Cape Verdeans: An Atlantic Maritime Civilization
American cotton and other American plant species reached Cape Verde twenty-five years before Columbus’s first voyage.1 The islands sit 350 miles off the West African coast. When the Portuguese arrived in the mid-fifteenth century, they were uninhabited — “barren of people but not vegetation.”2
Within decades, the islands had a population large enough to supply an imperial charter.
Jack D. Forbes, Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples (University of Illinois Press, 1993). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Primary source quoted in Kurimeo Ahau, Pt. 18 — Nations of The World // Cape Verdeans / American Indians / Sephardic / Portuguese / Whalers. ↩ ↩ ↩
Columbus shipped between 3,000 and 6,000 enslaved indigenous Americans to Europe, the Azores, the Canaries, and Cape Verde before 1500.1 In 1495, he shipped 500 Indians to Spain. Queen Isabella postponed their sale pending a theological review — not on moral grounds, but jurisdictional ones.2
His brother was no different, shipping 300 natives to Spain on a separate voyage.1
Jack D. Forbes, Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples (University of Illinois Press, 1993). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (Oxford University Press, 1992). ↩ ↩ ↩
In 1501, the Portuguese began to systematically depopulate Labrador, “transporting the now-extinct Beothuk Indians to Europe and Cape Verde as slaves.”1
Labrador. Newfoundland. Nova Scotia. The indigenous people of northeastern North America were kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic.
James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (The New Press, 1995). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Some went to European slave markets. Others went to Cape Verde.
This was not a single event. It was a sustained operation.
In 1518, Charles V issued a charter authorizing the purchase of 4,000 people from the Cape Verde Islands. Not from Africa. From Cape Verde.1
Charles V charter, 1518. Primary source documentation. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
By that year, the islands had been receiving indigenous Americans for seventeen years. Columbus had been sending Caribbean natives since the 1490s.1 The Portuguese had been depopulating Labrador since 1501.2 The islands that had been uninhabited in 1450 now had a population large enough to supply an imperial charter.
Jack D. Forbes, Africans and Native Americans (1993). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
By the 1840s, Cape Verdeans were a significant presence on Nantucket and New Bedford whaling ships.
They were recruited not as unskilled laborers but as experienced mariners. They could read ocean swells to predict weather changes days in advance.
They navigated by celestial patterns that differed from European techniques. They identified whale species from distances that impressed Yankee captains.1
New England whaling captains hired Cape Verdeans as specialists because their navigation skills exceeded European methods.
Nancy Shoemaker, Native American Whalemen and the World; Thomas Dresser, Whaling on Martha’s Vineyard; Gioia Dimock, Whaling in Massachusetts. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
The Wampanoag of southeastern Massachusetts had developed whaling techniques before English colonists arrived in the 1620s. The English learned whaling from the Wampanoag.1
The industry that employed Cape Verdean mariners was built on indigenous American knowledge. The whaling routes connected Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard to the broader Atlantic — specific navigation routes based on whale migration patterns, seasonal wind patterns, and island-hopping techniques developed over generations.
Cape Verdean whalers working these same routes were not learning a foreign trade.
Nancy Shoemaker, Native American Whalemen and the World. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Cape Verdean whalers maintained connections between island communities throughout the Atlantic.
A sailor working out of New Bedford might have family in Cape Verde, contacts in the Azores, trading relationships in the Canaries, and shore-leave connections across Massachusetts — all within the same extended network.1 The whaling ships provided transportation. The networks were already there.
Letters sent from Nantucket could reach Cape Verde through informal networks faster than through official postal systems.
Thomas Dresser, Whaling on Martha’s Vineyard; Gioia Dimock, Whaling in Massachusetts. Cape Verdean maritime community documentation. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Cape Verdean “immigrants” were contracted as seasonal pickers on the cranberry bogs of Harwich and Falmouth — the same places where American Indians had lived and worked for generations.1
Not similar places. Not nearby places.
Kurimeo Ahau, Pt. 18 — Nations of The World // Cape Verdeans / American Indians / Sephardic / Portuguese / Whalers. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
The same places.
Harwich and Falmouth sit on Cape Cod, traditional territory of the Mashpee Wampanoag and other indigenous communities. American Indians had been managing cranberry resources in these areas long before European colonization.
Cranberry cultivation was indigenous American technology. The Wampanoag had managed cranberry bogs for centuries before European colonization.1
The harvest brought extended families together from multiple communities. Workers traveled from permanent settlements to seasonal camps.
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