what he considered fhe large sum of 1 sa slaves.3 2 It was the Jesuits who initially bought the bulk of the slaves for the Fazenda Santa CruzS possibly for their extensive earthmoving projects. Nirle years after confiscation of the estate and before serious efforts had been made to expand the royal income hom it, there already were 1237 slaves on thefazendz33 To be sureS sometime between 1783 and 1789 the administrator spent 4.7 contos an the purchase of slaves but this probably could account for no more than 80 or 100 slaves.34 Why he should have felt the need for any additional ones is unclearS but evidently he was continuing a Jesuit tradition of maintaining what now appears to have been a labor surplus. One of the best arguments advanced for entering sugar-production in early 1791 was the fact that there were 4'one thousand, two hundred slavesf more than six hundred of them able to work.'3 5 It was thus obvious that not all these slaves were needed for cattle raising or for cultivating riceS corn and manioc. Twenty years later the English traveler John Mawe who was offered the job of manager, reported there were still approximately :1500 slaves on the estate.36 The number of slaves clearly distinguishes the Fazenda Santa Cruz from the ordinary estate.

It is not within the scope of this essay to explore in what ways this estatess unrepresentative quality may have been heightened by its Jesuit origin. Whether the Jesuits were more likely to have been humane masters or more rapacious in their economic pursuits than the average landowner is a heated topic within certain historiographical circles in Latin America and the less unfounded specula- tion added to the debate the better. As for royal administration the argument is less heated but surely as moot. Mawe provided evidence for both sides on this point when he wrote about "the negroes on this estateS? saying that

Great pains have been taken to enlighten them. They are regularly tnstructed in the principles of the Chnstian faith, and have prayers read to them morning and evening Plots of grounds of their own choicet are assigned to each and two days in the week. . . are allowed them to raise and cultwate produce for their own subsis- tence. . * . The system of managementz however, is so bad that they are half-starved almost destitute of clothing, and most miserably lodged.3 7

Another factor that limits the utility of this data is our sketchy knowledge of contemporary Brazilian society.3 8 Until more is known about itS there is no compara.tive matrix into which these figures can be inserted and comparing them with data extracted from other societies may obscure much of their real meaning. Historians will want to consider for instance What was the age differential in nonslave lower-class Brazilian marriages? What was the life expec- tancy of all Brazilians at this time? Were free children in the same proportion being brought up by their mothers alone? What was the typical marriage age in Brazil? What was the number of children per couple in the country at large? Were there signIficant differences between urban and rural populations in regard to these questions7 How do the slave populations of privately owned estates compare with those on the Fazenda Santa Cruz? It is doubtful that reliable figures for the entire population can be ascertained but a sensitivity to such questions and the possibility of comparing the results for other small groups with the group surveyed here should foster our understanding of the nature of family life in Brazil in the late eighteenth centurys




The information on family groups presented in the 1791 inventory must be used with special care for still another reason. It represents the vision of reality as seen by a white administrator and may tell us more about him than about the slaves. For this very reason, of course, it is significant and in this sense may be considered indicative of a general societal view of slave family life. No other contemporary document even took note of it, thus implying that their familial arrangements did not escape the normal. The large number of skilled workers was considered a favorable indication of economic potential, but no surprise was expressed at their existence. The estate's management was criticized for general inefficiency,39 but not for overleniency toward slaves or for any aberrance in the family life of enslaved workers.

So the larger meaning of this inventory must be found in the mind-set of the inventory-taker. The fact that the slaves were so carefully listed by family group suggests a particular image of family life. There is no evidence that breeding a "better stock" explains this predilection, for records were not kept on the physical or mental abilities of the slaves. Possibly all this effort merely reflected an attempt to identify more easily subsequent defalcation of the slave property: "Where is the son of Jose7.?' One is left however, with the impression that it bears a greater significance. It would surely have been much easier to have had a "round-up' of slaves and to have quickly counted off the males, the females, and the children.40 Instead, each one was listed by name age, and family relationship. Although slaves might be sold off separately, they were enumerated in families. Clearly, and not really surprisingly, the human quality of this form of property was thus recognized. This manner of enumeration revealed although not necessarily to contemporaries, the basic contradiction between slaves as property and slaves as human beings, between their will-lessness and will-fullness.

Insight into the history of society is thus gained from even a limited source. Although inarticulate themselves, some aspects of the slaves' life can be perceived through such an inventory. In this particular estate over half the family units included husband and wife. Some families were even headed by men without women By far the largest number of children grew up with both father and mother. A large proportion of skilled workers enhanced the probability of a father's presence in the home. Marriage age, age at childbirth, and fertility suggest that the proper context within which these data may be placed is not the slave societies of the following century, but contemporary family life in Europe or perhaps in Africa. In any case the family life of these slaves reflect dimen- sions of a reality that has only begun to be investigated for Latin America.

University of Texas, Austin Richard Graham

FOOTNOTES

1. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Dauril Alden, Robert Conrad, Herbert Klein, Maria Luiza Marcllio, Dudley Poston, Donald Ramos, Susan Soeiro, and S8nia Bayao Rodrigues Viana, as well as Emancial aid from the American Philosophical So- ciety and the Institute of Latin American Studies of the University of Texas at Austin. Sec- retarial and computational assistance was provided by the Department of History and the Population Research Center of the same university.




2 Two examples of recent interest in slave family life are Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman's Time on the Cross: the Economics of American Negro Slavery, 2 vols. (Boston, 1974), esp. 12644, and an extended review of this book by Herbert G. Gutman, "The World Two Cliometricians Made: A Review Essay of F + E = T/C," Journal of Negro History 60 (1975): 53-227, esp. 138-227. See also the older view presented by E. Franklin Frazier, "The Negro Slave Family," Journal of NegroEHistory 15 (1930): 198-259, and corrections to that view put forward in Gutman, "Le phenomene invisible: la,composition de la famille et du foyer noir apr'es la Guerre de Setcession," Annales: Economies, societes, civilizations 27 (1972): 1197-1218. Also see John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: PkZntation Life in the Antebellum South (New York, 1972), pp. 77-103. I have not consulted Bobby Frank Jones, "A Cultural Middle Passage: Slave Marriage and Family in the Antebellum South" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of North Carolina, 1965).

3. Jose Saldanha da Gama, ';Historia da i,mperial Fazenda de Santa Cruz: primeira parte,'8 Revista do Instituto Historico e Geografico Brasileiro 38 (1875): 165-230; a wealth of information on the Jesuit period of the estate's history can be found in Serafim Leite, Historia da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, 10 vols. (Rio de Janeiro, 1938-1950), by consulting its excellent index. Also see [Manoel Martins do Couto Reis] "Memorias de Santa Cruz, seu sucessos mais notaveis, continuados do tempo da extinyao dos denominados Jesuitas, seus fundadores, ate o ano corrente de mil, setecentos, noventa e nove [enclosed in Jose Caetano de Lima Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, Rio de Janeiro, 27 Sept. 1799] ," Revista do Instituto Historico e Geogratco Brasileiro 65 (1902): 201-321. The ruins of Jesuit waterworks can still be seen outside today's bustling city of Santa Cruz.

4. Sonia Bayao Rodrigues Viana, '4A Fazenda de Santa Cruz e a crise do sistema colonial (1790-1815)," Revista de Histooria,No. 99 (July-Sept., 1974): 61-96, also found in Richard Graham, ed., Ensaios sobre a politica e a economia da provincia fltlminense no seculo XIX (Rio de Janeiro, 1974), pp. 9-63. Also see Viana, "A Fazenda de Santa Cruz e a politica real e imperial em relaKao ao desenvolvimento brasileiro, 1790-1850" (M.A. thesis, Universidade Federal Fluminense, 1974).

5. In 1771 it was said to yield an annual revenue of 3.6 to 4 contos de reis at a time when an entire sugar mill with stock pen was valued at only 0.6 contos and ten prime slaves aged 15 to 25, unskilled, but without physical defects, were estimated to be worth something less than 0.5 contos (Dauril Alden, Royal Go.vernment in Colonfal Brazil, wzth Special Reference to the Administration of the Marquis of LavradioJ Yiceroy) 1769 1779 [Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968l, pp. 346-7, 509-10).

6. Report of JoseoJoaquim de Silva Castro, Engenho Novo, 18 June 1790, Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (hereafter AN), Cx. 507, Pac. 3, Doc. 5; Conta do inspector da Real Fazenda de Santa Cruz do gado que comprou e do rendimento do aiougue, 4 May 1790, AN, Cx. 507, Pac. 3, Doc. 1. Report of JosewFeliciano da Rocha Gameiro, Rio de Janeiro, 19 Feb. 1791, AN. Cx. 507, Pac. 5, Doc. 2. Also see Vanous reports, 1793, AN5 Cx. 507 , Pac. 6.

7. John Mawe, Travels in the Interior of Brazil. Particularly in the Gold and Diamond Districts of that Country. . . (London, 1812), pp. 106-7.

8. Brazil. Contadoria Geral da Uniao, Balanfo da receita e despeza da Republica no exercicio de 1899 (Rio de Janeiro, 1904), pp. 19, 293.

9. Inventario dos escravos pertencentes a Real Fazenda de Santa Crus [sicl q o Sargt° Myr Manoel Joaqm da sa Castro entregou e ficao em carga a Joaquim Henriques Guerra, Cabo da




Esquadra do Regimt° de Artilharia em 12 de junho de 1791 AN, Cod. 808, 4: 165-84. Unfortunately, this inventory tells us nothing about color, place of birth, or value. No parish registry has yet turned up, so it has been impossible to compare these data with those of Nicholas P. Cushner, "Slave Mortality and Reproduction on Jesuit Haciendas in Colonial Peru," Hispanic American Historical Review 55 (1975): 177-199.

10. Gama, "Historia," p. 213.

11. Cf. B.W. Higman, "Household Structure and Fertility on Jamaican Slave Plantations: A NineteenthXentury Example,s' Population Studies 27 (1973): 543. No study of family life among the contemporary lower-class free population has yet been made, but with consider- able historical license, one may imagine it to have been highly disorganized as portrayed for the period after 1808 in Manoel Antonio de Almeida's mid-nineteenth-century picaresque novels Menwrias de um sargento de milicias, 4th ed. (Sao Paulo, 1962), or as described in the temporally more removed but more reliable scholarly picture of the late nineteenth century studied by Maria Sylvia de Carvalho Franco, Homens livres na ordem escravocrata, Publicasoes do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros 13 (Sao Paulo, 1969), pp. 4048.

12. Indian slavery had been outlawed and although some may have been kept in bondage, this inventory makes no mention of Indians (the Jesuits had long opposed Indian slavery).

13. He spent 4.7 contos on the purchase of slaves (Mapa das despezas que tem feito o Inspector e Administrador da Fazenda de Santa Cruz o Sargento Mor Manoel Joaquim da Silva e Castro desde que entrou no dito emprego em o principio de abril de 1783 ate o fim de 1789, ANs Cx. 507, Pac. 4, Doc. 1). See note 4 on the value of slaves.

14. Cf. the contrasting data for the population as a whole at a later period presented by Eduardo E. Arnaga, New Life Tables for Latin American Populations in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Berkeley, 1968), pp. 25-42.

15. On the other hand, these slaves were evidently more successful at maintaining their population size than the overall slave population of Brazil as we know it operated in the nineteenth century. Still, the low number of children per woman aged 25 to 29 may indicate a high infant mortality, the sale of children, or the practice of birth control.

16. Appendix B (col. 7) and Appendix A (col. 14) show the number of single men and childless single women living with parents. The fact that the bulk of single mothers also lived with their parents suggests the strength of family ties, ties that were relied upon in time of trouble.

17. Robert Conrad, 771e Destruction of Brazilian Slarery, 1850-1888 (Berkeley, 1972), p. 298; see also pp. 32-3.

18. Higman, "Household Structure," pp. 527-50.

19. Stanley J. Stein, Vassouras: a Brazilian Coffee County, 1850-1900, Harvard Historical Studies 49 (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 43-4.

20. Among the families that included both husband and wife there were 7 in which a daughter was less than 15 years younger than the wife. This suggests the existence of a previous wife although a disguised polygamy cannot be absolutely ruled out. There was one case in which the "father" was less than 15 years older than the oldest child and another in which a maleless household included a child less than 15 years younger than the "mother."

21. E.g., Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Instgtutional and Intellectual Life, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1968), p. 130. In considering the role of women it is important to remember that at the Fazenda Santa Cruz there was an unusually large proportion of females.




22. Since the inventory was taken only once,, it may be too much to speak of sSstability.'

Yet nothing in the records of the estate would lend credence to a belief that partners or

children were shifted around and only caught here momentarily in this relationship as in a

daguerreotype.

23. Cf. Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, 1: 50. l t is possible that orphaned children

were enumerated with adopted parents to whom they may have been assigned in keeping

with familial traditions possibly carried on from Africa.

24. [Alexandre Josew Mello Moraes Filho, ed.], "Treslado do autto de inventario da Real

Fazenda de Santa Cruz e benz que nella se acham que fes o Desembargador dos Aggravos e

Juis do Sequestro geral feito aos denominados Jezuitas o Doutor Manoel Francisco da Silva

e Veiga 16 May 1768l ' in Distrito Federal, Archivo, Revista de documentospara a historia

da Cidade do Rio de kneiro 1 ( 1894): 189-92 217-24, 333-9, 418-19.

25. See note 13. Brusque fluctuations are presumably more characteristic of slave than of

general populations. These figures could reflect momentary characteristics.

26. On the later extensive use of slaves as musicians, see Daniel Parish Kidder and James

Cooley Fletcher, Brazil and the Brazilians Portrayed in Historical and Descriptive Sketches

(Boston: Little Brown, 1857), p. 441.

27. Aldens Royal Go1oernment, p. 347.

28. Report of JoseXFeliciano da Rocha Gameiro, Rio de Janeiro, 19 Feb. 1791, AN,, Cx.

507, Pac. 5, Doc. 2.

29. Relaiao do Inventario do q. pertence a Botica da Real lEazenda de Santa Cruz q. o

SargtQ M Manoel Joaqm da Sa Castro entregou e Slca em carga ao pardo Cirurgm Jose Alves

escravo da mesma fazda em 7 de junho de 1791? AN, Co'd. 808 vol. 4.

30. Cf. Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross) 1: 149^53 and Gutman ;iThe World?' pp.

l 26-32.

31. Cf. Steins Vassouras p. 185.

Appendix A. Females by Age and Marital Status

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

= S Q i t >

S O

0 ¢ c 3 3 § > ;, r ; g t°3 = o

15-19 () O O O I t 2 2

20-24 30 2 0 32 l 5 6 8

25-29 43 1 4 48 0 7 7 8

30-34 52 4 8 64 0 4 4 8

35-39 27 3 10 40 0 0 0 3

4044 30 0 5 35 0 0 0 0

45-49 7 0 9 1 6 0 () O Q

50-54 12 0 12 24 0 n o n

55-59 2 0 1 3 0 () () 0

6(} 64 5 () 5 1() () () (>> ()

65-69 1 0 9 3 () t) l) ()

70-74 1 0 12 lS 0 (} (:) ()

75-79 0 (} 2 2 {) (t (} ()

80 and over 2 0 11 l3 0 0 f:) ()

TOTALS 212 1() 81 303 2 :l 7 l9 29




32. Jose da Silva Lisboa to Domingos Vandellis Bahia, 18 Oct. 1781. In Eduardo de Castro e Almeida, ed*, "Inventario dos documentos relativos ao Brasil existentes no Archivo de Marinha e Ultramar,}' Anais da Biblioteca JVacional do Rio de Janeiro 32 (1910): 501. 33. Moraes Filho, ed., "Treslado," p. 419. 34. Mapa das despezas (note 13). 35. Report of Josew Feliciano da Rocha Gameiro, Rio de Janeiro 19 Feb. 1791, ANs Cx. 507,Pac.5,Doc.2* 36. Mawe, Trwels, p. 107; a traveler later reported 2500 slaves there (Conrad, Destruefion of Brazilian Slavery, p. 73n. 37. Mawe, Travels, pp. 107-8. The reference to the assignment of plots is another indication that either this case was atypical or that the structure of this slave society was not as simple or as uniform as we might have thought from the previous literature on the subject. 38. Pioneering work is now being done on some aspects of these problems. See, for instance, Mana Luiza Marctio, La Ville de Sao Paalo: peublement et population, 1750-1850 (Rouens 1972),, esp. pp. 127-60 and Donald Ramos, "Marriage and the Family in Colonial Yila Rica," Hispanic American Historical Review 55 (1975): 200-225. Demographers may also estimate some general characteristics of the population simply from conditions known to exist for other preindustrial societies. 39. Vianna, 'sA Fazenda de Santa Cruz,s' pp. 93-5. 40. Inventories of the latter type were made with regularity. See Mapa dos escravos pertencentes a Real Fazenda de Sta. Cruz. . . [28 Aug. 1790l; Mapa geral da escravatura da Real Fazenda de Santa Cruz . . [26 July 17991; Relacao dos escravos pertencentes a Real Fazenda de Sta. Cruz. . . [22 Aug. 1814], Mapa dos escravos da R. Fda. S. Cruz. . . [2 Oct. 1815], AN, Cotd. 808 4. 191-2 193 195, 199. The point is that in the 1791 inventory a very different procedure was used. It was also used in 1768 when slaves were 'ichecked off by married couples as in the old inventory," apparently a reference to Jesuit precedent. A patient investigator could attempt to identify the slaves listed by both inventories and see the changes taking place in family structure over a 23-year period; but the use of first names only and the lack of data on ages in the earlier inventory would make the results of dubious reliability.

10 1 1 12 1 3 14 15 16 17 18 _s

o

,l =: > " .t.go c t c::: = c C} < _ < N t O ¢ E 00

3 3 {i 3- Je c c 6 3 v, 3 t E *< C 3 E 4 E c* * c ,c ,3 wc3 ,E, ¢ 8 X o36 g c ,3 UR c M 5 oE; O C 8 o ° 8 ;2 8 $ 8

2 1 10 1 1 58 68 59 70 70 8 3 6 9 44 50 49 58 88

12 5 0 5 7 7 14 19 62 16 12 0 12 0 0 0 16 68 13 13 0 13 0 0 0 13 40 5 5 0 5 0 0 0 5 35 9 9 0 9 0 0 0 9 16

12 12 0 12 0 0 0 12 24 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 3 5 5 1 6 0 1 0 6 11 2 2 0 2 0 0 0 2 3

12 12 0 12 0 0 0 12 13 2 2 0 2 0 0 0 2 2

11 11 0 11 0 0 0 11 13 110 93 17 110 109 l26 126 236 448



402

journal of social history

Appendix B. Males by Age and Marital Status

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

c s3 y ;_ * vi t , i 8 0 S E * :s 4 F

V <; E E s O # 8 E; ° - 8 E-. : 8 P 8 V

15-19 0 () O 5 5 43 48 48 48

20-24 t 6 7 9 10 34 43 44 50

25-29 1 35 36 6 7 8 14 1 5 5(}

30-34 2 43 45 6 8 2 8 10 53

35-39 4 38 42 2 6 0 2 6 44

4044 8 36 44 0 8 0 0 8 44

4549 2 11 13 0 2 0 n 2 13

50-54 4 2 1 25 0 4 0 0 4 25

55-59 3 5 8 0 3 0 0 3 8

6S64 3 7 10 0 3 0 0 3 1()

65-69 2 1 3 0 2 0 0 2 3

70-74 2 3 5 0 2 Q 0 2 5

75-79 1 2 3 0 1 0 0 1 3

80 and over 3 4 7 0 3 0 0 3 ?

TOTALS 36 212 248 28 64 87 115 151 363



Slave Families on a Rural Estate in Colonial Brazil

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