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The History of the Baga in Early Written Sources*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

P.E.H. Hair
P.E.H. Hair*
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

The extent of secure knowledge of the past of the groups of people known in scholarly literature as Baga is inconsiderable. This is in part because of the limited European interest in past times in the Baga homeland (on the coast of the post-colonial state of Guinée), and also in part because of limited scholarly investigations in recent times (the post-colonial state did not help by for long exiling or barring from access non-Marxist scholars).

Ethnographic and linguistic investigations have been undertaken only since the mid-nineteenth century and still amount to very little, with even less in print. Archeological investigations have yet to begin, apart from the brave attempt of Fred Lamp to date certain artefacts stylistically. As a result, in the 1990s the connotation and exact range of application of the term “Baga” remain unclear and the precise linguistic relationship of “the Baga language” with those neighboring languages that appear to form a language group is known only in outline. What this means that it is impossible to sum up the earlier history of the Baga briefly. The reader who continues and bravely tackles the listing and discussion of sources that follows will, however, be able to assess how much of the history can be securely reconstructed.

It is understandable that the desire to construct a history for the Baga has latterly turned on the interpretation of oral traditions. Such traditions now preferred by the Baga—or at least by certain sections, strata, or individuals—are patently of great interest to the anthropologist inasmuch as they depict what the present-day Baga, or some of them, wish to see as their past history and thus throw light on contemporary ideology and popular mindsets.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 24 , January 1997 , pp. 381 - 391
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1997

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Footnotes

*

I am much indebted to Frederick Lamp, Curator of the Arts of Africa, the Americas, and Oceania at the Baltimore Museum of Arts, and to the Museum of African Art, New York, for being invited to serve as a consultant in the preparation of an exhibition on “The Art of the Baga: a Drama of Cultural Reinvention,” held at the Museum in the last quarter of 1996. Part of my report on the evidenced history of the Baga appears in Lamp's book accompanying the exhibition and with the same title, a book focusing on interpretations of present-day Baga art forms. My approach to the historical evidence being, however, rather different from that of Lamp (and other consultants), my full report is here published separately.

References

Notes

1. Lamp, Frederick, La Guinée et ses héritages culturels (Conakry, 1992), 5–6Google Scholar; The Art of the Baga: A Drama of Cultural Reinvention (New York, 1996), passim.Google Scholar

2. Caravajal, Luis del Marmol, Primera parte de la description general de Affrica (Granada, 1573, reprinted Madrid, 1953), f. 3Google Scholar; for a translation, see Hair, P.E.H. [hereafter PEHH], “Sources on Early Sierra Leone: (15) Marmol 1573,” Africana Research Bulletin [hereafter ARB], 9/3 (1979), 70–84.Google Scholar And for Spanish contacts with this part of the Guinea coast, see PEHH, “A Note on French and Spanish Voyages to Sierra Leone, 1550-1585,” HA 18 (1991), 137–41.Google Scholar

3. de Almada, André Alvares, Tratado breve dos Rios de Guiné, ed. Silveira, Luís (Lisbon, 1946), cap. 13Google Scholar; for a translation, see An interim edition of André Alvares de Almada's “Tratado breve dos Rios de Guiné”, c.1594, eds. PEHH, da Mota, Avelino Teixeira, and Boulègue, Jean (2 vols: Department of History, University of Liverpool, 1984).Google Scholar

4. Pereira, Duarte Pacheco, Esmeraldo de situ orbis (Côte occidentale d'Afrique du Sud Marocain au Gabon), ed. Manny, R. (Bissau, 1956), 759Google Scholar; Fernandes, Valentim, Description da la Côte Occidentale d'Afrique (Sénégal au Cap de Monte, Archipels), ed. Monod, T., da Mota, A. Teixeira, and Mauny, R. (Bissau, 1951), ff. 125, 126vGoogle Scholar; and on the latter, see PEHH, “The Text of Valentim Fernandes' Account of Upper Guinea,” BIFAN 31B (1969), 1030–38.Google Scholar And for a discussion of these ethnonyms in the early sources, see PEHH, “Ethnolinguistic Continuity on the Guinea Coast,” JAH 8 (1967), 252–53Google Scholar, and “An Ethnolinguistic Inventory of the Upper Guinea Coast before 1700,” African Language Review 6 (1967), 50-51, 65–68Google Scholar (or see both papers in PEHH, Africa Encountered: European Contacts and Evidence, 1450-1700 [Aldershot, 1997]).Google Scholar

5. PEHH, “Black African Slaves at Valencia, 1482-1516: an Onomastic Inquiry”, HA 7 (1980), 119–39Google Scholar; Bühnen, Stephan, “Ethnic Origins of Peruvian Slaves (1548-1650): Figures for Upper Guinea,” Paideuma 39 (1993), 57–110Google Scholar, citing Lockhart, James, Spanish Peru, 1532-1560 (Madison, 1970)Google Scholar, Bowser, F.P., The African Slave in Colonial Peru (Stanford, 1974)Google Scholar, and a number of minor sources.

6. Hakluyt, Richard, The Principall Navigations… (London, 1589, reprinted London 1965), 527Google Scholar (in a voyage of John Hawkins); The Rare Travailes of Job Hortop… (London, 1591), [4].Google Scholar

7. de Figueiredo, Manoel, Hidrographia…com os Roteiros…para… Guiné (Lisbon, 1625), f. 47vGoogle Scholar; Bràsio, António, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, Africa Ocidental, 2nd. ser., vol. 4 (Lisbon, 1968), 159–73Google Scholar, and in translation PEHH, “Sources on Early Sierra Leone: (9) Barreira's ‘Account of the Coast of Guinea,’ 1606,” ARB 7/1 (1976): 62Google Scholar, repeated in Jesuit documents on the Guinea of Cape Verde and the Cape Verde Islands 1585-1617 in English translation, ed. PEHH (Department of History, University of Liverpool, 1989)Google Scholar; Alvares, Manuel, Ethiopia Minor and a Geographical Account of the Province of Sierra Leone (c.1615), trans, and ed. PEHH (Department of History, University of Liverpool, 1990), f. 48Google Scholar and “Single Chapter”; André Donelha, Descrição da Serra Leoa e dos Rios de Guiné do Cabo Verde (1625)/Account of Sierra Leone and the Rivers of Guinea of Cape Verde, ed. da Mota, A. Teixeira and PEHH (Memórias 18, Centra de Estudos de Cartografia Amiga, Junta de Investigações Cientfficas do Ultramar, Lisbon, 1977), 98–101.Google Scholar

8. Coelho, Francisco de Lemos, Duas descrições seiscentistas da Guiné, ed. Peres, Damião (Lisbon, 1953), 63-64, 213–14Google Scholar; for a translation, see Francisco de Lemos Coelho, Description of the Coast of Guinea (1684), ed. PEHH (Department of History, University of Liverpool, 1985).Google Scholar

9. Separation of the coastal Baga from the interior Futa Jalon by a broad belt of Susu makes it particularly difficult to accept the received oral traditions that suggest that sections of the Baga migrated to the coast—that is, through the Susu belt—in quite recent times. A difficulty in assessing the history of this region is that little is known about the history of the Susu, who have themselves been credited, on very slight and unconvincing evidence, with having themselves migrated from the distant interior in comparatively recent times. A problem in Lamp's discussion of the possible historical relationships of Baga art is the lack of a published scholarly analysis of Susu art and its social context.

Recorded Culture Items

Notes to the Table

(a) Information obtained from Portuguese informants, apparently on the earliest European visit. See PEHH, “Early Sources on Religion and Social Values in the Siena Leone Region: (1) Cadamosto 1463,” Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion 11 (1970(1969]), 51–64Google Scholar. Note that the islands are named only on the Benincasa map.

(b) Information from Portuguese informants. Foulché-Delbosc, R., “Voyage à la côte occidentale d'Afrique, en Portugal et en Espagne (1479-1480),” Revue Hispanique 4 (1897), 175–201Google Scholar; Voyage d'Eustache Delafosse, ed. Escudier, D. (Paris, 1992), 35Google Scholar; and see PEHH, “Early Sources on Religion and Social Values in the Sierra Leone Region: (2) Eustache de la Fosse, 1480,” ARB 4 (1974), 49–54Google Scholar.

(c) Information from Portuguese informants. For Duarte Pacheco Pereixa see note 4.

(d) Information from Portuguese informants. For Valentim Fernandes see note 4.

(e) Probably information from Portuguese informants. For Hakluyt/Hawkins see note 6.

(f) As the previous. For Hortop see note 6. For the reference in the Cotton MS account of the Hawkins voyage, see Williamson, J.A., Sir John Hawkins (Oxford, 1927), 508–09Google Scholar.

(g) For Marmol see note 2.

(h) For Almada, a trader from the Cape Verde Islands with local information, see note 3.

(i) Information from the Cape Verde Islands trading community. For Barreira see note 7.

(j) Information from Portuguese sailors. For Figueiredo see note 7.

(k) Information from the Cape Verde Islands trading community. For Alvares see note 7.

(1) Thevenet, Melchisédech, Relation de divers voyages (Paris, 1664)Google Scholar, “Mémoire du voyage…du Général Beaulieu…,” 1; and see PEHH, “Sources on Early Sierra Leone: (1) Beaulieu 1619,” ARS 4/4 (1974), 42Google Scholar. Beaulieu touched in at the area during a voyage.

(m) For Donelha, a Cape Verde Islands trader who had visited parts of the region, see note 7.

(n) Sandoval, Alonso, Naturalem…de todos Etiopes (Seville, 1627),lib. 1, cap. 1, f. 6v; cap. 11, f. 40Google Scholar; and for a translation, see PEHH, “Sources on Early Sierra Leone: (3) Sandoval 1627,” ARB 5/2 (1975), 78–92Google Scholar. Sandoval was a missionary in America who obtained information about Guinea from fellow Jesuits in that region and perhaps from interrogations of slaves.

(o) Silveira, Luís, ed., Peregrinação de André de Faro à Terra dos Gentios (Lisbon, 1945), 44Google Scholar; for a translation of most of this work, see André de Faro's Missionary Journey to Sierra Leone in 1663-1664, trans, and ed. PEHH (Institute of African Studies, University of Sierra Leone, Occasional Paper 5, 1982)Google Scholar. André de Faro, a visiting friar, referred to “bagas” in the kingdom of Coia in the Sierra Leone estuary (ibid., 52), but this seems to be a back inference from Robaga, the name of the chief settlement, a name apparently derived from a Temne term—baka, and not an ethnonym.

(p) For Lemos Coelho, a Cape Verde Islands trader who visited parts of the region, see note 8.

(q) Dapper, Olfert, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche Gewesten… (Amsterdam, 1668), 175Google Scholar, or 1676 edition, 2nd. pag., 5. Dapper collected information from Dutch voyagers.