Madras, India Connection

One must be careful when interpreting the "nations" reported of runaway slaves in Saint-Domingue. This is also true for cases of "Negro Indians" or "Black Indians," who may have usually been people from India or South Asia. Although undoubtedly only a very tiny part of the slave population in Saint-Domingue, they occasionally appeared in the colony's press as runaway slaves. Sometimes they are assigned very specific regions of India, such as Bengale, Coromandel, Malabar, or the Mascarenes (where the French enslaved many Indians). In this case, however, we have encountered, for the first time, an Indian from Madras. This specific Indian runaway, Jean-François, was probably the subject of a runaway ad posted in May 1790. Without this additional description of him in the newspaper, we would not have figured out he was from Madras, or supposedly from Madras (a Tamil, then?).

Estimating Saint-Domingue's "Indien" Population

One thing we have been toying with is the possibly of using the number of reported runaways of small "nations" to reach estimates of their total numbers in the colony of Saint Domingue. Thanks to the excellent data collected in Le marronage dans le monde atlantique project, one can more easily sift through the reported runaway slaves in Saint-Domingue's press. In this particular case, we focused on "Indiens" reported as runaways in the period 1766-1790. Checking for possible repeated offenders, we found approximately 42 "Indiens" (of Amerindian, Asian Indian, or mixed "Indian") origin. If, following the work of Eddins, we assume a total number of reported "maroons" was 12,857, then we can play with the numbers for very rough estimates of the total "Indien" population in the colony. In this case, if 42 out of 12857 maroons were "Indien" in the aforementioned years, then about 0.33% of the maroons were classified as such. Applying that figure to the total slave population in 1790, which we will just use the "safe" estimate of 500,000, gives a figure of about 1633 "Indiens." Using a larger figure based on the total estimated slave imports of approximately 800,000, about 2613 slaves imported into the colony during the period of French rule were "Indien." These figures, though still very small, are likely overestimates. Since many of the "Indien" slaves in Saint-Domingue seem to have been domestics and others lived in towns or cities, their share of the reported marronage cases may be somewhat inflated. In that case, we should use lower figures and keep in mind the diverse sources of "Indien" slaves in the colony (Louisiana, Lesser Antilles, Spanish colonies, India, Mascarenes) are not always documented. Nonetheless, using the lower estimate of about 1633, based on the period from 1766-1790, is still plausible for an Amerindian & East Indian presence of less than 1% of the total slave population. It is rather easy to see how this population was quickly absorbed or disappeared in Saint-Domingue and independent Haiti. 

Enslaved Indians in Jacmel (1719)

Whilst perusing the archive of digitized notarized documents from Saint Domingue, from Jacmel, specifically, we encountered a reference to 2 enslaved Indian women. Fouquet serving as notary, the document indicates the presence of a few "Amerindian" slaves in the Jacmel region during the early 1700s. Sadly, nothing of their origin is indicated, although we assume they may have been from the mainland Spanish colonies or "Caribs" from the Lesser Antilles. Family Search's site is such a treasure...