A maroon legacy? Sketching African contributions to live fencing practices in early Spanish America

sjtg_366 232..247

A maroon legacy? Sketching Africancontributions to live fencing practices in

early Spanish America

Chris S. DuvallDepartment of Geography, University of New Mexico, New Mexico, USA

Correspondence: Chris S. Duvall (email: [email protected])

Geographers have generally neglected African influences in attempting to understand the historical

development of cultural landscapes in the tropical and subtropical Americas. In this paper, I analyze

the early post-Columbian history of live fencing in the Americas, focusing on Spanish-held areas

in the 1500s and 1600s. Live fences characterize many modern landscapes in the tropical and

subtropical Americas, but the historical geography of these landscape features is poorly known. I

show that live fences bear Native American, European and African inheritances, but argue that the

African contribution was particularly significant. Specifically, escaped slaves – or maroons – like

many contemporaneous communities in Africa, experienced conditions of endemic warfare and

labour shortage. Live fences were an effective and labour-efficient means of defence, and all

descriptions of live fences in the tropical and subtropical Americas before about 1800 were

observed in maroon settlements. As African communities integrated into the multicultural societies

of tropical and subtropical America other benefits of live fencing came to be more widely valued

and integral to land management throughout the region – though its African inheritance has been

forgotten. To understand more completely the historical cultural ecology of the Americas, geogra-

phers must challenge the deeply rooted belief that Africans contributed only labour in the devel-

opment of New World landscapes.

Keywords: historical geography, cultural ecology, slavery, Central America, warfare, Atlantic

Basin

Introduction

Scholars in African studies have for decades approached the Atlantic Basin as anintellectual and historical-geographical unit, but with few exceptions geographers havenot taken this view (Carney & Voeks, 2003). Limiting geographical analyses to singlesubcontinental areas may create artificially constrained spaces that have never existedin the lived experience or historical memory of particular peoples or places (Lewis &Wigen, 1999; Voeks, 1997). In the Atlantic Basin, the traditional area studies approachis problematic because the vigorous trade, social and cultural networks that developedsoon after 1492 linked four continents (Meinig, 1986; Mintz, 1985; Voeks, 1997;Warner-Lewis, 2003).

Recently, the geographers Judith Carney (2001) and Robert Voeks (1997) haveadvanced knowledge of tropical Atlantic history by assessing African legacies in NewWorld cultural ecologies (Hawthorne, forthcoming). This field of research represents afrontier in human–environment and historical geography because most analyses ofpost-Columbian landscape change hardly mention Africans, presenting them – if atall – only as passive, enslaved adjuncts to European-led endeavours that transformedNative American environments (Carney, 2001, 2006; Carney & Voeks, 2003).

Certainly, the elementary power dynamics of slavery meant that the majority ofthose transported from Africa were prevented from leading processes of innovation and

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9493.2009.00366.x

Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 30 (2009) 232–247

© 2009 The Author

Journal compilation © 2009 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

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knowledge diffusion in most aspects of life (Eltis et al., 2007). However, geographersmust recognize that there were African groups who did have this type of leadership andthe clear potential to shape resource management practices at many times and places inthe New World – a historic contribution that has been obscured or forgotten preciselybecause of the power dynamics in New World societies (Carney, 2001; Epperson, 1990).My broad focus here is Spanish America, and specifically the Central America regionstretching from Panama to Mexico during the 1500s and 1600s, when Africans wereabsolute majorities in many locations. Many Africans had substantial autonomy inlandscape management and were important cultural influences in emerging, multicul-tural New World societies. Yet these African roots are often overlooked both in CentralAmerican societies and by scholars (Aguirre Beltrán, 1972; Carney & Voeks, 2003;Cortés López, 2004; Landers & Robinson, 2006).

In this paper, I argue that African knowledge was significant to the developmentof live fencing practices in the American tropics and subtropics, particularly CentralAmerica. My argument is based upon published, primary sources and is meant tostimulate further studies of specific landscapes using archival and field research.Today live fences characterize many cultural landscapes in the tropical and subtropicalAmericas (Budowski, 1987; Budowski & Russo, 1993; Mintz, 1962; MolléapazaArispe, 1999; Sauer, 1979; Zuria & Gates, 2006). Live fences serve not only as barriersto livestock and people, but also as sources of various plant products, includingfood, forage and fibre. This contemporary commonness of live fences presents anhistorical conundrum. Fencing was used infrequently in pre-Columbian landmanagement because individual land ownership was uncommon and the absence oflarge, domesticated animals reduced the need to enclose fields and gardens (Denevan,2001; Gade, 1975; Whitmore & Turner, 2001). Nonetheless, several studies of con-temporary live fencing have, in the manner of Sauer (1979: 260), concluded that:‘Presumably, [live fences] are a pre-Conquest tradition that became more importantafter the introduction of Spanish livestock and before the invention of barbedwire’ (see also Budowski & Russo, 1993; Zuria & Gates, 2006; Simpson, 1952).Alternatively, some have concluded that live fences were imported as part of westernEuropean livestock production systems (Crane, 1945: 34; Dunmire, 2004: 157).Scholars have not considered possible African contributions to neotropical livefencing practices.

In any case, the historical geography of live fencing in the Americas is poorly known.Zuria and Gates (2006) studied Aztec codices to understand pre-Columbian field bordersin Mexico and briefly summarize secondary sources on post-1492 agriculture on pos-sible reasons why live fencing came to be important (most of their material referring tothe 1700s and 1800s). Otherwise, the oldest primary source cited in any study of livefences is Polakowsky’s 1876 (cited in Sauer, 1979) description of Costa Rican vegetation.Live fencing practices in the 1500s–1700s have received almost no attention. In thispaper, I use previously overlooked primary sources to show that, beginning in the1500s, African settlements widely used live fencing to manage landscapes in the tropicaland subtropical Americas. The earliest evidence of live fencing in the Americas after1492 comes from accounts of escaped slave communities. Of course live fences are notuniquely African features of New World landscapes; Native Americans and Europeansalso contributed knowledge to the practice. Nonetheless, Africans did bring a distinctknowledge of landscape management to the Americas and scholars have yet to recog-nize that Central American cultural landscapes may bear specific and widespreadAfrican inheritances.

African live fencing practices in early Spanish America 233

Technical and geographic background

‘Live fences’ are human-created barriers composed at least in part from living plants,usually trees or shrubs. Live fences must be distinguished from remnant strips ofvegetation that are not intentionally planted (Baudry & Jouin, 2003) and from wind-breaks and other landscape features whose primary purpose is something other thanfencing (Le Sueur, 1951). Broadly, two techniques are used to construct live fences.‘Hedges’ are constructed (almost) exclusively from densely planted trees or shrubs.Other live fences use ‘live fence posts’, which are widely spaced trees that support a wirebarrier. These two techniques may be used in combination and with other types offence, but they are distinct (Howes, 1946). The plants that compose live fences areusually grown from cuttings rather than seeds.

Environmental variation produces geographic variation in live fence composition,construction and use. Biophysical factors limit the distributions of component speciesindependently of cultural ecology, which affects fence construction and use practices.Different livelihood strategies and histories mean that live fences meet different func-tional, aesthetic and practical demands in different landscapes. There are four broadtypes of live fencing practice in the tropical and subtropical Americas. First, in northernMexico, live fences are used to retain sediment in fields along seasonal drainagechannels (Doolittle, 2003; Nabhan & Sheridan, 1977), probably representing a NativeAmerican adaptation to localized environmental demands. Second, in many cities,plants with showy flowers or foliage dominate hedges used primarily as functional,decorative barriers along roads and in gardens (Sauer, 1979). These hedges representNew World iterations of formal European gardens, the setting in which most live fenceswere planted in early modern Europe (Huxley, 1978; Baudry & Jouin, 2003). Third, indrier areas, various species of Cactaceae and Agavaceae form barriers along roads andaround fields (for example see MacDougall, 1943; Fuentes, 2005). This type of livefencing has a clear Native American heritage (Zuria & Gates, 2006), although theethnobotany of component species (considered further below) also suggests possibleAfrican contributions. Finally, the most widespread type of live fence, occurring in rural,lowland, subhumid areas, is typically composed of tropical trees and shrubs – especiallyGliricidia sepium, Spondias spp., and Erythrina spp. (for example see Crane, 1945; Mintz,1962; Sauer, 1979; Budowski & Russo, 1993; Molléapaza Arispe, 1999). I focus on thistree-dominated live fencing, for which historical and ethnobotanical evidence suggestan African heritage.

Live fences, livestock and people

Most scholars have presumed that Central American live fencing developed in asso-ciation with livestock industries, because livestock control is currently a major use oflive fencing. Yet there is no clear evidence from before about 1800 that live fencingwas used in livestock management although hedges were widely employed for thispurpose by the mid-1800s (Ruxton, 1848; Ballou, 1854; Polakowsky, 1876; Dillmann,1883; Esponda, 1888; Sartorius, 1961 [1858]; Garavaglia, 1996). Several nineteenth-century experts considered hedges an outdated means of controlling livestock, aproblem that was ‘completely resolved in favor of [barbed] wire fences’ (Dillmann,1883: 106). Experts hoped to replace hedges with wire fences using live posts andto introduce fast-growing species (for example see Esponda, 1888; Warder, 1858).During the 1900s, neotropical live fences were indeed transformed with introduced

234 Chris S. Duvall

species and live fence posts, which now seem more common than hedges (Crane,1945; Sauer, 1979; Budowski, 1987; Budowski & Russo, 1993; Molléapaza Arispe,1999).

The use of live posts was developed to improve livestock management, but neotro-pical live fencing predated this nineteenth-century innovation. The earliest evidence forlive fencing after 1492 – despite evidence that agave-cactus field boundaries wereplanted before the arrival of Columbus (Zuria & Gates, 2006) – comes from descriptionsof escaped slave settlements, where hedges were used primarily for self-defence. Whilelivestock control certainly became more prominent over time, live fences were first usedprimarily to control people, not livestock.

Africans in post-1492 landscape change

Many geographers have analyzed post-1492 landscape change in the Americas, butfew have considered African contributions. It is unjustifiable to overlook Africansfor two reasons. First, Africans were numerical majorities in many areas, especiallyduring the 1500s and 1600s, the formative centuries of European colonization. Forinstance, Spanish censuses from 1530–45 in Hispaniola (present-day Dominican Repub-lic and Haiti) recorded many times more Africans than all other groups. For instance in1530 there were 1870 Africans, 427 Spaniards and about 200 Native Americans (Guitar,2006: 43). Similarly, Africans formed the majority or large minorities in sixteenth-and/or seventeenth-century Peru, New Spain and on various Caribbean islands(Moreau de Jonnès, 1842; Aguirre Beltrán, 1972; Cook & Borah, 1974; Bennett, 2003;Klein, 1986: 32). Overall, nearly 200 000 Africans were brought to the neotropics by themid-1600s, a population much greater than the number of Europeans who had arrivedat that time (Palmer, 1976). Thus many Spanish colonial societies began with asignificant African presence that was instrumental in shaping emergent social andcultural institutions (Aguirre Beltrán, 1994; Cortés López, 2004). Significantly, duringthe 1500s, 80 per cent of slaves came from Upper Guinea, especially Senegambia, whilein the 1600s, 75 per cent came from coastal Central Africa (Aguirre Beltrán, 1972:240–41).

Second, although the power structure of slaveholding societies generally pre-vented Africans from leading processes of innovation (Eltis et al., 2007), in the 1500sand 1600s some Africans had autonomy and authority in land management. Manyslaves were required to provision themselves from personal gardens, and some wereallowed market-oriented gardens and occasionally also livestock (Berlin & Morgan,1991; Klein, 1996). More importantly, escaped slaves established free – albeit illegal –communities on the frontiers of European-settled areas (Aguirre Beltrán, 1958). Thesemaroon communities were neither rare nor small even in the early 1500s: every-where there were slaves there were maroons (García, 1996; Price, 1996; Landers,1990; 2005). As early as 1503, Spanish residents of Hispaniola complained that toomany African slaves had escaped, joined Native American settlements and ‘taught[them] bad customs’, and could not be recaptured (Saco, 1938: 95–96). Similarly,maroons were believed to be a ‘problem’ amongst Zapotecs in central Mexico by1523, just four years after the Spanish conquest (Corro, 1951: 9). Maroon commu-nities, occupying the frontiers of European control, were officially acknowledged assignificant sources of knowledge for and acculturative influences on many NativeAmerican groups in emerging New World societies (Martin, 1985; Zeitlin, 1989;Voeks, 1997).


Maroon cultural ecology

Insecurity was the most basic feature of life for maroon communities. Faced with aconstant threat of violence from nearby colonial communities determined to recaptureslaves and reduce the banditry some relied on to acquire food, manufactures and specie(Price, 1996). To survive and protect themselves therefore, communities had to adoptsafeguards and implement effective defensive warfare strategies ‘whereby the Spaniardsoften got the worst of it’ (Benzoni, 1857 [1565]: 95). Vigilance was always important,as was selection of settlement sites where natural barriers, especially topography,impeded access (Robinson, 1969; Price, 1996). More pertinently, maroon communitiesfortified their settlements from attack.

Until recently, African-built defences in Africa received little scholarly attention(Diouf, 2003). Maroon fortifications in the New World seem to have received just briefmentions in a few sources such as Price (1996), Santos Gomes (2002) and Landers(2005). Scholars have studied only European and Native American fortifications in theNew World. The bodies of knowledge enslaved Africans brought often had been pro-duced in sociocultural contexts of endemic warfare (Carney, 2001; Hawthorne, 2003;Warner-Lewis, 2003), which in western Africa persisted until the late 1800s because ofthe slave trade (Inikori & Engerman, 1992; Lovejoy, 2000; Diouf, 2003). Insecurityproduced by a constant threat of violence and capture was not new for African-bornmaroons (Warner-Lewis, 2003; Landers, 2005). Statements that ‘African men in theNew World were forced to give up [. . .] warfare and the culture that [it] had engen-dered’ (Klein, 1996: 180) are inaccurate; many Africans relied upon African knowledgeof warfare to protect their communities.

During the period of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, live fencing was often a keycomponent of built defences in western Africa. For instance, in the 1680s, the Italiantraveller Giovanni Cavazzi (1732 [1687]: 421) observed in the Kingdom of Kongo that‘villages are surrounded by a dense hedge [. . . which] is rather well devised to avoidsurprise by enemies’. Live fences were often the outermost ring in a series of concentricdefensive structures, sometimes including palisades and moats (Figure 1). Other hedgeswere labyrinthine: a Senegalese village in the 1450s had ‘forty to fifty grass huts closetogether in a circle, surrounded by hedges [. . .], leaving but one or two gaps asentrances. Each hut [had] a yard divided off by hedges’ (Cadamosto, 1937 [1507]: 38).Other primary source accounts of defensive hedges span the 1400s to the 1800s andmuch of western Africa, especially Senegambia and coastal Central Africa (Moore, 1738;Alvares d’Almada, 1841 [1594]; Mage, 1868; Noirot, 1885; Clapperton, 1966 [1829];Caillié, 1968 [1830]; Donelha, 1977 [1625]; Jobson, 1999 [1623]). The distributionof these descriptions reflects the primarily coastal forays of Europeans beforethe 1900s; oral histories show that defensive hedges were also widespread inland(Seignobos, 1980; Fairhead & Leach, 1996). Indeed, the hedgerows that dominatemany western African landscapes (for example see Gautier, 1992; 1995; Pillot et al.,2002) were probably originally defensive structures, although the current importance inlivestock management obscures this history (Seignobos, 1980).

Characteristic African defensive structures were reproduced in the Americas(Figure 2). In 1609, the Spanish community of Veracruz, Mexico attacked the marooncommunity led by Gaspar Yanga, which had for three decades attracted escaped slavesand engaged in banditry (Davidson, 1966). In the most detailed account of New Worldlive fences prior to the 1800s, a Spanish observer described how around the settlement‘had been made a hedge [. . .], where any man who wanted to attack was obstructed

236 Chris S. Duvall

and entangled, and had to retreat and find another route’ (Pérez de Rivas, 1896 [1654]:287–88). Inside this first hedge was another protecting the palisade in which thesettlement was located. Other brief accounts describe defensive hedges at other maroonsettlements in Brazil (Anonymous, 1988 [c. 1768–73]: 107; Santos Gomes, 2002:487–88), in Panama (Nichols, 1932 [1628]: 297; Jopling, 1994: 377), in Florida(South Carolina General Assembly, 1954 [1743]: 25) and in Jamaica (Robinson, 1969:68). These observations are significant because there are relatively few first-handaccounts of maroon settlements from before 1800, and few of these describe the builtenvironment in any detail. Furthermore, accounts describing maroon settlements as‘hidden in the bush’ (Gemelli Carreri, 1955 [1700]: 240; Pérez de la Riva, 1996 [1952]:53) may represent observations of ‘overgrown’ live fences that became rings of

Figure 1. Live fences in early modern Africa. Top: Miller, ‘Draught of a Pholey Town and Plantations about

It’ (detail), image following Moore’s (1738: 24) description of a Peulh settlement in Senegambia, based on his

observations over several years’ residence during the 1730s. Bottom: Mathey ‘Bananier du Congo [Bananas of

the Congo]’ (detail), image based on Giovanni Cavazzi’s (1732 [1687]: 137) observations of small settlements

in the Kingdom of Kongo before 1687.


trees (Fairhead & Leach, 1996: 93–94), or hedges planted as screens as slaves did in theCaribbean (Pulsipher & Goodwin, 1999).

The African heritage of defensive hedges is particularly revealed in the case of GraciaReal de Santa Teresa de Mose, a settlement of fugitive slaves from South Carolina andGeorgia that obtained legal sanction in Spanish Florida in 1738 (Landers, 1990). Locatedjust north of St. Augustine, near the northern boundary of Spanish control, Mose wasauthorized explicitly as an outpost to defend against British attack. Its strategic impor-tance meant that a royal official oversaw its fortification, which was similar to othercontemporaneous Spanish forts (Landers, 1999). However, English troops who unsuc-cessfully besieged St. Augustine in 1740 discovered that Mose was ‘on all Sides linedround with prickly Palmetto Royal’ (South Carolina General Assembly, 1954 [1743]:25). The botanical species is uncertain, but may be Yucca gloriosa, which was planted inhedges around free black settlements in South Carolina (Pierce, 1863: 295), or Sabalpalmetto, which was sometimes called palmetto royal (Wentworth, 1835: 171). There isno evidence that live fencing contributed to the defence of any contemporaneousEuropean forts in the Americas (Benítez, 1929; Calderón Quijano, 1953; Chevalier,1952). Rather, European defences relied on labour-, material- and capital-intensivestructures (Robinson, 1969: 32–33). For instance, early Mexican haciendas weremassive stone structures (Chevalier, 1952) that had ‘the appearance of castles, with highwalls, turrets and battlements, capable of defence’ (Sartorius, 1961 [1858]: 168). Thedefensive hedge at Mose represented an African addition to a European design. Mose’sleader, Francisco Menéndez, was ‘Mandinga’, presumably born in Senegambia, likeseveral other Mose residents (Landers, 1999). Maroon hedges represented Africanknowledge of landscape management for defensive warfare.

Figure 2. Quilombo of São Gonçalo, Brazil, c. 1768–1773 (Anonymous, 1988 [c. 1768–1773]: 107). The

crosshatched area around the settlement represents a ‘hedge 10 hands high’, through which several passages,

some booby-trapped, are indicated. Like most descriptions of maroon settlements derived from military intel-

ligence prior to 1800, the map data were collected during an expedition ordered by the governor of Minas

Gerais, Brazil. (Used with permission of the Biblioteca Nacional of Brazil.)

238 Chris S. Duvall

On both sides of the Atlantic, many Africans in the early modern period faced similarsituations of endemic warfare and developed land management practices that exploitedor increased natural defences (Seignobos, 1980; Inikori & Engerman, 1992; Fairhead &Leach, 1996; Diouf, 2003; Hawthorne, 2003). Moreover, maroon societies faced condi-tions of limited labour and capital similar to those in tropical Africa, where labour hasbeen a limiting factor throughout agricultural history. Much of Africa is an internalfrontier, with conditions of low population density and limited state authority ininterstices between cultural groups (Kopytoff, 1987). These conditions produce bothinsecurity and labour shortage, socioeconomic factors that have been as important asenvironmental factors in shaping some West African cultural ecologies (Fairhead &Leach, 1996; Netting, 1965; Nyerges, 1992; Stone, 1996). Maroon communities gainednew members primarily by attracting escaped slaves, or by helping slaves escape (Price,1996), and although some communities grew to hundreds of individuals includingwomen and children, labour availability remained limited due to the constant need tomaintain defensive capabilities.

On both sides of the Atlantic, hedges were a means of defence that had low capital,labour and material requirements. Since the mid-1800s, agricultural scientists haverecognized this advantage in comparison with other types of fencing, although the costof this resource-efficiency is the time required for planted fences to become substantialbarriers (Sayers, 1845; Warder, 1858; Esponda, 1888; Powell, 1900; Le Sueur, 1951).The structure of African built defences clearly reflects the advantages and disadvantagesof live fencing. Hedges were often used alongside labour- or material-intensive struc-tures such as palisades, walls or moats. However, hedges were the outermost structure(Fig. 1) because this was the least demanding means of establishing an outer perimeter,and because the innermost structures – the last lines of defence – needed to be thestrongest. In the 1609 attack on Gaspar Yanga’s maroon settlement in Veracruz, theoutermost hedge impeded the Spanish-led forces but the innermost palisade blockedtheir advance for a longer period of time (Pérez de Rivas, 1896 [1654]: 287–88).Probably only large or long-lived settlements had defences more substantial thanhedges.

Live fencing can also contribute significantly to agricultural productivity. First, ashedges are labour- and material-efficient means of controlling livestock, by fencingfields and gardens or corralling livestock with hedges, farmers can reduce the labourrequired to monitor and protect domestic plants and animals. Second, hedge plantsoften provide various products, including food, forage and fibre. The agricultural utilityof hedges certainly benefited maroon communities and remains important to modernfarmers (Budowski & Russo, 1993; Zuria & Gates, 2006), including many of Africandescent (Mintz, 1962).

Beginning around 1650, decreasing numbers of slaves were imported to CentralAmerica with the increasing reliance upon American-born labour (Palmer, 1976), evenas slave imports increased elsewhere in the Americas. Additionally, many marooncommunities gained legal recognition as colonial governments sought to reduce theexpense posed by continual attempts at their subjugation (Price, 1996). Thus, in 1624Gaspar Yanga’s settlement became the legal village of San Lorenzo de los Negros (Pérezde Rivas, 1896 [1654]) and its residents interacted more actively with neighbouringtowns (Davidson, 1966). Although legalized maroon settlements were initially distinc-tively African – in the late 1600s, a European observer opined that San Lorenzo ‘appearsto be in Guinea’ (Gemelli Carreri, 1955 [1700]: 240) – they became less so as people ofAfrican descent integrated into Central America’s multicultural societies (Aguirre


Beltrán, 1946; 1958; Martínez Montiel, 1994; Bennett, 2003; Cortés López, 2004). Themulticultural societies that emerged were primarily rural and characterized by subsis-tence production, especially livestock husbandry (Hoberman & Socolow, 1996). In thissetting, the labour-, material- and capital-saving benefits of live fencing remainedsignificant after the need for community defence declined. By the 1800s, live fencingwas widespread in Central American landscapes but its history had been forgotten.Indeed, Central American societies have generally overlooked their African heritages(Aguirre Beltrán, 1958; Landers & Robinson, 2006). As Africans and their knowledgediffused into society as a whole, live fencing would become a ‘mestizo’ or ‘creole’practice (Esponda, 1888: 77; Sartorius, 1961 [1858]: 161).

Atlantic Basin ethnobotany

Maroon communities were able to build defensive hedges because many of the NewWorld plants they encountered were familiar to them. While human introductions ofAfrican plants transformed many American landscapes (Parsons, 1972; Carney, 2006),many genera and species occur naturally on either side of the Atlantic (Thorne, 1973).Africans recognized many neotropical plants and, when possible, used familiar plants infamiliar ways (Voeks, 1997). Indeed, plant species and genera found on either side of theAtlantic dominate lowland, tree-dominated live fencing.

There is little evidence that pre-Columbian Native Americans marked field bound-aries with trees or shrubs (Sauer, 1966; Gade, 1975; Hoberman & Socolow, 1996;Denevan, 2001; Whitmore & Turner, 2001), although woody plants were occasionallyinterspersed with agave and cactus along field boundaries (Zuria & Gates, 2006).Historical accounts of maroon settlement hedges show that these were usually com-posed of trees and shrubs rather than agave and/or cactus (Pérez de Rivas, 1896 [1654];Wright, 1932 [1577]; Santos Gomes, 2002). Many plants characteristic of tree-dominated live fencing in the American tropics and subtropics – such as Erythrina,Cassia, Croton and Spondias – are also used in live fences in Africa (Bond, 1944; Gautier,1992, 1995; Pillot et al., 2002). In Budowski and Russo’s (1993: 72–4) list of 90 speciescommonly used in Central American live fencing, 39 belong to genera or species foundnaturally on either side of the Atlantic. Furthermore, many plants used in CentralAmerican live fences are morphologically similar to plants used in African live fences.Plants that are unrelated in terms of taxonomic botany are often superficially similar innon-floral morphology; such plants are often grouped together in folk taxonomies(Berlin, 1992). Even taxonomic botanists recognize such superficial similarities:although the New World’s Cactaceae are unrelated to Euphorbiaceae, some Africaneuphorbias are called ‘cactiform’ because they are spiny and semi-succulent. Cactiformeuphorbias are used in West African defensive hedges (Seignobos, 1980; Fairhead &Leach, 1996) while various cactus species are used in the Americas. Many Africanswould have associated New World plants with superficially similar African plants andexperimented to determine if the newly encountered plants were similarly useful(Voeks, 1997).

Africans brought ethnobotanical knowledge to the Americas that was distinct fromNative American knowledge. Historical sources often lack sufficient detail to identifyplant species, but in the case of Spondias mombin Africans certainly brought relevanthorticultural knowledge from Africa. Native Americans have long used this tree for fruitand domesticated a congener, Spondias purpurea (Miller & Schaal, 2005). Spondiasmombin occurs naturally on either side of the Atlantic, but Spondias purpurea does not

240 Chris S. Duvall

(Duvall, 2006). Both species are common in neotropical lowland live fences, in partbecause they grow readily from cuttings (Sauer, 1979; Budowski & Russo, 1993; Molléa-paza Arispe, 1999). Vegetative propagation has affected the genetic characteristics ofSpondias purpurea (Miller & Schaal, 2005) but genetic analysis does not suggest whenplantation with cuttings began. Early written sources provide no evidence that NativeAmericans planted either Spondias species with cuttings (Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés,1851 [1535]; Benzoni, 1857 [1565]; Acosta, 1880 [1604]; Pardo Tomás & López Terrada,1993).Conversely, early sources confirm that Africans did. Spondias mombin cuttingswere planted in Guinea-Bissau in 1506–07 (Fernandes, 1951 [1506–07]: 87), while inthe 1570s in coastal Central Africa people planted the cuttings ‘so that when [the treesare] grown great, they make a strong fence or wall about their houses’ (Pigafetta, 1970[1597]: 115). The earliest published observations of either Spondias species in neotro-pical live fences come from descriptions of African-American gardens in the Antilles inthe 1800s (Tussac, 1827). While Native Americans certainly cultivated many trees nowcharacteristic of neotropical live fences, including Spondias purpurea as well as theimportant species Gliricidia sepium (Pardo Tomás & López Terrada, 1993), Africansbrought distinct horticultural knowledge that contributed to neotropical live fencingpractices.

Europeans also brought knowledge of plant use that contributed to neotropical livefencing practices. Although Europeans have planted hedges since at least Roman timesfor many purposes, including defence (Baudry & Jouin, 2003), in the early modernperiod, hedges were not widely planted in western Europe (Huxley, 1978). In manyareas, land enclosure began only in the 1500s and did not accelerate until the 1700s(Platres, 1979; Rackham, 1986; Baudry & Jouin, 2003). In the early modern period,Europeans in Europe and the neotropics generally did not fence rural landholdings,except for gardens (Chevalier, 1952; Hoberman & Socolow, 1996; Aguilar-Robledo,2003; Baudry & Jouin, 2003). When fences were built, Europeans often used labour-and resource-intensive techniques. An extreme example comes from Juan GemelliCarreri’s description of a Mexican monastery in 1700: ‘The whole area of this monas-tery, which is about [12 545 acres], is encircled by a good wall made of stone and lime’(Gemelli Carreri, 1955 [1700]: 169). In livestock management, stone walls (includingone 305 km long) were built to control sheep, while vaqueros on horseback – rather thanfencing – were used to control cattle (Aguilar-Robledo, 2003). As land enclosure becamemore important in Central America, European knowledge and landscape ideals certainlycontributed to the development of hedgerow landscapes. However, this influence seemsto have become widely significant no earlier than the mid-1700s (Crane, 1945; Cheva-lier, 1952; Hoberman & Socolow, 1996).

European ethnobotanical knowledge and aesthetic values contributed to specific livefencing practices. Europeans initially recognized few neotropical plants (Pardo Tomás &López Terrada, 1993); European ethnobotanical knowledge was relevant mainly just inthe bioclimatically temperate highland areas, which host several genera with Europeanspecies. Experimentation with superficially similar plants led to the use of New Worldtrees in hedges in both Europe and Central America. Mexican white cedar (Cupressuslusitanica), for instance, was first described from hedgerows in Portugal, though it is aneotropical native now abundant in highland live fences (Sauer, 1979). Beginningespecially in the 1800s, Europeans also introduced plants from around the world thathave become important in American live fencing. European-style formal gardens werecreated in New World cities such as Havana by the early 1800s (Ballou, 1854), andcarefully groomed hedges remain important features of these gardens (Sauer, 1979).


European horticultural knowledge did not extend significantly into tropical and sub-tropical live fencing until the 1800s. Africans undoubtedly learnt plant uses and land-scape management practices from both Native Americans and Europeans in the NewWorld (Voeks, 1997). Yet Africans brought distinct ethnobotanical knowledge to theAmericas and this knowledge must be recognized as a distinct inheritance in many ofCentral America’s cultural landscapes.

Conclusion

Central American live fencing is not solely an African inheritance. New World soci-eties and cultures arose from a complex mixing of people and knowledge from fourcontinents, not solely from the simple transference of Old World peoples to newsettings. However, within this complex history of cultural diffusion, extinction, andchange, scholars, like many American societies at large, have often forgotten or over-looked African contributions to New World cultural ecologies (Carney, 2001). Theoppression of slavery did not just prevent many Africans from having the power toshape the American societies in which they lived (Eltis et al., 2007), but also createdan intellectual atmosphere in which Africans were rendered invisible – despite theirdemographic and often cultural dominance in many areas (Epperson, 1990). Geog-raphers must challenge historically dominant representations of Africans in theAmericas in order to develop complete and accurate knowledge of landscape changesthat began in 1492.

Africans have been integral to Central America societies since the early 1500sbecause this region is an integral part of the Atlantic world to which Africans, likeEuropeans and Native Americans, have always contributed distinct and significantknowledge. Central American societies have for centuries downplayed their Africanheritages in favour of Native American and/or European roots (Aguirre Beltrán, 1972;Cortés López, 2004). Additionally, the fact that Africans in colonial Latin Americaexperienced a wide range of conditions – from the brutality of plantation slavery tohaving legal freedom in urban settings – is frequently not acknowledged (Landers &Robinson, 2006). In particular, during the 1500s and 1600s, significant numbers ofAfricans who escaped slavery experienced relative autonomy throughout CentralAmerica (Price, 1996). While maroon communities experienced strong social, political,and economic constraints, these constraints were similar to those many had faced inAfrica. The knowledge many Africans brought to the New World therefore was ideallysuited for the conditions of maroon life and escaped slaves were able to establish large,enduring and self-sufficient communities in many areas.

Scholars of historical cultural ecology have almost entirely overlooked possiblemaroon contributions to Central America cultural ecologies. Maroon communities werea distinct source of knowledge in New World societies; their knowledge of land man-agement could often be applied because they lived beyond the control of colonialsocieties, occupying broadly familiar environments. In fact, precisely because they wereuncontrolled, early Spanish officials sometimes underreported their presence in officialdocuments. The purposeful concealment of escaped slave communities – in a physicalsense by maroons and a documentary sense by colonial authorities – has importantimplications for scholarship, because academic knowledge creation relies on uncon-cealed information. Existing knowledge of how maroons contributed to Central Ameri-can cultural ecologies is incomplete because knowledge of African cultural diffusions haslagged behind the historic diffusion of African knowledge.

242 Chris S. Duvall

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Judith Carney and Walter Hawthorne for bibliographic recommendations and

helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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