My Friend Nicolas Mongoula: Africans, Indians, and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Mobile

Title

Creator

David Wheat See all items with this value

Date

2007

Bibliographic Citation

Wheat, David. 2007. My Friend Nicolas Mongoula: Africans, Indians, and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Mobile. In Coastal Encounters: The Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century edited by Richard F. Brown, pp. 59-90. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

annotates

Wheat’s chapter in Coastal Encounters is a piece of microhistory centered on Nicolas Mongoula, a free black man living in Mobile from 1720 to 1798 and whose surname was derived from the Mobilian trade language. Using census records, along with baptismal and sacramental records, Wheat broadly argues that the shared experience of slavery and the regional exchange economy brought Africans and Native Americans, including the Choctaw, into close contact in Mobile fostering linguistic exchange and familial relationships. Wheat refers to a pair of Choctaw villages north of Mobile named “Mongoulacha” and cites specific examples of Black enslaved persons living among the Choctaw and African American-Choctaw intermarriage in Mobile. Although Wheat forgoes discussion of material cultural exchange due to the limited nature of his sources, he still provides useful historical insight into African-Native relations which are often overlooked.

Subject

Alabama See all items with this value

Gulf Coast See all items with this value

Coastal Plain See all items with this value

Relations See all items with this value

Commerce See all items with this value

Cultural Accomodation See all items with this value

Chahta (Choctaw) See all items with this value

African American See all items with this value

Temporal Coverage

Postcontact See all items with this value

18th Century See all items with this value